Veronica

I shifted on the bleacher seat next to Trent. “Have I mentioned that I owe you?”

Baseball was boring, according to Trent. Most sports were boring to this computer nerd, yet he gamely attended my soccer tournaments to support me. But going to a high school baseball game for a sport he didn’t even like? This was going above and beyond.

He grinned, leaning over to nudge me with his shoulder. “You can pay me back by not talking about hair, makeup, or clothes for the duration of this game. Think you can handle that?”

I let out short laugh at the totally accurate criticism. Most of the time Trent was around, so was Margo, which meant that the conversation had a tendency to steer toward my makeover. More specifically, how I was going to maintain the look and not destroy all of Margo’s hard work. “Hey, it’s not my fault your girlfriend has turned my makeover into her charity work for the year.”

His huff of laughter was sweet. Even when we were laughing about Margo and her overzealous ways, he got this dopey look on his face. The way he looked when Margo’s name was mentioned—that’s what I wanted.

I didn’t just want a first kiss, or a date with some random guy like Alex… I wanted this. The real deal. I wanted a boyfriend who looked just as dopey as Trent did whenever Margo was around. I wanted a real relationship.

And I wanted it with Drew.

Ugh. Get over it already. Nearly a week had passed since Drew’s heroic rescue but there was no sign of these feelings fading. Maybe my expectations had been too high, but I’d hoped I’d have moved on from this stupid crush by now.

Not only had the crush not faded away like I’d hoped, it had somehow managed to grow. I’m pretty sure I was in full-blown infatuation territory here.

“So tell me again what we’re doing here?” Trent asked as he reached over to steal some of the fries I’d bought at the concession stand. “I thought you’d given up on trying to befriend those jerks who humiliated you.”

I nodded. “I have.”

He turned to face me with an expectant look. “So what are we doing here then?”

I spotted the group of jerks in question down near the bottom of the bleachers. From this far up, it was easy to believe they were as nice, fun, and beautiful as they appeared when I’d first met them.

Unfortunately for them, I got to know them. There was nothing nice or fun about that group. The more I learned from hanging out with normal girls, like my new friends on the soccer team, that crowd was synonymous with backstabbing and vicious gossip.

I guess I’d been lucky to figure that out when I had. At least I’d managed to walk away from them with my soul intact. I was still friendly in the hallways but I’d kept my distance, and I didn’t exactly hear anyone crying about it on their end either.

I turned away from that group and faced my friend. My real friend. “I’m here to support Drew.” I nudged his shoulder like he’d nudged mine. “And you’re here to support me.”

He let out a long suffering sigh. “So…what? You and Drew Remi are friends now?”

I hadn’t told him about the bonding talk we’d had over pizza so his confusion was warranted. I shrugged. “I guess.”

Part of me was just as confused by this new arrangement as Trent was. But, at the same time, after the way he’d opened up to me, I wanted to be a friend to him. Hottie or not, star pitcher or not—he was a good guy. A nice guy.

Surprisingly sweet, really.

And he was funny and smart, and really easy to be around when I could manage to forget how hot he was and stop doing stupid things like blushing around him.

God, blushing sucked. The weirdest things seemed to set it off around him. Heat would flood my cheeks with no notice just because he looked at me too closely or gave me a smile that felt too intimate for “just friends.”

But me and my blushing would get over it. It wasn’t going to happen and once my brain thoroughly registered that information, Drew and I would be friends.

Just friends.

And until then?

I watched Drew run out onto the field and take the mound. Holy hell, he was too hot for life. My heartrate sped up just watching him in all his uniformed glory.

Until then I would fake it ‘til I made it. Just like my popularity project, I could fake being friends with Drew until my feelings toward him settled into the friend zone, where they belonged.

I watched in awe and one hundred percent female appreciation as Drew worked his magic. The guy wasn’t a local baseball star for nothing—he had moves. He looked like such a natural out there, it took my breath away.

