Solving for Ex Read Online Free PDF Page B

after the first semester of sophomore year. Nothing.
    No, I couldn’t go back there, which meant that I couldn’t leave here, which meant that if I was going to confess my love for my best friend, next-door neighbor, and popularity lifeline at Mansfield Prep, I’d better have a damn good reason for doing it. And the only reason good enough would be if I knew, for sure and for certain, that he loved me too.
    And not in the offhanded, “love ya” way we got off the phone every now and then, or when I did him a favor and he wanted to thank me. Or the “Oh, I love you” as he unwrapped and snarfed down a Snickers bar after not having eaten for six hours. Neither of those things would cut it. Nothing less than him taking my hand, looking me in the eye, and saying, “Ashley, I love you,” and then kissing me would do. And maybe threading his fingers through my hair. And possibly throwing me down on his bed and having his way with me.
    In other words, I’d have an unrequited crush on Brendan forever.
    I snapped out of my daydream of being tossed onto navy blue sheets that smelled like Brendan’s aftershave to see Brendan staring at me expectantly. “Ash?”
    “Hmm?”
    “The clothes are okay, right?”
    “Oh. Yeah. Um, I’ll wash them when I get home and bring them back by tomorrow.”
    He grinned. “Don’t worry about it. So,” he said, plopping down next to me on the floor, “What do you wanna do? Narrate your summer for me?”
    I snorted. “Not much to narrate. Same old, same old. Sunblock’s embedded in my skin…”
    “Even though you still got quite a tan,” Brendan said, nudging my knee and nodding his head toward my bronzed-up legs.
    I nodded. “At least two deadly spiders in the bunk, four bed-wettings, six twelve-year-olds caught making out behind the camp shed.”
    Brendan laughed. “Normal summer.”
    “Normal summer,” I agreed. “Although I did learn how to really use the camera.”
    “That’s what you say, but I still haven’t seen any pictures.”
    I motioned for his tablet. “Here, asshole, I’ll show you.”
    I navigated to my photo account page and let him sit there swiping through the pictures while I fiddled around on my phone, taking the time to look up and be satisfied when he oohed and ahhed every few seconds.
    A couple of people had asked me the problem with me and Brendan. As in, why weren’t we going out yet. I didn’t know, really. Maybe he was too shy, or maybe I was. He had a lot of friends, and I had…well, not that many. I’d never really had close friends even before I was chronically depressed. Because of that, I’d had trouble being interested in casual conversation; after the incident, it had gotten even worse.
    But with Brendan, it was different. I didn’t know why, but he just got me.
    We spent a lot of time together, but we were in different grades, and he was always at Mathletes practice. That was one completely, beyond-awesome thing about being at this school. I don’t know if it was because of the proximity to Carnegie Mellon, or just a weird quirk, but being a Mathlete here was actually pretty cool. Not like being a lacrosse player, but not like being a theater nerd, either. So this year, I was planning to up my cool factor and my closeness-to-Brendan factor by summarily kicking ass at math and testing onto the team for my junior year and his senior year. The year he’d be captain. The year he’d win State.
    “So you made all these with one camera?
    “’Made them?’ Well, there are different styles, different post-processing treatments, yeah.”
    “Like, in the computer?”
    “Yes, in the computer.” I grinned. “This one’s called Lomo. It’s supposed to look a little faded and the colors are supposed to be kind of weird.”
    “And it’s also supposed to be blurry?”
    “Yeah, I guess. What do you think of it?”
    “I think I like the ones where the image is clear and the colors are true much better. Bright and sunshiny, and