Love at First Fight
Geeks Gone Wild #1
Maggie Dallen
Copyright © 2019 by Maggie Dallen
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Images © Shutterstock – Look Studio
Cover Design © Designed with Grace
Created with Vellum
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
The Perfect Score
About the Author
Chapter One
Margo
As far as back-to-school parties went, this one was…not exactly a rager.
My best friend Suzie floated beside me on a blow-up unicorn in the swimming pool in her backyard, her bright red curls falling over the edge of the inner tube and dangling in the chlorinated water. Ever the tomboy, she was wearing a white T-shirt and shorts over her swimsuit.
Our other best friend Matt sat perched on the edge of the pool, his feet dangling in the water as he peered down at the phone in his hand. His black horn-rimmed glasses reflected the sunlight and every once in a while I got a vicious glare off those coke-bottle lenses. He and Suzie were dressed almost identically, and with their stick-thin bodies and frighteningly pale skin, they could have been twins. How they could still be so pale after a summer in the sun was beyond me.
I rested my elbows on the edge of the pool and let my body float, my face tipped back to absorb the last fleeting rays of late-summer sun. Unlike them, I wasn’t trying to actively avoid sun exposure. In fact, I was actually trying to get a tan so I’d worn my skimpiest bikini to make sure I got as much color as possible.
This was pretty much exactly the way the three of us had spent every other late afternoon this summer when we weren’t otherwise occupied by part-time jobs or early admissions college applications. There were only two factors that made this day different from any other. The first was the obscene amount of Diet Dr. Peppers sitting in a cooler beside the pool, courtesy of Suzie’s mom. The second, and far more important difference, was that Suzie’s parents were out of town for the weekend.
“I still can’t believe your parents let you have a party when they’re not home,” Matt said, finally lifting his head from whatever site he’d been perusing that had kept him occupied for the better half of the last hour.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Suzie shrug. “Why wouldn’t they?”
I lifted my head slightly to give Matt a knowing look. The girl had a point. We were far from troublemakers. All of us were in the Honor Society, not one of us had ever had so much as a detention, and our wildest party to date had consisted of too much sugar, an excessive amount of caffeine, and an all-nighter in front of our laptops as we battled it out to the death in MageRunner, Suzie’s favorite videogame.
“Still,” Matt said with a shrug. “My parents would never let me have people over when they were away.”
“Me neither,” I said, pulling my shoulder-length brown hair up into a topknot so I could dip down lower in the water without getting it wet. With my shoulders now under water and out of the heat, I let my head rest back against the pool wall with a sigh. It was amazing how exhausting it could be just lying in the sun.
“Yeah, well,” Suzie said, her tone filled with all the laziness I was feeling. “I guess I deserve to be trusted, right?”
There was no arguing that. Out of the three of us, Suzie made me and Matt look like rock stars. There was good and then there was a goody-two-shoes. Suzie proudly fell into the latter category. If one were to overanalyze the situation, one might conclude that her aversion to being bad was in direct correlation to her younger brother’s propensity for trouble.
If I had a sibling who was only a year younger than me and determined to steal all of my parents’ attention by getting in trouble on a daily basis, I’d probably be on the extreme end of the behavior spectrum too. As it was, I was an only child. I had no one else to blame for my lack of a rebellious streak. It just wasn’t in my nature, I guess. Some people were driven by a desire to be cool, and others were more interested in succeeding in life.
I didn’t know at what point exactly I’d realized this small town in Pennsylvania wasn’t my destiny, but my desire to flee was as deeply ingrained as Matt’s desire to expose the world’s injustices with hard-hitting journalism or Suzie’s desire to win daughter of the year.
So yeah, I guess my nerdiness was due in large part to me not wanting to screw up. I mean, college was my ticket out of this suburban hell, and there was no way I’d mess that up, not with only one year left to go.
Still, even knowing that, I couldn’t help but think that maybe this back to school party was just a little lame. Even for us.
Yes, I adored my friends, and yes, hanging out at Suzie’s pool with these guys had been the highlight of my summer. But this was Labor Day weekend. This was it—the last hoorah before school started up. The final days before our senior year of high school. The beginning of the end. The weekend leading up to the final stretch before we tasted the freedom that was college.
So yeah. While this little poolside shindig might not have looked like much of a party to an outside observer, this was absolutely a celebration. In spirit, at least.
Matt’s voice cut through the lazy summer silence once more. “Do you ever think…”
“What?” I prompted when it became clear that he wasn’t going to finish that thought.
“Never mind.”
