Forget You by Jennifer Echols Read Free Book Online Page B

yanked Lila back too hard? They must think I was crazy. "I was planning to go to his house tomorrow night after the swim meet and take him parking," I said as calmly and sanely as I could.
    "Oooh," Lila said appreciatively.
    "That's ridiculous," Keke said. "He can't ban you from coming to his beach party. It's not his damn beach."
    "Good point." Lila escaped toward the junior girls again before I could grab her. She whispered to them and they squealed.
    It was too easy, too good to be true. I hadn't planned it. I hadn't asked for it. I wouldn't look pitiful chasing Brandon around, because crashing the party was the swim team's idea, not mine. I'd fought resentment all day that Brandon was going out with the guys tonight instead of me, when I hadn't seen him since Monday night. I'd thought it was okay, I'd told him it was okay, but the longer I considered it, the less it was okay. Now suddenly the problem was solved without me doing a thing? It felt dangerous. I didn't trust it.
    As if in agreement, the forest of pines and magnolias behind the guest bleachers bent in a gust of wind. A few puffs of popcorn escaped from the top of Keke's bag. My hair whipped into my eyes. "What about the hurricane?" I murmured, smoothing my hair back and knotting it into a heavy bun.
    "It veered toward Mississippi," Keke said. "We'll only get thunderstorms late tonight. Goooooooo . . ." She cheered and circled her fist in the air like everyone else in the stadium but me as the Bulldogs kicked off. The ball lobbed through the air. The line of players ran forward and collided with the enemy team. Then Brandon jogged to the sidelines with the rest of the offense. I located his red helmet with the white 24 almost immediately because he was so tall.
    And my stomach twisted with anticipation because he was mine, and I was about to have him again. Part of me didn't want to have sex with him anymore--the part of me that had felt nauseated and hadn't wanted to do it with him last weekend. I liked to keep everything in its place. Brandon Moore inside me seemed hopelessly out of place. But that was just nerves. I could overrule that part of me tonight, like I had before. Since we were going to see each other less often than I'd assumed, we needed to make the most of our time together whenever we had the chance.
    And if the swim team crashed the football players' party, Doug would see me there with Brandon. Strange that I cared so much about this with everything else going on in my life, but after Doug's insult, I cared very deeply about looking desired and perfectly normal. He would see that Brandon did, in fact, give a shit about me. And as my mother had always told me, if I gave the appearance of keeping everything together, people like Doug would be less likely to attack me.
    "Dee-fense! Good Lord!" Keke shouted through cupped hands, her popcorn bag in the crook of her arm. I looked past her at what Lila was up to. She'd finished with the junior girls and had moved on to the swim team boys. Then she stood on her tiptoes to see over their shoulders. She winked at me. The party was a go.
    Her face lit up with laughter as a howl rose over the crowd noise. I knew from experience it was Mike singing his falsetto boy band imitation, which he'd started this season when Lila and Keke blasted their CDs in the swim team van. Normally Mike was painfully shy and turned beet red if you looked at him, which made this strange performance that much funnier to the other swim team boys. They beatboxed along with him. The girls on the team weren't as into the performance because whenever Mike howled and the other boys beatboxed in the van, we couldn't hear each other talking. We were imprisoned by Mike's falsetto until he coughed to a stop. It's hard to explain what many, many afternoons spent with the same seventeen people could do to you.
    But this time, because we weren't stuck in the van with him and it wasn't so annoying, Lila laughed and fluttered her eyelashes at