Cora Carmack - All Lined Up

But I am going to start now, damn it.

Note to self: do not use the world blow in front of Silas . . . in any context. It won’t turn out well.

No matter what I have to do, I will not let my dad limit my life here, too.

I don’t look in the mirror as I work to gather my composure. If I do, I know I’ll obsess over my hair—how the deep red color clashes horribly against my no doubt pink cheeks. I can feel the light perspiration above my brow, so my bangs are probably a clumpy, oily mess, too.

Nope. Better to avoid the mirror altogether. Silas didn’t seem to take issue with whatever he saw, so neither should I. Instead, I take a few seconds just to lean against the door and breathe.

By-product of having a coach for a father? A natural gift for mental pep talks.

But now . . . I wasn’t sure which pep talk to give. The familiar be cautious and careful routine? Or take a cue from Stella and treat myself to a live it up talk to get my ass in gear? In the end, I decide on something carefully in the middle. I’ll see what happens with Silas, but I am not staying upstairs with him, and I am not leaving the party with him either.

There. That seems reasonable.

Fun. I need to have some. Stat.

Decided, I open the door quietly, smile situated on my lips, expecting to find Silas waiting, but he’s nowhere to be seen.

Walking back toward the stairs, I see him, hands braced on the railing and talking with someone a few steps down.

“Come on. Give me one hint,” Silas says.

The answering voice is familiar, and immediately I feel sick.

“Dude, it took me years to get in her pants.” Levi. Freaking Levi. “No way I’m giving you an easy in. And no way you’re managing it in one night. She’s an icebox, man.”

I shiver. Like I really have been coated in ice.

Silas chuckles before replying, “Oh ye of little faith.”

“Oh ye of little chance.”

“Whatever,” Silas says. “If she gave it up to high school you, all farm fresh with zero game, she can’t be that tough.”

They talk about me like I am some play to master, a team to beat. I probably matter less to them than their helmets and pads. And, oh yes, I have no doubt now that Silas is on the football team. Levi wouldn’t be hanging out with him if he weren’t.

My heart drums in my ears, and my mouth waters in that way that usually means I’m about to be sick. I don’t scream, even though it would be satisfying. Nor do I pick up the vase on the hallway table and test out how my Angry Birds skills translate to real-life target practice.

Instead, I calmly walk the length of the hallway and escape into an empty bedroom. I breeze past a few twin beds and head straight for the French doors that open up to a balcony on the far side of the room.

Emerging into the surprisingly cool evening air, I close the door behind me, sucking in a lungful of refreshing air.

Then I scream.

Not the shrieky, ear-shattering kind. Lower, more guttural. Like a battle cry.

Gripping the balcony railing, I stand up straighter, like I would if I were standing at the barre in my dance studio, and I let it all out.

Already I feel better.

A few seconds of precious silence passes, filled only by the faint echo of my scream. Then below me a voice calls out, “I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you’ve decided against going Greek.”

Down in the yard, highlighted by one of the floodlights affixed to the outside of the house, is another gorgeous guy wearing dark, worn jeans, scuffed boots, and a smirk that oscillates between infuriating and adorable. He’s got dark hair and a delectable touch of scruff along his jaw, and he looks entirely entertained by my mental breakdown.

And all I can think is . . . Dear God, not another one.

It’s like she took the scream right out of my throat. I’ve been out here alone, alternating between convincing myself to leave and convincing myself to stay. And here comes this gorgeous girl with a lion’s roar.

She leans over the ledge, her eyes searching until she finds me sprawled at the base of one of the wide oak trees in the yard. I sit up a little straighter under her gaze.

Her pale skin shines a creamy white in the moonlight, and dark red hair frames a heart-shaped face with full, pouty lips. Her eyes narrow on me, or maybe she just squints. After a few seconds of studying me, she offers an unenthusiastic, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. That was the best thing I’ve seen all night.”

“You can’t have had a very exciting night, then.”

No. No, I hadn’t. I’d tagged along with some other teammates, thinking I needed to make an effort to get to know them off the field. I’d gotten to know them all right. And I was already tired of them. I knew it wouldn’t be easy to walk on to a team like this, it never was. People were nice enough, but none of them took me seriously.

Just a walk-on.

Most people see us as just players for the real athletes to practice against with no real chance of getting any substantial playing time for ourselves. A few are more accepting.

But fitting in isn’t worth spending an hour with those assholes. They aren’t even drunk yet, so I can only imagine how much worse it will get.

I shrug off that frustration and tell the girl, “At least things are looking up now.”

She stiffens, shaking out her hair like a mane. The deep red shines, catching glints from the lights as she moves.

“Listen,” she says, “tonight is not the night to flirt with me.”

I should probably be annoyed by her brusque tone, but I find myself smiling instead.

“Who said I was flirting?”

She scoffs, her fingers curling tighter around the balcony banister.

“You were.”

I grin because, yeah . . . I was. She’s not cocky when she says it either, just matter-of-fact. I find it . . . fascinating.

“It’s not like I stood below the balcony reciting Romeo and Juliet.” Not like I could either. I never managed to finish that when we read it in high school English, and the movie version I watched with guns and gangs got me a big fat F on the exam. She makes a noise, and I can’t tell whether she’s scoffing at me again or laughing.

“Romeo was a tool.”

