Chase Read Online Free PDF Page B

was Tatiana’s, it was . . . hormones. (Not to mention the fact that all his skate friends had scattered the moment he’d landed in his wheelchair and hadn’treturned when he’d stepped out of it.) He’d spent the last few years, and the last few months especially, alienating everyone he knew in order to focus all his energy on women. Now all the women had up and left him, and he was friendless. It served him right.
    A burst of laughter caught his attention, and he glanced over at the table in the center of the room that had welcomed the Friends of Heather at lunch hour every day of every year since they were but breastless, brace-faced fourteen-year-olds. Heather was no longer there, of course, but today Tatiana was missing as well. If she’d been there, then Ed might have sucked it up and gone over to sit with them and listen to them pick apart Jennifer Aniston’s latest red carpet wear for forty-five minutes. At least then he wouldn’t be sitting alone.
    Of course, come to think of it, he might be better off where he was.
    He realized, as he took his first bite of spaghetti, that he hadn’t actually seen Tatiana all day. And Gaia was out as well—he’d noted that before the first bell. The dual absence couldn’t be a coincidence. With those two, a simple flu was easy to rule out. They were probably back at home, kicking the crap out of each other. Not that he’d ever known Tatiana to be violent, but the way those two were acting around each other lately, it wouldn’t have surprised him in the least.
    Where the hell were they?
    â€œOh dear God, I have to get a life,” Ed muttered, dropping his fork. He tipped back his head and covered his face with his hands, letting out a groan.
    Enough with the Gaia obsession. Enough with the Tatiana “friendship” that could become something more. It had become clear to him over the past week or so that there was no way to be friends with Tatiana without constantly encountering Gaia, and he was never going to get over the girl if she was in his face all the time. And he had to get over her. It was for his own good. For his mental health. For his very survival.
    Somehow, somewhere, there had to be a normal girl for Ed Fargo. Someone who didn’t come with the lovely peripherals of gun-wielding psychos, vengeful thugs, and emotional issues too countless to list.
    Why couldn’t he find such a girl?
    â€œUm . . . are you okay?”
    Ed let his arms drop down and hang at his sides but barely moved his head. From the corner of his eye he could see a petite, pretty Asian girl in a pink-and-yellow T-shirt, with two short pigtails, tilting her head to look at him. She had a curious smile and a tiny diamond nose piercing.
    â€œYeah, I’m cool,” Ed replied. He sat up straight and squeezed his eyes shut against the head rush.
    â€œOh, cuz you looked like you were a little . . . you know . . . floopy,” she said, crinkling her nose. She wasstill holding her full lunch tray. She had a well-worn Birdhouse skateboard tucked under her arm.
    â€œYou skate street?” he asked semiblankly.
    Her whole face lit up. “Yeah! And some vert,” she said, setting down her tray and pulling out the board to show him. “This is my deck.”
    Ed frowned thoughtfully as he checked out the bird graphic on the bottom of the board, chipped away from hours of good, hard use.
    â€œNice,” he said.
    She grinned. Ed noticed that she had a nice smile. “Can I?” she said, gesturing at the chair across from his.
    Ed barely lifted his shoulders. “Sure.”
    â€œI’m Kai,” she said, shaking up her chocolate milk, her fifty rubber bracelets slipping up and down her arm.
    â€œEd,” he replied.
    â€œI’ve seen you skating down by Washington Square, right?” she asked.
    â€œI’ve been known to,” Ed replied, staring down at his