Read The Starter Boyfriend for Free Online

parents. Who wouldn’t come?”
    Me, voluntarily. But I let that slide, and leaned in closer. “Hey, Saffron and Adam, huh?”
    Her face tensed, like she’d known this topic was coming. “She’s hoping. You okay with it?”
    “Sure. But why didn’t you tell me?”
    “I just heard about it myself.” She smiled. Big. Too big. Was she telling me the truth? “He’s old news to you, anyway. And now you have Randy.”
    She sounded like the guy’s mother! “ I do not ,” I said, lowering my volume, but not my intensity, “ have Randy .”
    “Okay, okay, but you said there was some cute guy at work.”
    I pulled back, half-remembering a fleeting mention to explain why I didn’t mind all the long hours there. I’d just left out little details, like his lack of flesh and blood.
    “Oh,” I said and let out a long laugh. “Good looking guys come in all the time to rent tuxes, but mostly they’re like thirty years old, you know?”
    “No, you said he worked with you.”
    Crap! Big decision time: insist she’d misunderstood or own up to my freakish fetish for the unreal?
    When my gaze suddenly zapped into Randy Schiff’s, I had more pressing matters. Especially when he moved in beside Flea, his head dipping at me in a hello.
    “Courtney, right?”
    “Um, hi, yeah.”
    Flea garbled out a “see you later,” then made a stealth disappearance. I knew she was trying to be helpful, but all she really did was move me from one insanely uncomfortable conversation to another.
    “About before,” he said, a grimace lifting his top lip high enough for me to see a sizeable gap between his front teeth. What came to my mind was the word “braces,” then I gave that thought a dentist daughter pop fly, reminding myself that some people liked that look, even made it part of their trademarks. Like Madonna. Anna Paquin from “True Blood.” And a whole bunch of rappers.
    “With my mother and all,” he went on, his hand tightening around his Solo cup. “See, she was already freaked out when we got there, thinking we were too late to order a tux. And then the phone call with Jacy...” He shook his head. “It pushed her over the edge. She didn’t exactly like Jacy to begin with.”
    “I caught that.”
    He let out a laugh. Uneasy, but a laugh nonetheless, and something between us to share. “Yeah, anyway, sorry about all that.”
    “No problem.”
    I started to inch backwards, appreciating him manning up with that apology, and assuming we were done, that we’d go back to being near-strangers. When Adam pushed in between us, his long arm thrusting a cup of beer my way.
    “Here,” Adam demanded.
    Instinctively, I sealed my fingers around the cup. What flew through my mind was why Adam couldn’t hold his own beer, and if he needed help from someone, why me ? But he disappeared too quickly to get any of that out of my mouth. Whatever.
    Randy gestured toward the cup. “I was just about to ask you if I could get you one.”
    I started to tell him I didn’t drink—then did a quick shift. Because if I’d learned anything from my life lately, it was that the Just Say No thing made me about as popular as a cafeteria money grubber.
    “Looks like I’m set,” I said instead.
    In what I hoped was a smooth subject change, I asked about which vest/tie he’d ended up choosing with Phillip, but a guy from across the pool called out to him. As Randy’s thick neck swiveled back and forth between us, it was suddenly clear to me I’d never get that answer.
    “Sorry, I need to go talk to him.” He flashed a smile, so gap-toothed that all I could think was that he probably wasted a lot less of his life flossing than the rest of us. “But I’ll see you around, okay? Maybe later here, or at school.”
    “Sure,” I said, then added the word “whatever” real low.
    I turned and walked toward the house, planning to find Adam and return what was rightfully his. My phone vibrated in my back pocket, suggesting he and I were on the