Rules and Roses: Untouchable Book One

by Long, Heather

  “Then the cafeteria?”

  Gripping my backpack straps, I made another face. “Yes, then the cafeteria. Can we go now?”

  Coop pivoted and started walking, his longer strides outpacing me almost immediately. “C’mon, slowpoke,” he called over his shoulder. “Stop dawdling. We got teachers to see and classes to find.”

  Torn between laughing and groaning, I shook my head and hurried to catch up. It was almost impossible to get mad at Coop.

  Almost.

  I’d done it.

  At the end of last year, but I’d taken the summer to get over it.

  When he smirked and bumped me, I had to fight the urge to bump him back harder.

  I was over it, right?

  Most of my classes were on the second floor, which was convenient. I’d spent my sophomore year zigzagging across the school along with Archie. The two of us had the worst schedules. Coop and Bubba had pretty much been on one half of the school or the other while Jake had the opposite of their schedule. The only benefits Archie and I had were we had classes with all of them, but after Freshman year, we’d never had a class including all five of us.

  Then again, we were all focused on different tracks. Junior year they’d combined all the lunch periods, so at least we could eat together. Junior year also marked the first year we could eat off campus, though, so the guys ate off more than on for the fall semester. I got used to finding somewhere else to go at lunch. I could afford to eat off campus, I just didn’t want to spend the money.

  Coop nudged me when we got to Ms. Fajardo’s room. The door was open and the lights were on. The teacher in question was just setting her purse on her desk when I stuck my head in the room.

  “Hi, Ms. Fajardo.”

  With a soft laugh, the teacher waved me inside. “Hi, Frankie. Couldn’t even let the first day go by before you checked in?”

  Heat kissed my cheeks. “Well, when a routine works, it’s better to stick to it.”

  “True enough.” Ms. Fajardo wasn’t much older than my mom. She had a pageboy cut to her dark brown hair, really kind brown eyes, and a smile that welcomed questions. She also possessed a terrific sense of humor. This was the first year I’d actually be in her class, though I’d met her way back in ninth grade when she talked to our Honors Humanity class that served as my English credit that year. “Come on in.”

  I straightened and slipped in the door. Instead of following, Coop just leaned in the doorframe.

  Ms. Fajardo had already pulled out her sticky notes and wrote down the name of three books. “I’m assuming you finished The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Middlesex?” Those had been on our summer reading list.

  “In June,” I admitted ignoring Coop’s drawn out “nerd” from where he stood at the door. Hands behind my back, I flipped him off.

  Ms. Fajardo glanced past me to Coop. “If you haven’t finished them, Mr. Brennen, you won’t be ready for today’s introductory quiz.”

  “I’m good,” he declared, much to my surprise.

  Twisting, I stared at him. A, he was in AP Lit? And B, he’d done the reading?

  “I finished the last one yesterday.” He tapped his chest. “Not a nerd.” He pointed at me. “Definitely a nerd.”

  Rolling my eyes, I returned my attention to Ms. Fajardo. She just shook her head while still chuckling. “Then this list is for you, too,” she informed him. “You’re going to have independent reading each quarter. This is the first quarter choices. Pick whichever one you like. If you have it with you, and there’s free time in class, you can read it then.” Without missing a beat, she focused on me. “You should probably grab all three, because I know you. You’ll finish them by the weekend.”

  Face hot, I just grinned. “Like I said, when it works…”

  “Yes, yes. It works. Okay. Go on.” She pressed the sticky note to my hand. “I’ll see you both in fourth.”

  Oh. Cool. Coop and I had Fajardo together before lunch.

  “See you then!”

  As Coop fell into step with me, he peered at the list. “How many have you already read?”

  I skimmed the list of books then had to bite back a laugh.

  “Two,” Coop answered before I could. “My money is on two.”

  Dammit. “Yes, I’ve already read two of them.”

  He laughed and hooked an arm around my shoulders again. “Gonna be my study buddy, right?”

  “Depends,” I countered. “You didn’t tell me you were taking AP classes this year.” In fact, he’d avoided them when at all possible. Dual credit was where he’d focused his efforts. If you were going to school in state, dual credit was better.

