SWAY (Part 1) Read online

  SWAY

  Part 1

  JENNIFER DAVIS

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Photo used per licensing agreement with Dreamstime.com

  Copyright © 2013 JENNIFER DAVIS

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 10:149100715X

  ISBN-13:978-1491007150

  Thanks so much to my family for relentlessly cheering me on. For understanding my craziness, eating like pirates, and picking up my slack when I’m in lala land. Love you peeps the most!

  Thanks to Leeanne Lane, Kerrie Sullivan, and Greg Mason for your time and feedback. It was very much appreciated.

  .

  For Julia

  Sorry it took five years, sweet girl. I hope you still love the story as much as you did then.

  1

  I ran outside when I heard Justin’s truck. He drove a diesel that looked like a shiny piece of candy. Crimson red and covered in chrome.

  “I brought you some juice,” he said as I hoisted myself into the passenger seat. “I thought you’d be too nervous to eat.”

  I smiled. He knew me so well. My guts had been in knots all morning.

  I’d asked Justin to pick me up because it was our first day at our new school. He and I, along with my friend Lindsay, and several hundred others were the victims of redistricting, and I was dreading it.

  Having to change schools in the middle of his senior year wasn’t bothering Justin at all. It disgusted me how well adjusted he was. My parents were psychiatrists for crying out loud. I should have been as unaffected as he was.

  “It’s not going to be as bad as you think,” Justin said, an attempt to soothe me. I groaned, not believing him.

  “Expect the worst, hope for better, and you’ll never be disappointed,” I chanted. Justin snickered. “You should leave that psychology bullshit to your parents.”

  I shrugged, sipping my juice.

  Justin and I met when I was eleven and he was twelve. He played baseball and I played softball in a summer league at Lehman Park. Pam, his mother, who insists everyone, including Justin, call her Pam, stopped my mother to ask where she’d gotten her purse. They talked so long that Pam finally grabbed Justin, who was running around with some other boys, introduced us, and told him to include me in whatever game they were playing. He groaned and whined at her suggestion, but did what she asked.

  After a few minutes of staring at me in disgust, Justin sarcastically asked if I even knew how to throw a baseball.

  “As long as its round, I can throw it,” I spit. He huffed then dared me to prove it. After I passed that test, he asked me questions, like, who was the MVP of the 1988 World Series.

  I suppose I did well enough to keep him from rendering me useless that day, although it may have had more to do with my knowing who Orel Hershiser is than my throwing ability. Either way, we’d been practically joined at the hip ever since.

  As we pulled into our new school’s parking lot, a silver sports car whipped around us, making a harsh snarling sound as it passed, abruptly cutting into the only empty space on our side of the lot.

  “What the hell?” Justin complained, hitting the brakes hard, slinging us both forward. “Was he thinking?” I finished.

  Then the driver’s door opened, dumbfounding us both. I couldn’t see her face, only a mass of blond hair whirling in the wind as she stepped out of the car.

  “Aston Martin,” I shrieked, after seeing the famous insignia. Justin explained the particulars to me. It was a Vantage and hers was a V12. The stainless steel exhaust pipes were responsible for the snarling sound we’d heard when she accelerated past us.

  I’d expected to see a few luxury cars, because there was more money in this district, but seriously. Our old school’s lot was full of beaters. The kind of first cars most kids got. Here, they’d probably have a car like that towed for trespassing or making the pavement look bad.

  BMW seemed to be the car of choice. I saw more of those than anything. When I had the courage to drive myself to school I would be in the Infinity my father had given me for my sixteenth birthday, which also wasn’t a regular kid’s first car, but it was no Aston Martin, either.

  As Justin and I walked toward the building, my heart beat faster. Change upset me, but I knew I would feel better once I had this day behind me. Everything gets easier with time as my parents had told me.

