It's a Match! (2 page)

Hey, what are you up to?

Just drinking some coffee. You?

I’m about to head to the gym. I thought we could meet up and talk in a couple of hours.

I’m hanging out with Cole in a bit, but I could meet up later tonight.

Don’t worry about it. Go have fun. We’ll talk another time.

But Sutton didn’t want to talk another time. She knew exactly what storm was about to hit and she wanted to delay it as long as possible. She stared at her phone for a minute or so, her mind becoming blank. Then he texted again:
   

Actually, we don’t really need to meet up. I just wanted to tell you I think this isn’t really working anymore.

Sutton placed her phone on the table and held back the tears yearning to escape. Though she knew it was coming, and had for a while, she was sickened by the fact that he was so cold that he would end it over a text message.
 

Sutton decided then and there that she would never text Aiden again….
 

What Sutton really should have been doing was packing. In three days, she was heading off to Hardman University in Badger, Colorado. She had received a full scholarship for writing, which would come in handy seeing as her parents had locked her out of her hefty trust fund, since she wasn’t following in her father’s footsteps by going to Harvard and studying law. Her passion was writing, and she wasn’t willing to sacrifice that to please her impossible-to-please parents. For as long as she could remember, her parents had been overbearing and controlling, while they worshipped her younger brother, Grant, for being a complete suck-up. He would have done anything to ensure his share of the family fortune.
       

Sutton unplugged her phone from the charger to call Cole. Cole Hansen was Sutton’s best friend. They’d met freshman year of high school at the bleachers by the football field, where Cole was trying out for the varsity team…
 

Sutton was finishing up cheerleading tryouts when she saw the herd of fame-hungry freshman boys rushing excitedly toward the field. Jefferson High was the school to attend if you were interested in sports – volleyball, football, soccer, you name it. They had numerous ex-pro athletes coaching and it was a big college scout destination.
 

Sutton was standing by the cooler chugging some water when Cole walked up to her and said, “I’m thirsty.”

Sutton attempted to mask her mildly sarcastic streak, to no avail. “Hi, Thirsty, I’m Sutton.”
 

Cole nodded his head as he smirked a bit. “Pleasure to meet you, Sutton. I’m Cole.”
 

Sutton observed Cole for a moment. He was a quirky type of handsome. At 6’3”, he towered above most, and had a fairly muscular build for someone of that height. His medium-length, shiny brown hair was parted on the left and combed carefully in the other direction, with short sideburns next to his nicely shaped and somewhat rounded ears. His eyebrows were thin and straight, with his small brown eyes directly below, which were illuminated with a hint of hazel. He was wearing a somewhat worn out pair of dark Levi’s jeans and a soft, forest green v-neck shirt. Sutton had a feeling they would turn out to be great friends.
 

She was right.
 

The phone rang a couple of times before Cole picked up.
 

“Hey, Sutt.”

“Hey, C. Whatcha up to?”

“Watching Season Two of
Archer
. I live an exciting life.”

Sutton shuddered as she heard the word
Archer
. She and Aiden had marathoned the television show religiously. They’d even had plans to go to Comic-Con dressed as Archer and Katya, but they’d broken up before they had the chance. Cole must have forgotten that, or else he wouldn’t have mentioned it.
 

Sutton shook it off. “Sounds like it. Are you all packed?”

“I’m a guy. We don’t pack. Plus, I still have a few days,” Cole said, with a laugh. “Are you packed?”

“Umm … not entirely. Let’s go see a movie.”

“Avoiding packing, I see. Yes, let’s do that. What about
Flesh Wars
?” Cole asked.

“Okay. I could use a zombie distraction.”

“Let me look up some movie times and give you a call back.”

“K. Talk to you soon.”

“See ya,” Cole replied.
 

 
Sutton hung up the phone and looked around her gigantic room. What was she going to do with all of this stuff? Surely her parents would get rid of anything she left behind the minute she backed out of the driveway. They would probably turn her room into a gym or something. Not that they really needed to use her room, seeing as they already had tons of other rooms they didn’t even use.
 

Sutton jumped when she heard her mother’s dainty knock on the door. She took a deep breath, which she always felt the need to do right before any interaction with her mother. She opened the door to find her mother dressed in a light pink tennis outfit and matching shoes with seemingly brand new white laces. Sutton’s mother, Justine Meyers, was the typical trophy wife, and a whopping twelve years younger than Sutton’s father. She looked like she’d crawled out of a Playboy/JCrew-hybrid magazine, and had had an obscene amount of plastic surgery done over the years: boob job of course, plenty of liposuction in various places, the occasional face lift, and collagen injections in her lips. She was pretty much allergic to wearing the same thing twice, and they could afford to buy never-ending amounts of clothes, so she threw away—not to be confused with ‘gave away’—mostly anything she’d already worn once or twice. Her all-too-tightly-pulled-together skin was golden from her many trips to the tanning salon, and her strict nail grooming routine was fairly impressive (Justine had arranged to have a nail lady come by the house every week to redo them). Some people would probably have envied her Barbie-like perfection, if they weren’t too busy pitying her for the need to try so ridiculously hard.
 

Justine had a very impatient look on her face as she nosily peeked around the room. “Sutton, this room is a disaster.”

“I’m packing, Mother. Which, if I remember correctly, was what you and Father told me to do not even an hour ago,” Sutton replied sarcastically. She often referred to her parents as ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’ to piss them off, though sometimes she wondered if they would actually prefer that to being called ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’, like commoners.
 

