Ryan Hunter

hottie that most of the girls used in combination with my name, but while I didn’t want to be bound to anyone because the girl I wanted walked clueless in front of me every day, totally unaware of how I felt, I didn’t understand what kept Cloey from having a deep and meaningful relationship.
    She’d flittered through half the guys at soccer camp by the time we evacuated our dorms after the five weeks were up, and she had certainly made a name for herself because of that. There were only few of us who were immune to her flirting, but Tony Mitchell definitely didn’t fall into that group. It would be a lie to say I didn’t hope for them to hook up, even though he was my friend and deserved better. But she’d been the first girl in like forever that he seemed to be interested in apart from Liza, and I couldn’t help getting my hopes high whenever I saw the two of them together. I would never hit on any friend’s girl. But if Tony was with someone else, he couldn’t claim Liza Matthews as his own any longer.
    On the train it was us four again: Alex, Frederickson, Tony, and me. We had all tanned nicely from playing in the sun and were fooling around like horny cocks, bragging about how the girls would be at our feet when we got back. But the truth was, only Frederickson really meant it, because I…well I had stopped plucking girls from every corner of the school’s corridor some serious time ago. Tony was texting like mad with Liza, and Alex Winter had finally come out with why he had been so low-key around the fairer sex during the past five weeks. There was a girl on his mind, too. A special one. And he intended to make her go out with him eventually, even though she’d rebuffed him twice before school had been over. Her name was Simone, and I thought I remembered her from the parties I sometimes threw. Parties at which I’d always hoped to see Liza walking through my front door, but as it was, Tony had never passed on my invitations. He said she was too nice to be dragged into a hellhole like my house on a Saturday night, but I was sure he was just scared someone else could hit on her and she might like it.
    I glanced at my friend who just punched in another text message. He was surely telling Liza that we’d be home in about two hours, and she probably sat in her room, biting her nails because she couldn’t wait to see him again.
    “Are you two making out over the phone or what?” I mocked and kicked his tennis shoe with the toe of mine.
    Tony glanced up, having this innocent What? look in his eyes.
    “You sent Liza over twenty messages in the past half hour,” Alex said, backing me up with a sneer. “What’s so urgent that it can’t wait until we’re home?”
    “Nothing.” Tony cleared his throat and tucked the cell into his pocket. “I was just giving her an update about the past few days. Since Hunter wants to meet with the others about this co-ed thing right when we get back, she’ll be in a terrible mood when she hears it.”
    “Dude, give it a break and just make her come along with you. I don’t see why you’re being so complicated and wasting all that money on text messages,” I said. But the truth was I was jealous, and more than just a little bit. I wished I could text back and forth with Liza like this on the ride home, have her all euphoric to see me again, and wrap her up in a tight hug, which Tony would doubtlessly do when he walked over to her house in a little while.
    “She won’t come. She hates soccer, and when I mention your name, her face usually turns into a grimace.” Tony smirked. “No offence, Hunter.”
    “None taken,” I muttered and turned to stare out the window. Liza was probably the only girl in the universe that was resistant to my charm. Goddammit! But then, she hadn’t seen much of it so far, anyway, since girls of friends were a no-go for me, which made me tone down the flirt-factor automatically. It could all change with Cloey, though. A bubbly spark of hope lit in my chest. It made me feel stupid, and I struggled to get that feeling under control. I glance sideways at Tony. “What about the Summers chick?”
    “What about her?”
    “You two have been hanging out a lot during camp.”
    His lips became a thin line. “Yeah. So what?”
    Damn, we hadn’t talked about her in all this time, and now that I thought of it, we hadn’t because whenever someone mentioned Cloey’s name, Mitchell changed the subject. “So, is there something going