“Neither can I,” Rose agreed. “None of us can if we hope to win.”
“And social media is the biggest distraction,” Layne concluded.
Lola scoffed. “Well, I love it. And it’s part of the competition now so we might as well embrace it. Besides, social media might be a distraction, but it’s not worse than boys.”
Layne nodded. “Fair enough. Boys are more of a distraction, especially for you, Lola.”
Rose laughed. “So what, are we supposed to close down all our online accounts and stop dating? Should I enter a nunnery while I’m at it?”
Layne laughed. “You don’t have to stop dating, just be sure you don’t . . . I don’t know . . .”
“Fall in love,” Lola suggested.
Rose’s brows arched in surprise at the L-word. “That I can definitely promise not to do.”
“Me too,” Lillian said. “I don’t have time to sleep, let alone deal with boy drama.”
“Me three,” Lola added. “There’s just too many kissable boys in the world to fall for just one.”
They laughed at Lola’s comment, but there was one among them who’d been silent.
Layne blushed. “Oh, I don’t have anything to worry about there. My love life is non-existent.”
“Then we don’t have anything standing between us and victory,” Rose said.
They’d stopped short of the desk where the organizers were collecting the forms and Jenna brushed past them, pushing Lola to the side as she beat them to the desk. “Word to the wise, ladies?” she called over her shoulder. “Keep your eye on the prize.”
Book Prologue
Two Years Ago: The Breakup
Jax
The hallways were filled with people. Not exactly the best place to drop the bomb, but at the same time—with a girl like Rose, the more people around the better. She might enjoy the spotlight, but no one wanted to be dumped publicly. Letting her down easy here, where there were witnesses, meant I was more likely to survive this blowout.
Poor girl didn’t even know it was coming.
“You’re seriously gonna break up with Rose on the day of the dance?” My friend Simone was giving me that judgy look again as she waited beside me at my locker. She was my oldest friend, and I was well acquainted with that look.
“It’s time,” I said with a sigh. It was the tenth time we’d gone over this.
Ending things was never fun, and with a girl like Rose? This could be brutal. But that was exactly why it needed to end before it went any further. The girl was drama with a capital D.
I didn’t do drama. I got enough of that at home.
Besides, I didn’t do relationships. Period. Everyone knew that. What had started as flirting at Bobby Newman’s party two weeks ago had escalated into a thing and now suddenly we were hanging out every chance we could and texting late at night when we weren’t with each other?
Nope. That wasn’t me. I hadn’t signed up to be anybody’s boyfriend, and definitely not with someone like Rose.
Don’t get me wrong, I liked the girl. She was hot—like, hotter than hot—and she was funny. She was all into the theater department and it showed in everything she did. She was larger than life. A force of nature. And that was all fine and good, or whatever, but it wasn’t for me.
“She’s coming,” Simone hissed beside me.
I’d already spotted her coming down the hallway in my direction. How could I not? She was sporting bright pink hair that screamed ‘look at me!’
As if she needed shockingly pink hair to make guys see her. She could have been wearing a bag over her head and guys would still be leering.
She was tall—taller than most of the girls, at least—and she had this willowy body that made her every move look like she was posing on the catwalk.
Or maybe that was the heels.
Tall or not, she was the only girl I knew who wore spiky heels and crazy platform contraptions to school.
“She’s going to kill you,” Simone whispered helpfully beside me.
I shot her a sidelong look. I loved Simone like a sister, but sometimes she drove me nuts. Like right now. When we were kids I used to tease her that she was my own personal angel on my shoulder. Such a goody-two-shoes. Always.
Maybe that was why we worked as friends. She was always good, and I was…well, not bad. It wasn’t like I was some hardcore thug or anything. Let’s just say, I didn’t care for rules.
“Good luck,” Simone said, backing away as Rose drew closer with this beaming smile that took over her whole face. When I was a kid, my mom was obsessed with that Pretty Woman movie. That old eighties one about a hooker and her sugar daddy, or whatever. Every time I saw Rose and she aimed this smile at me, I thought about that movie.
She had a Julia Roberts smile.
The one that could make a movie a hit even if it’s a super creepy premise when you think about it.
That smile was what had kept me in this pseudo-relationship this long. I mean—how could you give someone the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech when she was smiling at you like that? Like you were the sun in her very own solar system? Like her whole world began and ended with you? Like you were her everything?
I let out a long exhale and ran a hand through my hair as I braced myself for what was to come.
Tears, definitely.
Maybe even a dramatic slap across the face.
I wouldn’t put that past Rose. She’d almost reached me when a flash of panic had me tensing. Maybe I’d gotten this all wrong. Maybe breaking things off in public would only make things worse.
She might very well cause an epic scene that people would be talking about for years to come.
Oh crap. I had to get this over with. Like ripping off a Band-Aid, right?
“Hey, babe!” Rose barreled into me. We were almost the same height and her hands pressed against my chest,
