Tough Guy: PROVIDENCE PREP HIGH SCHOOL BOOK 2 Read online

  Tough Guy

  PROVIDENCE PREP HIGH SCHOOL BOOK 2

  Jacob Rothenberg

  Contents

  1. Jackie

  2. Kevin

  3. Jackie

  4. Kevin

  5. Jackie

  6. Kevin

  7. Jackie

  8. Kevin

  9. Jackie

  10. Kevin

  11. Jackie

  12. Kevin

  13. Jackie

  14. Kevin

  15. Jackie

  16. Kevin

  17. JACKIE

  18. Kevin

  19. Jackie

  20. Kevin

  21. Jackie

  Epilogue

  1

  Jackie

  It’s gonna be a good night. Heavens, if it’s not, I’ll sure try and make it one.

  I didn’t see how it couldn’t be a great night. The first semester of senior year had just ended, meaning we only had one more semester left to enjoy each other—no more time for drama, no more time for fighting. Nothing further proved this than the almost fairy-tale way that one of my good friends, Emily Zane, and her former lover turned bully turned current lover, Adam Collins, reunited.

  The only question was, how else could the good times continue to grow after something like that?

  Well, as I had my Jeep parked outside my other friend, Samantha Young’s, house just half an hour before our arrival at the Collins’ winter break celebration, I could imagine a whole lot of ways. More people falling in love. More people developing last memories.

  Maybe, if I got lucky, one of those people would be me. And I already had my eye on whom I would most like to be with.

  Even if that person seemed to want to shove me away at every opportunity he got. A stranger is just a friend you don’t know yet. He doesn’t let me know him yet, but as soon as he lets me in, he’ll see.

  I looked over to my right, saw Samantha walking over, and waved with a radiant grin. Samantha waved back, a closed-mouth smile on her face, as she stretched out her long legs to get into my Jeep.

  “You always dress like a queen, Jackie,” she said, complimenting my long, purple dress and my curly brown hair.

  “You’re too kind,” I said with a giggle. “I just want to look nice.”

  “Girl, you always look nice,” Samantha said as she buckled her seatbelt and grabbed the hangar above the seat. “I wish I had your skin complexion.”

  Perks of having a white father and a black mother. Everyone thinks I look exotic. I just think I look normal. I like how I look, but I’d never call it exotic. That’s too much.

  “Well, I wish I had your intellect.”

  Samantha gave a one-off laugh as she looked ahead, the two of us falling into something of a brief silence as my Jeep headed toward Adam’s neighborhood. I appreciated Samantha as a friend for this very reason. With both of us being introverts, we didn’t have to pretend that we needed to talk to fill the air. We’d been friends long enough that I didn’t have to feel like every second of silence needed a small-talk question.

  We pulled up to Adam’s neighborhood, and immediately, I was inundated with reminders that the class the Collins belonged to and the class the Whites belonged to might as well have been as disparate as kindergarten class and senior year of high school class. The Collins had a mansion that, from my memory, had at least six bedrooms, a giant pool, a balcony, a giant pool… hall, a video game room, and rumor has it that the basement had a movie theatre. Adam and Ryan had never opened the possible movie theatre, but I’d been meaning to ask Emily if such a thing existed.

  As for my house? Well… it didn’t look like most houses. For one, my father had built it when he moved back to Nashville—although, technically, we didn’t even live in Nashville, we lived in Murfreesboro, a rural town about forty minutes without traffic from the city and Providence Prep, the high school I attended on scholarship. Second, my father’s concept of a house was a lot more integrated with nature than not. We didn’t have air conditioning and windows so much as we had “natural” balconies, beads for windows and doors, and candles for warmth.

  I liked it. In fact, I loved it. I hoped that I could carry such a concept to whatever house I owned in the future. But it definitely didn’t happen because my father had millions of dollars and just wanted to connect with nature.

  This neighborhood also featured dozens of sports cars, cars worth more than four years’ tuition at Providence Prep, and cars that, had they not been driven, could have sold as a collector’s item in twenty years. I got my Jeep Wrangler only because my father had to logistically acknowledge that we needed a vehicle for where we lived; I think if he had his choice, he would have given us all bikes.

  “We’ll certainly draw notice as we walk in,” Samantha said.

  I chuckled. Poor Samantha never quite realized when what she was saying could have been construed as an insult—she was less caustic and more just so blunt she had no realization as to the double meaning of her words. Emily had put it best, describing her as “endearingly awkward.”

  “Why? Because of the Jeep?”

  “Yes.”

  I shrugged a single shoulder. I really didn’t mind. I knew people said things and got snooty about it, but I relished the Jeep. It was a part of the Whites’ character, and no one could diminish how I felt about that aside from myself, and that certainly wasn’t going to happen.

  “Money’s tight right now,” I said. “Can’t take an Uber right now. And I don’t mind being the responsible—”

  “Because you’re poor?”

  Samantha immediately put her hand over her mouth.

  “I’m so sorry, I know that’s rude.”

  “Nonsense, don’t you worry yourself about that,” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “We’re rich in the soul, and that’s what matters more than money.”

