Bella and the New Guy (Love on the Track Book 1) Read online

  Copyright © 2019 Amy Sparling

  All rights reserved.

  First Edition February 2019

  Cover design by Amy Sparling

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems -except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews-without permission in writing from the author at [email protected].

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter One

  Maybe I’m in the wrong here, but it is my great opinion that kissing should not be loud. It also shouldn’t be some public spectacle on display while I’m trying to eat my cold slice of cafeteria cheese pizza, which honestly shouldn’t even be called pizza in the first place. Maybe the menu should say, reheated fake dairy product on top of cardboard - $1.50. I curl my lip and drop the soggy rectangle piece of “food” onto my plate. It smacks down with an unappetizing thump, and believe it or not, that’s actually a better sound than the “muah” that happens right in front of me.

  “Can you two get a room?” I say.

  Jodi Thomas, who is sitting next to me, starts clapping. “Finally! I was hoping someone would say it so I didn’t have to.”

  My best friend Kylie pulls her gaze away from Trey Nguyen, her new boyfriend, and gives me a glare that doesn’t look all that evil. She’s my best friend, after all, so her glares are pretty much meaningless.

  “We don’t need a room!” she says, looking scandalized. “It was just a harmless kiss.”

  “It’s loud,” I say, poking at my soggy pizza with the plastic fork I used to eat my soggy, wilted salad a few minutes ago. Why is cafeteria food always so soggy? “We don’t need to hear you kissing your boyfriend.”

  “We also don’t need to see it,” Jodi says.

  This is the most I’ve heard her talk during lunch. Jodi always sits with us, but she’s usually reading a book instead of joining in on the conversation. I guess the fact that she’s participating now is really a testament to how gross my best friend is being with her stupid new boyfriend.

  Don’t get me wrong, Trey is okay. He’s nice and all. But he also just stole my best friend so he’s not exactly my favorite person. Every time Kylie gets a boyfriend, I lose her until they eventually break up and she comes back again.

  Kylie brushes the tips of her jet black hair back behind her ears. Now that she’s dyed it several shades darker than her natural brown, you can really see the pink that flushes to her cheeks. “Fine, we won’t kiss at the lunch table,” she says, turning her chagrined smile to look at Trey.

  “Aw, but lunch is the only time we see each other,” he says, making this pouty face that looks stupid but I can tell that Kylie somehow finds it endearing.

  “You also see each other before school, and after school, and on the weekends,” I say, counting off all the places my best friend has abandoned me for Trey over the last few weeks they’ve been dating.

  “Oh, that reminds me,” Kylie says. She detangles herself from Trey’s lanky arms and leans forward, giving all of her attention to me. That usually means she’s about to say something disappointing. Luckily, I’m used to it.

  “I can’t binge the new season of Nailed It with you tonight,” she says, throwing in a frown for good measure. But she doesn’t look that sad.

  Nailed It is a TV show on Netflix about people with no baking skills who are trying to win a baking competition. It’s hilarious and amazing and we love it. We were supposed to order real pizza – not this reheated mush the cafeteria serves – and watch all of the new episodes tonight.

  “Why not?” I ask. Unlike Kylie, my frown is actually real.

  She bites on her bottom lip, which is her guilty tell. “Trey’s got a game tonight. It was supposed to be an away game, but then the other team’s court got vandalized and they moved it here.”

  I want to tell her that high school basketball season is over and has been over for months. It’s May, and summer break starts in two weeks, so her basketball star boyfriend shouldn’t even be thinking about games. But then she’d just remind me about how he joined an outside league that plays year round and it’s filled with aspiring pro ball players and they all take it extremely seriously. We’ve been down this road before. Pretty much every time she ditches me to hang out with him.

  I flip my hand through the air, pretending like I’m not totally crushed. “Whatever,” I say. “I’m going to watch the show without you.”

  She gasps, slamming her hands on the table. “Bella! You can’t!”

  I roll my eyes. “I won’t… I’ll just go riding or something.”

  She grins. “Thanks, Bells. You’re the best. I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

  “Sure you will,” I say, glancing at her boyfriend. He’s playing on his phone and totally oblivious to our conversation. He’s oblivious to a lot of things, like how he’s completely taken over my best friend’s life. She never has time for me anymore, and this is destined to be the most boring summer ever if she’s constantly glued to his side.

  At least I have my dirt bike. It’s an inanimate piece of metal and grease and plastic, so it can’t fully replace my best friend but it’s still amazing it its own way. When I’m riding my dirt bike, it’s easy to lose track of time until my best friend finally wants to hang out again.

  The bell rings and we get up and toss our trash on our way to our next class. Only two more weeks of this and I’ll no longer be a senior in high school. I’ll be free. Free to do what, I’m not sure. That’s a problem to figure out later. My brother is in college studying business, and I always joke that he should open a business and hire me so that I’ll have a job. Now, I’m not even joking about it anymore. I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. Kylie wants to be a teacher. She’s known that her whole life. I debated doing the same thing, but I’m not so sure I want to spend my adult life in the same place I’ve spent all of my childhood and teenage life.