“No need to get snappy, young lady.” Justine crossed her arms in annoyance.

“Are you here for something in particular, or did you just come to hassle me about my room?” Sutton asked impatiently.
 

To say the relationship between Sutton and Justine was rocky would be an understatement. They were on completely different ends of the spectrum. Justine was incredibly superficial, and Sutton couldn’t care less about material possessions. Justine had probably never read a book in her life, and Sutton had read thousands.
   

“Tone, Sutton.”

Sutton was silent, awaiting a response to her question, playing a little game with herself, wondering when Justine would cave and continue.

The game was over quickly.
 

“Your father and I need to speak with you before you head out later. I assume you’re going to meet up with that
Cole
character?” The way Justine pronounced his name thoroughly annoyed Sutton, and Justine knew it. She had always looked down on Cole and his father, seeing as they were from the ‘wrong side of the tracks,’ which really just meant that they didn’t have much money, ever since Cole’s mom cheated on his dad and left them back when Cole was eleven years old. They had been struggling ever since. Obviously Sutton never judged Cole or his father for it, but Sutton just wasn’t a judgmental person to begin with. And Cole meant more to her than both her parents combined.

“Yes, that
Cole
character and I are going to see that new zombie movie,” Sutton replied, putting on her best Justine impression when she said his name.
 

“Great…. Just what you need, more filth in that head of yours.”

Sutton chose to ignore the ridiculous jab. “I’ll come down in a bit. I need to finish a few things up here.”

Justine nodded slightly. “You have five minutes. Not a second more.”

Sutton stuck her tongue out and slammed the door after her mother turned to walk away. Justine ignored it, which was unlike her since door slamming was a huge pet peeve of hers.
 

Sutton sighed and sat down on her bed. She shook off the unpleasant interaction.
Only three more days until you finally get to leave this place and never look back.

After a few more moments of contemplating her glorious escape and the exciting new journey she was about to embark upon, she decided she should get the whole parental conversation over with. She stood up and reluctantly walked downstairs. The Meyers Mansion, as it was called by virtually everyone in San Francisco, took up half a city block in Presidio Heights. It had its own parking lot, filled with at least a dozen expensive cars, from the Lexus SUV they took to school functions to the Shelby GT her dad only drove a few times in the summer, always with the top down. But mostly they were for show, like his wealthy status wasn’t already obvious enough.

The mansion was four stories high. The first floor was devoted solely to the security office and various vintage arcade games. The second contained a ballroom and a good-sized movie theater/TV room filled with La-Z-Boy Recliners. On the third were the kitchen and three living rooms. And the fourth floor was where all eight bedrooms were, each with its own bathroom.

It was a dream house, but Sutton really couldn’t have cared less. She entered the largest of the living rooms on the third floor and saw her parents sitting together on the giant leather couch, looking at her disapprovingly, which she was used to at this point.

Scott Meyers was one of the wealthiest men in San Francisco, and honestly didn’t have to do much to earn that status. He did work as a highly-paid criminal lawyer, but the bulk of the Meyers fortune came from his mother, who went by the pen name Genevieve Donovan. Genevieve Donovan was a household name, and could be found on the bookshelves of virtually every woman’s home, seeing as she was one of the highest-selling authors ever to see the light of day. She wrote what Sutton liked to refer to as
Sex-Ridden Crime Fiction
. Sutton was a very avid reader, but had only ever been able to stomach half of one of her grandmother’s many books. She, of course, lied to her grandmother and said she had read multiple books and loved them all, but what else was she supposed to say?
 

Scott cleared his throat and Sutton shifted her gaze to him. He was a typical lawyer type, with short, well-groomed hair and an all-too-serious demeanor. He was much older than Justine and hadn’t had any plastic surgery of his own, so he had many wrinkles on his forehead and at the corners of his eyes. Sutton liked to call them
worry lines
.

The moment Scott had seen his first grey hair, he’d freaked out and begun dying it regularly, so now it was always a much darker shade than his eyebrows. He wore a suit everywhere he went, even around the house. Sutton had actually rarely ever seen him wearing anything else. He had small, beady eyes that looked almost black in their coldness. And though many people found him charming, he was pretty much the opposite to Sutton.

“Sit down,” Scott demanded.
 

Sutton obeyed. Not out of fear, but out of the need to shorten the talk as much as possible.

“I pulled a few favors for you earlier today,” he began.

Sutton wondered what sort of favors her father could have pulled that she would possibly be interested in. “Such as?”

“I spoke with an old friend from Harvard,” he continued.
 

Sutton rolled her eyes. “I leave for college in three days, dad.”

“Correction: you leave for that liberal excuse for a college in three days,” Scott replied in a condescending tone.
 

“I’m not having this argument again. It’s happened so many times that I almost have it memorized.”

“You’ll sit there and hear your father out, young lady,” Justine chimed in.
 

“I don’t need your approval. Either of you. I’m not using your money, so why do you even care?”

“Why do we even
care
?” Scott bellowed. “We care because every cent we put into your education was a complete waste. We care because you’re our daughter and we want you to have a good life.”

“Your definition of a good life and mine are completely different. You guys don’t get me—never have, never will. Have either of you ever even been passionate about anything other than money?”

Scott and Justine had stunned looks on their faces as Sutton stood up and rushed out of the room, without even allowing them a response to her rhetorical question. She stormed up the stairs and back into her room, then grabbed her phone from the desk and sent Cole a text:

I have to get the hell out of this monstrosity of a house. I’m coming over.