  Although, to be fair, a little bit more money would have helped. The hope was that my college degree, which ideally would be in biology or some other life sciences, would position me for a job that could pay me decently. I would never leave my familial, somewhat-hippy roots, but I would also not hesitate to relish a Jeep that had air conditioning, either.

  “Besides, it ain’t like you’re wrong,” I said with a light laugh. “I am one of the poor ones!”

  Like Kevin Torres.

  I tried to ignore the thought that bubbled to my mind. I’d encounter him plenty of times throughout the night and get brushed off plenty of times; I didn’t need him to also occupy space in my head before I even showed up.

  Samantha and I parked behind a BMW i8 vehicle, looking very much like a sore, green thumb jutting out relative to all the nicely manicured sports cars. We each got out, landed softly on the ground, and walked over.

  “Hey girl!” a boy I didn’t recognize said, whistling at me. “Where are you from? I can take you to a place just as exotic!”

  I just laughed, staying close to Samantha as we walked forward.

  “I’m from here, but thanks!” I shouted back, confusing the boy.

  Samantha and I got halfway up the driveway when I got a text from Emily that caused me to groan.

  “Adam’s sending a limo for you two. He sent it to Samantha’s. Hang tight.”

  “You want me to call her or should I?” I said, showing Samantha the phone.

  “Let’s surprise her inside,” Samantha said.

  “And keep the limo waiting?” I said, noting we still had another four or five minutes of walking—the Collins definitely owned more land than my father would ever imagine.

  “OK, fine.”

  Samantha made the quick call. I could hear
Emily showing amused displeasure; it was hard for her to be angry these days. A part of me, admittedly, kept wondering if the other shoe might fall on her relationship with Adam, but in the six or so weeks that they’d been an item, they’d shown no sign of falling apart.

  In fact, if anything, a few of us were getting concerned not at how little their relationship had zest, but at how it might have had too much. PDA was not a term that they saw as a problem.

  “She said she’s calling it back, but it can take us home later if need be.”

  “Hmm,” I said, knowing full well that wasn’t going to change my plans tonight. A parked Wrangler in this neighborhood would just as likely draw suspicions of a burglar who passed out in the streets as a high school student who had made a responsible decision. “He might be able to take you home if we leave at separate times.”

  “Or maybe we could get our friend group and the Broad Street Boys into one vehicle,” Samantha said, a shake of her head.

  That idea both delighted and scared me a little. I had always found Adam to be a boy dealing with a lot of problems, but one who also was an arrogant prick, at least before Emily tamed him some. Nick was nice, but he’d recently become a little bit surlier. Rumors had it that he wasn’t getting the scholarship offers for football he thought he would. Ryan was… I tried my best to only say nice things about people. Ryan was someone whom I struggled to follow that rule for.

  And then there was Kevin.

  Oh, Kevin. He was the one I thought of earlier, the one who I always found myself drawn to at any party and in any social setting. He was bulky, with thick forearms and a barrel chest, with floppy blonde hair and intoxicating, haunting blue eyes. He also had a wicked sense of humor and could outwit just about anyone around him, Adam included.

  But boy… for whatever reason, he always seemed to push me away. Sometimes, if I was lucky, he would just outright ignore me. Other times, if I wasn’t lucky, he would bite me, make smartass remarks, and drag me down.

  So why did I keep going back to him? I wasn’t naive about what he was doing. I wasn’t some poor, innocent girl who was getting manipulated by the worst kind of person.

  Part of it was that there was perhaps no one more complex on campus than Kevin, and he interested me. Everyone else wore their emotions on their sleeves, but no one quite had the personality and the hidden parts of themselves like Kevin.

  Part of it was that I just liked to make people happy. To date, I had made everyone who encountered me smile, even the emo and goth kids… except for Kevin. For whatever reason, trying to get Kevin to be happy was like trying to break down the Berlin Wall with my own teeth. It was only hurting me, but I just hated seeing people upset.

  Part of it, probably, was that I just found him attractive. He was an enigma to me. But he also hinted at things that suggested we were pretty similar. There were rumors, for example, that he was one of the few other students there on financial scholarship. That alone put the two of us into a rare class. I could see how he liked to please Adam and make him happy, and I understood that all too well.

  I had my limits, of course. Kevin wasn’t going to walk over me, but to date, he’d pushed me away but not then stomped on me. If it got to that point, I wasn’t afraid to stand up and explain that what he was doing was not OK.

  “Maybe we could,” I said with a smile.

  “If they weren’t all assholes,” Samantha immediately spat back.

  “I wouldn’t say their assholes,” I said. “More like misunderstood. You just need—”

  But Samantha was rolling her eyes.

  “You’re very sweet, Jackie, but kindness and optimism only work if you don’t have blinders on,” she said. “Lest you forget, Emily nearly got bullied into depression by Adam before a miracle occurs. Kevin picks on you whenever he can. Nick’s getting worse. And don’t even get me started on Ryan.”

  “Kevin’s not—”

  “Oh, Jackie,” Samantha said, taking a sigh. “Well, let’s not ruin it for Emily. She’s right there.”

