American Sweethearts (Dreamers #4)

Prologue

Thirteen Years Earlier

priscilla

I let myself into the apartment, wired and excited to talk to J. I’d finally done it: put in all my paperwork to apply for the police academy. My big plan—no, our big plan—since we were like fifteen.

“Hey, where are you?” I called into the empty living area.

“I’m in the bedroom, still unpacking—shit!” he yelled, as what sounded like a bunch of rubber balls crashed to the floor. I hurried over, laughing, and found J on his knees picking up a ton of tennis balls and throwing them into a box.

“Hey.” I leaned against the doorframe watching him, his brown skin a little clammy from the summer heat. He had all the windows closed, but like always, refused to turn on the AC until it got so hot, we ran the risk of melting. He could still get it, though.

He looked up and grinned when he saw me glomming him up.

“You lost something down here.” He grabbed his dick like the dirtbag he was and I almost wanted to forget about what I’d come here to tell him and jump into bed.

It’s not like we could get up to anything at my place with my three roommates.

But J had this one-bedroom with the good mattress two blocks from the D train.

“I don’t have time for your dick jokes, Juan Pablo.”

“Oh, I’m not playing with you.” He licked his lips all suggestive and shit. I swear, sometimes keeping my clothes on around this fucker felt like a full-time job.

“Stop it, asshole. I got something important to tell you.” It was hard keeping a straight face when he was giving his “papi chulo” impersonation everything he had. He pushed up from the floor, those brown arms flexing every muscle and pressed up against me.

“You smell.” I did not sound like it was bothering me none, and that slick bastard knew exactly how to distract me from the enormous news I had to share.

But maybe this was for the best. I’d sort of gone off script for our plan, by going on my own, and getting him off always put him in a more manageable mood. Not that it would be a hardship.

“What, you don’t like my stank anymore?” He joked as he ran his sweaty chest all over my arms.

I could barely talk; I was laughing so hard. “Ew.”

“But you didn’t complain last night after I came in from my run and ate—”

“Oh my God!” I took a step back because all of my body parts were tingling just from the mention of what we’d gotten up to last night on his couch. He’d been a sweaty mess then, too, and I had not cared.

“Time out, you ass.” I backed into the hallway, my hands up. “I didn’t come over to mess around with you.”

He gave me a “yeah, right” look, eyebrows raised high, but he stayed where he was.

“For real, J. I got something to tell you.” He stiffened, and in an instant, his face got serious.

That was one of the things I loved about J—he listened to me.

Like really listened. Being a girl in a Dominican family sometimes meant that you got told about yourself more often than you were given a chance to say what you actually wanted.

Even when you had parents that were trying to, at least, not raise their kid like they were still living in the sixties.

Juan Pablo always listened to me, in bed and out of it, since always. I smiled, thinking how the two of us had been at this forever. We’d grown up across the street from each other. Him in his family’s little house with a garden, and me in my parent’s cramped two-bedroom apartment.

“Yo, what’s going on in there?” He tapped my temple gently, as I tried to breathe through what was going on in my head.

“You’re starting to make me nervous, Pris.

Are you breaking up with me?” He tried to sound like he was joking, but I wondered if he already suspected what I was going to say.

We’d talked about joining the police academy for years.

We said we’d do it right after graduation.

Now we’d been done with school for a couple of months and he was still waffling, so I went and did it on my own.

I kept trying to get the words out and they just would not come. He’d feel blindsided. I knew I should’ve waited, but I wanted to get on with it. I wanted to be a detective, for myself and to fulfill the dream my father was not able to get for himself.

I fisted my hands and pressed them to my thighs, my nails digging deep into my palms. The queasy want-to-kiss-J feeling replaced by a hole in my stomach.

“I signed up for the academy. I start in five weeks. Now it’s your turn.”

He took a step back and his expression went slack, like he had no idea how to react. He took a deep breath and ran his hands roughly over his head, not talking. There was a weird flutter in my chest, like there wasn’t enough air in my lungs. I wanted to ask what he was thinking, but I didn’t.

When he looked up, I knew the answer before he opened his mouth. “I’m not joining the academy, Priscilla. I applied for grad school.”

I felt like throwing up, bile rising in my throat, because I couldn’t shake the feeling that this would be what finally blew us apart. This would put our lives in different paths. He would do his thing and I would do mine and we’d lose this.

We’d lose us.