  The building was nice. It was newer than the one I’d left, but had been designed to look older than it was. It looked more like an Ivy League college than a high school. As we neared the front doors, I glanced up to see Hurst High School cavernously inscribed in the limestone slab above us.

  “You ready for this, Reynolds?” Justin asked, a shit-eating grin on his mouth. “You bet,” I sang, and whipped up some fake enthusiasm for him. I even managed to generate a half-hearted smile.

  Hurst wasn’t all that bad. I think my favorite part was that everything looked fresh. The interior was free of that dingy smell my other school had. Hurst smelled like lemons and expensive perfumes, instead of mold and powered vomit concealer.

  As I hurried out to wait for Justin by his truck, I heard my name. “Annie,” Lindsay gasped before almost knocking me over. “Sorry,” she said brokenly, bent over, hands resting against her knees as she worked to catch her breath.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, laughing at her condition. She’d been running, which wasn’t like her. I didn’t think I’d seen Lindsay run, ever.

  “Ditching detention,” she said, her breath more even.

  “You got detention! It’s our first day.”

  “I know, but it was so not my fault.” She stood upright. “I was in first period,” she began. “First period,” I laughed.

  “Like I said—not my fault. It was the tool sitting behind me. He wouldn’t shut the hell up about my hair.”

  Lindsay’s hair was white blond and had orange and yellow Kool-Aid stained streaks in it.

  “He said, the new girl looks like a dreamsicle, I wonder if she tastes like one,” Lindsay said cynically, mimicking a brute voice. “So I told the perv to bite me, and he’d find out,” she sang. “The teacher gave us both detention, which is completely unfair,” she complained. “What he said was way wors—Ew,” Lindsay moaned, staring past me.

  “What is it?”

  “Him,” she frowned, turning up her nose. I rolled my eyes. She meant Justin.

  “Bye,” Lindsay barked, before vanishing.

  Although Lindsay and Justin were my closest friends, they weren’t friends at all. We’d hung out a few times after Lindsay and I met, but she and Justin couldn’t stand each other, which is why we’re never intentionally in the same place at the same time anymore.

  Lindsay’s my only female friend. She moved in across the street from me four years ago. She’s normally easy-going, but she’s also unabashedly bold and completely speaks her mind. She would never intentionally hurt anyone—unless they asked for it. She does what she wants—what makes her happy and doesn’t let what anyone else thinks of her affect that. Most people aren’t capable of living that way, which is the greatest thing about her, I think. But that’s probably also why she doesn’t have any other girl-friends, either.

  ***

  Because Justin and I weren’t volunteer transfers, we were allowed to try out for Hurst’s ball teams. I’d pitched my freshman and sophomore years at Wilson, the school we transferred from, and Justin played second base.

  Our tryouts were on the same day so I had to go to mine without Justin. I had hoped he could come with me. I wasn�
��t needy or anything, it’s just that having him there would have calmed my nerves.

  Coach Pratt was in the process of introducing herself to everyone when she was interrupted by snarling tailpipes. The silver Aston Martin that had cut me and Justin off the first day of school came to a dramatic stop behind home plate.

  “Kristy Prince,” Coach Pratt called, twisting to look at her. “Glad you could join us,” she announced, irritated.

  “You’re welcome.” Kristy smirked.

  I missed most of what Coach said after that because I was concentrating on Kristy—staring at her, actually. I watched her swoop her long blond hair into a ponytail, take her bat bag from the trunk, and swing it over her shoulder before strutting to the dugout.

  Coach Pratt called out Kristy and a few other girls, and introduced them as returning players who would help her assess our skills during the tryout. Luckily, I didn’t have to come in direct contact with Kristy during the process, and made the cut, but I was not looking forward to being her teammate at all.

  2

  I was running late for practice, hurrying out of the locker room, trying to avoid having to run laps and Kristy’s wrath when I banged right into someone. I was half bent over finishing pulling up one of my socks, not watching where I was going.

  “I’m so sorry,” I gasped, rising from my hunched position.

