The Boyfriend Whisperer 2.0

by Linda Budzinski

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author makes no claims to, but instead acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the word marks mentioned in this work of fiction.

  Copyright © 2019 by Linda Budzinski

  THE BOYFRIEND WHISPERER 2.0 by Linda Budzinski

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by Swoon Romance. Swoon Romance and its related logo are registered trademarks of Georgia McBride Media Group, LLC.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-948671-67-5

  ePub ISBN: 978-1-948671-74-3

  Mobi ISBN: 978-1-948671-75-0

  Published by Swoon Romance, Raleigh, NC 27609

  Cover design by Danielle Doolittle

  To Deb, Karen, and Ted

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Other Swoon Romance Titles You Might Like

  I sink back into the booth and rub my temples. I’m not sure whether this headache is from my mango smoothie or because my ex just strolled into the Juice Joint with his arm around Becca Marsh.

  My two best friends, Maggs and Brie, shoot me a look.

  “What is this, his third girlfriend since you two broke up?” Brie curls her lip. She’s never been a Ty Walker fan. “That boy has commitment issues.”

  Maggs points her straw at me. “His problem is, you’ve ruined him. He can’t find anyone else who measures up to the fabulous Alicea Springer.”

  I smile in spite of the pickaxe to my cranium. “Yeah. I’m sure that’s it.”

  Ty is everything I could ever want in a boyfriend: athletic, super cute, and really, really, really smart. He’s this season’s leading scorer for the Grand View High School soccer team, and he’s applying to go to Harvard, Princeton, and Penn. He’s the perfect guy for me. Well, except for the whole dumping-me-a-week-before-junior-prom thing.

  Not that I’m bitter. Now that we’re almost two months into our senior year, I’m ready to move forward, with or without him. Preferably with.

  “Someday soon, he’ll realize we’re meant for each other,” I say, eyeing his calves, so tanned and muscular and perfectly Ty. “He’ll come crawling back.”

  “That I’d like to see,” Brie says. “Actual crawling. And maybe some bawling.”

  Our chatter stops as Ty and Becca pass our booth on their way toward the back of the restaurant. Becca shoots me a sly smile, while Ty completely avoids eye contact.

  “Did you see that? He never even glanced at me as he walked by.” I try to sound casual, but my voice catches. And Maggs, of course, catches the catch.

  She takes a sip of her ginger-mint tea and leans forward. “Know what? He’s not worth your time. You deserve better.”

  “Agreed,” Brie says. “Way better.”

  “And you’ll get it.” Maggs’s tone is serious. “I know you will. The universe has a way of working these things out.”

  I force a smile. That’s easy for them to say. No guy has ever broken Maggs’s heart. She’s always the one to break up with them. And Brie has been dating Blake Myers since sophomore year. He’s at UVA now, but they’re so in love, they’re even making the long-distance thing work. Neither of them quite understands what I went through last year to get Ty to notice me and what it was like to lose him.

  “I don’t want better.” I say. “I want Ty. He’s The One. We belong together.”

  Brie sighs. “Do you really believe that?”

  “I do.”

  She and Maggs exchange glances. “Well, we know how you can convince him.” Brie wiggles her eyebrows at me, and I can see exactly where she’s going.

  “Sorry. Not happening. We’ve been through this a million times.”

  “Come on, Alicea. Boy-friend Whis-per-er.” She teases out each syllable. “Libby has brought together so many happy couples. Why not at least try her?”

  Libby is the matchmaking computer program I developed this summer, after I became president of Boyfriend Whisperer Enterprises. Her name is short for LIBACA, which is short for Love is But a Click Away.

  My predecessor, Lexi Malloy, started Boyfriend Whisperer Enterprises last year to help the girls at our high school snag their crushes. She was a modern-day Cyrano de Bergerac, spying on her targets and anonymously coaching each client on how to get her crush’s attention.

  Lexi’s model was very successful … until it wasn’t. Turns out telling guys exactly what they want to hear isn’t the path to true love. Most of her couples—and her business—fell apart toward the end of our junior year.

  That’s when I offered to take over and give the business an upgrade—one that uses actual data and formulas to pair up couples. It took me all summer to perfect my program, but Libby is easy to use and super accurate. My clients log in, take the survey, and find their top Grand View High match. My only role is to collect their money and keep my mouth shut.

  “I have no intention of using Libby,” I assure Brie. “I already found my perfect match.”

  “But if Ty is—”

  “He is,” I say. “And I don’t need Libby to tell me that.”

  “Of course you don’t.” Maggs reaches across the booth and grabs my hand. “But maybe it would help for her to tell him.”

