Dating: For the Block

by Stephanie Street

  Copyright © 2019 by Stephanie Street

  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 © DepositPhotos – tonic85 & torsak

  Cover Design © Designed with Grace

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Invitation

  1. Mia

  2. Grayson

  3. Mia

  4. Grayson

  5. Mia

  6. Grayson

  7. Mia

  8. Mia

  9. Grayson

  10. Mia

  11. Grayson

  12. Mia

  13. Grayson

  14. Mia

  15. Grayson

  16. Mia

  17. Grayson

  18. Mia

  19. Grayson

  20. Mia

  21. Grayson

  22. Mia

  23. Grayson

  24. Grayson

  Author’s Note

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  Also by Stephanie Street

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  1

  Mia

  “It’s not fair. Mom wants to get remarried and that makes it okay to jack with my life? Nobody asked me what I wanted.” Just like no one had asked for my opinion when my parents up and decided to get a divorce when I was seven.

  “I thought you liked Mark,” my best friend, Brooke asked. By her tone I could tell she was just patronizing me and she’d much rather talk about all the dating possibilities at my new school than discuss my feelings of betrayal at the hands of my parents.

  I rolled my eyes even though she couldn’t see me since we were on opposite ends of the country. I hadn’t wanted to Skype because I was still unpacking my stuff into my bedroom at my dad’s house and didn’t want to shout as I moved around the small space.

  “I do like Mark. That isn’t the point. When they told me they were getting married, they conveniently left out the part about moving to Siberia.” Or I’d never have given them my blessing.

  “Alaska is hardly Siberia, Mia.” Brooke was still patronizing me. She’d heard all this before. Several times, in fact, since Mom and her new husband, Mark, announced they were moving to Alaska due to Mark’s job.

  “That’s not the point, Brooke,” I huffed while lifting my large suitcase off the floor and onto the double bed that still sported a Disney Princess comforter my dad hadn’t replaced since the divorce. “The point is nobody thought to ask me how I felt about moving to a different school midway through my senior year. Do you have any idea how different Indiana is from Southern California? Huh? Do you? Because they are nothing alike. No beaches. No palm trees. And definitely no tans.”

  That’s right. Indiana, as far as the eye could see, because there were no mountains to block one’s view, looked like a wasteland in the middle of winter. Brown, leafless forests and brown, dead cornfields.

  Brooke sighed from her stucco house in sunny L.A. “I’m sorry, Mia. You know I wanted you to stay here with me, but we all know how that worked out.”

  My lips tightened just thinking about it. Really what would have been the problem with me just staying with Brooke’s family? Her parents hadn’t cared, but of course, mine had dug in their heels. Mom felt it was important for me to live with at least one of my parents until I graduated high school narrowing my choices to Alaska or Indiana, home of the great big nothing. Unless you were a fan of farmhouses and cornfields. And football. Or basketball.

  Ugh!

  I was a fan of surfing. And laying out next to our pool. The pool we didn’t have anymore because Mom and Mark sold our house in California just before shipping me off!

  “Yeah, whatever. What can I do about it now? I’m stuck in this cold, dreary, brown place until I graduate. And then I’m out of here.” May couldn’t come fast enough.

  “Well, are you at least going to try and cheer?” Brooke asked. “Your dad’s the basketball coach. I’m sure he could get you an in.”

  He probably could. He’d even mentioned it in the car on the way back to his house from the airport. But I didn’t want to get involved with a new squad. The basketball season had already started and according to Dad, Eastridge Heights had a super competitive cheer program. Not that my old school didn’t. It just meant working extra hard to catch up, learning routines all while trying not to be a liability to the squad. I wasn’t up for that after everything else.

  “I don’t know. It seems like a lot of work.” Tossing my half-full suitcase on the floor, I flopped down on the bed feeling defeated. A poof of dust reached my nose. Obviously, Dad hadn’t bothered to wash the bedding before my arrival and I’d just laid down in almost a year’s worth of dust.

  “Well, buck up, girlfriend. Tomorrow starts a new day at your new school and I can’t wait to hear about all the hot new guys. Especially the ones on your dad’s team.” From the tone of her voice, it was easy to imagine how Brooke’s eyebrows had jumped up and down when she said that.

  “How can you even think of boys at a time like this? My whole life is falling apart!”

  Her eyes rolled loud enough to hear through the phone. “Hun, it don’t matter what’s going on, I can always think about cute boys.”

  I couldn’t take it anymore. Brooke was no help. I needed someone to commiserate with not someone who was trying to get me to see the silver lining.

  There was no silver lining, people!

  Especially not when it came to boys. I was so done with the species.

  “Have you heard from you-know-who?” Brooke asked. I’d banned her from saying his name just like Voldemort in the Harry Potter books.

  “No. And I don’t plan to.”

