Getting Schooled (Getting Some #1)(13)

And the ass that, even from this distance, I would know anywhere.

Callaway Carpenter. Holy shit.

She looks amazing, even more beautiful than the last time I saw her . . . than the first time I saw her. You never forget your first. Isn’t that what they say? Callie was my first and for a long time, I thought she’d be my only.

The first time I laid my eyes on her, it felt like getting sacked by a three-hundred-pound defensive lineman with an ax to grind. She looked like an angel. Golden hair framing petite, delicate features—a heart-shaped face, a dainty jaw, a cute nose and these big, round, blinking green eyes I wanted to drown in.

Wait . . . back up . . . that’s not actually true. That’s a lie.

I was fifteen when I met Callie, and fifteen-year-old boys are notorious perverts, so the first thing I noticed about her wasn’t her face. It was her tits—they were full and round and absolutely perfect.

The second thing I noticed was her mouth—shiny and pink with a bee-stung bottom lip. In a blink, a hundred fantasies had gone through my head of what she could do with that mouth . . . what I could show her how to do.

Then I saw her angel face. That’s how it happened.

And just like that—I was gone.

We were “the” couple in high school—Brenda and Eddie from that Billy Joel song. The star quarterback and the theater queen.

She was the love of my life, before I had any fucking idea what love was . . . and then, still, even after I did.

We broke up when she went away to college and I stayed here in Jersey—couldn’t survive the distance. It was a quiet ending when I went out to visit her in California, no drama or hysterics. Just some hard truths, tears, one last night together in her dorm-room bed, and a morning of goodbye.

She never really came home again after that. At least, not long enough for us to run into each other. I haven’t seen her in years—in a lifetime.

But she’s here now.

At my school.

And you can bet Callie’s sweet ass I’m going to find out why.





Chapter Five


Callie





I was fourteen the first time Garrett Daniels spoke to me. I remember every detail—I could close my eyes and it’s like I’m right there again.

It was after school, a week into my freshman year, TLC was singing “Waterfalls” from the radio on the floor next to me. I was sitting on the bench outside the school theater when I saw his black dress shoes first, because football players wore suits on game days. His suit was dark blue, his shirt white, his tie a deep burgundy. I looked up, and those gorgeous brown eyes, with long “pretty” lashes that should’ve been given to a girl, gazed back at me. His mouth was full and soft looking and smiled so easily. His hair was thick and fell over his forehead in that dark, cool, careless way that made my fingers twitch to brush it back.

Then he uttered the smoothest opening line in the history of forever.

Do you have a quarter I could borrow? I was gonna get a soda from the vending machine but I’m short.

I did, in fact, have a quarter and I handed it to him. But he didn’t go to get his soda—he stayed right where he was and asked me my name.

Callaway.

I’d mentally cursed myself immediately for using my full name because of its weirdness.

But Mr. Confident didn’t think it was weird.

That’s a really pretty name. I’m Garrett.

I’d already known that—I’d heard a lot about Garrett Daniels. He was a popular “middle school” boy because he’d gone to Lakeside public schools, as opposed to me, who was a “St. Bart’s” girl because I’d spent grades one through eight at the only Catholic school in town. He was a freshman, already playing on the varsity team, because he was just that good. Garrett was the third of the Daniels boys. Rumor had it he’d had sex in eighth grade with his then-girlfriend, though I would come to find out later that that was just the middle-school gossip mill run amuck.

Are you going to the game tonight?

He asked, and seemed genuinely interested in my answer.

I glanced at my theater friend, Sydney, who was watching the whole exchange in wide-eyed, open-mouthed silence. Then I shrugged.

Maybe.

He nodded slowly, staring at my face, like he couldn’t look away. Like he didn’t want to stop watching me. And I was perfectly happy to watch him right back.

Until a group of varsity jackets called his name from the end of the hallway. And Garrett started walking backwards towards them, eyes still on me.

You should come to my house after the game—to the party.

There was always a party after a home game, usually at an upperclassman’s house. That week, word around the school hallway was the party was at Ryan Daniels’ house.

Technically, it’s my brother’s party, but I can invite people. You should come, Callaway.

Another flash of devastating smile.

It’ll be fun.

I went to the game. And the party.

Although my sister didn’t exactly run in the same circle as Ryan, she had some friends on the cheerleading squad and had already planned on going.

We were there a few minutes, in the basement, with Bruce Springsteen playing on the stereo, when Garrett walked up to me. He handed me a red plastic cup of beer that was mostly foam and kept another for himself. It was loud in his basement, teenagers shoulder to shoulder and wall to wall, so we ended up in his backyard, just the two of us. We sat on the rusty swing set and talked about silly things. Our classes, what teachers we had, the star constellations we could see and name, why a quarterback was called a quarterback.