  I narrow my eyes at them. “Why are you two teaming up on me?”

  “What?” Maggs’s eyes widen. “This isn’t about teaming up.”

  “Come on, Al
icea,” Brie says. “You know Libby works. What are you afraid of?”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. This conversation is over.” I nod toward the restrooms. “Be right back.”

  I head into the ladies’ room, where I slump against the sink, tears threatening. The fact is, Brie’s right. I am afraid. Afraid Libby would pair me up with someone other than Ty. Any other guy at Grand View would be a step down—a major step down. If I can’t have him, I don’t want to date anyone.

  I lean forward and study myself in the mirror. We came straight from our Tuesday afternoon ballet class, so my hair is twisted into a bun. I let it down and shake it out. The girl staring back at me is pretty. Not beautiful, but certainly pretty. She’s smart and has a good sense of humor and is even a fairly talented dancer. Yet she’s not good enough for Ty. Not perfect enough for him.

  The sound of a bolt opening in one of the stalls startles me. I’d thought I was alone. I grab a paper towel and wipe at the smear of mascara below my eye.

  “Well, hello, Alicea.” Becca appears beside me, studying me in the mirror. “Nice leotard. So you’re still dancing, even after … ?” Her voice trails off, and she smirks.

  My face burns. She doesn’t have to finish. I know exactly what she’s talking about—junior prom. I may or may not have made a complete fool of myself on the dance floor after the infamous dumping. Will I ever live that night down?

  “Yep.” I force a smile. “Still dancing.”

  “And whispering?”

  “And whispering.”

  “How’s that going?” Her tone oozes skepticism.

  “Awesome. As of this morning, I had almost two hundred clients.”

  “Really?” She takes a lipstick out of her pocket and carefully applies it. “So who are some of the couples you’ve matched up?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that.” I get asked this a lot, or people ask who so-and-so’s match is, but I keep Libby’s results confidential. “I can tell you that there are almost two dozen Boyfriend Whisperer couples who are dating right now.”

  Becca smacks her lips and turns to look me in the eye. “Interesting. And yet you remain single and alone.”

  I’m tempted to snap—to tell her my perfect match is the boy she walked in here with—but instead, I shrug. “I’m not in the game right now. I have other priorities.”

  “Of course you do.” Her smile hovers somewhere between condescending and cruel. “Like maybe inventing another program? How about one that magically makes losers less … loser-y?”

  I scowl as she turns on her stilettos and struts out the door. I haven’t thought of myself as a loser in a long time. Not since I hired Lexi to help me catch Ty’s attention almost a year ago.

  Wow. It feels like another lifetime. I turn to my reflection and remind myself of the advice Lexi gave me in that first email, the one that changed everything.

  You’re beautiful and brilliant, and you have a voice that matters. Now use it!

  I’d read the email over and over for weeks before I believed it. Of course, I didn’t know it was from Lexi at the time; she kept her true identity a secret. I just knew it was from the Boyfriend Whisperer. It had been a bold move, hiring her to set me up with the most sought-after guy at Grand View High. In fact, I puked immediately after submitting my application. But her success rate was phenomenal, and my crush on Ty knew no bounds. I’d risk anything to get him. I followed every step of every set of her instructions. I switched desks in civics partway through the second quarter so I could sit next to him. I just “happened” to drive up one day after soccer practice when he had a flat tire to offer him a ride home. I even created a mini video for him starring an animated hero that looked and sounded a lot like him.

  Finally, after a few weeks, Ty asked me out. I found myself in a different world, going to all the best parties, cheering for Ty at his soccer games, and riding around Sterling in the front seat of his silver BMW coupe with the windows down and Bruno Mars blaring on his sound system. I “came out of my shell,” as my mom liked to say, and even made friends with two girls from my dance class whom I had always found a bit intimidating but who turned out to be the best things to ever happen to me—Maggs and Brie.

  Yes, dating Ty was the best four and a half months of my life. Until the dumping.

  My stomach still clenches when I think about it. A bunch of us had gone to Laser Nation. Ty and I were on the yellow team. We stuck together, but partway through our third round, we lost each other. As I crouched behind a barrier wall trying to figure out my strategy, Chris Broder appeared around the corner wearing a vest for the blue team. I have horrible aim, but Chris is our basketball team’s star center. He’s huge and would have been impossible to miss, so I shot him square in the chest.

  “Nice hit,” he said.

  I flashed a smile and rushed by him before he could recover. “Have you seen Ty?”

  Chris pointed to the far side of the room. “I think he’s over by red team’s home base.”

