A Whole New League (Briarwood High Book 2) Read online

  “What’s the point? I suck.” He threw it out there as a challenge, as if he wanted to see if I would argue with him.

  I couldn’t. Honestly I just wasn’t that good of a liar. Besides, it might have been the nice thing to do but it wouldn’t help anyone in the long run. “Yeah,” I agreed. “But you haven’t even been trying.”

  I saw his jaw clench in annoyance—or maybe humiliation as I’d outright told him he sucked. But he did. There was no way he didn’t know that. He was a cocky ass, but he was arrogant for a reason. He knew he was the best on the football field. He knew he was hot and could have any girl he wanted. He knew he was charming and charismatic and that people liked him.

  God, it must be good to be Brian Kirkland.

  But my point was, he knew what he was good at and I honestly don’t think he’d had much experience at sucking. In the entire time I’d known Brian—which was his whole life, basically—I’d never known him to fail.

  Until he’d tried his hand at acting.

  No wonder he wanted to quit.

  “Look, I only agreed to be a part of the stupid—of the play—because Hayley asked me to.”

  “I see, and now that she broke up with you, you have no obligation to the rest of us.”

  If his eyes widened any further he might hurt himself.

  I didn’t know why I was getting so bent out of shape or why I was taking it personally. But I was. I was definitely feeling personal about it all and I hated the feeling that I was being rejected, again, for what felt like the billionth time. I was seriously sick of being rejected—first by Brian the junior high kid, then by Julian my friend-slash-crush, and now but Brian again.

  I was done with it. I wouldn’t just roll over and go into hiding this time. This time he had to explain himself. I crossed my arms and walked toward him. “Tell me, is that what makes you such a fearless leader on the football team?” I asked, imbuing ‘fearless leader’ with as much sarcasm as I could muster.

  I could muster a lot of sarcasm. It was a skill.

  “Do they admire your tenacity?” I asked. “Are they blown away by your ability to commit yourself to something bigger? To be a true team player?”

  I could see I was getting under his skin. There was nothing Brian Kirkland took more seriously than his team. “I am committed to my team,” he said. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for those guys.”

  “I see,” I said. “So you meant it when you committed to the football team, but when you made a commitment to a cast and crew full of people who were relying on you…that didn’t count?”

  He opened his mouth to reply and stopped short. I mean, what could he say without looking like a fickle dick?

  I made a note to self to use Fickle Dick as the title of my next screenplay about an obnoxious jock who walked all over people to succeed. I collected obscure film titles the way Julian hoarded potential band names. It was one of the many things we had in common.

  Finally the fickle dick in question let out a loud exhale. “You’re not being fair. You know it’s not like that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m good at football. My team needs me.”

  I waited. Oh no, I wasn’t going to say it for him and miss out on the chance to hear the great Brian Kirkland humble himself. He gave me a look that said Really? You’re going to make me say it again?

  I didn’t flinch.

  He threw his hands up in the air. “I’m a horrible actor. You know it, I know it, and every one of those loser nerds who laugh at me offstage knows it.”

  I had to hold back a wince. I’d heard the laughter and the snarky comments from the other cast members and while I’d taken a brief, if immature, satisfaction in seeing Brian be the butt of the joke for once, overall I hadn’t approved.

  That kind of gossip and negative talk did nothing to help foster a good team environment, which was crucial if a show was going to come together. Egos needed be checked at the door for an ensemble cast like this one, and Brian had left his on the other side of town when he got up there every day and let himself be laughed at.

  The least the others could do was acknowledge that. However, in their defense….

  “They wouldn’t laugh at you if they thought you were trying.”

  He gave me that wide-eyed look again. “I am trying. I—”

  “No, you’re not,” I said. “You show up on time, I’ll give you that. But you’re not trying. You’re so self-conscious, not willing to be vulnerable and open and—”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  I stopped. “If you were a phenomenal actor—if you just killed it every time you went on stage, would you still be quitting the show?”

