Crushing Read Online Free PDF Page A

shirt.
    I blinked a couple of times and turned around to get something to drink. All that working out paid off for him. I had spent a lot of time on hair and makeup, or I would have stuck my head under the faucet to cool off.
    My mom rubbed his head as she walked by. He smiled up at her.
    And we were right back to where we started.
    My brother Jeremiah strolled into the kitchen looking sleepy.
    “Late night?” I asked, grabbing him as he walked by to snuggle in for a hug. I had heard him come in around five this morning. He didn’t always come home on the weekends, and I missed him and Jackson terribly. I had the best older brothers. I hated that they lived in the dorms at Charleston Southern University. I complained to my parents that they got away with murder, but I loved them so much.
    He gave me my expected bear hug. “Yup.” He smirked down at me. He rubbed my back and moved on to the fridge.
    “Is Jackson coming home?” I asked hopefully.
    He took the milk out of the fridge, but just before he could drink out of the carton my mom shoved a glass at him.
    “He’s writing a paper this weekend, so he has to stay. He needs the library.” He poured the milk and scrounged around in the fridge for who knows what, when he asked, “Wanna kayak tomorrow after church, Shrimpy?”
    “Sure, we haven’t been in weeks.” I loved kayaking in the swamps and marshes with my brothers. We’d been doing it for as long as I could remember.
    “Wanna go, Dom?” Jeremiah asked.
    I tried not to visibly cringe. Jeremiah, Jackson, and Dom were good friends. Dom was eleven months younger, but the three of them had been inseparable since Dom had moved here. Now that the boys were away at college, when they came home they wanted to hang out.
    “Definitely.” Dom was grinning from ear to ear.
    I knew he missed them too, so it was hard to begrudge him time spent with Jeremiah. I would have loved to have my brother to myself, but that rarely happened anymore.
    “Okay, we’re on, then.” He sat down at the table with the leftovers he found in the fridge. My mother set down a plate of the chicken piccata she had whipped up for dinner while I had been getting ready. My brother proceeded to wolf down the leftovers and the chicken in an amount of time that couldn’t have been healthy. Dominic had already finished his. Boys and their food.
    “So I heard Gage Maddox moved back in across the street.” Jeremiah raised his eyebrows at me.
    “Yup, that’s what I hear.” I got up and started rinsing my plate.
    “You gonna cry if he leaves again?” Jeremiah smirked.
    How is it I can love my brother but want to throw something at his head at the same time? “Shut up, Jeremiah.”
    “What are you talking about?” Dom asked.
    “Rory was in love with him when he lived here before,” Jeremiah informed him.
    “I was not. You are such a jerk!” I’m sure my face was beet red.
    “You cried for a month, Rory.” He laughed.
    “Two,” my mom said as she made her way to the laundry room with her laundry basket.
    “What is the matter with you? I was eleven. He was my best friend.” I threw my hands up in the air.
    “Your first real-life crush. You loooovvved him.” He made kissy noises and rubbed my head when he took his plate to the sink.
    “Why does everybody keep saying that? I’m going to tell your date that you peed the bed until you were nine,” I told him.
    “I peed the bed once when I was nine, and it was because I drank too much soda and didn’t wake up in time. One time, Aurora,” he argued.
    “Well, she won’t know that.”
    “Well, it’s a good thing I won’t be bringing her here, then.”
    Dominic wasn’t laughing; he just sat quietly while my brother and I argued about the appropriateness of telling family secrets until Jeremiah wandered off to shower for his date. Jerk.

Chapter 4
     
    Dom and I walked along the beach toward the party. He was rambling on about the end of our senior year and everything we