Chapter 1

1

Senior year was the year my childhood best friend, Amy, fell for a jock.

He'd make her smoke in the bathroom, even slap her around in front of other girls.

And she ate it up, her grades plummeting faster than a lead balloon.

I was terrified this loser would ruin her future, so I kept telling her to ditch him.

She'd just roll her eyes and go back to making googly eyes with him. "I'd rather be used and abused by Jake than treated like a princess by a nice guy like you, Tom."

The night before the SATs, she ditched our pact to study together and snuck off to some motel with him.

And me? I swallowed my feelings and set my sights on Harvard.

...

I think Amy was in love.

She was always daydreaming in class, a little smile playing on her lips, propping her chin up with one hand and clutching a pen with the other.

The pen would scratch across the pages of her notebook, etching out a name.

I peeked once, and it was "Jake Miller."

A sharp, edgy name that fit him perfectly.

Jake was the school bad boy, arrogant, wild, like a beast charging across the basketball court.

Said beast had accidentally nailed my sweet Amy in the head with a basketball three days earlier.

We were walking past the court, arguing over some complicated calculus problem.

Suddenly, bam! The ball smacked Amy right in the head.

She yelped, glaring toward the court, and saw Jake jogging over.

He was sweaty, rocking that kinda-cute-but-kinda-douchy messy hair thing, a cocky grin plastered on his handsome face.

"Hey, cutie, you okay?" He always called girls "cutie."

Amy just froze, staring at his face, his body, and her cheeks instantly flushed red.

She quickly ducked her head and tried to walk away.

Jake chuckled. "What's the rush? I'm not gonna bite. Here, add me on Snap, maybe we can shoot some hoops sometime."

Amy stopped dead in her tracks, fumbling for her phone.

That's how they connected.

I stood there like a pathetic idiot.

Eighteen years, and Amy had never blushed around me.

Not even when I worked up the nerve to tell her I liked her. She just burst out laughing.

"Tom, seriously? You think you could handle me? I'm into the bad boy type, you know? The edgy, rebellious guys. Not the sweet, gentle, 'nice guy' thing."

Yeah, I was too nice.

I'd loved her since we were kids, like a favorite cat, always petting her hair, bringing her treats.

I figured love was like tending a flower; you wanted it to bloom, beautiful and carefree.

But she wasn't blooming for me.