My ringtone woke me up from a second, and pleasant, dream. Alex walked with me across the school parking lot. White cotton ball clouds hung in a clear blue sky, framed by a bright sun. A warm breeze tossed my hair in sexy waves around my face. Every few steps, he stopped and tucked strands behind my ears, then smiled and recited romantic poems. "I love you not only for what you are but for what I am when I am with you." "I carry your heart with me. I carry it in my heart." "When I saw you, I fell in love, and you smiled because you knew." Elizabeth Barrett Browning, E.E. Cummings, and creepy Shakespeare. He wrapped each sonnet in a kind, sincere voice. I wanted to float away and never wake up. As my ringtone continued, I mumbled incoherence. Had I gotten any sleep? My eyelids were filled with cement, taking too much effort to open them, and the rest of me screamed that I hadn't slept ten minutes. I flopped my hand and grasped thin air. My low energy reserves pried open my eyes. Jake had a party, right? "Jake?" I accepted the call and groaned Harper's reminder, "If you had sex tonight, then you're spraying the car with Lysol and Febreeze tomorrow." "Uhhh… It's morning. And not Jake." a familiar, pleasant male voice answered, then cleared his throat. "Hi, Elle. It's Alex." "Alex?" I bolted upright and smoothed my hands over my bed hair. "Oh, Alex. Umm, sorry. Hey." "Hey." His chuckle warmed my cheeks. "I was calling to see if you wanted to hit up the library this weekend for some book club candidates." "Yeah?" I searched my tired brain for my previous engagements. "I have to work until closing tonight, and Harper-" "It's alright," he cut in. "How about next weekend, before book club?" While Harper defended me to her last breath, she came off a bit harsh. Well, all the time. The first time she met Alex, she warned him not to cross her or she'd have his balls strung up the school's flagpole. Hesitant was an understatement about how Alex felt about my best friend. "Sure." I pressed my feet onto my bedroom's soft carpet and stretched my legs. "That'd be great." "Great," he echoed. "Guess I'll see you later? Can I visit you at work sometime?" My heart flipped at that idea and the politeness in his warm voice. Our food was awful. This was how a boy should talk to girls. Nice. Genuine. Not one ounce of arrogance. "That'd be nice." I smiled, then we said our goodbyes and hung up. My smile remained while I scrubbed my skin pink in the shower. It widened as the pale yellow walls in my room brightened my mood. I pulled the frayed edges of my quilt under the pillows and traced a white daisy, but I wrinkled my nose at the sight of my uniform laid out. The black pants were itchy and starchy no matter how many times Mom and I washed them. Despite being an extra small size, my short legs required me to roll up the pant cuffs. A most unflattering pleat ballooned my hips. Logan towered over me… We were almost eye-to-eye. A scowl tugged my mouth down. My only regret when blocking his number was that I would miss his reaction. With a school more than forty minutes away, our chances of bumping into each other were almost zero. Thankfully. "Logan, you are something else. I'll give you that." I stared at my screen for a minute before I tossed my phone next to the most hideous work uniform shirt. Why had he called me Ellie? There's no way he knew how Ryder ruined that nickname for me. Better than baby. I pushed aside those thoughts and picked up my shirt. Blinding red and white vertical stripes were embarrassing enough, but additional adornments of giant blood-red pepperoni circles hung off the front. It looked like a failed elementary school art project. If I moved the shirt low enough, the pepperonis became giant nipple pasties. The cheap polyester getup itched my skin. Not even a cute ponytail out of the back of my greasy black hat helped. I ran a visual check on this embarrassing getup, which hung on me like a clown suit. Nametag? Check. Continuous blackmail material for Jake? Check. "Ellie?" Mom's dark-haired head poked out of the kitchen. Her dark brown eyes, the same color as mine and Jake's, peered at my entrance. "Jake said you weren't feeling well?" I picked up an apple from the kitchen's fruit bowl. "Beach side effects." "Right," she said with a dry voice and skeptical glance. Her bright red lips pursed at my awful uniform. "You are not my California baby. Are we all on for meatball rolling Sunday?" With heavy footsteps, Jake bounded into the kitchen. "Can't make it." His damp hair and much-improved smell indicated he had used the shower after me. He grabbed my apple on his way to the fridge. "Hey!" I lifted my eyebrows. "Hey," Jake greeted me with a sloppy grin, took a big chomp out of my apple, then handed it back with Jake's germs. "Thanks, Jake." I tossed the apple into the trash and pulled out another one. "I'm on for Sunday, Mom. Harper mentioned poetry hour at the coffee house, so can we do it in the morning?" She smiled at me. "That's fine, Ellie." "Poetry hour or drooling over poets?" Jake's eyes glinted, and his mouth curled up into a smirk. "Poetry." I glared at him. "It's possible to attend something without the sole motivation being a person of the opposite sex." Not that he'd know. His smirk widened until a small dimple on his left cheek appeared. "I meant Harper." He had me there. Harper could pick up a guy while pumping gas or… breathing air. I released my glare as Mom's interrogation turned to him. "What's on Sunday, Jake?" "Film day with Coach." His biceps rounded as he crossed his arms and shifted on his feet. "Pre-camp drills and playbook planning. Game six is Salesian. Our bye week is the week before, so we have a lot of time to practice beforehand." "Pre-camp?" I snickered. While least qualified to describe football, I knew Jake was a very calculated captain. He spent a lot of time on play development, play calling, and conditioning drills. In addition to the offensive team's practice, he also attended the defensive and special teams ones and worked out six days a week. Both the laundry stink and family obligations yanked by his schedule were proof. "Salesian, hmm?" Dad shuffled both into the kitchen and the conversation with his eyes fixed on Jake. "Their quarterback's stats are damn near identical to yours." "Good test for the team." Jake nodded with a sigh. "And yeah, their quarterback is decent. He only had three fumbles all last season." The rare flash of humility looked nice on Jake. It was gone in a blink as his eyes hardened at me. "Hightower." Oh. Oh. Him. My eyes widened and I rounded my lips in another silent 'Oh.' Guilt seeped into my stomach and dried my mouth. I hadn't told Jake about… whatever the fuck didn't happen between me and Logan. Or how I had forty-seven followers, of which I knew three. Now wasn't the time to tell him, and never was my preference. I wrapped my arms around his waist and gave him a tight hug. "I'm sure he's not as amazing as you." Jake rolled his eyes and shoved me away. "I hope so," was all he said. "All their offensive starters are returning. My top receiver is supposed to be a sophomore rookie."