  “Hey,” Kylie says, catching up with me in the hallway. She must have already kissed Trey goodbye. I hope for the sake of every student at Roca Springs High that the kiss wasn’t loud and smacky.

  “What’s up?” I say.

  “I really am sorry for tonight. It’s just that Trey really wants me to go and…”

  “It’s fine,” I say, cutting her off before she can continue making excuses for why her boyfriend is more important than pizza and Netflix with me. I try not to get too annoyed with her because if I had a boyfriend, I’d probably want to hang out with him all the time. But I’ve been single for a very long two years, and I’m not even sure I want to count my last boyfriend Mikey as a real boyfriend. It was back in sophomore year and every time we went somewhere together, one of our parents had to drive us. It was lame, to say the least.
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br />   “Can I still get a ride home after school?” Kylie asks.

  “Of course.”

  “Thanks,” She says, squeezing me into a quick hug as we split down the hallway to head to our different classrooms.

  I spend the last two hours of the school day thinking about hitting up the motocross track after school. I got an amazing new dirt bike two months ago for my eighteenth birthday and I’ve only ridden it three times since then. After years of riding my brother’s old hand-me-down bikes, my dad decided I deserved one to call my own. It’s a Yamaha YZ 250f, all shiny and brand new, with custom purple graphics that I designed myself. Instead of rocking my brother’s old bike number—888—I decided to pick out my own number.

  And that’s why my bike’s number plate is currently empty.

  I can’t think of anything. I don’t want to use my birthday because that’s lame. And there’s no other number that means anything to me. People think my brother chose 888 because it looks cool but really it has a meaning behind it, even if it’s kind of obvious. It’s his birthday. August 8th, 1998. Many people use their birthdays for their bike numbers, but Brent’s is different. He was born premature and almost didn’t make it. My mom calls him her miracle baby. He chose his bike number because it symbolizes how far he’s come from that little baby that could fit in your palm and was born on the wrong day. It’s something special to him.

  And I want something special too, but I was born on my due date so that’s nothing special. I don’t have a special number to call my own. I keep looking for one in my life, but nothing has happened yet that was of any significance. But I guess it doesn’t matter because bike numbers are used for people who race their dirt bikes. I don’t race. I just ride for fun.

  After school, I drag Kylie with me to the bike shop before dropping her off at home. It’s on our way, and plus, she’s ditched me all week for her boyfriend. The least she can do is spend an extra ten minutes with me.

  The only bad thing about brand new dirt bikes is that they’re made with all stock parts. The grips on the handlebars are kind of crappy, and plus they’re black, which is boring. I’ve already decked out my bike with purple graphics, and now I want some purple grips to match them. My dad is my mechanic and the one who fixes and maintains my bikes, but changing out the grips is pretty easy. It’s just rubber and glue.

  Kylie trails along behind me, her attention glued to her phone, while we walk into the bike shop. It’s always a little busy since Roca Springs Motocross Park is just a few miles away. Not many places in Texas have motocross tracks, so we’re a tourist destination for people who love the sport.

  I weave my way through the people and make my way to the back wall to pick out some purple grips.

  Layla is the owner’s twenty-something daughter who usually works the registers, but she’s having an intense phone call when I walk up to the front counter to make my purchase. She gives me an apologetic look and then types something into her computer for the customer on the phone. “Like I said, sir, that year model of bike just never existed.” I can hear the yelling on the other end of the line. Whoever the customer is, they don’t believe her.

  Mr. Hernandez pops up from somewhere in the back of the shop. He always takes over the second register when the line gets backed up. He meets my gaze and I smile, setting my grips on the counter so I can reach into my back pocket for some money.

  “Mr. Mosely!” he calls out in his thick accented voice. “What can I do for you today?”

  “I need some race gas,” a guy says from beside me. He walks right up to the counter, right next to me, and opens his wallet.

  “Sure thing,” Mr. Hernandez says as he positions himself in front of the cash register, which is exactly in front of me.

  Because I’m first in line.

  My jaw drops. Whoever this guy is, he just cut in front of me in line. And yeah, he’s extremely cute, but that doesn’t matter.

  He’s still a jerk.

  The cute ones usually are.

  Chapter Two

  Roca Springs, Texas is not what I had in mind when my dad decided that I needed a break from racing. I thought he wanted me to stay home a while and sulk in my own failures after I got kicked off the shortlist for becoming Team FRZ Frame’s newest rookie racer. I thought I’d be banned from racing all summer and then my dad would get over it and the fans would be over the drama, and I could start racing again.

  I should have known better. I should have known he’d ship me off to Roca Springs, Texas.