  Our beautiful, blonde friend from Russia had come to the bottom of the stairs, greeting us at the front door. She had the kind of smile on that made it obvious she’d been smiling so much in the recent hours that it was all but glued on. Instead of resting bitch face, she had resting beautiful face. It made me so happy for her.

  It also… I wouldn’t say made me feel jealous. I preferred the term curious. It sounded nice. What had she done that I might be able to get someone like she did? Maybe not Kevin, but just anyone? I wasn’t desperate for love, but love sounded like the kind of thing that would make tight bonds even tighter. It was the ultimate expression of our humanity.

  OK, that sounded way too much like my mother and father.

  “Hello, ladies!” Emily said.

  She bounded down, gave Samantha a huge hug, and then turned to me and gave me a big hug.

  “You look so happy!” I said. “I take it the boys are upstairs?”

  “Yep!” she said. “Sorry we didn’t send the limo out earlier, it—”

  “Oh, stop, girl,” I said. “I don’t think Adam would have wanted to send a limo out to Murfreesboro. I didn’t mind driving, it’s easier on y’all—”

  “He’s the richest kid in school, he could send a limo to Alabama and he wouldn’t notice the charge,” Samantha interjected.

  Emily just giggled, like a girl getting tickled every few seconds—it was like she couldn’t help herself from laughing so much and being in such a good mood.

  “Well, he’s a sweetheart, and I’m in love right now.”

  “Goodness, girl, ask him to get a ring at this rate,” Samantha said, not bothering to hide her eye roll.

  I found it sweet, but there was definitely a part of me that wondered if that was their inevitable destination for how closely tied together they were now. Literally, between every class, they would find each other, talk for a bit, and kiss with a “I love you.” It was sweet… but sometimes a little too sweet, like eating too much ice cream in one sitting.

  “No, no, no, none of that,” Emily said. “We want to get through college at least before we even have that conversation. But, speaking of! I just got some good news.”

  “What is it?” I said, holding my hands together in excitement.

  “I got into Vanderbilt early decision!”

  We screamed for joy and embraced Emily in a big group hug. I knew what it meant for Emily to stay close to her family while also attending a top 15 school in the country. She’d come as an immigrant, but she hated the idea of moving more.

  That, and there was a variable to this all left unstated yet.

  “Is Adam coming to Vanderbilt?” I asked.

  “Oh, he didn’t apply early anywhere, but remember, his stepfather was once one of the big deans there. He could snap his fingers and he’ll get into Vanderbilt. It would take something crazy.”

  “Like his parents getting divorced?” Samantha said.

  I grimaced. Oh, girl, I know you didn’t mean it, but did you have to bring some bad news to this moment?

  “I sincerely don’t know anything about that,” Emily said. “So maybe not, but let’s not ask. Where are you girls applying to?”

  “Harvard early,” Samantha said. “Then Duke, Yale, Princeton, Vanderbilt, Georgia Tech, and Emory.”

  “Where didn’t you apply to?” Emily asked, causing Samantha to just shrug. “Jackie?”

  I didn’t feel self-conscious about my family’s class status often. In fact, most of the time, I took something of a perverse pride in it; I relished the fact that I didn’t have to depend on my parents’ money to get by. But boy, after hearing Samantha’s list rattled off…

  “Uh, the Tennessee schools mostly. Knoxville, Chattanooga, Memphis. I applied to Vanderbilt, but unless they throw the bank at me, I don’t think I can afford it.”

  “Well, never say never!” Emily said. “The three of us could wind up in a triple somewhere. That could be fun.”

  It
could be! I’d always just assumed I would wind up somewhere second-tier while those two would have the private school opportunities afforded them, but if some sort of a miracle did happen…

  I tried not to let myself get carried away. At a school like Providence Prep, if someone went to a school like Memphis, it was because they didn’t have the brains or the work ethic to get into a school like Vanderbilt. The person I was most likely to wind up knowing at wherever I went was, ironically, the one who always pushed me away. That was going to create some interesting dynamics, but I tried not to think that far ahead.

  “But anyways, enough of this,” Emily said. “Let’s go party, hmm?”

  Before Samantha and I could say a word, Emily was dragging us both in, grabbing our hands. She let go about halfway into the hallway before bouncing back up the stairs, past… him.

  From here, the way his blonde hair covered his right eye, the way just a little bit of a beard had started to grow, with his V-neck shirt and a necklace dangling from it… I tried not to swear, but damn, he was hot!

  “I think ‘let’s go party’ was code for ‘let me go back to sucking face with my boyfriend.’”

  “Huh? Oh, right,” I said to Samantha, turning my attention to Kevin.

  And then, suddenly, our eyes were locked.

  I couldn’t see his right eye, but I could imagine it. I could see the intensity with which he gazed at me with his left eye. I could feel the pit in my stomach, the nervousness of being watched… and the nervousness of wondering what he might say this time.

  But just as quickly as Kevin had looked at me, he turned away, hurrying up the stairs to the porch, not quite running but not walking, either. I wanted to believe it was just a coincidence, that Adam had called him seconds before he laid eyes on me, but that was a disservice to the truth. And if there was one thing I vowed to do better this last semester of school, it was to be more honest with the world and less have my head in the sky.