I shifted so my toes touched the bottom of the pool and I could see him over the pool’s ledge. Suzie lifted her head too so we were both staring over at Matt.
It was so not like Matt to hesitate over his words. Suzie? Yes. She was more of a think before you speak kind of gal. But Matt?
His short brown hair was covered by a ridiculously dorky sunhat and he blinked over at us with a wry smile. “Seriously, never mind.”
“Matt,” Suzie said with that motherly warning tone she’d mastered years ago.
It was the tone she used with her brother Dale and it never failed to make guys everywhere turn into little boys. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. It had lost its effect on Dale at around the same time he’d hit puberty and become an outrageous jerk.
But it still worked on Matt, and he squirmed under her knowing stare. “Okay, fine,” he said. “Do you sometimes think that we’re…I don’t know…” He shrugged. “Missing out?”
Suzie looked over at me but I didn’t quite meet her eyes. I knew exactly what he meant. Every cheesy teen movie ever made had taught us all the expected rites of passage we ought to be experiencing in high school and this party was just our latest failure to live up to society’s expectations.
“What are you trying to say?” I said, feigning indignation. “That we’re boring?”
He widened his eyes. “No, no. Of course not.”
“Yeah, Matt,” Suzie said, her tone teasing. “What are you trying to say?”
I waded
over toward him and splashed him with some water, making him flinch and recoil as though he were a cat. He’d never been big on swimming. He narrowed his eyes and kicked, splashing me right in the face and making me sputter.
When I wiped away the water they were both laughing at me and I grinned back. “We are so not boring.”
“No, of course not,” Matt said again quickly. “I mean, I know that, and you know that—”
“Then who cares what anyone else thinks?” Suzie said.
There was a weird sort of tension in the air because this wasn’t the first time this topic had come up, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. It was an ongoing debate this summer and it usually ended with Matt on one side, Suzie on the other, and me awkwardly stuck in the middle.
Because here’s the thing. I got where Matt was coming from. This would be our senior year—AKA our last year as a threesome, in the totally platonic sense of the word. It would also be our last chance to experience high school life, for better or for worse.
At some point over the summer, Matt had apparently watched one too many John Hughes movies while trying to avoid the sun. He’d become much more sentimental about the whole “creating high school memories” thing than me and Suzie, and while his new attitude wasn’t exactly controversial, it put Suzie on edge. Understandably, to some extent.
Suzie and I were sort of on the same page about senior year. We just needed to get through it. This last year of high school was a necessary evil. A means to an end. We had to not only survive it, but excel at it and make it through the first semester with flying colors so we could each go to the college of our respective dreams.
Matt understood all of this, of course. I mean, no one was more determined to get into college than he was—he’d even applied for early acceptance that was how psyched he was to get out of Grover, PA and on to Stanford, CA.
Or Palo Alto, CA? Wherever Stanford University was located in California, that’s where he aimed to be next fall.
Anyway, the point was, he understood that part of it. He was totally on board with all of us doing what needed to be done to get into the colleges of our dreams. But I think there was a little part of him that felt like we were missing out on some key experiences by being…you know. Not popular.
“I still say we ought to have some stupid, clichéd high school memories to call upon when we’re old and fat and surrounded by kids,” Matt said.
Suzie let out a little snort of laughter. “Speak for yourself, Cartwright. Personally, I don’t plan on being fat.”
He rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“And I am definitely not popping out a bunch of babies,” I said.
“You’re both being intentionally obtuse,” he mumbled.
“And you’re being too serious for our last party of the summer,” I said.
He met my gaze evenly and I was a little surprised by how serious he looked. Matt was rarely this serious and for the first time I realized how much this meant to him. I shifted closer so I could prop my arms next to his knees. “You don’t honestly want to try and be…” I waved my arms a little as I looked for the word.
“Cool?” Suzie said the word with such disgust that Matt and I shared a grin.
“Oh the horror,” I teased.
“Yeah, seriously,” Matt said. “I could think of worse things than being known for something other than our good grades.”
“Like what?” Suzie asked.
He looked to me but I was no help. I arched my brows expectantly.
Matt let out a little huff of exasperation. “You guys, this is senior year. This is supposed to be our year—”
“And it will be,” Suzie insisted. “You’re going to be the editor-in-chief of the school paper, I’m going to be president of the computer science club, and Margo is going to be first chair in the band.”
I beamed at the reminder. The fact that I was finally, finally going to be first chair still made me giddy beyond belief. Was the clarinet the sexiest instrument in the world? No, of course not. And I’ll admit, when I’d first been told to choose an instrument I’d only picked it because it was portable and sounded more exotic than a flute. But I’d taken to it, I’d mastered it, and I’d embraced it wholeheartedly, becoming an involved and enthusiastic member of the band.