Every few minutes I’d have to remind myself that we were just friends. My new rule of thumb to live by? Friends don’t drool over other friends.

It wasn’t exactly a great slogan on par with “say no to drugs” or “just do it” but it suited my needs at this particular moment.

My brain could grasp the concept of friendship, but my body and heart were so not on board. “This sucks,” I muttered at one point after having to remind myself yet again that ogling a guy’s butt as he ran off the field was not acceptable friend behavior.

“What sucks?” Trent asked.

I heaved a heavy sigh. “Where do you stand on boy talk?”

I felt his side eye. Or maybe I just knew him well enough to know that my question warranted one of those looks. “It depends,” he said slowly. This was new terrain for both of us. “Who’s the boy?”

I bit my lip. God, this was harder than I’d thought. It was bad enough hearing him talk about Margo like that and she was his girlfriend. But I needed help. Bad. And Margo was nowhere to be seen. Even if she was, she wouldn’t be a help. She was such a romantic, her advice would be clouded in rose-colored glasses. I didn’t need optimistic hope right now, I needed a cold dose of realism. Maybe Trent could talk some sense into my heart and body because my brain clearly wasn’t up to the task.

I swallowed down the uncomfortable feeling and kept my eyes trained on the field. “You’re looking at him.”

Drew had just resumed his position and Trent groaned beside me. “You too?”

I knew what he meant. It had been a joke for years that every girl at Atwater was gaga for Drew Remi.

Everyone but me.

And Margo, presumably. Hopefully. But judging by the way she’d swooned every time I mentioned him, I could safely say she understood his sex appeal even if she wasn’t outright crushing herself.

“I know, it’s ridiculous,” I said with a shake of my head. I mean, of course it was ridiculous. He was Drew freakin’ Remi—popular, hot, sexy, sweet, and the guy who could have any girl ever, and didn’t. Ever. Not since April. He’d been the first to admit that he doesn’t date anymore so why would he break that rule now? And for me? His friend?

“It is ridiculous,” Trent said.

My heart fell just a little bit further toward the crumbs and peanut shells on the ground at our feet.

“You could do so much better.” Trent stuck one of my fries in his mouth and continued watching the game. He didn’t laugh, didn’t smirk. He didn’t do or say anything to make me think he might be kidding.

Still, I stared at him, waiting for him to crack up. “You’re kidding, right?”

He turned to face me. “What?”

“You’re kidding,” I told him.

“No, I’m not.” He looked honestly confused.

“Every girl wants Drew.”

His brow furrowed even more. He was staring at me like I’d just started speaking Klingon. “So?”

“So?” I repeated. But my so was louder and far more irritated.

He let out a sharp exhale in obvious exasperation. “So,” he drawled. “He obviously doesn’t want every girl, so what does that matter?”

I opened my mouth to argue and then slammed it shut. He didn’t want every girl. I’m sure he didn’t want any girl, either, just like I didn’t want any guy.

I couldn’t protest because he had a point.

Dammit. I hated when he had a point. Particularly when it meant he was right and I was wrong.

But I wasn’t totally wrong. “But he still doesn’t want me.”

He eyed me again, this time with a clearly critical eye like he was sizing me up from an objective point of view. “How do you know?”

“Because we’re friends,” I said, imbuing the word friends with all the disgust I could muster. “He said so.”

Trent was starting to get a little smirk that made me want to smack him. “You know, sometimes friendships become more. I’d even go so far as to say that friendship is kind of crucial to the whole love thing.”

“Love?” My voice sounded snarky out of habit. “Who said anything about love?”

He rolled his eyes. “All I’m saying is that relationships usually start off with people liking each other.” He tilted his chin down and gave me a ‘you’re an idiot so I’ll spell it out for you’ look. “Which means…friends.”

Huh. I turned back and faced the field, watching Drew be amazing and trying not to let my hopes out of their iron-clad cage as I pondered what Trent had said.