  “You didn’t ask,” he challenged. Without missing a step, he guided me to the next classroom. AP French. Four years and I’d gotten pretty good at the language, so this year would be fantastic. Madame greeted us both, though Coop hadn’t set foot in French after sophomore year. Since they only required two years, that was all he intended to do.

  With Madame’s notes added to my sticky, we went on. AP World History with Mr. G was an independent study class. He wasn’t in his classroom, but there was a note on his door addressed to me. Coop laughed his ass off when I snagged it.

  By the time we’d swung by AP Calculus, AP Government and AP Economics—gov was on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays while econ would be Tuesdays and Thursdays for the fall semester. The schedule would flip-flop in the spring—Coop was over the tour and hurrying me along. It helped that those teachers weren’t there.

  “I’m sorry, Coop,” I said as we jogged down the stairs to hall A so we could make our way to the lunchroom.

  He paused on the last step and stared at me. Since I was two steps up from him, we were almost eye-to-eye. “For what?”

  “I kind of ignored you this summer.” Coop was right about that. We’d picked our classes last April, two days after the spring formal and fundraiser, and I’d—I’d been a little sore.

  “Yes,” he said slowly, eyeing me. “You did. Lucky for you, I forgave you for that already.”

  A laugh escaped and I shook my head. “I really am sorry.”

  “Fine,” he said all too easily, but that was Coop. “You can make it up to me by driving me to school this year. And maybe giving me rides home.”

  “I’m pretty sure you were going to ride with me anyway…” Then again, he’d just shown up at my car this morning. He’d been waiting for me. Maybe it hadn’t been a sure thing for him.

  Yep. I’d been a jerk.

  “Convenient, isn’t it?” He winked. “Now, let’s go.” With a light tug, he pulled my ponytail, and I smacked his shoulder. The tension popped and we were just Coop and Frankie. I’d known Coop since kindergarten, we’d been best friends from day one. He’d vanished over summer vacation between 7th and 8th right as his parents were getting divorced. He’d gone to stay with his sister to stay at his grandparents. I didn’t hear from him at all. Then he was back, waiting for the bus the morning eighth grade started, and he’d tugged my ponytail then.

  It was like nothing had changed.

  Yet, at the same time, everything had.

  But it had changed even more in ninth…

  There were a lot more kids in the cafeteria. Band kids streamed in from practice, theatre kids acting out—pun intended—on the steps, the ROTC kids checking each other’s uniforms, and then there were the jocks flowing in from the athletics hall. Band and sports got there even earlier than me.

  Speaking of sports, Bubba and Jake dropped their backpacks on the table Archie had already claimed. Sipping from a venti cup from Starbuck’s, Archie motioned to the other cups, but Coop’s whistle caught their attention. Archie—Archibald Standish the Third, poor guy. His parents were well off, but his grandfather was stinking rich. There’d been some kind of falling out between his grandparents and his parents, so while Archie could probably afford to go to school at some ritzy place in Europe, he was enrolled in public high school and had been since ninth grade.

 
; That first year had been kind of hard on him, and I wasn’t the only one who’d gotten protective. Rich and pampered didn’t always equal egotistical dick.

  No, he’d had to grow into that reputation, but in a lot of ways, Archie was still that same kid who’d looked so hopelessly out of his depth in my freshman homeroom class. I’d taken the seat next to him and spent that first week of school introducing him to everything.

  “Oh my god, it must be a holiday. Frankie Curtis is in the house!” The announcement sounded a lot louder than it was, but it definitely earned us a few looks from the other tables, including a smirk from Rachel Manning. We shared one of those barely polite smiles at each other before she turned back to her friends and I followed Coop over to the table.

  Jacob “Jake” Benton snorted as he checked the coffees on the table, then picked up one and turned it around so I could read the Frankie Goes to Senior Year on the side of it. Laughing, I shook my head as he held it out. Jake had gone to elementary with Coop and me. But Jake’s dad was military, so when he got sent overseas, off their whole family went. After his parents divorced while he was in junior high, his mom moved them back here.