  He straightened and opened his mouth, but he didn’t speak. I knew he wanted to say yes, he’d still quit because this was about his commitment to the football team and blah blah blah.

  But he didn’t say that because it was a lie, and he knew that I knew it was a lie. Or at the very least, it wasn’t the whole truth. Not by a long shot.

  “Now,” I said, my tone impressively schoolmarmish. “How would you feel if a new member of your football team quit after a handful of practices because he was teased a bit for not being the best.”

  He worked his jaw, his gaze meeting mine and holding. I could see the wheels turning.

  He gave one last lame protest. “If he’s terrible at football—”

  “Then you’d expect him to work twice as hard,” I finished. “You’d think he was a pathetic quitter if he didn’t at least try to improve and make the team proud.”

  He stared at me some more and I saw the moment that I won. A second later he dropped his head back and muttered a curse to the ceiling. “Freakin’ hell. What have I gotten myself into?”

  I felt a brief surge of triumph until clarity returned, alongside my sanity. I’d been this close to getting my wish. Brian would have been out of the play and out of my life if I’d just let him quit.

  Instead, I was now stuck with Brian on a regular basis. Not only that, I was stuck with a sucky male lead.

  Freakin’ hell. What had I gotten myself into?

  Chapter Six

  Brian

  By Monday afternoon two things became clear. I was an idiot and also…I was an idiot. Okay, maybe they were the same things but for two different reasons. They both had to do with decisions made in a post-breakup haze on Friday night.

  My first mistake was laying low after the breakup rather than confronting it head on. By the time I finished lunch with my buddies on Monday, it became appallingly clear that I should have gone out after Hayley’s drive-by breakup. If I’d been really savvy I would have gone to Tina’s party, despite the awkwardness of seeing Hayley there and having everyone watch us like we were the live entertainment for the night. It might not have been fun, but it would have squashed these stupid rumors Hayley was spreading that I was crazy heartbroken over our split.

  Even my friends were giving me pitying looks, and the more I tried to argue that I truly didn’t care that Hayley had broken up with me, the worse I looked. No one seemed to buy it, and I could understand why. I sounded way too okay with it all. But the thing was—I was okay with it. I was even kind of glad it happened.

  I mean, yeah, being dumped sucked but I definitely wasn’t heartbroken. In fact, I was a little worried about how heartbroken I was not. I mean, I’d really thought I’d cared for Hayley at one point but it was becoming abundantly clear that my feelings hadn’t exactly run deep. Although, in my defense, I didn’t really get the full picture of Hayley until it was too late.

  Alice used to give me a hard time about caring too much about what people thought—it was basically the whole reason we stopped being friends in the first place. But I didn’t care. Not really. I just hated the fact that everyone was casting me as the poor suffering dumpee, when that was so not the case. I wasn’t solely concerned with looking good, but a man had his pride and mine was being dragged through the mud.
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br />   Speaking of Alice…going to her place that night was mistake number two—the mistake that led to so many other doozies I stopped trying to keep track. How had I let her talk me into staying in the play? How had she done it?

  Through sheer force of moral superiority, that was the answer. She’d rubbed my nose in the fact that I considered myself a team player. She’d used my sense of loyalty to guilt trip me into continuing on this insane mission to humiliate myself.

  Oh sure, she’d promised she wouldn’t let that happen. But did I believe her? Not really. That girl has had it in for me for years, and now I was offering myself up on a platter so she could have a nice, cushy front row seat while I made a fool of myself.

  Although, a voice of reason pointed out that Alice was sincere in her loyalty to the cast and crew. Theater was her life, just like football was mine. She’d be cutting off her nose to spite her face if she let me make a complete and total fool of myself.