  As soon as my eyes met his, my face flushed. I stuttered, unable to form a cohesive thought to say anything else. I’d never seen a boy so attractive. I was completely mortified that I had run into him and stuttered like an idiot. I didn’t know what else to do, so I fixed my eyes on the floor and quickly walked away.

  “It’s okay,” he called, and then I heard him laugh.

  I cringed; feeling like a total moron when I realized someone was talking to me.

  “I’m sorry. What did you say?” I asked her.

  “He makes me speechless, too.” I must have looked confused. “Ryan Mullins,” she said, eyes wide, waiting for me to catch on. “The guy you just plowed into,” she said, when I didn’t.

  “Oh—I didn’t know his name.”

  “Seriously?” She gave me a slack-jawed glare.

  “I’m new. I’ve only been here a few weeks.”

  “That explains it, then,” she grumbled, before veering away from me.

  It was raining outside, so practice was held in the gym. Coach Pratt took everyone except me, and Amber, one of the team’s catchers, to run drills.

  Amber and I were throwing back and forth, warming up my arm so I could practice pitching when I heard cleats pounding against the floor in unison. I turned to see the baseball team climbing the stairs to the batting cage in the balcony above the bleachers. We’d never crossed paths with them before because the girls’ field is off campus.

  Once upstairs, the boys spread out along the railing. I spotted Justin and smiled. He threw up his hand and when he waved the guy he was talking to turned and looked at me. It was the guy I’d just banged into. Ryan Mullins. He started to laugh and I quickly spun back around, feeling like a total idiot—again. In my rush to get away from him, I hadn’t realized he was wearing the practice uniform the boys were required to dress in.

  Amber had finished fastening on her gear and squatted into position, holding her glove out just below her chin. The first few pitches I threw were high. It was hard to concentrate because of my audience. Even though the boys’ voices had quieted, I could still feel them watching, and since I had completely embarrassed myself in front of Ryan earlier, I didn’t want to do it again by not pitching well.

  I threw a dozen more pitches, and it seemed the more I thought about how uncomfortable I was, the more precise my throwing became, allowing me to throw harder, boosting my ego a little. I was hitting the center of Amber’s glove consistently. Pitching perfect strikes. Hearing the sound of that leather pop when the ball smacked the center of her mitt made me feel a little high.

  I had somehow managed to shut everything completely out. I was in the zone. And then—he killed it.

  “Damn girl! You throw hard!”

  I released the ball early and sent it skipping wildly across the hardwood floor. I spun around with narrowed eyes, glimpsing who had broken my concentration. “Justin Bishop!”

  He threw his head back laughing. “You’re way too easy to rattle, Reynolds,” he said through a wide grin, all of his teeth in view. I pursed my lips, but not in anger. I couldn’t be mad at him. Not for long anyway, and he knew it.

  “What’d you do to that girl, Justin? She was bringin’ the heat before you showed up.” My breath hitched when I saw Ryan.

  “Is he bothering you? Ryan asked me, although not directly and popped Justin on his chest with the back of his hand. “I’ll take care of it if he is,” he offered. I figured the question was rhetorical and ignored it.

  “Yeah Annie, I heard you tried to take Ryan out before practice,” Justin snickered. I scowled at him for bringing it up.

  I looked timidly at Ryan. “Sorry, I wasn’t watching where I was going,” I admitted in a smallish voice.

  “It’s alright.” He smiled and I couldn’t help but smile back. Ryan Mullins was even better looking when he smiled.

  His hair was dirty blond and cut sort of trendy. The back and sides were short. The top was longer and a bit messy. He was tall, like Justin—over six feet, with a lean build, golden brown skin, and beautiful green eyes.

  I was thinking about how everything on the guy was perfect when I felt someone yank my gloved hand out, drawing my attention away from Ryan. Amber slapped the ball back into my glove and shot Ryan a look so dirty that it made me shudder. It didn’t faze him, though. He looked at me, smiling. “So, your name’s Annie?”

