The Perfect Boy Read online

  The Perfect Boy

  Hailey Abbott

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Ciara Simmons gripped the back of Dougie Hendrick’s neck and…

  Chapter Two

  Ciara loved the trip up US Highway 101 from Los Angeles…

  Chapter Three

  The beach club café looked exactly the way Ciara remembered…

  Chapter Four

  I can’t believe how good they are!” Ciara gushed to…

  Chapter Five

  What are you two talking about?” AJ asked, approaching Kevin…

  Chapter Six

  Hey, John, I’m going to take five,” Ciara called to…

  Chapter Seven

  Ciara had never been such a wreck over what to…

  Chapter Eight

  That was, like, the best day ever,” Heidi said happily…

  Chapter Nine

  Dusk was setting in, and the last pink streaks of…

  Chapter Ten

  Ciara fought her way through the mass of revelers to…

  Chapter Eleven

  Ciara tried to battle the creeping feeling of weirdness as…

  Chapter Twelve

  So how are things going with AJ?” Ciara asked. She…

  Chapter Thirteen

  This is going to be the best night ever!” Heidi…

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ciara sprinted until she got to the tent, suddenly glad…

  Chapter Fifteen

  I thought about it and I’m sorry and I want…

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ciara drove aimlessly up and down the streets of Santa Barbara…

  Chapter Seventeen

  Hey, I have a text message!” AJ announced as they…

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ciara was so hysterical by the time she got home…

  Chapter Nineteen

  The lunch rush at the beach club café was in…

  Chapter Twenty

  I found it!” Ciara screamed. She quickly hit “print” on…

  About the Author

  Other Books by Hailey Abbott

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  I don’t wanna be a player no more

  —Big Pun

  Ciara Simmons gripped the back of Dougie Hendrick’s neck and pulled him closer as his tongue slid inside her mouth. She closed her eyes and breathed in the mixture of sweat and TAG body spray wafting from his skin as the sun beat down on them through the rear windows of his Hummer, which was parked at the edge of the student parking lot at Westwood Prep.

  Ciara’s mind traced over the past half hour: Dougie had strolled up as she finished cleaning out her locker, shoving a year’s worth of old loose-leaf and worn manila folders into a trash bag and carefully taking down the photos of her and her best friend, Em, rocking out at the Black Eyed Peas show and partying on their class trip to Baja. Star of the lacrosse team and headed for USC, Dougie was a hulking blond senior with a small sun tattoo on the right side of his wide, tan neck. Girls loved him, and Ciara had been making eyes at him from across the room in her Eastern Religions elective for the better part of the semester.

  As he approached her locker, Ciara waited for the familiar surge of power and excitement she always got when she was about to “land” a guy. She waited through Dougie telling her that she looked good and that he was sorry he didn’t get to know her better while he was still at Westwood. He asked if she wanted to check out the sound system in his new Hummer. As soon as his gaze fluttered from her long, dark legs to her twinkling Hershey-colored eyes, she knew that Dougie wanted to touch her. She waited for this to feel good and right, like it always did. And now, in the hot backseat of the Hummer, with Dougie’s arms around her and his tongue halfway down her throat, Ciara was still waiting.

  Ever since her first kiss behind the toolshed at the far end of the soccer field in the sixth grade, Ciara loved smooching boys. She loved the way they smelled, loved the curious, longing way their lips moved, loved the way they looked like they would do anything to keep kissing her once she pulled away. She considered herself kind of a player—she liked having guys around, but once the initial rush of that first heady kiss wore off, she tended to get bored. And lately, the boredom was setting in faster and the rush took longer to kick in. Ciara had always prided herself on thinking more like a guy than most of the guys she knew, but lately it seemed like every guy she made out with was getting more out of the experience than she was.

  Dougie’s fingers, broad and callused from so many hours cradling the lacrosse stick, began to creep under the soft cotton of her lavender Miss Sixty T-shirt. Ciara pulled back, clamping her hand over his through the material.

