Summer Alone (Summer #1) by Amy Sparling Read Free Book Online Page A

and take a sip of coffee, which is so not as good without Ollie’s fancy creamers. “We have sugar cubes at work and it’s fun to drop them into your coffee and watch them disappear.” Half the time I’m tempted to eat the cubes straight out of the box, letting them dissolve on my tongue. One of my favorite books, Chasing Forever Down, has a character named Topher who eats sugar cubes all throughout the book. If I wasn’t afraid of becoming a hyperactive maniac, I might do the same thing.
    “Let me guess, that guy at work likes sugar cubes,” Mom says, wiggling her eyebrows at me as she sips her coffee.
    “What? No.” I groan and gulp down the rest of my coffee.
    “Oh come on,” Mom says in her trying-to-be-cool voice. “I’m just playing with you! Geez!”
    “No, Mom. You’re trying to make it weird. Braedon is just a coworker.”
    She nods in this really sarcastic way. “A coworker that has a super huge crush on you! Oh stop blushing, Becca. He’s cute. You should be happy about it.”
    “Oh my god. I am not having this conversation with you.” I rinse out my coffee cup as quickly as possible and grab my purse off the counter, singing “La la la la la la,” as my mother goes on and on about how cute she thinks Braedon is, based on her very tiny knowledge of what he looks like. Ugh, I swear. Your mom walks into your work when you’re having one tickle fight with a coworker and she won’t ever let you forget it.
    Not that I could ever forget it, either. It was the greatest tickle fight in the history of the world.
    If she only knew the truth, that Braedon is about a million times more popular than I’ll ever be, and I’m sure he has a ton of other female admirers that flock around him outside of work. Maybe then she’d shut up and stop picking on me, acting like her daughter has a boyfriend. My goal this summer is to become more popular, but even I’m not delusional enough to know that no amount of summer makeovers will make me popular enough to date him. But of course I can’t bring myself to tell her that. It would just be too awkward.
    Mom’s laughing her butt off by the time I finally gather my stuff and rush out the front door, blushing from head to toe. Braedon does not like me and I wish she’d just stop saying it for once. Geez! I mean, of course he’s super cute and he’s fun to be around, but there’s no way he’d like me. Braedon is fun and energetic and spends hours after work each day riding his bike on the track instead of trying to find a girlfriend like most guys I know. He likes me as a coworker and that’s it. He called me pretty just to be nice. I’m convinced of it now. There was nothing else to it. I bet the second Bayleigh comes back from her summer away he’ll get a massive crush on her. She’s got that magnetic personality guys like. Me? Not so much.
    But who cares? I don’t. It’s been two weeks of being an official C&C employee and I just got my first paycheck. It’s burning a hole in my pocket but I can’t spend it until after work today since I’m opening the shop at nine in the morning. I haven’t forgotten about my plans to change my entire self this summer, but besides highlighting my hair and getting a job, I haven’t done anything else to further my mission.
    Guilt and embarrassment creeps over me as I drive to work. I know I’m supposed to be on this self-imposed journey of coming out of my shell this summer, but give a girl a break. No matter how badly my brain wants it, I can’t be expected to do it all at once! Of course, I can’t stop playing these scenes over and over in my head each day—scenes where I saw an opportunity to be more outgoing and fun, to be the person I want to be, and then I chickened out like an idiot.
    Two days ago, a group of guys in my grade came to C&C to ride but I was in the back room chatting with Ollie so Braedon signed them in instead of me. Josh Beck and Chase Summers were two of the guys at the last party I