Wicked Sweet Read Online Free PDF Page A

But when his nine months were up he didn’t go back to work as a brakeman. He decided he’d worked as a union man since he was seventeen and he needed a life. My mom threw him out once she realized the life he wanted was smoking pot all day long. She says she told him he could come back if he was clean and had a job. Dad 2 said things were so screwed he couldn’t live with us anymore. He moved to Vancouver. I wonder if he ever runs into Dad 1 there.
    Our street is downtown now. We had to move from Columbia once Dad 2 wasn’t making any money. It’s okay. The houses are close together, but we live on a dead end, so the boys have a place to set up their hockey nets. It makes it easier to babysit a set of seven-year-old triplets, almost-three-year-old twins, and a one-year-old. Chantal and I chill under the tree and read or do our projects while the boys run around with hockey sticks and eat popsicles. Chantal says the time between diaper changes is great. But everyone’s favorite part of the summer is the end, when we put on our summer project performance. Despite the boys booing our flatland synchronized swimming last year, they loved watching us, being part of something that felt like a real family thing, minus the parents. We made lemonade
and cookies and we had music, and those flippers and our nose plugs. I couldn’t breathe, I was laughing so hard.
    I remember the look on Chantal’s face right before she ran away. Then I remember the way Parker looked at me, the way no one else has, and I wonder if I was imagining it. “Maybe we can go for ice cream tomorrow,” he said when he met me at the bottom of the hill as I was getting on my bike. I told him I’d have to take the boys with me because I was babysitting. “No problem,” he said.
    But it is a problem. What happens when he finds out who I really am?

Parker
    Keeping Score .
    “D ude. You’re serious? You’re going to her house tomorrow? And taking her baby posse out for ice cream?” Will holds out his fist.
    I make sure we’re alone before I pound it. “You got a man challenge, you gotta send a man to do it.” I watch Will as the words register. The comment is fresh meat for a starving piranha.
    “Dude.” Will throws his towel at my head but I catch it, throw it back at him. “Don’t go thinking you got one up on me. We handicapped this one, remember?” As predicted. If he wasn’t my best friend he’d probably say he wanted to kick my ass.
    “Right. When I’m winning it’s all about luck.” I click the automatic unlock on my key. The Mustang clicks in response. “Who remembered Cranium? Brilliant. Say it, Will. Brilliant.”
    “Whatever.” Will opens the passenger side door. “I’m laying it out there. It’s going to be harder for me to kiss my target than it is for you. Not that I’m bitching. ‘With the greatest effort comes the greatest reward.’”
    I tune out Will as I slide the key in the ignition. Jillian in the bikini. It’s like I never really saw her until today. And, damn, she’s fit.
    “Dude, are you listening to me?” Will interrupts my private movie. “You know who said that, don’t you?”
    Sometimes I’d like Will to shut up. “Said what?”
    “‘With the greatest effort comes the greatest reward.’”
    “Gandhi.”
    “Shit, no. Mario Andretti, man.”
    The engine growls when I start it up. Satisfaction. “Andretti?”
    Will nods his head, turns up the volume, and the car rumbles with hip-hop.
    “Yes you can. Yes you can,” Will shouts to the radio. He lowers the window, and hangs his arm outside. I think he’s making the Mario Andretti thing up because Will’s like that. Meh.
    Even if I get Chantal to the party, and Will works his magic, I know I’m definitely ahead on this challenge.
    Sunroof open. Radio on. I wonder if kissing Jillian will be much different than kissing Annelise.
    I check my reflection in the rearview mirror—hair, sunglasses, and a smile.
    “No kidding,” Will says.