  “You never know,” she said in a sing-song voice that made me want to scream.

  I hadn’t told Brooke about blocking his number from my phone. She would just accuse me of being dramatic. I didn’t think it was dramatic to want to scrub a jerk from my life after he broke my heart, but what did I know?

  “It doesn’t matter.” None of it did. I wasn’t in California anymore. Brooke was the only friend from home that even cared about me moving. Everyone else acted like they were sad for about two minutes before moving on with their lives like they’d already forgotten my name. Especially him. He hadn’t even pretended for a day after I told him I was moving that he still cared about me. I didn’t even get a chance to talk to him about it before he was hanging all over Rachel Hickerson. When he finally noticed me standing there, he just shrugged and smiled that smile I used to love.

  Goodness, I hated that smile.

  “I better get to bed,” I said with a sigh. I was terrible company, anyway. She was probably dying to get off the phone with my depressed butt. “I’ll call you tomorrow after I get back from Dad’s practice.”

  Since I didn’t have my own car anymore, I had to ride to school with my dad. That meant arriving a half hour early for school and not getting home until he was finished with practice.

  “Okay. Feel free to text me any pictures of hot boys!”

  “Bye, Brooke.” I disconnected the call before she could say anything else. Brooke was actually a really good friend, but she was on my last nerve with all her happiness.

  Ugh! What was my problem? It wasn’t Brooke’s fault I was all bent out of shape about moving. S
he was probably dreading my next phone call knowing she’d have to listen to me gripe about my situation.

  I was the bad friend.

  With that happy thought rolling around in my brain, I rose from my dusty bed and made my way down the hall to the bathroom. At least Dad had his own bathroom as part of his master suite and we wouldn’t have to share. I hadn’t lived with my dad for longer than a few weeks at a time since I was seven and I had a feeling I got the best version of Dennis Tillman during those visits. Who knew what he was really like after living alone for the last ten years? He probably forgot to put the toilet seat down on a regular basis because, why not? No one was around to give him a hard time about it.

  Either way, I was glad I didn’t have to give up my privacy as well as my car. And my house. And my pool. My friends and my school. Even my mom.

  Tears pricked my eyes as I brushed my teeth. I’d held it in this morning, swallowing hard against the lump in my throat as I said goodbye to Mom and Mark when they dropped me off at the airport. I’d distracted myself with a paranormal romance on the plane and worked to put a smile on my face when Dad greeted me down in Baggage Claim and made small talk on the hour and a half drive from the Indianapolis Airport to his house. I even managed to choke down a slice of the pizza he ordered for dinner and smiled when I told him goodnight several hours before my normal bedtime.

  But now? It was catching up with me. The disappointment. The hurt. The feeling of abandonment I’d been pushing down since Mom and Mark’s wedding day.

  I spit toothpaste into the sink and rinsed out my mouth. Using the towel hanging from a round metal loop on the wall beside the sink, I took a good long look at myself in the mirror.

  Who was I kidding?

  Those feelings of abandonment hadn’t started at Mom’s wedding. They’d been there a lot longer. Ever since I’d lived in this house as a little girl with both of my parents and they first told me they were getting a divorce. I’d just pushed them down, convinced myself both my parents loved me and I was lucky to have them and that things could have been a lot worse.

  I repeated the sentiment to myself again.

  After brushing through my hair to get out all the knots from a day of traveling, I trudged back to my room. Downstairs, the sounds of some sports show on the tv let me know Dad was still awake. I felt a little guilty for leaving him to go hide in my room on my first night here, but I needed some space to adjust, get my bearings, work through some of the emotions I hadn’t had time to unpack as quickly as I had the suitcase on the floor.

  The sound of Dad’s voice talking softly made me pause again, straining my ears to listen. Was someone else down there? I heard him chuckle softly. There was a moment of silence before he spoke again. He must be on the phone. But who was he talking to? And then it hit me. I knew my dad. If he was talking to one of his friends, he’d be speaking loudly, joking and laughing. If it was my mom his words would be clipped short, as polite as possible through clenched teeth. This didn’t sound anything like that.

  Was Dad talking to a woman? Anxiety made me shuffle my feet at the top of the stairs. The floor creaked from the motion and Dad’s voice cut off abruptly. Holding my breath, I waited. After a few seconds, he began talking again. Probably to tell whoever it was on the other end that he’d heard something. Suddenly, I didn’t want to know who it was. Maybe he was just speaking softly because he didn’t want to wake me. Or it was a parent from school and he was discussing something confidential. He could be talking to anybody, really, and I was just being silly.

  After tip-toeing back to my room, I ripped the dusty comforter off and thanked the powers that be for the fleece blanket underneath. I’d have to wash everything tomorrow, but for now, I was too exhausted to do anything but sleep. Too bad sleep wasn’t as quick to come as the tears rolling down my cheeks.

