Summer Breeze Kisses - Addison Moore Page 0,122

favor.

I knock my foot into the baseboard and wince.

Hey, Rex! Friendly enough. Are you available in the next hour? I hurt my foot and sort of need a quick ride to Carlton. Scratch that last part. Delete, delete, delete—Carlton equals Timbuk-freaking-tu equals a swift rejection from my soon-to-be stepbrother the jock. A quick ride across town.

I hit Send, and the dancing ellipses pop up on the screen, assuring me he’s busy responding. A tense knot builds in my stomach at the thought of another rejection. Good God, who the heck am I going to mooch a ride off if Rex falls through? I suppose I can try Sabrina or Lawson, but they’re both well aware of my fear of the freeway. I’d have to endure a half hour of lectures both coming and going.

I’m at practice. Sorry.

“What?” I give an audible groan as if I’ve just landed on the wrong end of a kitchen knife. This is not good. This is not good at all.

His text bubble illuminates once again. He’s making the ellipses dance, and I nod as if willing it what to say.

Just finishing up. Do I have time to hit the shower?

A swell of relief fills me.

Yes! But make it fast. I’ll meet you outside of Cutler Tower in an hour. Thanx, Goober. I add that last term of false endearment just to let him know we’re still at an emotional arm’s length away. As much as I appreciate the effort, in no way does this signify that I’m actually falling for the quarterback of Whitney Briggs’s football team. That in and of itself is a cliché I want no part of.

Ha! Rex Toberman is a cliché. I’ll have to remember that the next time he has me hot and bothered.

I somehow manage to lug all of the boxes filled with yummy hot pink goodness across the street and in front of Cutler Tower in time to see the cheer squad warming up—decompressing, whichever, out on the lawn. I spot Savannah with her long slender ponytail, her matching svelte legs, and swelling breasts that are currently trying to escape her all too tight sports bra. I hate girls like that with perfect bodies and perfect faces and perfect bitchy attitudes to match. It’s not that I’m trying to be masochistic to my own kind, but an equally bitchy part of me can’t help it. Something about that girl in particular twists my guts into a barbed-wire pretzel, and I simply can’t stand her.

Just as I’m about to send another quick text to my friendly unsuspecting chauffeur, the scent of a fresh Irish spring meadow envelops me.

“Hey, little sister,” a deep voice rumbles from behind, and I can’t help but give a crooked grin.

“Hey, big brother.” I turn just in time to see Savannah leap onto his shoulders.

“What’s this? Are you two, like, related?” Her upper lip hitches into her cheek on one side as if a fisherman is about to reel her in.

“Yup.” Rex gives me a little wink, and something about that small act sends a fireball rolling through me. I can’t help but notice the water beading over his freshly slicked hair, that clean soapy scent of his skin, the understated cologne, and the hint of minty toothpaste all clue me in on the fact that I’ve got a freshly scrubbed Rex Toberman on my hands, or more accurately in Savannah’s hands. “Our parents are about to bite the big one, so we’ll be steps come August.”

Crap. Why did he need to go and fill her in on that fun tidbit? Worse yet, why did he need to speak that sentence out loud, and put it out in the universe like a fact? Everyone knows you don’t mess with that crap. Once you’ve loosened something so affirmatively into the heavens, it’s as good as done.

“No kidding?” She snaps a pretty pink bubble in my face. “Well, I guess there’s no need to see you as competition.” She gives a cackling laugh, and for a second, I wonder if I missed the joke. “Rex and I are sort of a thing.” She gives a lazy shrug while draped over his chest, and in every way they look like sort of a thing. A jock-cheerleader cliché of a thing, but nevertheless a very real thing.

My stomach stews in its own acids, and I nod into this as if agreeing with her.

“Come on, Goob,” I snap. “We’ve places to go and people to feed.”

“What?” He follows blindly as