When Trent spoke again, he startled me. I’d like to say I was in the midst of having some super insightful deep thoughts, but really I’d just caught myself drooling again.

Bad Ronnie. Bad!

“So what kind of girl is he looking for?” Trent asked.

“What?” I spun to face him, swiping the side of my mouth just in case. “Drew?”

He smirked again and this time I did smack his arm. “Yeah, Drew. That’s who you have a crush on, right?”

I scowled at him. His teasing tone was beyond obnoxious and I was starting to regret I’d ever said anything.

“Well?” he prompted. “What kind of girl is he looking for?”

“He’s not looking for anyone,” I said. “That’s the point. He was burned before and he’s tired of the drama. He’s sick of people playing games…” I trailed off with a shrug.

Trent stared at me for a minute and I could see his brain working. He gave me an irritatingly mysterious smile before turning back to the field. “Well then I guess you’re right. You’re out of the running.”

“What do you mean by that?” Of course, I knew exactly what he meant by that. “You think I play games? I don’t play games.”

He turned to look at me and my outrage faltered. “Except for Mario Kart. And Fallout 4 and…you know what I mean.”

His gaze was so knowing. Unbearably knowing. The kind of knowing that only a best friend of forever could manage.

I turned away and looked at the field but this time I wasn’t paying attention to the game, or the pitcher, or even the pitcher’s superfine butt. I wanted to summon up anger at his words but they hit a nerve.

Had I been playing games?

I turned back to Trent and he gave me a look that was the very definition of tough love. “Admit it, Ronnie, you’ve been playing games this whole time with the new and improved Veronica thing.” He donned a remarkably spot-on impersonation of me when he’d said that and I gave him a grudging smile.

Very grudging, because his words stung. But how much they stung clued me in to the fact that they held merit.

I might not be the most self aware person in the world, but I wasn’t totally blind to my faults, either. Still, I felt the need to justify my mentality. His criticism felt too harsh. “I haven’t been playing games,” I said.

He didn’t argue with me but his tone didn’t alter either. It was smug and annoyingly wise. “But you have been playing a role.”

“That’s not the same thing,” I said.

He arched one brow. Could it talk, that single expressive eyebrow would have said, Close enough.

I straightened in my seat and looked around the crowd, suddenly acutely aware of where we were and who was around us. My new classmates. The ones who knew me as Veronica, and all that name implied.

“This new me,” I said, gesturing to my jeans and T-shirt that actually fit. “This isn’t some act, Trent. It’s me.” I met his gaze and wouldn’t let him look away. This felt important for some reason. To our friendship, maybe, and definitely to me. “This is me, just not the me you’re used to.”

He looked agitated as he shook his head and scratched the back of his neck. His confusion was apparent. “It’s not you, Ronnie. It’s an act.”

Fake it til you make it. “Maybe at first,” I admitted. “At first it was me being the person I wanted to be.”

He raised his brows in unspoken challenge and I rolled my eyes. God, he was such a stickler for honesty. “Fine, maybe it was the person I wanted other people to see.”

“You wanted to fit in.”

“Yeah,” I snapped. “I wanted to fit in.”

He’d said it as a challenge. An accusation, even. But I wasn’t ashamed and I didn’t want to be. I was officially sick of him judging me for wanting something different in life. Of wanting to be something different.

I knew why it made him uncomfortable and I got it. But that didn’t mean I had to go along with it. This was my life and I’d be damned if his discomfort was going to affect the way I lived it.

But, even as I thought those empowering thoughts, his criticism bugged me. I hated the hint of truth to it. For my own sake more than his, I found myself rationalizing and explaining. “It wasn’t just about popularity and boys, even though that was part of it. I just wanted to show people a different side of me. I’ve been pigeonholed for so long as the class tomboy.” I shook my head, hating the emotion in my voice that made us both discomfort. “I hated being invisible. An asexual non-entity to the guys and a nobody loser who had nothing in common with the rest of the girls in our class.”

