Just about over you, p.1
Just About Over You, page 1
Just About Over You
Carrie Aarons
Copyright © 2021 by Carrie Aarons
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Editing done by Proofing Style.
Cover designed by Okay Creations.
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For every girl who was a real one, and that guy just never saw it. You’re beautiful, you’re worthy, you’re so much better than the person you would have been with him.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Epilogue
Also by Carrie Aarons
About the Author
Prologue
Gannon
Four Years Ago
Some cheesy slow song starts to lilt the dance floor into coupledom, and I roll my eyes.
My prom date is somewhere off in the bathroom, probably swallowing a teeny tiny pill that will make her go insane at some point. As it is, my own veins buzz with the warmth of three shots of vodka consumed in the school parking lot.
I get that this is some rite of passage for privileged kids in the suburbs, but I’ve never been that privileged. And this is just another roadblock in my final destination. College, and eventually, Hollywood.
College, where I can finally escape my fucked-up family life. Where I can gain some of the necessary skills and contacts and then pitch myself relentlessly until anything falls into my lap.
This? This is just another night where getting drunk underage is a possibility, and I might be able to get naked with a chick.
Maybe not my prom date, who just stumbled out of the girl’s room. Her eyes rove the floor, and I duck behind one of the pillars in the ballroom. The high school prom committee really outdid themselves, this is a step up from the school cafeteria. Still doesn’t mean I want to slow dance with Gia, my date. I brought her mainly to try to get in her pants at the after-party, as bad as that sounds.
But as I spin to avoid detection, my gaze lands on the one girl I actually did promise a dance to.
She’s standing in the middle of the dance floor, her head swiveling as everyone starts to pair off. The lilac dress she picked swishes around her feet, every single gorgeous ounce of her on display in the sweetest, most innocent way possible.
Oh, how I wanted to be the guy standing behind her while we were all taking pictures at someone’s house earlier. How I wished it was me putting that flower corsage on her wrist and helping her up the stairs of the limo bus.
Amelie Brook. The most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.
We met when we were ten.
After a horrific breakup that resulted in my half-sister, Desi, being born, my mother moved us from Philadelphia to upstate New York. We landed in Webton, which just so happens to be where Amelie Brook spent her childhood.
I remember the first time I saw her sitting at a desk in the front row of our fifth-grade class; I thought she was Tinker Bell. White-blond hair all swept up in a ponytail, with bangs that swished every time she blinked her eyes. Those eyes were the next thing that captivated me and haven’t let me go since.
Brown or maybe amber, some would say, but those are simple terms. Amelie held all of her emotions in them, and I had to physically tear my own gaze from them so many times when we were in the same room.
Nowadays, she still has that mane of moonsilk hair, but it brushes her tailbone and always seems to graze the ass that should have a religion named after it. Jesus fucking Christ, but this girl’s curves. They sprang up out of nowhere last year after her boyish figure disappeared. The first day she walked into my house, after seeming to grow D-cups overnight, I had to hide in the bathroom until my dick calmed down. I still find it hard to think away a boner when Amelie is in front of me.
She defines the term hourglass figure, and with how short she is, her perfect tits and drool-worthy ass only seem more exaggerated. Like tonight, when I can’t seem to take my eyes off her, no matter how hard I try.
We’re best friends, or at least I’ve put myself in that zone. And as she’s my best friend, she is the only girl who could get me to agree to a dance on prom night. Earlier in the week, she made me promise that I’d find her just once, take a sliver of time out of my night for her.
It kills me she thinks I don’t want to give her my whole night. Because I do. Fuck, I do. But I know better.
“Come on, let’s get out of here!” Sam, the guy in our grade who seems to always be able to score weed, comes up to where I’m standing and hits me in the arm.
I look behind him, and a group of the more popular seniors stand there, including my date. They all look either drunk or high and are itching to leave. The chaperones have to let us out at ten p.m., and a glance at the huge clock on the wall shows me that the time has nearly come.
Glancing back toward the dance floor, I watch as Amelie continues to stand alone. Continues to wait for me. A beat passes, and then another. Then a guy approaches her, some junior whose name I forget. He must ask her to dance because she looks around reluctantly one more time and then shrugs before moving into his embrace.