  Ian “Bubba” Rhys straddled a chair and took a long drink from his coffee while Jake handed me mine. Bubba’s eyes were closed, his expression almost blissful. He was a running back on the football team while Jake served as the tight end. That was about the extent of my knowledge of football. They were both big, bruiser-looking guys with wide shoulders, heavily muscled, and every stereotype of fit, buff jock you could think of. While Archie wasn’t a slouch, they made Archie and Coop both look lean and underweight. Not that it seemed to faze them.

  Out of all of them, Archie had been in most of my classes the last three years. We were the closest in GPAs, too. I edged him by less than a quarter point when they posted our class rankings last spring.

  I needed to climb two more spots—that would secure me a top percentage and a guaranteed scholarship.

  “You look beat,” Coop said with a light slap to Bubba’s back.

  Bubba grunted, but just kept drinking his coffee.

  “Wait until his caffeine kicks in,” I advised, setting my bag down. Jake stole my sticky note before I could secure it, though. Thankfully, he offered me coffee to keep me from smacking him.

  “Ha. Ten bucks,” he said to Archie and held up the note. “I told you she’d go see the teachers first even if she brought Coop with her.”

  Archie made a face. “You know, Frankie, you could be less predictable. Just once. That would be great.”

  “Too bad, so sad,” I told him then snatched my note back before sitting down and taking a sip of my coffee. “My methods work.”

  With a sigh, Archie stared at me as he pulled out his wallet and forked over a ten-dollar bill to Jake. “Don’t we know it…”

  Chapter Two

  Lunch

  The first four classes of the day blew past like someone had hit fast-forward. Coop had claimed the desk next to mine in AP Lit. Since our very first assignment required partners, he smirked at me and we ended up spending the class arguing about the summer reading.

  My morning had been packed—first period with Archie alternating between AP Government and AP Economics, Bubba turned up in my AP Calculus class, and Coop in my AP Lit. I hadn’t seen Jake since the cafeteria earlier, but AP French had been a lot of fun. The great part of having the same French teacher for four years was that I’ve gotten to know her, and she had a terrific sense of humor. She also had a gorgeous new TA, a French foreign exchange student named Mathieu Domienier.

  While I wasn’t the only girl who’d taken notice, I thoroughly enjoyed my front row seat and his delicious accent. I hoped he had the TA assignment all year, because while I’d already been looking forward to AP French, but he was like a cherry on top of it.

  “Yo,” Coop said. He caught my arm when I started to follow the flow of students toward the cafeteria. I really did hate the fact everyone had the same lunch period, and what was up with the freshmen this year? They seemed to outnumber the sophomores and juniors by, like, two to one. “Not that way.”

  “We’re not eating lunch?” But I let Cooper drag me through the flow of traffic. The benefit to his height and laconic manner was most people did get out of his way.

  “We’re eating lunch,” he said.

  “Cooper!” Laura Zaverman appeared in front of us. She hooked her arm through Coop’s free one. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Yeah?” He barely glanced at her. “Don’t have time right now, Laur. Maybe later.”

  “But it’s lunch…”

  “Exactly.” He extracted himself from her grasp even as he kept a firm grip on me. What did he think I was going to do? Vanish into the flow of the crowd? Half-turned, but still moving, Coop pivoted to give Laura a once over. The weight of those piercing gray-green eyes was impossible to deny, and Laura straightened, her chin and chest lifting. Definitely not a coincidence. “Looking good, babe,” he said. “Real good.”

  Before he even finished the heated compliment, he’d already focused away and we were on the move. Laura’s gaze skipped from Coop to me. A part of me wanted to apologize because Coop was an idiot. The rest of me just shrugged. Coop was also Coop. If Laura wanted to swap spit with him, she should get used to it. He did what he did on his schedule and no one else’s.

  She vanished into the sea of students. Coop didn’t slow down. He shoved open the door to way too bright sunshine and wall of heat waiting for us outside.

  Eeling out of his grasp, I dug my sunglasses out of my backpack. I slid them on before tugging the straps over my arms. It was an oven outside, the sun beating down mercilessly on us. If the school let me wear hats, I’d have a baseball cap on in a heartbeat.

