First Love by James Patterson Read Free Book Online Page A

laps, and when we finally slowed, I turned to Robinson with wide and no doubt crazy-looking eyes.
    “Oh my God,” I said, pulling off my helmet and shaking out my sweat-drenched hair. “Oh. My. God.”
    Robinson cackled madly. Brad came over and said, “Whaddja think?”
    It took Robinson a moment to answer, probably because he had to wait for his brain to stop vibrating. Then he said, “I might have just had the best time of my life.”
    I started laughing like an idiot, because that was exactly what we’d come for, what I’d wanted to give him.
    Carpe diem.
Because today, after all, was all we knew we had.

12
    “I’ M STANDING ON T OM C RUISE, ” R OBINSON yelled. “Take my picture!”
    “You’re on his
star
, Scalawag,” I said. But I snapped the photo anyway: dark-eyed Robinson, handsome as any movie star, dressed like a hipster lumberjack. Even in Southern California, he couldn’t give up the flannel.
    We were fresh off the Cal-Am racetrack, still hopped up on the experience. Hollywood was a hop, skip, and a jump up the 110 from Torrance, so that’s where we went next.
    Of course we had to go straight to the Walk of Fame. While Robinson ogled the street performers (buskers, hustlers, and dudes dressed like Iron Man and Captain Jack Sparrow), I dashed around taking photos of the names I knew and loved: Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, James Dean… and, okay,Drew Barrymore and Jennifer Aniston, because it’s 2013, people, and not all good movies are in black and white.
    “This place is nuts,” Robinson said, hopping over to Snow White’s star. “Look, now I’m on top of a fairy tale.”
    “ ‘I used to be Snow White, but I drifted,’ ” I said. Then I cocked a hip and gave my best sultry wink—like Mae West, whose line I’d just stolen.
    Then I turned, and together we walked up Highland Avenue, toward the golden Hollywood Hills and the giant, iconic white sign. Our destination: the Hollywood Hotel. Robinson didn’t know it, though, because I wanted to keep surprising him. The delight on his face—the way his eyes went wide when he was taken aback—I wanted to keep seeing that for as long as I possibly could.
    The fact that we would be alone together in a hotel room had nothing to do with my decision.
    (Quit laughing!)
    When Robinson saw me striding up to the reservation desk, he said, “Do we have enough money for this?”
    I wasn’t sure if we did, but it didn’t matter. “My back can’t take another night in the car, and I am
not
camping out with those shirtless dudes I saw in the park.” (If I couldn’t tell him the truth, didn’t that seem like a good enough reason?)
    “I thought that guy with the python looked nice,” Robinson joked. “But hey, I’m down with creature comforts. Are we gonna get room service?”
    I shook my head. “Nice try,” I said. “Spendthrift. Profligate.”
    “I totally don’t know what those words mean,” Robinson said, “but I’m not the one who booked us the expensive hotel room.”
    We rode the mirrored elevator to the fifteenth floor in silence. We didn’t meet each other’s eyes, either in person or in our reflections. Did Robinson feel shy, the way I suddenly did? I didn’t know, because I couldn’t look at him.
    A minute later, we opened a door onto a spacious cream-colored room, with a giant flat-screen TV, floor-to-ceiling windows, a little seating area, and one giant boat of a bed.
    I felt my breath catch in my throat. Robinson and I had slept in a tent, as close together as spoons. And this bed was so stupidly huge that we could be on either side of it and not touch at all. And yet—it felt way more intimate.
    I went to the sink to wash the racetrack grit from my face. In the mirror was a girl I hardly recognized. For one thing, she desperately needed a shower. For another, she looked… well,
wild
was the word that came to mind. Certainly she did not resemble a
straight arrow
or a
do-gooder,
which were the kinds of nouns I was