  That was the only reason she’d ended up offering to give me one-on-one acting lessons during the playoffs. It was the compromise we’d come up with before I’d left her house that night. I hadn’t been lying about needing to focus on the team, and she seemed to get that. Until the playoffs were over, she’d cut back on my rehearsals as long as I worked with her on the weekends and any other free time I could spare to learn my lines and hopefully learn how not to suck in the process.

  Freakin’ hell. I still couldn’t believe I’d let her talk me out of quitting.

  I pushed some food around on my tray as my buddies talked about some drama that had gone down at Tina’s party. With Alex and Tina, there was always drama. Always. I tuned it out, too busy trying to figure out how to solve my own problems, each of which was personified by an irritating female in my life. On one hand I had Hayley and her ridiculous rumors, which were seriously messing with my image. On the other I had Alice and her quest to humiliate me. Which was also seriously messing with my image.

  Finally I shoved the tray aside. I couldn’t even eat, that’s how out of sorts I felt. This wasn’t like me. I didn’t do angsty and emo. I was a simple guy. I’d learned how to play the part of the football quarterback, be the guy everyone wanted me to be. I’d mastered the art of the con.

  That sounds bad, but let me explain. A con man was short for confidence man, right? I’d figured out way back in junior high that the secret to making people believe something was right there in the term. Confidence. Whether it was real or not, didn’t matter, all that mattered was that you owned it.

  I’d done an experiment freshman year. I wore a pink shirt. Not salmon, not peach...pink. Serious pink. Pinker than Alice’s little sister’s bedroom, which Alice had always referred to as the pepto room. As in, pepto bismol.

  Anyways, I’d worn this shirt—me, the lowly freshman on the varsity team. The newbie who was just starting to be cool. But I’d owned that shirt. I’d worn it with a cocky swagger and a knowing smile. And guess what?

  People loved it. Next thing I knew, three other boys in my class were sporting pink shirts. That was when the lesson really clicked for me. You were either a leader or a follower. If you were a leader you got to set the rules, and that was what I’d wanted. I’d known even then that I’d wanted to be the football team captain. That I wanted to be the homecoming king and the one voted most likely to succeed.

  And I was doing all those things thanks to the image I’d created. The image Hayley and Alice seemed bound and determined to destroy.

  “Where you headed, man?” Alex asked.

  Jesus, if anyone looked at me with concern one more time I was going to punch them in the face. Alex wasn’t truly concerned, he just lived for gossip and drama. I knew he was looking for something juicy to report—he’d love nothing more than to go back to Tina, Hayley, Melody and the others and tell them how I cried over my lunch or something stupid like that.

  “Gotta see someone,” I muttered.

  Really I’d just needed to get away. But as I was rounding the corner in the hall, I spotted Alice by her locker.

  I hadn’t even realized I’d headed toward her locker, but I was happy to see her. I needed to go over this acting lessons plan one more time. It was humiliating to admit it even to myself but I needed to see that Alice had confidence in this plan.

  If my harshest critic truly believed that I could get up on that stage and not humiliate myself and ruin the entire show, then maybe I could start to believe it. And maybe once I believed it, I could sell it just like I sold that ridiculous pink shirt.

  When I got closer I realized that she wasn’t alone. A guy had joined her.

  Anger had me picking up the pace. That guy. That loser with the glasses who looked like a snobby hipster. He looked like the kind of guy I hated. And knowing how he’d treated Alice?

  My hands clenched at my sides. Just give me a reason, jackass. Say one crappy thing to Alice and I’ll slam this fist down your turtleneck-wearing throat.

  “Where were you this weekend?” the hipster asked. “And where’d you run off to Friday night? I didn’t see you in the theater. Leila and I were getting worried.”

  I’d gotten close enough that I could hear him. Neither of them had spotted me but I could see Alice’s profile. I could see how pale she was, and it didn’t take a psychiatrist to read her body language. She was all hunched in on herself, making her tiny frame even smaller, like a dog who’d been kicked.

  A surge of protectiveness rushed through me. Now I didn’t just want to beat the living daylights out of this bastard, but after that I wanted to scoop her up in my arms and take her far away from him. Far away from this school and these people.

