Shark Out of Water (Grab Your Pole, #3) by Jenn Cooksey Read Free Book Online Page A

any kind of a future whatsoever is an unbelievably frustrating waste of time. However, when the occasional girl happens along and I think she and I might have the potential for something more than the shallow relationships most everyone around me is satisfied to have, I’ll venture a few real dates. Although when it becomes clear that for whatever reason she and I won’t work, I end it ASAP. I keep my options open, but that’s also the basic reason why I’ve contented myself with the superficiality of meaningless hook-ups and one-night stands, and I make no apologies for that. I’m a guy. There’s nothing deep or introspective about it…I like girls and I like sex. Period.
    But for my entire life, Jeff has been there, like a surrogate sibling or a separated Siamese twin. Shit, we even have each other’s blood running through our veins. When he got chicken pox and was gonna be held back, we tried to infect me with regular exposure; it didn’t work so, we went a step further. In a ritual set to the song “Cowboys Like Us” by George Straitand while drinking our stolen ceremonial Coronas, we cut ourselves open and swapped blood, vowing that we were brothers from another mother and we would always be together in sickness and health. I know, sounds a little gay but we were eight. The point is, we’ve always had each other’s back, even if one of us was in the wrong, and we’ve always known each other’s deepest desires and darkest secrets.
    Well, that is up until last month.
    When my suspicions were confirmed about Kate being pregnant and then losing the baby in the accident, the reality that Jeff hadn’t shared any of that with me was really fuckin’ hard to accept. But accept it I did. Grief makes people fragile and I knew he was doing everything he could do to not break and that he might’ve thought talking about it would shatter him. So I left him alone, thinking we were still as tight as we ever were. But, I was wrong and when it dawned on me Pete was pussy-footing around with the news that Jeff had automatically believed the lie just like Camie had and that he still did, not only that, but that he’d written me off as well, for the third time in my life…I threw up. I can only thank my lucky stars Jillian wasn’t around to video it again, as I’m sure she did the night of Camie’s party when I puked for the first time after I fled from her bedroom.
    That brings me to the second thing I knew; I wasn’t about to tell either Camie or Jeff they were mistaken. That would mean having to tell one or both of them the truth and I just can’t. I can’t tell them and I can’t tell anyone else. I can live (meaning barely get by) with them thinking I’m just an asshole who threw the best thing in my life away over sex—or more specifically, the lack of it—but now, having either of them know the rest and having to see my admittedly deserved condemnation and repulsion in their faces everyday would effectively nail my coffin closed.
    And one other thing I was absolutely certain of…I didn’t have a fuckin’ clue as to how I was gonna face either of them.
    I had no strategy. I had Pete and I had Jillian, but I didn’t have a plan. That’s why I dicked around before turning in my expertly forged readmittance note that Jillian gave me until just after first period and just before second so I wouldn’t run into Jeff, and when I saw Camie walking across campus on her way to second period and felt my heart twist and splinter, I found myself asking Mrs. Henderson if I could take today and tomorrow in the library to “catch up.” There wasn’t anything I could do about Team Sports with Jeff seventh period, aside from ditching that is, but when Coach Roy stopped me on my way into the locker room and asked for my help with the first-aid class he was teaching, I counted it as a blessing from God, whom, I will admit, I’m still a little pissed off at.

Five
    Friday, Week One

    Fateful fraternizing ~