“Really?” I thought girls lived for that shit.

She crosses her arms over her chest and huffs, “He’s head-over-heels, mopey in love with Rosaline, and then in one night, he flip-flops and decides now he’s in love with Juliet. If he would have just thrown his whiny tool self at another girl, Juliet wouldn’t have died.”

“Well, I can promise I’m not going to suddenly declare my love for you. Satisfied?”

She shrugs, and I assume that’s the only answer I’ll get.

“So was it a Romeo who inspired that scream?”

“Nope. Just the regular kind of asshole.”

She stumbles over the last word, her cheeks pinking prettily, and I get the feeling her blunt honesty doesn’t usually include swear words.

“Well, fuck that guy.” My suspicions are confirmed when her blush deepens, and she pulls that full bottom lip between her teeth. I try to connect this shy piece of her puzzle with the brazen girl who called me on my flirting without blinking.

“Uh . . . yeah,” she replies hesitantly.

I make a mental note to cuss as much as possible to keep that sweet flush on her face. “Don’t let that dick ruin your night.”

I should probably learn to take my own advice. I’m the one hiding in the backyard of a frat house.

“They will not ruin my night.”

They? There’s more than one? Damn.

I start to ask her name, but then someone inside the house shouts out, “Dallas?” and her head whips around in response.

“That him?” I ask.

She rolls her eyes and nods.

“Well then, Dallas. As I see it, you have two options. You can turn around and unleash another of those screams on him, which would be entertaining. Or . . .”

I trail off, debating whether or not to try again considering my crappy flirting record with this girl so far.

“Or what?”

“Or forget about the prick, and hang out with me. I’ll make my best effort not to be an asshole.” She hesitates and I add, “Or a Romeo. Or a tool. Or whatever it is you’re sick of.”

There’s a third option that I don’t add, as appealing as it is. She could introduce me to the dick, and I could introduce him to my fist and work off some frustration. But that could get me in trouble with Coach, so while effective, it’s off the table.

I am fully prepared for her to say no and lump me in with whatever other guys have pissed her off tonight. Instead, she considers me. Her lips twist, somewhere between pursed and pouty.

“I’m not sleeping with you,” she says.

Surprised, I bark out a laugh and feel the last of the night’s frustration ebb away. She says exactly what she’s thinking, and I love it. I’m shocked by how much I want to keep prodding until I’ve unraveled every little thought that crosses her mind.

“Again with the assumptions,” I say.

“Like you weren’t thinking about it.”

I hadn’t actually gotten that far, but now I’m thinking about it, about how it would be an even better way to work off my frustration than fighting. I bet that flush is just as pretty across her chest as it is across her cheeks. It’s hard to tell from down below her, but she’s tall, maybe just a few inches shorter than me, and her legs go on and on. I imagine them going around and around my hips.

I clear my throat before I can wander too long down that trail of thought. “Thinking about and expecting it are two different things. One makes me a douche-bag, the other just makes me a dude.”

Tempting or not, I don’t have time for that kind of thinking. It was one thing to hook up with girls at Westfield. It didn’t take nearly as much effort to secure my spot on the team or keep up my grades there, but I am on an entirely different playing field here. Literally.

“Dallas!” The guy calls out again, and a light a few rooms down switches on. There’s a shrill scream before the light switches off and a door slams shut, the guy clearly having interrupted something.

Dallas’s face screws up in a laugh, but no sound comes out.

When another room lights up down the hall, she sobers quickly.

“Why would you want to hang out with me? I’m likely to be a roaring bitch for the rest of the night.”

So honest. And gorgeous. It’s a rare combination. I have to remind myself again that I don’t have the time to really appreciate this particular rarity.

“What can I say? I have a thing for screamers.”

Her blush had calmed, but now it detonates across her cheeks again, and I’m laughing before I manage to hold it back.

“I’m kidding, little lioness. I’m not looking to hook up with you. I just find your honesty refreshing. That makes you better company than every person I’ve run across tonight.”

She watches another light switch on, just two rooms away, and lifts her chin. She seems to come to a decision. Then she braces her hands on the railing, hefts herself up, and throws a long leg over the balcony’s edge.

“Holy shit!” I jump to my feet, sprinting to stand beneath her. She has both legs over by the time I’m standing under her, her toes tucked carefully along the ledge on the outside of the railing.

“Dallas, be careful.”

Her legs look even longer now that they aren’t blocked by the balcony, and her pale skin almost glows in the moonlight.

“You better not be looking up my skirt right now,” she says.

“I’m not!”

Anymore.

She twists her head around, and her eyes meet mine, and I am so caught. Even at night, the bright green of her gaze stands out like emeralds against her porcelain skin. I note, with a wry grin, that her underwear is the same color.

“Does this make me a coward?” she asks, glancing in the direction of the seeking voice.

“You’re currently dangling off a balcony. Coward was not the word I was thinking of.”

She grins, a vibrant gleam in her eye, and before I can smile back in response, she lets go and starts dropping toward the ground.

“Oh shit!”

I throw my arms up while simultaneously jerking my head away so I can’t be accused of looking up her skirt again. Her knee makes contact with my shoulder, and when I try to catch her I end up catching her skirt instead, and then I’m tipping backward with her somewhat in my arms. My ass hits first, then the top of her head cracks against my chin a second before her weight slams into my midsection.