Perfect Timing Read Online Free Page B

though Aidan never admitted the same to her. It was sugary-sour, sticky-sweet, and the only kiss the two had ever shared. After the fact, after Aidan crunched down on his prize piece of candy, friendship slid into a tailspin. And because he was incapable, Isabel had to choose for him. Did she want Aidan to be her boyfriend or her friend? It didn’t take much to deduce that being Aidan’s girlfriend would only lead to being Aidan’s ex-girlfriend—even at thirteen. Subsequent years and a laundry list of girls like Shanna proved that theory like a surefire mathematical equation. And it wasn’t to say that she didn’t lose out by choosing not to be Aidan’s girlfriend. Isabel simply had more to gain by being his friend, their finger-slice, blood-swearing status wholly suiting Catswallow’s much sought-after prize.
    It was the privacy that Isabel coveted most, an intimate friendship that crushed any physical moment Aidan might share with another girl. She also didn’t mind the boundaries that protected her from becoming
one of them
, an Aidan Roycroft casualty. He’d been there in more important ways. Aidan listened to Isabel worry about how she might pay for college and assisted with simpler matters, like memorizing the conjugations for the French verb
faire
. He was a whiz with foreign languages—even singing in Spanish if the mood struck him. While he finessed her through three years of Madame Lameroux’s French class, he couldn’t help much with college. That came down to hard finances, which landed Isabel at her fourth choice, a mediocre satellite campus to a larger university. Over the summer she’d tried to find the positives. It was still higher education, even if it wasn’t on the scale she’d envisioned.
    As the start of classes approached, other changes entered Isabel’s mind. The farmhouse, a condemnable structure with fortress-like walls, no longer seemed able to keep the future at bay. Time that ran on an hourglass was about to run out. Isabel would miss that, the louder reasons for being there, like today’s Lovett Street debacle, and the tiniest of routines, like their tutorial swap of irregular verbs. With Aidan’s gift for languages and a sharp head for numbers—which he generally ignored—the hourglass could have easily flipped, at least for a while. But college didn’t interest Aidan. This place, the farmhouse or Catswallow, was not the beat of his heart. Music was Aidan’s passion, making his departure imminent. The only unknown was how long it would take until he’d saved enough nerve and money to go. One thing was certain; he’d have no trouble walking away from Fountainhead.
    Catswallow’s premier mobile-home community was where they slept, though both felt more at home in the farmhouse. While it served as Aidan’s music studio, lately, for Isabel, its purpose had expanded. Her mother’s boyfriend, Rick Stanton, was the local-boy-makes-good story and Carrie was crazy about him. It added a third person to the now familiar mother-daughter life. And for reasons Isabel couldn’t identify, she was unable to get comfortable with that. At first she thought it was jealousy, but it didn’t seem to match the awkward emotions in her head. She was truly happy for her mother, pleased she found someone successful, charismatic, and driven. Isabel didn’t like to stereotype, but considering the choices in a trailer park dating pool . . . well, Rick Stanton exceeded the odds. Strapped to his rocket to fame were the half-dozen car dealerships he owned, though it went farther back, having something to do with his years as a football god. Rick was a Catswallow state champion and an all-American linebacker for the University of Alabama. After college he’d parlayed his popularity into a showroom bonanza, making car dealerships look like corporate success. But Rick had loftier ambitions than cornering the Heart of Dixie’s motor vehicle market. Recently, he’d announced his bid for the state