  “Yeah,” I smiled, too. I couldn’t help it, I felt like I had to.

  “I’m Ryan.” He picked up my empty hand and held it instead of shaking it. Staring into his eyes put me in a trance, trying to figure out exactly what shade of green they were.

  We watched each other longer than we should have, and I seemed to have forgotten everything I knew in that moment, including where I was, until Amber, who had been in position waiting for me to continue pitching, stood up and began yanking off her gear.

  “I think I’ve had enough of this for today,” she said through gritted teeth, stomping off, causing me to pull my hand away from Ryan.

  Amber’s reaction shook me. She was normally very sweet and particularly nice to me.

  “I think you made her mad, dude,” Justin snickered. Then I realized she wasn’t upset with me.

  “She’ll be alright,” Ryan assured Justin.

  I wondered why Amber was angry with Ryan until he looked at me again and that broad smile returned to his face, revealing his perfect, glossy white teeth, entrancing me again.

  Justin lightly punched Ryan’s arm. “I’m gonna take off, man.” Then he looked sharply at me, abruptly clearing my mind. “You ready, Reynolds?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be right back. I have to get my bag,” I told him, already in motion.

  I’d barely gotten around the corner of the locker room when I heard Ryan’s voice. “So, what’s up with you and Bishop?”

  “What are you doing in here?”

  “I asked first.”

  “Justin and I are friends,” I answered sharply. He and I were mistaken for a couple all the time. We were normally together, unless he got a girlfriend. Right now, I was enjoying being the only girl in his life.

  “Are you going to answer my question?” I asked Ryan, who suddenly looked cocky as hell.

  “Nobody cares if I’m in here. I know you don’t know me yet, but I can pretty much get away with anything I want to around here.”

  “I bet you don’t take much advantage of it either,” I smirked, beginning to figure him out. Ryan smiled again, confirming that he took every advantage he could. I scoffed and continued walking to my locker, unimpressed with him now.

  I grabbed my bag and turned to leave, but Rya
n was standing squarely in front of me, blocking the aisle, startling me, which must have shown in my expression.

  “Am I making you nervous?” he asked, a slight grin on his lips.

  “No, but you might cause me to miss my ride,” I lied. Justin would never have left me.

  A devious smile spread across Ryan’s face, making my pulse quicken. That smile, so different from the one before, was almost scary. “I could give you a ride. I’ll take you anywhere you want.”

  I glared at Ryan, signaling that the only thing I wanted from him was to get out of my way, which amused, instead of insulted him. He picked up my hand and winked at me. I curled up my lip and rolled my eyes away, feeling a quick, feathery light movement across my palm, and then, without another word, Ryan released my hand and stepped out of my way.

  I waited until I was in the open air of the gym to look at my hand. “How arrogant!” I griped, rushing toward the exit. I was amazed. The guy had managed to go from making me forget where I was, to making me want to spit on him in three minutes flat. I didn’t like that side of him. I liked the side that stood there looking hot. At least when he was quiet I could pretend he wasn’t a jerk.

  I climbed into Justin’s truck and stuck my palm in his face. “Your friend put his phone number on my hand in permanent marker,” I barked.

  “Classic Ryan Mullins,” Justin snorted. “He’s sort of famous for that little trick.”

  “Seriously?” I asked, my mouth gaping open.

  “Yeah, he gets tons of girls that way.”

  I held my hand up again. “This works for him?”

  “Yeah, it works. I’ve never seen anything like it. The guy can get any girl he wants without any real effort at all.” Justin laughed, but more out of amazement than amusement. “Most girls are already falling all over themselves to be with him anyway. He’s a big deal around here. He’s all over the newspapers and we haven’t even played our first game yet. Our stands are full during practice,” Justin marveled. “Packed with people there to see him—girls and scouts mostly. It’s crazy.”