One More Shot (Hometown Players #1) Read Online Free Page B

after she passes out.”
    “Ha-ha.” I roll my eyes at her as Rosie chuckles.
      
    It’s past midnight. We had all said good night and gone upstairs to our teenage bedrooms over an hour ago, but the room spun every time I tried to lie down. And so here I am in the dark, in the kitchen, staring at the goddamn countertop where it all began.
    I wonder if he really told Donna he was thinking about me. I wonder, if he really said it, if he meant it. Is he just thinking about me because my cold, emotionally vacant grandmother died? Is that the first time he’s thought of me in a while? Years? Probably. God, I wish I could say this was the first time I had thought of him. Or of this countertop.
    I run my hand over it again and feel that familiar sharp pain in my chest. I’m too drunk to fight it, so I let the memory take over.

Jessie
    Six years ago
    S o, have you lost it yet?”
    I stare at Callie, horrified.
    “First of all, shut up!” I hiss, and glance around to see if anyone heard her.
    Luckily the party is a total rager. The music is loud, everyone is talking animatedly among themselves. Some drunk girls from my class are dancing on the Echolls’ dining room table, attracting the attention of most, and a boisterous game of quarters is going on in the kitchen. Thankfully, no one is paying attention to my sister’s blunt inquiry about my virginity.
    “Second of all,” I continue, plopping down beside her on the couch. I lean toward her ear so I can be as quiet as possible. “You just saw me in the kitchen ten minutes ago. Of course we haven’t…yet.”
    Callie shrugs and sips the vodka-infused pink lemonade in her red plastic cup. “Ten minutes is a long time for an eighteen-year-old boy. Trust me. I know.”
    I have nothing to say to that. She does know. Callie lost her virginity four months ago to a guy who works at the Trinity Community College bookstore. She and our friend Amber liked to hang out there and pretend they were students.
    Callie was very different from me. Where I had thought and rethought and over-thought every aspect of what I wanted my first time to be like, Callie had made the decision on a whim. She didn’t care if she ever saw the guy again. In fact, she didn’t want to see the guy again. Steve, the guy, had tried to see her again, calling the house a couple of times. but she always made me say she was out.
    “He was nice and cute and it was sweet,” she had told me. “I don’t want to ruin that by getting to know him too well. Besides, he’s an education major at a community college. He’s going to end up teaching at our high school or something, and I am not staying in this craptastic town for the rest of my life.”
    So, whereas my sister gave it up and moved on, I had been dating Chance Echolls for almost a year—ten months and eleven days to be precise—and had just recently decided it was time to take that ultimate step. It was a long time to wait, at least in Callie’s opinion. I’d thought Chance was cute ever since I first saw him, when I was nine, but if he had felt the same about me, he hadn’t shown it until ten months ago when he’d shown up at the local hockey arena where I was working at the concession booth and asked me on a date.
    Callie said, if she were me, she would have done it with Chance on that very first date. But I needed more. Chance was special. He was different. And he wanted me. This shocked the entire town, I’m sure. On top of being a hockey phenom, which wasn’t uncommon in our small town, actually, because every boy played hockey, Chance was also the youngest son of the mayor and his prestigious lawyer wife. Unlike the handful of other local boys who were good enough hockey players to realistically entertain the idea of making a career out of it, the Echolls boys would not skip college and throw themselves into the NHL draft right out of high school. Scholarship or not, people like the Echollses went to college. Chance spent just about every