Second to No One by Natalie Palmer Read Free Book Online Page B

Before saying anything I took a deep breath, “Hello?”
    “Hey, Gem. It’s me.”
    “Hey.” Crap, I sounded too ex cited. “What’s up?”
    “Can we talk?”
    I knew I was supposed to act all hard-to-get, but the way he asked it, so sweetly and almost humble, made it impossible to say no. “Um, yeah. I’ll meet you out front.” I tried on three different jackets—two old and the new one my parents had just given me for my birthday. The new one was definitely the cutest, but the old blue one was the one I was wearing the first time Jess kissed me. Maybe it would bring back old feelings. No, I wasn’t this girl. I grabbed the new jacket and threw it over my shoulders as I ran down the stairs. I met Jess on the front porch, but he wasn’t sitting down. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said nodding toward the street.
    “Okay.” I followed him over my lawn, wondering with every step what this meant. He wanted to talk. Surely he didn’t want to re-breakup with me. So talking could only be a good thing. Or maybe this was about the note. Maybe he thought that I wrote it. Maybe he was jealous. Either way, Drew was right. I couldn’t get back together with him. Even if he begged me to.
    We turned right down the street in the direction of the cement jungle. For a while over the summer, I went there every night and thought about Jess. But as the phone calls got scarcer and Trace became more regular, my visits to the jungle tapered off, and it had been a good couple of months since I’d been there. We walked in silence, and I was relieved that we still could. That we could still be together, without saying anything, and feel completely comfortable — well, almost completely comfortable. Jess helped me up the first block, and I waited for him to get up while I daydreamed of a million things I wished he’d do once he was situated—hold my hand, kiss my lips, kneel down on one knee and ask me for forgiveness. But as the minutes rolled on, none of those things happened, and when we finally sat down, Jess stuffed his hands back in his pant pockets. We sat a good foot apart, as far apart as two people that are just friends would.
    Jess bit his bottom lip and slowly kicked the block beneath us with the back of his shoe. One and then the other. “So,” he finally said, “you’re in my photography class.”
    “Yeah.” I looked up at him, but he didn’t look back. “I had to transfer classes, and that was one of the only ones with space.”
    He nodded. “I like Ms. Delrose.”
    “Yeah, me too.”
    Jess shifted uncomfortably. “How has your birthday been?”
    I shrugged. “It’s been fine. Drew did everything she could to make it very exciting .”
    “What do you mean?”
    “She put balloons in my locker. And those notes.”
    “Drew did all that?”
    “Yeah, but she didn’t write the one about you. Someone else must have…” His eyes were distant, and he seemed to barely be listening to my explanation, so I stopped.
    “You can, you know,” Jess said.
    “I can what?”
    “Be with Trace. I don’t want you to think that just because I’m around and will hear about stuff that…I’m just saying you can date him if you want to.”
    I looked away from Jess and down our long dark street. This wasn’t exactly the talk I was hoping we would be having. It was impossible to stand firm in my resolution to not get back together with him when he didn’t even want me back.
    Jess continued despite my silent prayers that he wouldn’t. “I really want us to be friends again. I know that it usually doesn’t work, you know, when two people date for a while, they say they can’t be friends…that it can’t ever be the same. But I think we’re different. What we had, our friendship I mean, it’s so much stronger than most.”
    I nodded in slow motion. The friend talk. Again. How was it possible that my heart was breaking all over again?
    “Here.” He leaned forward and grabbed a roll of newspaper out of his back