[Currently being rewritten and updated chapter by chapter]
Book One in the "Hard Love" series.
It's hard being knocked down. And it's even harder getting back up.
Thalia Carter grew up on the south side of Chicago with a dead-beat dad and never real...
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I'm frustrated as fuck.
Every time I think Thalia and I are rounding a corner, she pulls a one-eighty and veers off in another direction. Or crashes the car into a tree and abandons the scene altogether. I don't know. I have no fucking clue.
I've never gotten this shaken up about a girl before. And I wouldn't still be hanging around if this felt completely one-sided. The thing is, I know she's into me. Try as she might, she can't hide it from me anymore.
She wants me. I want her. It's simple as that.
Or at least it should be. Instead, we're in this stupid in-between state, like middle schoolers having their friends play telephone because they're too scared to tell the other one they like them.
I'm not scared. I'd shout it from the rooftops that I want Thalia Carter to be my girlfriend if she'd fucking let me. But then she'd probably go into witness protection or something, and that would set our progress to a pace akin to snails moving backwards.
"Oh my god," Nate moans beside me. He's been making sex noises like that for the past ten minutes. "This is orgasmic. I swear to god, guys, try some."
He tries to shove his artery clogging funnel cake toward Oliver and I, but we don't take the sugary bait. I've never heard a guy refer to food as orgasmic, which goes to show how much of an influence Zoe has on him, because she says it about just about everything she maybe half-likes, completely devaluing the epic feeling of an orgasm. Or maybe she just doesn't know what an orgasm feels like. Maybe Nate sucks in bed.
Okay, new subject.
"It's fried dough, not a blowjob," Oliver gripes, not looking up from his phone. Glancing at the screen, I see a notification come through, but I'm too far to make out what it's for. Oliver frowns, swiping up to clear it before shutting his phone off and pocketing it. "Where are Fallon and Thalia?"
"You weren't texting Fallon?" Nate asks, voicing the question on the tip of my tongue.
Oliver shakes his head, blue eyes drifting away for a nanosecond. "Nah. That was Katy confirming plans for later."
That makes my eyebrows shoot up. I'm not one to slut-shame, or tell a guy what to do with his dick, but this is going to be the third girl this week. Three girls. One week. Half the time he's at school, most of his afternoons are spent at practice, and when he's not there he's pretty much been with us because he hates going home. Where does he find the time?
Nate whistles, then chuckles. "Don't you ever get tired playing junior roulette?"
"Nope," Oliver replies with an overly cheerful smile, but his eyes are saying bloody murder. "Don't you ever get tired meddling in other people's sex lives? You'd think you have your hands full as is."
"And why is that?"
"Zoe's a full time job and you're trying to get off slacking on company time," Oliver answers with a smirk.
