Summer Apart by Amy Sparling Read Free Book Online

and there were girls all over him?”
    She makes a grumpy face. “Yeah.”
    “The same thing has happened to me,” I say, playing with the silver ring on my index finger. “Only it was one girl, and they were on a date instead of at a party.”
    I’m expecting a slur of curse words to fall out of her mouth because my best friend is always one to take up arms and declare brutal bloody murder upon anyone who hurts me. But instead, she thinks about it for a moment and takes a sip of her drink.
    “I don’t think that’s the whole story,” she says finally.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    She shrugs. “I just don’t think Park is capable of dating someone else right now. He likes you way too much.”
    “I’m not so sensitive that I’ll just drop dead if you give me the truth, you know.”
    She sits up straighter. “I am giving you the truth! You should hear the things he says about you.”
    “Well you should hear the way he talked to me. How he said he’s the type of guy who dates around and shouldn’t be trusted—how—” My declaration of Park’s shady behavior is cut off abruptly when the front door of Bayleigh’s apartment opens. Heat rushes to my face because Jace is probably coming out here to complain that our talking was too loud and woke him up. Or maybe Jett is awake and needs his mom to give him a bottle and put him back to sleep. Whatever the case, I’m almost glad for the interruption because had I kept talking about Park, I would have surely either started screaming or crying. The boy gets way too much emotions out of me and he doesn’t even try.
    The shadowy figure that steps outside of the apartment is wearing a jacket with the hood up. He doesn’t look over in our direction, instead choosing to step forward to where the stairway juts out from under the balcony. He rests one hand on the metal railing and the other one is at his ear. He’s on the phone. I glance at Bayleigh, wondering if she thinks it’s weird that her husband has walked outside to make a phone call this late at night. Her eyes are just as wide as mine are, but she doesn’t look upset.
    My cell phone bursts to life, ringing as loud as it possibly can since I had it set to loud in the car. I jump, grabbing the phone the moment someone says, “What the hell?”
    The person calling me is the same person standing on the porch just a few feet away.
    Nolan Park.
    “Park!” I say as I gasp for breath. I’m not sure if I meant to say his name aloud. I stare at my phone in my hand, which is still ringing and then up at the man himself, as he watches Bayleigh and I with a shocked expression on his face.
    “Becca?”
    He steps forward, pulling his hood down around his shoulders. My phone still rings but I don’t dare press the ignore button out of fear that my racing heartbeat will somehow be louder than the phone. “What are you doing here?” he asks, sliding his phone back into his pocket. The ringing on my end stops and I lower the phone into my lap, face down. The last thing I need is for him to see how red my cheeks are in the glowing of the phone light.
    “Wh—what are you doing here?” is all I can manage to say in these tense seconds of awkwardness.
    “I’m crashing with Jace. You knew that, right?”
    I nod, like the dumb, idiot that I am. Freaking duh. Where else does he stay when he’s in town? It’s always with Jace. I’m a complete brainless moron. Now he probably thinks I came over late at night just to see him and pretend like I wasn’t here for him. God. Why can’t the earth just open up right now and swallow me whole?
    Bayleigh jumps to my rescue. “She came over after work because I begged her to. I’m so bored and I needed my best friend.”
    “Cool,” he says, but he doesn’t look entirely convinced.
    “So anyway, Becca I’ll go get your bed set up on the air mattress and you two can talk.”
    “We don’t need to talk.” I spit the words out so fast they barely make sense.