  Population four thousand.

  There’s four million people in Houston, my hometown, and the place I’m longing to be right now. It’s only been two days in this middle-of-nowhere country town, and I already want to call up my father, the grand Mr. Mosely of Mosely International, and beg him to let me come back. But I can picture the look on his face if I did.

  And that look is what’s keeping me here.

  I guess I don’t blame my mother for moving to the middle of nowhere after their divorce. She was sick of my dad’s famed architecture firm and all the dinner parties and constant traveling. She wanted something slow, something small and manageable. So she packed her bags and moved out here, and she was so unbelievably mad when I begged to stay with dad.

  I remember it all so clearly even though I was just six years old. Mom had assumed that I’d live with her full time and visit Dad on the weekends. Nope. I wanted to live with him. His house is where my dirt bike was. His truck is what drove me to the track. Dad meant a life of motocross. Mom meant a small town life of nothing. The choice was easy, and it broke her heart.

  I don’t think I fully realized that until I got older and only made the three-hour drive out here two or three times a year for holidays. Now my mom is remarried to Phil, who is a widower and he seems nice enough, and she’s taken on his two children as if they were her own.

  She’s happy now, but I still feel bad about my choice to live with Dad. I should have been there for her when I was growing up. I should have visited more, called her more. Motocross is like a drug, though. It’s better than driving a car. It’s better than riding a motorcycle. Dirt bikes can fly over jumps the size of buildings and tear through rugged terrain that’s even too sharp to walk on. Dirt bikes are amazing. And racing them brings a thrill stronger than any drug possibly could.

  If only I could use that drug metaphor as an excuse to get out of trouble for what I did at the nationals race last month. Sorry everyone. It wasn’t my fault. I had the motocross in my veins. The thrill of the race, the desire to win. That’s what made me screw up. That’s why I got kicked off the team. I’m an addict. It’s not my fault.

  In the town of lame and boring that is Roca Springs, there is one shiny bright beacon of hope. A new dirt bike track. It’s been here a few years, and I’ve heard that it’s kind of small and janky, but it’s better than nothing. At least I’ll get to ride this summer while I’m exiled to my mom and Phil’s house. It’s a beautiful day outside which means it’s perfect for dirt bike riding, even if the local track sucks. I find the nearest shop that sells race gas and drive over. Sure, you can put regular gasoline in your dirt bike, but that’s what slow riders do. If you want speed, you need high ethanol race gas. I’m not about to let my skills slip away this summer while I’m stuck here. I’ll keep working out, and I’ll keep riding, and I’ll make sure I’m just as fast as I was before FRZ Frame kicked me out of Nationals.

  I’ll come back. And I’ll pick up the pieces of my shattered career, and I’ll race again. I’ll get on the team again. It’ll all be okay.

  The shop is a black building made of sheet metal and glass windows that’s in a shopping center with a nail salon, a vape shop, and a laundry mat. I don’t know why, but it makes me laugh. Most bike shops are standalone buildings with huge parking lots and hundreds of dirt bikes for sale. Not this one. Like Roca Springs, it’s small.

  I make my way inside, surprised to see so many people here. The second I make eye contact wi
th someone is the second it happens. The guy, probably in his twenties, sees me and his eyebrows shoot up and he does a double take. I look away, but I can hear him nudge the person next to him and whisper, “Is that Liam Mosely?”

  There was a time in my life where getting recognized was awesome. And that time was pretty much every day of my life up until a month ago when I ruined everything. Now, instead of praise and selfies and autographs, people stare at me like I’m some escaped convict. If they know anything about the world of professional motocross, they’ve heard about me, and the incident that ruined everything.

  I grit my teeth and walk toward the front counter, determined not to make eye contact with anyone else.

  A middle-aged man wearing oil-stained shop coveralls walks from the back part of the shop where the sound of mechanics working is a dull roar of metal and hydraulic tools. A woman is behind the register, but she’s on the phone. I flag him down and ask for some race gas. He recognizes me and seems happy to have me in his shop. I’m guessing small town bike shops don’t get anyone of any importance here, so even a disgraced racer is better than nothing.

  He rings me up and I pay with my debit card, carefully avoiding the curious looks I’m getting from people all around me, but especially right next to me. It’s a girl, short with brown hair, and she’s trying to burn a hole in the side of my head with her gaze. Ugh. The man hands me my receipt and tells me he’ll meet me out back by the gas pump so he can fill up my gas jug.

  Before I go, I turn toward the girl. I’m tired of being stared at. I’m tired of being gawked at like I’m some criminal. I’m about to ask what her problem is, but then I realize what just happened. She’s not staring at me because she’s a fan—she’s staring at me because I just cut in front of her in line. She’s got her money in her hand and everything.

  My breath hitches. I want to say something—apologize or something—but she’s so pretty it’s caught me off-guard. I can’t think of a single word to say.