  I wove my way through the maze of barriers and pillars, getting shot a half dozen times as I went. I had a bad feeling about this. Ty had been acting strangely all night long. All week, if I was being honest. He was moody and quiet, and our kiss when he picked me up tonight had been all lips and no heart. Something was wrong. I knew it.

  My sense of dread grew as I neared my destination. As I turned the last corner, two red guards zapped me. I ignored their whooping and chest bumping and pushed past them into the base. And there I found … nothing.

  “Hey, you.”

  I swiveled at the sound of Ty’s voice. He’d come in behind me.

  “I’ve been searching all over for you.”

  “You have? I mean, me too. I’ve been looking for you.” I pulled him out of the base and into a dark corner, but when I tried to kiss him, he pulled away. The feeling of dread welled up again in my chest, my lungs, my throat. “Ty? What’s wrong?”

  He sighed and looked away. “I think we should take a break.”

  “A break?”

  “Yeah. Not necessarily forever, but … you know.” His eyes met mine. “For now.”

  My heart pounded in my ears. For now? As in, a week before prom? People do not break up the week before prom, especially when they’ve been nominated for king and queen. Even a one-time social misfit like me knew that. Unless … “Who is it?”

  Ty shook his head. “There’s no one else. Listen, I’m sorry. You’re an amazing girl, and the past few months—”

  “Five. Almost.”

  “Five. Right. They’ve been great, but, I mean, come on. We both knew this wouldn’t last forever.”

  Did we? I couldn’t count the number of times I’d daydreamed about visiting Ty at college, spending spring breaks together at the beach, and making plans for our future. My dreams usually ended with him getting down on one knee.

  “Of course we knew,” I lied. “But prom is next week. If you want to take a break, why not wait until after?” Even as I said it, I knew it sounded stupid and lame and desperate and whiny and, well, basically all the things I actually felt at that moment.

  Now, six months—and, as Brie so kindly pointed out, three girlfriends—later, we’re still on “break.” I know I should forget about Ty. Move on to bigger and better things, as Maggs says. Problem is, there is no one better as far as I’m concerned.

  “Alicea? Are you okay?” Brie appears in the bathroom doorway. “Your smoothie’s melting.”

  “I’m good.” I offer a bright smile, though I have no doubt Brie can see through it.

  She joins me at the mirror and drapes her arm around my shoulder.

  “What does he see in Becca?” My voice cracks, and I glance away from our reflections. One of the faucets is dripping, and I have an urge to smack it. “She’s kind of a wench.”

  “I saw her strut out of here. Did she say something to you?”

  “No. I mean, she asked some questions abo
ut the whispering, but … ” I leave off the part where she basically called me a loser. “It’s her attitude, you know? She’s not right for him. He deserves someone better.”

  “Like you?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Then prove it.” Brie holds up her phone and taps it, pulling up the Boyfriend Whisperer app. “Come on, Alicea. What do you have to lose?”

  I bite my lip. Maybe Brie is right. Sure, part of me is terrified that Libby won’t match me with Ty, but what if she does? We were so perfect together. No doubt she’ll get it right, and at last I’ll have proof that we belong together. Sitting around waiting for him to figure it out himself clearly isn’t working.

  I sigh and grab Brie’s phone. “Nothing. Nothing to lose at all.”

  Libby asks sixty-four questions, all designed to figure out my clients’ likes, dislikes, and personality traits, as well as their beliefs about some of the Big Questions in life. Since I created it and have had lots of time to think about my answers, I tear through it. Maggs and Brie sit on the edges of their seats watching as I click through, screen by screen.

  Finally, I reach the last question.

  LIBBY Question #64: Which of the following would be part of your ideal vacation?

  A. Surf

  B. Snow

  C. Ruins

  D. Tents

  I tap “Surf.” My finger hovers over the bright pink “Love Is But a Click Away!” button as my heart pounds and my headache returns.

  “Go on. Do it.” Brie’s eyes shine as brightly as though she’s about to find her own true love.

  I tap the button. The screen fades to gray as Libby goes to work, matching me with the boy of my dreams. Meaning, with Ty. It has to be. I hand the phone to Brie. “Here. I can’t look. Tell me what it says.” I turn to glance at Ty and Becca laughing and holding hands in their booth. “No, wait. Don’t tell me unless it’s him.” I squeeze my eyes shut and wait.

  After an interminable amount of time, Brie emits the faintest of grunts. “Huh.”

  My eyes fly open. Huh? What does that mean? Brie is frowning. Crap. Or … not crap? Brie doesn’t like Ty. Maybe she’s upset because it’s him. I sit frozen to my seat, unsure whether I want to know.