It’s better this way. I should break my promise to her, one of the only ones I’ve ever made her. I don’t make her promises normally, because I know I’ll disappoint her. Like this moment. Because I’m not going to dance with her. I’m going to leave and get drunk out of my mind so I can forget the sight of his arms wrapping around her.
If I take her in my arms right now, I’ll never let go. And for her benefit, no matter how selfish I am, I’ll never do that to her.
I’m the same poison I came from, incapable of a lifelong love.
I’ve known it since forever; Amelie Brook is way too good for me.
I will never be enough for her. I will never be able to give her the love she deserves. After all, look at the cloth I’m cut from.
Which is why I’ll fight every urge to fall for her and resign myself to being the best friend she could ever have.
At least then I can still allow myself to be around her without draining her of the light and goodness she embodies.
1
Amelie
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Jameson asks, rolling over to pop a quick kiss on my mouth.
I nod, but it’s more of a shrug slash non-committal motion. Maybe I’ll see him tomorrow. If I feel like it. If my heart and head don’t feel so overloaded that they make me chicken out.
“Bye, beautiful.” He winks, toeing into his sandals and striding out of my bedroom.
Watching him go as he shuts my door, I flop back onto my pillows. It’s the third night, in the two weeks since the fall semester started, that he’s slept over. I haven’t stayed at his place, and we don’t talk more than I’m willing to on any given day.
For now, it’s the speed I can handle. Casual hookup with a nice guy who also seems interested in more. After what I’ve subjected myself to in the love department, I’d say I’m doing pretty well.
It’s a typical Friday morning at my version of Talcott University. The private college in Ithaca, New York, is where my two best friends from childhood and I decided to attend school. We spent a year living in the dorms, and then decided to move into a house on Prospect Street, one of the most popular off-campus spots for students. Now that we all turn twenty-one this year, we’ll be able to zip right over to the bars across the street and then drunkenly stumble home.
Last night, we threw a small house party for Thirsty Thursday, and I invited Jameson to come over. We’ve been talking since last semester, around May, and saw each other twice over the summer since he only lives about an hour from my hometown of Webton, which is forty minutes from Talcott. Since getting back to school, not only has Jameson wanted to spend more time together, but I’ve been open to it.
Which is how he came to wake up in my bed this morning. Things with him are good. Not weird, not awkward. He understood that I have a
I have a paper due next week in my English Literature of the Eighteenth Century course, four books I need to read for a Paranormal Romance class, and I promised my boss at the library that I’d take on an extra shift this weekend. My dream job of working for the New York Public Library is going to be a tough get, but I’m working my butt off to achieve it. Especially since I’m crafting the perfect application for an internship this summer.
While busy dreaming about the smell of all the books in Manhattan, I nearly miss the voices in the hall just outside my door.
“Oh, shit, sorry! Didn’t see you there,” I hear Jameson say.
Please don’t let it be Gannon, please don’t let it be Gannon. I squeeze my eyes shut and pray to the gods.
“Uh, no problem. And you are?” That deep rumble has all sorts of skepticism.
Fuck my life. I blow out the breath I was holding.
“Jameson, nice to meet you. I think you were here last night, during the party? I’m, uh, seeing Amelie.” He sounds unsure, and I wonder if he’d say that if I was standing next to him.
He doesn’t sound like he’s bragging or like he wants to hide that we’re seeing each other. More like he just doesn’t know how to label our relationship, which is probably because of my lax attitude toward it.
“Are you?” Gannon says, and I just know the look he has on his face.
A holier-than-thou smirk that could make even the cockiest person cower. The smug bastard, what does he care if I’m seeing someone? It’s not like he wasn’t promising a girl that he’d marry her mere months ago.
Did I also mention I decided to go to the same college as my guy best friend from back home? Who I also happen to be head over heels in love with? And we all live together in a co-ed, off-campus house?
Because yeah, I am that idiot who agreed to this.
Gannon Raferty. The boy who stole my heart the minute I laid eyes on him in the fifth grade and never gave it back. Unfortunately for me, he has looked at me like a little sister from the jump. That could have been because I basically looked like a kid sister until I miraculously hit puberty junior year of high school.
No, really, I actually don’t think I hit puberty until then. I didn’t get my period until seventeen. Up until March of junior year of high school, I was flat-chested, had no hips, and genetics had blessed me with the height of a pixie. I’m five one on a good day.