“You had us.” He said it softly, simply, and it made me feel like the crumbs and garbage at our feet.

It was what Margo had said about how she was my friend except worse. A million times worse because Trent had been by my side forever. He and the guys always had my back and kept me company. We were there for each other…and Trent thought that wasn’t good enough.

“I know I had you guys, and I loved that,” I said. “I love that.”

“But?”

When I didn’t say anything he answered for me. “But you wanted more than that. More than us.”

“Yes,” I said. At his hurt look, I hurried to add, “Not to the more than you part. God, don’t be melodramatic.”

“Fine, but you did want more. What we had wasn’t enough.”

“Not anymore, no.” I watched as his expression grew hurt, painfully close to a wounded puppy dog. I couldn’t take it. I was making a mess of this explanation but I needed him to understand. “This wasn’t about you. It was about me.”

He shook his head. “And it was important to you that people buy into this new version of you. Yeah, I get it.”

But he didn’t, that much was clear in his tone.

I stared down at my cute little wedge heels that might not have been as comfortable as my sneakers but I’d opted for them anyway. I wished absently that they might have the answers within their cute silver straps. And in a way, I realized, they did. “Look at these wedges.”

I could feel his stare on the side of my face. He was probably looking at me like I was nuts. I half expected to him to question why now of all times I wanted his input on my footwear.

Instead, he asked, “What the hell are wedges?”

I let out short laugh before I could stop it. “They’re my shoes, idiot. Look at them.”

I heard him sigh but when I glanced over he was looking. “Well?” I asked. “What do you think?”

His gaze turned weary. “Seriously? Now you want to talk about how your shoes look? I’m not Margo, Ronnie. I don’t care.”

“Well I do, and that’s exactly my point.”

Now he definitely stared at me like I’d lost my mind. “What point?”

“Maybe at first I was playing a role,” I said. “And maybe that’s weird, I don’t know. But it wasn’t just about being popular and all that crap.”

“Oh no?”

“No,” I said a little too loudly. But really, his judgy tone was annoying the hell out of me. “I was trying to figure myself out. I still am.”

He jerked back a bit. “What does that even mean?”

“It means I’ve changed,” I said. “It means I’ve been changing. We all have.”

“I haven’t.”

I scoffed at that, and when he gave me a haughty look that made me want to scream, I spelled it out. “You really don’t think you’ve changed?” I crossed my arms. “Or maybe you just thought I hadn’t noticed.”

“I have not—”

“You have a girlfriend.”

“That’s not changing, I—”

“You took her to see Disney on Ice.”

He clamped his mouth shut. Then his expression turned sheepish. “She told you about that, huh?”

“Yeah. And it’s cool.” I stopped and backtracked. “Well, it’s not cool. Nothing about Ice Capades is cool.”

He smirked and for the first time in what felt like ages that heavy feeling in my chest lifted a bit. “But it’s sweet,” I said. “What you did for her. And it’s cool that you’ve gone outside of your comfort zone to make her happy.”

He stared at me for a moment, his gaze dropping to my clothes and those uncomfortable but oddly empowering wedges. “And this is you going out of your comfort zone?”

“Yes.” I hesitated. “Well, maybe not totally. Not at first. But it is me changing and figuring out who I want to be.”

He shifted beside me and I knew he was thinking. I let him think.

“Why wasn’t Ronnie good enough?” He half turned to face me again. “The old Ronnie, I mean. The not-better version, but the version we all loved.”

I glanced over at his use of the past tense and he rolled his eyes. “The version we love.”

I sighed because honestly words were hard to come by. It was hard enough to understand myself let alone explain it to someone who was critical about it. “Because I outgrew her.” I shifted on the bleacher. No, that wasn’t right. “I became more than her.”