  “Uh-uh,” she warned him.

  “No?” Dougie flashed the wide, open grin that had probably worked many times on other girls. But she was already tired of his smile and his need. She was ready to be out of there.

  “Sorry, I don’t play that way,” Ciara said, removing his hand and scooting away from him on the seat. She stretched her arms over her head, then checked the small gold Seiko watch she always wore on her left wrist. “In fact, I should get going. I gotta start packing.”

  “Oh. Well, uh, where are you off to?” Dougie asked. He sounded disappointed. She could hardly blame him—he probably thought he was going to score a goal, and she was already calling game over.

  “Santa Barbara,” Ciara said. “My dad’s got a place near the beach.” There was no reason for Dougie to know her dad had been living in their summer house permanently ever since her parents split up right after Christmas. That was the kind of thing you only told best friends, not casual hookups.

  “You gonna be away all summer?” Dougie asked, reaching for her again. The heat inside the car had plastered his blond hair against his forehead with sweat, and his eyes looked puffy in the harsh sunlight. To Ciara, he suddenly didn’t look nearly as good as he had standing by her locker in the hallway half an hour before.

  “Maybe.” She shrugged halfheartedly. “Maybe not. We’ll see.”

  “Well, how ’bout giving me your number for when you get back in the fall?”

  “Who knows if I’m even coming back,” Ciara said saucily. She had already grabbed her backpack and opened the door. She hopped out of the car and strode across the parking lot to her cherry-red Jetta. As she slid into the driver’s seat, her shoulders began to slump. The high she usually got from landing a guy had never materialized, and the faint scent of TAG body spray in her hair was so cloying it turned her stomach. She couldn’t wait to get home and take a shower—even though it would take her thick, kinky hair hours to dry.

  Her cell rang as she clicked her seat belt into place.

  “Where were you?” Em’s voice came floating through the earpiece. “We waited for you after school, but you never showed. We’re still on for movie night, aren’t we?”

  Ciara groaned to herself. Movie night used to be her favorite thing in the world: her and Em sharing vats of kettle corn and mooning over Heath Ledger’s sexy accent until the wee hours. But ever since Em had gotten together with her boyfriend, Tim, right before Valentine’s Day, movie night had become a three-person affair with guns and car chases infiltrating the mix.

  “I had some stuff to take care of,” Ciara said quietly.

  “Oh?” She could hear the skepticism in Em’s voice. “Like what? And does this have anything to do with Dougie Hendrick chatting you up at your locker?”

  “I guess.” Ciara sighed. She felt too beat to lie, and Em would eventually worm the truth out of her anyway.

  “I see.” Ciara visualized Em’s lips pressing together to form a flat, disapproving line. �
��And let me guess—the two of you ended up in his Hummer? He wanted to ‘show you his new stereo’?”

  A strong flash of nostalgia for the old Em swept through her. Before she got together with Tim, Em was just like Ciara—they even used to compete to see who could lock lips with the most hotties. But now that she was lost in the world of domestic bliss, Em had begun to disapprove of Ciara’s playerly ways.

  “So are you going to see Dougie again?” Em continued. Ciara could tell from the tone of her voice that Em already knew the answer. She frowned as she pulled to a stop at a traffic light on La Brea and Melrose.

  “I don’t think so,” Ciara said. “You know my style.”

  “Love ’em and leave ’em.” Em sighed. “I know. Look, don’t you think it’s time you maybe chilled out a little on that? It wouldn’t kill you to get with someone you really cared about for once.”

  Ciara frowned. It seemed like Em was more up her butt to stop messing around every day. Ciara had to admit that Tim was a pretty great guy, but that didn’t mean Ciara had to go out and find one of her own as well.

  Em paused. “You know people have been saying some not-so-nice things about you ever since Lauren walked in on you and Kyle making out at that party in the Valley,” she said reluctantly.

  “I didn’t know they were still together!” Ciara protested. “He told me they broke up.”

