LITMIR.BIZ

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the lunchroom door just down the hall.

      “What’s up, girly girl?” Poppy demanded, striding up to her. The bangles on her wrist clinked as they slid down the arm she raised to brush back a curl that had strayed from the mass. “You’re looking exceptionally happy.”

      “No fooling,” Jane agreed. “It’s not every day we see you boogie down the hallway.”

      “I am feeling so fine.” If she felt any finer, in fact, they’d have to haul her down from the ceiling like a bouquet of helium balloons. She beamed at her friends. “I might even go so far as to say I’m feelin’ beautiful.”

      And wasn’t that amazing. She felt reasonably attractive most days, pretty on occasion, but beautiful? That was something so rare it was the next best thing to never. Given her constant struggle with weight, it wasn’t an adjective anyone at home ever applied to her. Her parents were more likely to give her grief for not doing enough to lose her “baby” fat.

      “Hey, you are beautiful,” Jane protested loyally.

      “Yeah, ‘She’s got such a pretty face,’” Ava quoted dryly. “What a shame she’s so plump/heavy/hefty.” That was a conversation she’d overheard more than once.

      “You know Janie better than to think she implied that, Av,” Poppy said. “She said you’re beautiful—and you are.”

      “I love you both for saying so, but that would be you, Poppy, not me.” With her Nordic blond hair and breezy confidence, Poppy was in a category all her own. She could’ve been part of the popular kids’ clique if she’d given a rat’s ass about that sort of thing. Hell, Ava thought proudly, Poppy could’ve ruled that crowd. She and Janie, on the other hand, would have never made the cut.

      Not that Jane wasn’t attractive, but it was a quiet prettiness that sort of snuck up on you. She had shiny brown hair and really great legs, but the clothes she wore made Goths look colorful. Plus, she was a brainiac—something most of the so-called in crowd were too stupid to appreciate.

      Ava gave a mental shrug. Neither she nor Janie gave a rip any more than Poppy. The kids in that crowd were mostly asses, and the three of them had something worlds better than winning a high school popularity contest—each other. They were tight. BFFs. They’d met at this very school in the fourth grade and been a unit ever since.

      Ava sure wished, however, that she were a size zero—okay, eight—like Janie and Poppy. Usually, in fact, she was fairly green-eyed over the knowledge that, no matter how nice her clothes, she always seemed to look like a sausage that had been packed too tightly into its skin—while her friends wore their Old Navy duds like runway models.

      Today, however, it didn’t matter. Because last night Cade Gallari had kissed her, touched her, made love to her. And since the moment she’d opened her eyes this morning, she’d felt almost skinny, wholly desirable and, yes, beautiful.

      Not that her first foray into sex had been completely wonderful. If the truth be told, the foreplay had been awesome, but the actual penetration part…well, that had been uncomfortable and over so fast she’d never actually gotten the chance to cross the finish line. But hey, it had been her first time, so it wasn’t as if she’d expected angels to sing or anything.

      Still, Cade had made her feel special. Between kisses, he’d told her how gorgeous her lips were, how pretty her hair, how soft her skin, how awesome her breasts. And afterward he’d held her as if she were more precious than platinum.

      Which didn’t prevent her from being blown away that she’d done it with him. She sure never would have predicted that. Up until six weeks ago, in fact, she’d have sworn it wasn’t even a remote possibility, since she couldn’t remember a time when Cade hadn’t been a giant pain in her butt. They’d known each other since birth, practically—yet at the same time hadn’t truly known each other at all. But the little she had known of him?

      She hadn’t liked. He was part of the crowd that reveled in ridiculing anyone who didn’t fit their standards, which, face it, was nine-tenths of the student body. So when she and Cade had been assigned partners in Mr. Burton’s year-end seniors science project, she’d seen Titanic stamped all over it. Because, c’mon, her and Gallari? On a project that accounted for a quarter of their grades?

      When the two of them were eight, he’d pulled her hair and trod all over her toes in cotillion class. In the tenth grade the guy had looked up her skirt from beneath the bleachers, for God’s sake, then told everyone she wore pink panties! Before last night, in fact, her blood had congealed at the thought of him seeing her fat thighs and probably laughing about them with those asshole buddies of his.

      Yet over the past month and a half, she’d seen another side of Cade, a sweet, funny, thoughtful side she hadn’t dreamt existed. And sitting across from each other in the library or at the coffee shop tables they’d taken to staking out to work on their project, an insidious attraction had begun to grow. Soon they were sitting in the dark in his car just talking, talking, reluctant to call it a day.

      Until one night he’d kissed her. And once that frontier had been crossed, there was no going back. Every time he’d kissed her these past couple of weeks, every time his hands had grown bolder charting new territory, she’d just melted, finding it really difficult to call a halt as, little by little, he’d pushed the envelope on their intimacy level.

      Until, last night, she just couldn’t make herself say they had to stop. Her lips curled up in a secret smile.

      “Okay, that’s it!” Stopping in front of the cafeteria doors, Poppy grabbed Ava’s arm. “What is up with you?”

      She laughed.

      Tried to keep the news to herself.

      Then ultimately caved, because they were a sisterhood and she told them everything.

      “I did it, Poppy. I thought for sure I was going to graduate—if not die—a virgin, but last night I…” Heat crawling up her chest, she suddenly turned shy at the idea of saying the words aloud.

      Jane’s mouth dropped open. “Oh. My. Gawd,” she said slowly. “You did the deed?”

      She nodded.

      Poppy looked perplexed. “With who?” Then her eyes narrowed. “Oh, crap, please tell me it wasn’t Buttface Gallari!”

      “Don’t call him that!” Okay, so she was the one who had given him the title way back when. But still—

      “Just…don’t, okay?” she said in a softer tone and shook her head. “Look, I want to tell you guys everything, and I will—after school when the potential to be overheard isn’t so high.”

      “Yeah, all right,” Poppy agreed. “But the minute we’re clear of this place, I’ve got some questions for you, sister.” Turning Ava loose, she pushed open the lunchroom door, and they walked into the chaos and bedlam of second lunch.

      Trays and crockery clattered, voices reverberated off walls, and students seemed in constant motion as they either moved between the long tables or jockeyed for position at them. Peering around a couple of jocks tossing a baseball back and forth, Ava looked for Cade. Not wanting to appear too obvious when she didn’t immediately locate him, she followed her friends to the lunch counter.

      She’d picked up a tray before she noted an unaccountable lessening in the noise level. It was never quiet in here, yet except for a few conversations still going on at the farthermost tables, the usual babble had faded to near silence. She looked over her shoulder to see everyone looking at her.

      Someone snickered.

      She smiled uncertainly, so damn dumb that even then she didn’t get that she was the butt of some joke. It wasn’t until Dylan Vanderkamp, the biggest ass in Cade’s crowd of mega-asses, rose to his feet, smirked at her and brandished a fat roll of cash that she began to get an inkling that this was not going to be good.

      “Here you go, Gallari,” Dylan said, “two hundred bucks.” He extended it across

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