Dying for Rain (The Rain Trilog - BB Easton Page 0,75

me wonder why I left in the first place.” I blushed and looked at the ground. “You wanna ride the bus home with me this afternoon? Just like old times? My mom just stocked the fridge with PBR …”

Yes. No. Kinda?

Before I could say something stupid, Juliet swooped in and rescued me. “She’s riding home with me, Colton. BB is my bitch now.”

Juliet set her tray down across from my backpack and glared at Colton. She never liked him. For starters, I’d kind of forgotten she existed after he and I started dating. I just started riding the bus home with him every day instead of her—a dick move, I knew, but I was fourteen, and he was my first real boyfriend. I was pretty sure “first real boyfriend” would be accepted as just cause for a temporary insanity plea in a court of law. But Juliet also hated him because I’d kind of blabbed to her about how hard he’d been pressuring me to do stuff with him. I would have given in, too, if he hadn’t told me he was moving. I was not giving it up to somebody who was just going to leave in a few weeks. Besides, I was saving myself for Lance Hightower.

Colton glared back at her for a minute. Then, he smiled and asked, “Can I watch?”

We all laughed, even Lance, who was watching the show with piqued interest. When I sat back down next to him (and away from the pheromone cloud that was Colton Hart), I let out a shaky breath and stared straight ahead at Juliet, thanking her silently. Lance, who had resumed his conversation with Colton, reached under the table and gave my thigh a reassuring squeeze. He left his hand there, and I prayed to every deity I’d ever learned the names of that he would slide it up a little farther. He didn’t, but he did absentmindedly lace his fingers through the holes in my fishnets as he spoke, causing me to stop breathing long enough to almost actually fucking die.

My mind was sufficiently scrambled when August, whom I hadn’t even noticed, spoke to me from the spot next to Juliet.

I had been friends with August Embry since first grade, when we wound up in the same first grade class. Back then, he was a shy, pudgy little thing with no friends, and I was a bossy, talkative little thing with no friends, so we’d just clicked. I loved him like a brother.

August was still a shy, round little thing. He hid his warm chocolate-brown eyes behind a curtain of dyed black hair, and every night, he painted his fingernails black to match. Of course, every day, he would pick them clean again—leaving little black flecks behind, like a trail of breadcrumbs everywhere he went. August was the sweetest, most sensitive person I’d ever met.

I could tell from his body language that August wasn’t exactly happy to see Colton either. He and Lance had become kind of close since Colton left. They both liked the same terrible music and competed over who had the best, rarest punk records in their collections, so Lance getting his best friend back didn’t bode well for August.

“Hey, A!” I cheered, trying way too hard to sound like a girl who didn’t have a boy’s fingers stroking her inner thigh at that exact moment. “I didn’t know you had this lunch period too! Are you growing your hair out? I love it!”

August just smiled and looked down at the food on his tray, which he suddenly decided needed rearranging.

I turned to ask Juliet if I could ride home with her and Tony, but she was gone. Her stuff was still on the table though, and I thought I could hear the sound of her voice. As much as it killed me, I moved Lance’s hand so that I could peek under the table. There she was, sitting cross-legged on the floor, talking on her cell phone, which was strictly forbidden at school. There was only one person she could possibly be talking to.

“Juliet,” I whispered.

She looked up, annoyed. “What?”

“Ask Tony if he minds giving me a ride this afternoon.”

She winked at me and whispered into her brick-sized Nokia, “Hey. BB’s gonna ride home with us this afternoon, okay?” She gave me a thumbs-up after hearing his response.

Cool.

Just then, I felt Lance’s hand press down on the back of my head and saw his crotch rise up to meet the side of my