  “Well”—Em sounded hesitant—“that’s kind of part of the problem. I mean, when all you do is randomly hook up with people, you don’t really know whether you can trust them or not.”

  Ciara told herself she was just irritated with the traffic on Melrose and not with what Em was telling her. “I know what I’m doing,” she assured her friend. “I’m sixteen years old—aren’t I allowed to have a little fun?”

  Em sighed again. “All I’m saying is that people are starting to talk,” she said.

  “People can say whatever they want,” Ciara snapped, trying to ignore the doubt creeping into her stomach. “But hey, let me go, all right? I’m going to need both hands once I get on the freeway.”

  “Okay…,” Em said. “About tonight. Tim TiVo’d Godfather for him and Save the Last Dance for us.”

  “Maybe I’ll come,” Ciara said. The thought of watching Em and Tim snuggle on the couch all night made her stomach turn. “I’ll see how much packing I get done. I want to get an early start tomorrow morning.”

  “Well, at least call me before you leave,” Em said, sounding disappointed.

  “I will,” Ciara promised, flipping her phone shut and shoving a Lil Jon album into her CD player, hoping the hard, rhythmic music would shove out the bitter taste in her mouth as she battled her way onto the freeway. She tried to pay attention to the beats, but Em’s comment about people starting to talk kept fighting for space in her head. She’d always been good about not kissing and telling, but what was the point if the guys decided to talk? Ciara prided herself on the reputation she’d built at Westwood—as a strong, independent leader who never took crap from anyone. She took all honors classes and was on the swim team, student council, debate club, and diversity committee. She didn’t go in for cliques and was nice to everyone, even the nerdy boys who played Warhammer in the back of the cafeteria. If she wanted to blow off a little steam by locking lips with a guy or two, what right did that give people to say not-so-nice things? But now that hooking up left her without the old high-flying feeling she used to get out of it, was there even still a point?

  Just the thought of it made the slimy tentacles of regret creep farther into her stomach. Once they reached a certain point, she knew, they would turn from doubt to guilt. She hated the feeling she got that she’d done something wrong after hooking up with a guy, but a few hours after the fact, it always came to sit like a lump of cold, flavorless oatmeal in her gut. It wasn’t so much worry over what people might be saying (although knowing there was gossip around wasn’t exactly the best feeling in the world either) or whether she’d hurt someone’s feelings. More than that, it was the lingering doubt that she might somehow be hurting herself, doing some permanent damage that would only become apparent in the future, when all her friends were getting married and she’d find out she was some kind of freak incapable of having a normal relationship.

  “You’re being stupid,” she reprimanded herself as she pulled off the freeway at Santa Monica. “It’s the twenty-first century, you’re an independent operator, and you like to kiss a boy or two every now and then without a major commitment. It’s not like marrying the first guy who comes along is a great idea either. Look at Britney!”

  She’d almost rationalized away the lump in her stomach as she pulled into her driveway. Ever since her dad had moved out, the house felt too big for just her and her mom. It was always a faint letdown when she came home and heard her footsteps echo hollowly on the polished marble tiles of the front foyer. When her dad had lived there, his large, booming presence filled the house even when he wasn’t home. He seemed to leave pieces of himself everywhere—his shoes in the entryway, his keys on the kitchen table, magazines and papers strewn throughout the living room. Her mom was much neater. Ciara didn’t know how she managed to keep the house so clean while working at the ad agency every night until nine or ten, but nothing was ever out of place anymore. Nothing except for Ciara’s dad’s absence.

  There was a note from her mom telling her she’d be at work late (again) and to call for takeout if she got hungry. Ciara sighed. When she was a kid, her mom always found ways to get in family time around her job, like sneaking Ciara on business trips and ordering room service from the fancy hotels they stayed at. But ever since the divorce, her mom had thrown herself into her job to the exclusion of practically everything else. She had always been kind of a workaholic, but in the past few months, she’d spent entire nights at the office, sometimes driving home only to shower and change her clothes. Ciara supposed she got her über-driven nature from her mom, who had fought tooth and nail to climb the competitive ladder of the advertising world ever since moving to LA from Peru as a teenager and marrying Ciara’s dad at the age of twenty-two.

