Whisper (Novella) by CRYSTAL GREEN Page A

into community college, where I could actually avoid failing classes and meet people at the same time, but ever since I’d dropped out of UCLA, I had no interest. Or maybe I should say no confidence.
    I made a move for my phone, thinking that Diana could really be less obvious about comparing the shadowed profile on the TellTale post with all the guys around us. They were older than me and Diana, playing Quarters at the dining table and throwing down beers, hanging around in their Wranglers and boots while chatting up pretty girls with bouncy hair and tight T-shirts.
    â€œDo you have to gape at the picture so much?” I asked when she held the phone away from me. “You got me here by telling me you already had a good idea of who sent this.”
    â€œAnd I do. It’s just that he’s not here yet. I’m sure he will be, though. He knows the guy who’s throwing this poor excuse for a rager.” She used her thumb to flip through more TellTale posts and smiled. Her lips were shimmery pink, her blond hair in two ponytails, making her look like someone’s kissin’ cousin. “Hey, these posts are actually pretty entertaining. Someone within five miles likes to lay out in the nude in their backyard at night, even right now with the spring rain. Talk about letting it all hang out.”
    I finally snatched the phone before she could check my home page and see all the TellTales I’d been leaving ever since I’d moved to Aidan Falls—posts about feeling aimless, lost, and alone ever since my stepdad moved me and my mom from our place in LA to his suburban digs in this tight-knit little Texas town. Secrets about how I hated not being able to afford my own place and how it made me feel like a leech. Confessions about how I’d joined TellTale to feel like I knew more people than just Diana, and how I was embarrassed to talk to my friends from home because they were still in college and I hadn’t been able to make the grade.
    Mom had asked me to give Aidan Falls more time before I passed judgment on it, but it was hard to lob this town a gold star when it seemed like everyone already had their place and there was nowhere I fit in. I had no school to go to and no job yet, even though I’d been looking. I had to make some money to get out of that house, because I was so, so ready to really live now that I’d left college behind. There had to be more out there for me.
    The real world awaited . . . if I could just join in.
    Diana checked me out with a long look. “Wow, someone’s on edge tonight. You nervous about meeting your SA, Carley?”
    SA = Secret Admirer. “No.”
    â€œBullcrackers.” She scanned the room, with girls chatting in another corner, the crowd around the keg in the kitchen.
    And I knew the exact moment my SA walked in, because Diana’s entire face changed. Her body did, too, going a little melty, even while she lifted her chin and stuck out her chest like a sex bomb that’d just been lit. I didn’t even think she realized it, either.
    But who could blame her? Because the minute I saw him, I blushed, too. Majorly. I could feel it all over me, and I thanked my DNA that my real dad had genetically gifted me with a little Latina tint to my skin. Too bad my mom had lightened me out, because I sure could’ve used all the camouflage I could get.
    He was tall and built in his beaten boots, faded jeans, and white T-shirt that didn’t lie about all the planes and ridges underneath it. Abs, arms, shoulders—they were all present and accounted for. He had dark blond hair pulled back into a low ponytail, eyebrows that made him look naughty, and light eyes that seemed to smile across the room. And that smile wasn’t exactly nice—it was suggestive, full of thoughts that belonged on TellTale. Thoughts like
I want to kiss my way down your body until you scream
and
I like to dare women to say no
.
    A