  There was nothing like falling asleep on a damp dusty pillow while trying not to think about all the things that had gone wrong in my life. My parents divorce. Mom remarrying and moving.

  Dad.

  Was he hiding something, or someone, from me?

  That question haunted me until I fell into a dreamless sleep.

  2

  Grayson

  “Grayson! You’re gonna be late!” Mom pounded on my bedroom door with her fist. The sound of it, along with her yell, pulled me out of a deep, dreamless sleep.

  Reaching up, I rubbed both hands over my face, trying to shake off the exhaustion from another long night of restlessness.

  “Grayson!”

  “Ma! I’m up,” I called back. She wasn’t going to let up. She knew me too well. In fact, I’d lay money on the odds of her still standing outside my door listening for the sounds that would signify I’d actually gotten out of my bed.

  Throwing back my blankets, I figured I’d give her a break.

  “Damn!” I hissed, protesting the cold floor on my warm feet. All I wanted was to slide back between the cozy blankets and forget all about school. Two weeks at Christmas was crap, just long enough to get used to not going to school everyday and then BAM! Right back at it.

  “I heard that! Now, get moving.” Her fist pounded twice more before her footsteps moved down the short hall in the small two bedroom apartment we’d lived in since my dad ditched us when I was a baby. She used to wake me up with a soft hand on my shoulder, her sweet voice urging me out of sleep. Yeah, that all stopped when she began working nights. She was much more irritable in the mornings now after working for twelve hours. Not that she had to wake me up every morning. Just days like today when I hit the snooze on my alarm one too many times.

  After stripping out of the shorts I’d slept in, I wrapped my towel around my waist and headed to the bathroom we shared. A quick shower would help wake me up and hopefully wash away the rest of the bad juju from another sleepless night. I turned the water on as hot as I could stand it before lifting my face into the stream, staying longer than I should before heading back to my room to get dressed. Dishes clanging against the counter and the smell of bacon told me I better get a move on or I wouldn’t have time for breakfast.

  Glancing around my room, I spotted a pair of jeans on the floor. Picking them up, I brought them to my nose and sniffed. Shrugging, I yanked them on. They might not smell clean, but at least they didn’t smell like a locker room. I called that a win. Digging in my closet, I found a cream colored thermal and a navy hoodie with the school mascot on the front and my last name printed down the sleeve. I pulled them both over my head and stepped into my shoes. One squirt of my cologne bottle and I was set.

  “Morning, Ma,” I said and kissed her cheek. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail and her hot pink scrubs were wrinkled from the twelve hour shift at the hospital. Mom was a tiny lady who never seemed to age. It was as though time stopped for her when she graduated high school but kept moving like normal for everyone else. Her honey-gold hair curled in waves around her shoulders while her bright green eyes caught the attention of admirers everywhere we went. She looked young enough I stopped going with her to the grocery store because people were always mistaking us for a couple. Between men checking her out and the double-take glances between the two of us, it was downright embarrassing how pretty she was.

  “Sorry you had to wake me up. I hit snooze too many times.” I was usually way more responsible than that. Good grief, I’d been getting myself up and ready for school since first grade.

  She just grunted distracted by her phone. She typed quickly on the small screen then stuffed the device down her shirt. I wished she would keep that thing somewhere else.

  “I thought it was bad for you to put your phone there.” I knew it was bad for my brain knowing where that thing spent most of its time. I made it a point to never touch it. Ew.

  “I don’t have pockets.” She did have pockets, she just didn’t like putting her phone in them in case it fell out.

  I decided to drop it. “How was the ER last night?” It was a loaded question and one I was never sure I wante
d the answer to. I swear the craziest stuff happened in the ER in the middle of the night.

  “Slow,” was the short answer she gave before setting two plates of pancakes and bacon on the table. Mom always tried to make up for not being around for dinner by making a big breakfast when she got home from work.

  “That’s good,” I murmured around a mouthful of syrupy pancakes.

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” she said automatically. “Hey, can you stop after school and fill up the car? See if it needs a quart of oil?”

  I nodded this time instead of getting in bigger trouble for talking with food in my mouth.

  “There’s money in the account for a fill up and a quart of oil if it needs it and for this week’s lunch. Pay it all today so it’s not hanging over my head.”

  Nodding again, I tried not to feel guilty. We were always strapped and I hated it. I begged her to let me get a job, but she insisted we were fine and that she wanted me to have a normal childhood. To her that meant being involved in sports, keeping my grades up, and hanging out with my friends. Not having a job.

  Things were getting better lately, though. She’d finished her RN a couple of years ago, however, a huge chunk of her paycheck went toward student loans. I knew she was working hard, taking extra shifts and socking every penny toward her loans so she could pay them off sooner rather than later. She hated having debt and was determined to pay every penny before even thinking about buying a house or a new car.