  Ciara crumpled up the note and lobbed it into the trash before trudging up the stairs to her room. She dragged her suitcase down from the top of her closet and turned on the radio to 100.3 The Beat, her favorite hip-hop station. Ciara loved music that made her get up and move: her iPod was packed to bursting with bouncy hip-hop, from Q-Tip and OutKast to Diddy and 50 Cent, and her dream was to become an entertainment lawyer so she could represent all her favorite stars. The new Beyoncé played as she threw bikinis, sarongs, and flip-flops into her suitcase, trying to concentrate on how great it would be to hit the beaches in Santa Barbara. But the smell of Dougie’s cologne on her hair and the echo of Em’s words in her head kept distracting her, and the post-hookup nastiness thudded in her stomach.

  She realized that what she was looking forward to most about spending the summer in Santa Barbara wasn’t hitting some of the cleanest beaches on the West Coast, but getting away from the mess her life had become in LA. In Santa Barbara, she could get some distance and perspective, maybe get a fresh start. There would be no Dougies trying to lure her into backseats, no Em and Tim lording their couplehood over her, no guys with big mouths telling all their friends about the last time they’d hooked up. In Santa Barbara, she could be whoever she wanted to be. If only she knew who that was…

  “And now for a trip back to the nineties,” said the announcer’s voice on the radio as the Beyoncé song faded. “Who’s ready for Big Pun?”

  The opening chords to “Still Not a Player” came booming through her speakers, and Ciara froze with a lavender bikini in her hand. She hadn’t heard that song since she was in middle school. “I don’t wanna be a player no more,” went the chorus.

  “Hey!” Ciara yelled, spinning to address her speakers. “Just what are you trying to imply?”

  “Player no more,” crooned the background singers.

  Ciara knew it was sill
y, but she couldn’t help wondering if this was some sort of sign that her behavior was getting to be too much. If Big Pun was ready to stop being a player, did that mean she should be, too?

  “It’s hard to be a player when you’re dead like Big Pun,” she reminded herself. Just then, the breeze from her open window blew a strand of her hair into her face—and the gross scent of Dougie’s TAG with it. The regret returned with full force, squeezing her chest. Maybe, she thought, just maybe she should give this whole random hookup thing a rest.

  Chapter Two

  Summer, summer, summertime

  Time to sit back and unwind

  —The Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff

  Ciara loved the trip up US Highway 101 from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara. The road snaked along the coast, coming into kissing contact with the ocean from time to time: the perfect drive to make with your sunroof open and the windows down, singing along to your favorite hip-hop station on a beautiful afternoon in early summer.

  It was weird to be making the journey alone, though. When her parents first bought the summer house, they drove there almost every weekend in the spring and fall, her dad blasting old Motown hits and whistling off-key. They always let Ciara sit up front so her mom could have the entire backseat to spread out her files and type away on her laptop.

  Ciara spent two great summers at the house before starting high school, hanging out on the beach every day with Heidi, Marlene, Kevin, and AJ, the friends she’d met at the private beach club her parents joined. As the ocean swooped back into view, she lazily wondered if they were still around.

  By the time she got to high school, though, Ciara had to say good-bye to her Santa Barbara summers. As a future entertainment lawyer determined to get into an Ivy League college, Ciara packed her weekends with volunteer work and extracurricular activities, leaving no time to head up to the beach house and chill. Forget summers: going into ninth grade, she was a CIT at a day camp for underprivileged children, and the summer after that, she got an internship at Deuter Schlosselman, LLP, one of the top entertainment law firms in LA. She’d meant to at least head up to the house for a weekend but had gotten so busy the time just never materialized.