  Alice was one of those rare people. She’d never been able to pretend to be anything but herself. She was so genuine like that, and being around her made me aware of just how good I was at being phony. No, not phony, just…not genuine. No, that wasn’t right either.

  I wasn’t a liar—or an actor, as we all knew. I was just good at projecting what I wanted people to see.

  Alice couldn’t do that. Or she wouldn’t. Maybe it was just against her principles or something, but I didn’t think so. I think she was just too honest that anything but the undiluted, absolute truth was considered phony in her eyes.

  The girl saw the world in black and white, and that’s where she and I had always differed. Once I’d embraced the gray area, she’d disowned me. In her eyes, I’d joined the dark side and no amount of telling her that it wasn’t that simple had made a difference.

  By joining the football team, I’d basically become Darth Vader.

  Anyway, all that didn’t matter right now. It’s just my way of explaining why I did what I did next.

  I lied because I knew she wouldn’t.

  “Sorry about that,” I said with a friendly grin as I saddled up beside them. I slung an arm around Alice’s shoulders and ignored the fact that she stiffened at the touch. My smile didn’t falter as I met the dweeb’s condescending stare.

  I stuck out a hand, determinedly oblivious to his tension and with a smile that was all easy confidence. See a theme here? When selling a lie, or just an image, it all came down to confidence.

  “Brian Kirkland,” I said, as if he didn’t know who I was. Of course he did, but I was going for humble and friendly at the moment. Why? Because I knew it would piss him off. He probably hated me—know-it-all hipsters like him usually did—and he would hate the fact that I was being nice. So much harder to hate on a nice guy.

  “Julian,” he said in response. Julian. Even his name was pretentious.

  After a brief hesitation in which he flashed Alice a not-so-subtle questioning look, he shook my hand. Hard.

  Oh buddy, if you think you can intimidate me with your strength, you’ll have to do a lot better than that.

  I gripped his hand even harder and watched him pale. Was it juvenile? Maybe. But I hated this cocky A-hole for making Alice cry and I wasn’t above a little intimidation to make him pay.

  They both
seemed to be waiting for me to explain my presence so I picked up where I left off. “Sorry if we made you worry Friday night,” I said to Julian. “That was my bad.”

  If Alice had grown stiff before, she was now a wooden plank at my side. Her spine had turned into an iron rod. She may have been a lot of things, but she wasn’t an idiot. She knew exactly what I was doing and I could practically feel her getting ready to intervene.

  She wouldn’t let me lie, not to her precious crush.

  God, I hated this kid. How the hell had he managed to get Alice to like him? She was way too good for someone like him.

  “You were at the movies with Alice on Friday?” Julian didn’t even try to hide his disbelief, or his confusion.

  This made me even angrier for some reason. What did he think, that he was Alice’s only friend?

  Maybe he was.

  Ugh, that thought made me want to hit him even harder. If Julian didn’t watch himself, he would be flat out on the ground at any second.

  “No,” Alice said. The one-woman honesty police was about to rat me out. I knew in an instant why she hadn’t talked to Julian until now, when he’d clearly cornered her. She was going to tell him the truth—she didn’t know how to do anything different. Sure she may have been able to tell a stupid lie in the moment at the movie theater but I knew without a doubt that she’d been beating herself up ever since.

  How did I know? Because I knew Alice. We might have stopped hanging out, but I knew her inside and out. She had the worst guilty conscience of anyone I’d ever met. I’d bet money that she’d decided to come clean with him the next time she saw him, which was why she’d probably been dodging his calls and avoiding the hell out of him for as long as she’d been able.

  She’d been avoiding telling him the truth, but she would do it when push came to shove. But the problem was, if she did that, I knew exactly what would happen.

  Julian would know.

  He would understand how much he meant to her and he would use that against her. He would keep her wrapped around his little finger.