  “Keep up.” Coop produced his own sunglasses and tucked them into place. The hot breeze rifled his hair as he led the way toward the parking lot.

  “Let’s go,” Jake yelled as soon as we rounded the corner. He stood on the running board of the driver’s side of his sunshine yellow SUV. The thing was just so bright. He’d gotten it at the end of our junior year when he bootstrapped his class placement to the top ten percent.

  “I take it we’re going off campus for lunch,” I stated rather than asked as I followed Coop. Archie already sat in the front passenger seat and Bubba had the backseat. Coop herded me into the middle between him and Bubba.

  I hated the middle, and he damn well knew it. The seat cushion there was not comfortable, but I stripped out of my backpack. Bubba snagged it from me to drop it into the rear with theirs before I settled. Coop’s backpack followed. No sooner did Coop close his door than Jake settled in the driver’s seat, seatbelt on, and eased the SUV into motion.

  Getting out of the parking lot was a pain in the ass, but if we went out by the football stadium, we could slip out a much more unused entrance.

  Bubba stretched his arm along the back of the seat, and the lack of space left me sandwiched between him and Coop. Leaning forward, I said, “Turn up the A/C?” Even in shorts, they were going to roast me back here.

  Jake flipped it higher. His phone rang, but he just hit ignore as Maria’s name popped up on it.

  Jake and Maria. Archie and Patty, Bubba and Sharon, Coop and Laura. “Are you guys playing hooky from the girlfriends?”

  “Broke up,” Archie said over his shoulder.

  “Not dating,” Bubba said, his eyes still closed as he tipped his head back. Why the hell was he so tired today?

  “Not my girlfriend,” Jake said with a flick of his fingers.

  Coop, however, said nothing. When I glanced at him, he made a face.

  Five minutes later, we slid into the parking lot at Blaze’s. The pizza place was a longtime favorite of ours. I snagged my backpack on the way out of the car and Coop said, “You can leave it, it’ll be fine.”

  “Yeah, but I brought my lunch.”

  “We’re having pizza.” Jake tugged the backpack out of my grasp
and slid it back in the car. “My treat. You skipped the pizza party in June, so now we’re making up for it.”

  I hated when they paid for me. But Bubba and Archie had already vanished inside, and Coop gave me his smug, I-know-something-you-don’t look. Rather than arguing, I spread my hands. “Thanks, Jake.”

  “You’re welcome, Frankie.” He winked then shoulder-checked Coop as we passed him. Inside, the restaurant was darker, so it took a minute for my eyes to adjust. The scents of pizza hit from all sides and my morning snack and coffee seemed a long, long way away. I grabbed two slices from the available trays—one keto crust with grilled chicken, mozzarella, and mushrooms with a light garlic pesto sauce and another keto crust with sausage and applewood bacon with a familiar red sauce.

  Right behind me in line, Jake loaded his plate. We grabbed cups when we got to the register. He paid, and I waited a beat for him, then we got our drinks and went in search of the guys. They’d claimed a rear table with Coop following right behind us.

  “Congratulations to us for having made it to senior year. Only one-hundred eighty days left until we graduate,” Archie said. He toasted us with his soda and I laughed.

  It seemed like forever and no time at all.

  We all made like our various sodas and lemonades—and it looked like Bubba was just drinking water—were toast-worthy drinks. Finally, digging in, I sighed happily at my first bite. Okay, I could admit the pizza was a great call. My peanut butter and jelly sandwich would have filled the hole, and I preferred saving every dime I could, but warm cheesy pizza tasted amazing.

  Across the table, Jake stared at me as he bit into his slice. I crossed my eyes at him, earning another laughing smile. Wrinkling my nose, I kept eating. As annoying as their presumptuous behavior could be, it was also as familiar as the halls of the high school. It was just the way the guys behaved. Pushy, occasionally kind, and always looking after each other.

  I used to think that applied to me. Eating the pizza Jake paid for reminded me of that same feeling. But we all knew better. Twice, I’d considered asking them and twice I’d discarded it, words unspoken. For all that we’d hung out for years, I was and wasn’t a part of their group.