After the Rains Read Online Free Page A

sorry. He likes her a lot. I … I didn’t want to say anything because I thought this all might pass—either Jon’s crush on Nikki or your crush on him. But I don’t think it’s going to, Natalie. Sorry to be so honest, but he likes Nikki a lot.” She paused. “So … you really have it bad for him?”
    Unexpectedly tears came to her eyes. “Oh, Sara. I think I love him. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve always loved him. Ever since we were kids he’s been … I don’t know. Just special, you know?”
    Sara gave a smirk and held up a warning hand. “Hey, you forget the boy is my brother. I have a hard time seeing him as anything but the annoying pest he is.”
    Natalie smiled through her tears and stared, unseeing, out the windshield.
    A pickup roared through the Sonic drive-through, rap music blaring, jarring Natalie to the present. She picked up her cherry limeade and rattled the ice in her cup. “Sara, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I just … well, I didn’t figure I had a chance with Jon, and I didn’t want you to feel like youhad to play matchmaker or something.”
    Sara shrugged. “It’s okay, Nattie. So … are you going to go with Evan?”
    “I don’t know,” she sighed. “I guess it beats sitting home on homecoming night.”
    “I think you should go, Nattie. Evan Greenway is pretty cute, if you ask me.”
    Natalie gave her friend a close look. “Don’t tell me you have a crush on him?”
    “No way! You know who I like.”
    “Oh, yeah … Brad-ley.” She singsonged the name like a playground taunt.
    Sara blushed. “All right, all right. Back to the subject at hand. Are you going with Evan?”
    “I guess I might as well,” she sighed. “I’ve wasted years trying to get Jon to notice me, and look where that’s gotten me. I’ve got nothing better to do.”
    “And nothing to lose,” Sara pronounced with a bob of her chin. She looked at her watch and gasped. “But if you don’t get me home in five minutes flat I’m going to have plenty to lose—like any curfew past nine o’clock for the rest of my natural life.”

Three
    T he stadium was overflowing with a homecoming-night crowd when Cole and Daria Hunter arrived. They picked their way through the bleachers to their seats.
    The evening was chilly with a brisk breeze that hinted of a bitter winter to come. Daria buttoned her jacket and tucked her arm into the crook of Cole’s elbow. He gave her arm a quick squeeze, but he was already caught up in the excitement of the game.
    A roar came from the track that encircled the football field, and Daria’s attention was drawn to the high-school crowd. Despite the special section of bleachers reserved for them, the students chose to congregate on the track. It had been this way forever—at least since Daria had been a student at Bristol High herself. The teens were competing in a rowdy cheer with the fans from the opposing team, jumping up and down and yelling at the top of their lungs.
    From her vantage point, Daria Hunter searched her daughters out, one by one. She felt like a queen counting the precious gems in her treasury.
    Such beautiful girls. And each so different from the others. When had her little girls turned into young women? It seemed impossible that she and Cole had three teenagers. Why, she still felt like a teenager herself!
    She spotted Nicole near the thirty-yard line, laughing with a group of her freshmen friends, her brown eyes flashing, the life of the party.
    Noelle was there with her friends too, but the junior-high kids hovered at the fringes, not quite welcome in the fraternity yet. Noelle still had the coltish air of preadolescence, but the promise of impending beauty shimmered just beneath the surface.
    Farther down the track, Daria spotted Natalie huddled head to head beside Sara Dever. Nattie’s white-blond hair caught glimmers from the bright lights that illuminated the field. Daria smiled to herself, thinking what a godsend that flaxen hair