No Place Like Homecoming, Dallen, Maggie [beach read book .TXT] 📗

a kidney and not a beat-up copy of a depressing novel.

“Could you possibly sound more put out right now?” I shot back.

He smirked. “A simple thank you would suffice.”

I narrowed my eyes. Cocky jerk. Always smirking. So sure of his hotness. So confident in his place in this tiny little goldfish-bowl of a world.

He handed over his copy of Catcher in the Rye. I’d read this one for school last year and hadn’t seen the point in getting a new copy, since I’d hated it the first time around. But for the pop quiz today, I kinda needed a copy.

Jerk.

Okay, fine, so maybe it wasn’t his fault that I wasn’t prepared. But the guy had a way of being around every time I was in the midst of a predicament.

Or worse. Crying.

Ugh, I hated the fact that he’d seen me cry.

I never should have gotten in his car. I never should have spoken to him at the wedding reception my first day in Lindale.

There were a lot of things I wish I could do over after finishing one horrid week in this town. But most of those regrets revolved around this guy.

I should have apologized better. I should have said thank you just now. But it was like this guy’s smirk, the knowing look in his eyes—it had some sort of trigger affect on my temper.

I flipped open to the page I needed to reference and tried my best to ignore him.

It was impossible. The guy was everywhere, and he saw everything, and he took up way too much space in my brain.

Worse? Logan was taking up no space whatsoever. Or rather, I clearly wasn’t on his mind. I mean, I always knew he was sort of an out-of-sight-out-of-mind kind of guy. He was just like that. He was very...in the moment.

And if you weren’t in the moment with him?

Well, even now my fingers were itching to pull my phone out and see what pictures my friends were posting. To see if Logan had finally texted me back.

I refused to text again.

I wasn’t about to look pathetic.

But why the heck wasn’t he texting me back already?

“Hey, uh…” Flynn leaned over in my direction. “If you could avoid tearing apart my book while you’re borrowing it, that would be great.”

I looked down to see that I had in fact been abusing the already cracked and torn copy. “Sorry,” I muttered, more to the book than to Flynn.

I had nothing against books. Flynn, on the other hand…

“Do you need it back?” I glanced over at his quiz, which he’d scrawled all over.

“Nah, I’m done.”

“Already?” I arched my brows in surprise. Everyone else in the class was still hunched over their papers.

He shrugged.

Okay then. Good talk.

I rolled my eyes and turned back to my paper, focusing on the questions in front of me right up until the bell rang. “Keep it,” he said, when I lifted my head while scrambling to find the quote I’d been looking for to fill in my last answer.

“Oh, um, thanks.” But he was gone, halfway to the door by the time I got the ‘thanks’ out there.

I finished up my answer and grabbed my bag, my phone buzzing right as I picked it up.

Logan.

Sure enough, he’d finally texted and it was to say, call me. Sure there was a smiley face emoji and a heart, but the ‘call me’ made my stomach twist.

Call me. The two words seemed to taunt me as I stuck my phone in my back pocket and hurried down the hallway toward the parking lot. Today was a fitting and rehearsal day at Mrs. Messner’s and Callie had offered to give me a ride.

I was the first one out there and my heart was frantic in my chest as I tried to figure out what that ‘call me’ meant.

Did he just miss me?

I couldn’t bring myself to believe that. Sure, I knew Logan was into me. We’d had terrible timing, that was all. Freshman year he’d been dating Samantha and then sophomore year I’d been in an on-again-off-again thing with Logan’s friend Ryan. And then junior year Logan had gone off to spend a year in Switzerland with his mother. But this was supposed to be it. Our year. We were finally both on the same page…

Or we would have been if we were in the same town.

But whether he liked me or not, Logan wasn’t exactly the type to sit around and pine. Even if he wanted to, the other girls in our class would never let him. As Taylor liked to say, Logan was prime meat. He was the one guy every girl wanted. And I’d had him.

Until my dad went totally psycho.

Didn’t my dad see how he was totally screwing everything up?

He was the one who was all about appearances. He was the one forever reminding me about how perception was everything. He should have been over the moon that I’d finally snagged the guy everyone knew would be homecoming king. Which would have made me a shoo-in for homecoming queen. Which would have made my mom happy for years to come.

So I’d gotten into a little trouble. My dad knew better than anyone that a girl had to do what she had to to fit in. No goody-two-shoes were ever invited to the best parties, or sought after by guys like Logan. And they certainly didn’t rise to the ranks of homecoming queen.

“Are you all right, Isla?” Callie asked as she drew close to the car.

I hadn’t realized I’d been pacing and muttering to myself until Callie and Willow drew near, with Savannah following close behind.

“Fine,” I said.

Willow’s brow creased in concern, and Savannah gave me a cursory look before asking no one in particular, “What’s wrong with the new girl?”

My answering sneer was lost on Savannah as she climbed into Callie’s passenger seat, letting me and Willow cram into the back of the old clunker. Her car managed to make Aunt Lucy’s look like a Ferrari.

From what I