Turning to face him, I threw another fry in my mouth and talked while I chewed, because this was Trent and I could be rude like that with him. “I still love playing videogames and playing soccer,” I said. “I don’t particularly enjoy the girlie stuff, unless it’s with Margo, because she’s cool and she doesn’t seem to care when I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

He waited as I took a deep breath. “But I also like being seen. And I don’t mean being popular, I mean being noticed. Being recognized at school and not just on the playing field.”

I stared down at the fries. “I like not only being known for one thing, if I’m recognized for anything at all. I like being able to try a new look or a new hairstyle or a new hobby or new interests…” I let my babbling trail off. “I like starting fresh and being able to be anyone I want to be.”

I looked over at him. “I’m not totally sure who this new Veronica is yet, but she will always include Ronnie.”

He stared at me for a minute before grinning. “Will this new Veronica continue to talk about herself in the third person?”

I laughed and the laughter felt so good. The fact that he was smiling a genuine smile made me want to laugh and cry at once. “Maybe,” I said. “Who knows what Veronica will do?”

“Oh God, Margo’s created a monster,” he said.

For a second there, life was good again. Me and Trent were on the same page, something we hadn’t been since school started. And me and Drew?

I could see him on the sidelines, watching the other team’s hitter at bat with a couple other guys from the team. Everything Trent had said about me and playing games…now I knew why it had made me feel off. He had struck a nerve, but it wasn’t because I was ashamed of wanting to try different clothes or hang out with new people. It was because with Drew, I had played games.

“You were right,” I said. When he looked over in surprise, I added, “Sort of.”

“Oh yeah, how was I sort of right?”

“I wasn’t being honest with Drew at the start. You know, when I was pretending not to know who he was because he didn’t know who I was and then he didn’t—”

“Yeah, I get it.” Trent held up a hand to shut me up. “I was there for the whole will-he-won’t-he-remember thing. Don’t need a play-by-play.”

“Right,” I said. “Sorry.” Then I shrugged. “I’m just saying, that whole thing wasn’t me.”

At his arched brow, I added. “It’s not the old me and it’s not the new me either. I was playing games and I hate that.”

He nodded and it suddenly felt like I was in a confessional. “He deserves better than that, you know? After the crap he’s been through this past year, he deserves a girl who doesn’t play games.”

Trent studied me for a while. “Then it sounds like you know what you have to do.”

I turned back to the field and watched Drew be awesome. I knew what he was going to say but I so didn’t want to hear it, so I played dumb instead. “I do?” My grudging tone gave me away.

“You do,” he said. “You know you have to be honest with him. If it’s not just friendship you want than you should tell him.”

I turned to face Drew. “But what if we’re not there yet?” I asked. “What if you’re right about starting out as friends and—”

“I didn’t say you had to tell him today,” he said, interrupting me again with another hand in the face.

Seriously, the guy was asking for a smackdown. But, since he was currently the only one in our little group who was in a healthy, nauseatingly happy relationship, I supposed I had to swallow down my irritation and accept that he spoke the truth.

Besides, his truth made me feel a whole lot more relaxed, like I’d just gotten a “get out of jail free” card or something. He was right, I didn’t have to tell him today, or even tomorrow.

“You do have to tell him eventually though,” Trent said.

I nodded. “Yeah, I get it.”

“At the very least you need to spend time with him,” said Trent, the suddenly self-proclaimed Love Doctor. “You need to see where it goes.”

I murmured something in agreement. I was ready to drop this topic now that I’d decided to press pause on the crazy and just let things progress naturally.

But apparently Trent was on a roll. “And don’t discount yourself right off the bat just because you don’t think you’re what he wants.”

I turned to find him eyeing me again from head to toe. “Trust me, you’re what a lot of guys want.”

“Ew.”

He looked as disgusted as I felt as he held his hands up. “Not me, obviously.”

“Still ew.”

“But some guys—”

“Just stop talking,” I said.

“Right.” He turned back to the field. “So…Good game, huh?”

I glanced over at the scoreboard. We were still winning. “Yeah, great game.”