But then something happened, and I grew boobs and a butt overnight. My lips became fuller, the chub in my cheeks dissolved. After that, guys started looking at me differently.
Taya, one-third of our hometown best friend trio and now my college roommate, once told me I look like a mix of Kim Kardashian and Tinker Bell. It’s actually not a far-off comparison.
That’s beside the point, though. Gannon has never looked at me with any sort of lust in his eyes, nor has he ever seriously committed to a girl. Until, that is, he was cast on one of the most famous reality TV dating shows in the nation, not to mention the world. He took last semester off to go film it and came in second.
As the runner-up, I had to watch him pick out a ring to possibly propose to a girl he’d known for less than six weeks. Ultimately, she’d turned him down, but a star was born. Now everyone wanted a piece of Gannon, and it’s not just me harboring a gigantic, irrational crush on him. It’s half the country.
Of course, I watched every episode like the masochist I am. Each week, the knife would turn a little more in my heart. My chest was practically a gaping wound by the end, and Taya and Bevan would have to scrape me up off the couch. They are my best friends; we met in third grade and have been unofficial sisters ever since, and would watch the torture with me no matter how much they disapproved. Taya found the love of her life in Austin last year, and Bevan broke up with her high school sweetheart and our MIA roommate, Callum. And even through all of their relationship problems, they always helped me through my turmoil.
But I’m stronger now. Maybe I had to see that to finally have a come-to-Jesus moment. Gannon is never going to love me or feel anything remotely similar to what I feel for him.
So it’s time to move on. I like Jameson, he’s the first guy in a while that I feel a small flutter for. And I’m not about to let Gannon moving back into this house screw that up. No matter what my traitorous heart says.
And speaking of getting a move on, I need to. I’m going to miss the spin class I signed up for at the fitness center if I don’t get out of bed now. Quietly, I push off my bed and tiptoe to the door. Like a church mouse, I turn the knob and peek around my door, blowing out a breath when I see that the hall is empty. Gannon and Jameson have left.
I imagine what they must have looked like standing out here. Gannon, the blond muscled demigod with a dimple in his left cheek, a beauty mark just above the right side of his lip, and that Harry Styles-swagger that someone can only be born with and not taught. And then there is Jameson, whose brown hair and brown eyes are nice, if not average. Everything about Jameson is perfectly nice and respectful, the best a girl could ask for. However, we rarely want that, right? It’s not what gets our hearts pounding and our panties completely soaked. No, that honor goes to the crooked, come-hither grin that guys like Gannon have mastered.
Fortunately for me, the hallway is empty. Grabbing the workout clothes I laid out yesterday afternoon in preparation for this morning, just in case I was hungover, I race to the shared bathroom and lock myself inside. I could have used the en suite in Taya’s bathroom, the only person who has an en suite, but there is the chance she’s having FaceTime sex with Austin before he goes in for his midday radio station job, and they need their privacy.
It’s fine, I’ll deodorant in here, pee, slap some moisturizer on, and change. All of that takes me five minutes, and then I’ll grab my school bag, books already packed for today’s classes, and run downstairs for a bowl of oatmeal. I’ll be out the door in fifteen and be able to put the deep thoughts of this morning behind me.
And if that schedule doesn’t tell you all you need to know about me, it should. I’m the kind of person who always has a plan, who never leaves home without looking up the route. I’m planning on being a librarian, order is kind of my life.
I take the stairs two at a time down, something my aunt would yell at me for because I might fall and break my neck. The staircase in our off-campus house is a sweeping menagerie that is typically littered with drunken students on Friday and Saturday nights.
The house is made up of four floors. The basement is the drinking games zone. Then there is the first floor with its massive living room decked out with cathedral ceilings, the kitchen with its massive butcher block island in the center, a dining room that is the constant location of every roommate studying together, and a powder room that we rotate cleaning. The second floor houses every bedroom, five in total, besides the attic. The attic is Gannon’s space, a bachelor pad open-concept room that spans the entire length of the house. Last semester, Austin, Taya’s boyfriend, sublet it while Gannon was filming the show.
Typical for Talcott, our college that stands on the hill atop a massive Finger Lake, the house has an antique vibe to it, with scuffed chestnut hardwood and crown molding everywhere. It looks more like a Victorian-era dollhouse than a place where kids get shitfaced every weekend, but that’s the charm.
