scijessreads

I know this is something more like a Patreon or newsletter might get, and I don’t know how many chapters I’ll serialize here, but I am still pecking away at that book I’ve teased on here before. My original goal was to have a draft by February. That might still be doable, but as with my reading goals, I’m not putting hard numbers and dates on things this year. I am going to finish it, but that will happen when it happens. However, I do like sharing my writing. Putting words to page (or screen) has always been something that I liked to do. With Instagram I get a little of that, but only short bursts. Here… here I can write for longer. About anything, really.

Some of this story takes moments from my own life, but twists them into new scenarios. The story itself is all fictional, but I had to base it in some sort of reality I was familiar with for this first novel, so I could get a better handle on things and have a better starting point for the story I wanted to tell. It’s no surprise to me that it has ended up being a bit of a romance novel, as I read a lot of them. Right now, it’s leaning toward second-chance territory, and a lot of the drama comes from the female lead and her own internal struggles with self-worth and accepting who she is.

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Drake

It’s always her laugh. Loud, full-body, and completely unreserved. The opposite of how she presents herself most of the time. Her laugh makes my eyes smile and my chest ache. It makes me want to be near her and be the one making her laugh. Because at least then I’d know she noticed me. 

Walking up to the lunch table, I slide into the one empty spot on the opposite corner from where Jade sits, head leaning on Amy as they laugh about something that I clearly missed out on. 

“Everyone ready for graduation. Or, more accurately, the post-graduation party?” Tay asks as he reaches over to my plate and steals a pepperoni from my pizza. 

“Yes, and get your damn hands off my food, heathen” I smack at his hand as he pulls it away, taking the pepperoni and a string of cheese with him. All I get in reply is a smirk as he drops it all into his open mouth. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Jade turn slightly to see what’s going on on our end of the table, brown hair so dark it’s almost black framing her round, flushed face. I nod and smile, and she returns it with a slight upturn of her plump lips. Amy whispers something in her ear, and she completely turns away from me to focus back on her best friend. 

A fleeting moment, but I’ll take it. I’ll take all the fleeting moments, hoarding them like a dragon. Because I’m too much of a coward to actually talk to her without the safety of all of our friends. 

But I’m always watching her. Aware of her. From the first moment Tay introduced me to the group in our Sophomore year, she drew my focus like a magnet. She had a depth in her eyes that was not normal for most girls in high school. I wanted to fall into it and explore everything that she would let me. 

It makes my chest burn to think of the summer, of the fall, when we all go our separate ways to college. She’ll get away never knowing that for the last two years, all I’ve ever wanted was to be with her. I’d tried dating other people, letting Tay set me up with random girls he knew from sports and parties. I went out on dates and fooled around when they expressed any interest. I wasn’t a sports guy beyond a friendly game of backyard football, and while I wasn’t athletic, I had decent bulk from all those summers spent working manual labor jobs with my old man. Honestly, I don’t know why I kept letting Tay set me up. Probably just to keep my mind off the one person I wanted, but was afraid to have. I think I was trying hard to prove that I could be OK without Jade. Ha, the joke’s on you asshole. 

Picking up my pizza, I take a bite out of the end, catching the dripping cheese on my tongue and chewing slowly. Anything to keep my mind off of the shy, magnetic girl at the other end of the table. Today she was wearing cuffed denim shorts that landed mid-dimpled thigh and an oversized green t-shirt. Hiding herself. She always hides herself in her clothes. Which is a shame, because all my sex-crazed 18-year-old mind could think about was just how much I wanted to run my hands all over her curves. 

Think about Mr. Haven’s scraggly beard, I chant to myself. Anything to quell the sudden interest my dick has taken in Jade’s body. It really doesn’t take much for my body to go there these days. Because all I can think about is her. How much I want her, and how much she probably doesn’t even think about me. In our friend group, I’m tangential to her at best. I’m really only here at the table because of Tay and our friendship honed through multiple rounds of MarioKart. And living next door to each other. But mostly the Mario Kart. 

Tay is the stereotypical star athlete and effortless friend. Sometimes, I wonder why he even puts up with me, the moody computer geek who has to work after school at Starbucks to help his parents make ends meet. Me, the guy who had to scrounge for scholarships and financial aid to even think about being able to leave for college, and even with that help still has to find a job once I get there to be able to stay and also still help here at home. 

As far as Jade is concerned, I’m Tay’s friend, and not hers. I so wish I could be more. 

Jade

Amy drags me from the lunch table at the sound of the bell. 

“Oh my god! What’s the rush?” I grumble as I try to slide off the bench without leaving too much of my skin behind on the hot picnic bench seat. Summer in California is brutal, and no surface is spared, even in the shade. 

“I need to check on my project before class starts.” 

“And I need to be hauled in with you?” Brushing crumbs off my shirt, I grab my backpack and sling it over one shoulder. 

“Yes, I need a second set of eyes to catch any mistakes.” Her sharp fingernails dig into my arm as she tugs me after her. Amy is a perfectionist, and even in the last days of classes, nothing is going to be less than immaculate if she’s got her name on it.

As we move away from the table, I catch movement at the opposite end. Glancing back, I see Drake staring at me for a moment. When he catches my eye, he quickly looks away. But for a moment, I thought I saw something in his eyes. 

I swear, over the past year it felt like I kept catching him staring at me when he thought no one would see. It made me curious. What did he want? Drake had never given me the time of day in the almost three years he’d been hanging around Tay and Amy and all the people that flocked to them, forming this amorphous friend group that from the outside fit no specific clique rules. We were jocks and band geeks and theater people and everything in between. A collection of friends that worked, even though on paper we shouldn’t. Really, I think most of us were strays picked up by either Tay or Amy and never given the chance to say no. 

I was pretty much only in this friend group because of Amy and Sienna and mostly talked to them. I am very much an introvert who would have no friends at all if those two extroverted whirlwinds hadn’t found me and claimed me as theirs. Speaking to anyone else, outside of being with them, was something I tended to avoid. I knew I was going to be moving away from the bubble of my small mountain town the moment I had a chance, so why make friends that I would ultimately lose track of? As an only child, I was used to keeping my own company, and perfectly fine being on my own.

I glance back one more time to see Drake’s eyes following me again. Hmmm…