That’s right. I was a full-fledged band geek and proud of it. I was good. Like, really good. And now that Rose Gladwell had graduated and I was the senior clarinetist, the first-chair glory was all mine.
“Fine,” Matt said, giving in to our argument as he always did with a cute little smile that showed off his dimples. “You’re right, this will be our year. But you’ve got to admit we don’t have a lot to show for this summer.”
I pulled myself out of the pool and sat beside him, water pooling around me and soaking his shorts. “Don’t tell me you’re worried about that stupid back-to-school assignment.”
Suzie groaned. “Is that what this is about, Matt? You feel left out because we don’t have all sorts of photos documenting our glory days?”
Matt and I both laughed at her sarcasm—one thing we all agreed on was that anyone who said high school was the best time of their lives must have super pathetic lives. But despite his laughter, I also noticed that Matt didn’t argue with her, which meant she was right. That stupid slideshow was at least partly responsible for this latest outburst.
As our resident AV club nerd, some of Matt’s buddies had been put in charge of the principal’s latest lame attempt to be innovative. He’d gotten this idea in his head that this year’s welcome back assembly would involve a slideshow featuring all the incoming seniors in a “what I did last summer” presentation.
Lame.
Even lamer because if the principal were even half as innovative as he’d like to think, he would have realized that such a thing already existed in our world. It was called Instagram. If I’d wanted to see Julia Farrow and her fellow cheerleader friends taking selfies at the beach I’d be following them on social media.
I wasn’t, just like they weren’t following me and my friends. Because they didn’t care what we’d done this summer any more than I cared about what they’d been up to.
Of course, I had some idea, but not out of any sort of keen interest. Only because I happened to live next door to one of the pretty people. Jason Connolly—AKA star quarterback. AKA the school’s equivalent of Prince Freakin’ Charming. AKA the most popular guy in our class and one whose parents didn’t seem to care that their house and back patio were pretty much always overcrowded with the kind of people who either didn’t know I existed or who’d been making fun of me since junior high.
All of that I could handle. I mean, I didn’t love being mocked and ignored but it was to be expected. I knew where I fit in on the social totem pole at Grover High and I was fine with it. No, what really irritated me was Jason—the white-hat wearing knight himself. Why? Because he was so dang nice.
That doesn’t sound like much of a complaint, right? But it was. It drove me nuts, because he insisted on acting friendly to me, as if nothing had changed. As if we were still best buds who played in our backyards together and used walkie-talkies to communicate from our respective windows.
He acted like middle school and junior high never happened, like there was never a great divide as he became one of the pretty people and I became…well, I became a nerd. I didn’t mind my social status—in fact, I embraced it. I loved my friends, I couldn’t wait for my future, and unlike the pretty mindless clones who followed Jason and Julia around the school like a flock of sheep, my outcast status allowed me to wear whatever I wanted, to say whatever I wanted, and to do whatever I dang-well pleased.
So no, I didn’t mind being Grover High’s resident band geek. What I minded was Jason’s obliviousness. What I hated was the way he seemed so incredibly ignorant to the fact that his friends were a bunch of grade-A meatheads and the girls who fawned all over him looked at me like I was an insect beneath their feet.
I tried to shove aside all irritating thoughts of a certain sexy, smiling dirty-blond quarterback as I focused on my actual friends. The real friends who stuck by my side when the school divided itself up into the cool and the not cool, the pretty people and the geeks.
So yeah, I was over it. Mostly. But I could tell you right here and now—one of the best parts of going off to college?
Moving away from the boy next door.
Chapter Two
Margo
I slapped a hand on Matt’s shoulder. “Please don’t tell me you’re stressing over your life choices just because Principle Kramer is trying to be hip.”
He grinned over at me. “I’m not stressing about life choices, I’m just saying…”
Suzie and I waited patiently. I think maybe we were both hoping that for once this summer he could accurately explain what was making him so discontented with our daily routine.
He leaned over until his elbows rested on his knees. “I don’t know, I guess it bothers me that after all these years going to school together, the rest of our class still doesn’t get how cool you guys are.”
Suzie and I stared at him. Then we looked at one another. And then we burst out laughing so hard I almost fell back into the pool. Suzie actually did fall into the pool as climbed out of the unicorn so she could clutch onto the edge of the pool.
“Okay,” Matt said, a tolerant smile. “Laugh all you want. I’m totally serious.”
Love at First Fight: Geeks Gone Wild #1 Page 1
