Read Online Out of Nowhere by Rebecca Phillips - Free Book Online Page B

smoke. Sydney hated it here and tried to stay gone as much as possible.
    “Sorry,” I said when she opened the door to my knock. “I walked.”
    Sydney, usually so stylish and put-together, looked like she’d been sucked up and then spit out by a tornado. Her short red hair stood up in all directions, and she wore a ripped blue T-shirt and what looked like a pair of men’s boxer shorts. I wasn’t sure who they belonged to, since there were no men living here with her. She’d been raised by a single mom for the past few years, just like me, except her father wasn’t dead. Sydney only wished he was. One day when she was twelve and her sister was ten, he’d quit his job and moved to New Zealand to be with a woman he’d met on the internet, never to be heard from again.
    We set up our books in Sydney’s miniscule bedroom and studied until she was sure she wasn’t going to flunk the quiz, at least. We’d deal with the exam later. Since pretty much all I did was go to school, go to work, and study, I was already mostly prepared for my exams. Summer felt close enough to taste.
    I wasn’t in any hurry to go home, so Sydney let me hang out for a while. The apartment was quiet. Her mother was on night shift this week—she worked the front desk at one of the big hotels on the waterfront—and her fourteen-year-old sister, Kaylee, rarely came out of her room. Sydney and I went out on her tiny, concrete balcony, where we sat side-by-side in plastic chairs and she lit a cigarette.
    “So,” she said, flicking ashes into the potted plant beside her. “Who’s this guy Lucas has been talking about?”
    “What guy?” I waved away a cloud of smoke. I hated the smell it left on me, not to mention the numerous dangers of secondhand inhalation.
    “The guy . The one who buys you brownies and stuffs money into your tip jar.” She snickered.
    “Cole? Lucas mentioned him?”
    “Only like five million times. He said he came in three times last week to see you.”
    I quickly looked away, over the railing and down at the parking lot below. A man in a baseball cap was hefting two bags of garbage into the dumpster. At least I hoped it was garbage. “Not to see me,” I said. “For coffee. He’s addicted.”
    “Mm hmm,” Sydney said, watching me through narrowed eyes. “Because Jitters is so convenient for him.”
    I felt my face go red. It was true. Cole had been in three more times since our little brownie chat last Saturday, and all three times he’d waited around for me to go on break. We’d have a coffee together, sometimes share a brownie or a cookie, and talk. We were getting to know each other, becoming friends, but I could tell by the way he looked at me sometimes that he wasn’t just there for the caffeine fix. I’d been even more convinced yesterday, when at the end of my break he asked me for my number. I’d given it to him, of course, because what else are you supposed to do when someone you like asks for your number? And I did like him. He was nice and funny and easy to be with. But that still didn’t mean I thought he was cute.
    “We’re just friends,” I told Sydney, who shook her head and sucked hard on her cigarette.
    “Lucas said he asked for your number.”
    Damn that Lucas and his big gossipy mouth. “Friends call each other, you know.”
    She acted like she didn’t even hear me. “Wow, you guys are slow movers. All that time to work up to a phone number ? Jesus. It’ll be next summer before you get around to cashing in your V-card.”
    He won’t be around next summer , I thought. Which was exactly why I intended to keep things casual. I did not deal well with good-byes, and there was no point in getting involved with someone who would leave me in a year for sandy beaches and snow-free winters. Or someone who was intent on breaking his neck on a skateboard or, even worse, a motorcycle.
    “Sydney, please don’t start.” It always came down to this with her. My virginity. Like it was