Boy on a Train: The All American Boy Series Read online

  Boy on a Train

  Leslie McAdam

  Contents

  The All-American Boy Series

  Boy On A Train

  1. The Anti-Bucket List

  Audrey

  2. The Mobile Living Room

  Tate

  3. Popcorn and Pork Chops

  Audrey

  4. Douchebag Advice

  Tate

  5. Not Feeling Sorry

  Audrey

  6. Emojis

  Tate

  7. Game Changer

  Audrey

  8. Book Learnin'

  Tate

  9. Finals

  Audrey

  10. Don't You Dare Stop

  Tate

  11. Train Going Nowhere

  Audrey

  12. Boring Party with Decent Catering

  Tate

  13. Guess Who Comes to Dinner

  Audrey

  14. Full Mr. Peanut

  Tate

  15. Sacrifices

  Audrey

  16. Boy on a Train

  Audrey

  17. Finally

  Tate

  Epilogue

  Also by Leslie McAdam

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Photograph of Kyle Sawyer by Cory Stierley

  Cover design by Just Write Designs

  Formatting by L. Woods LLC

  Copyright © 2021 by Leslie McAdam

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual living or dead persons, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  The All-American Boy Series

  Welcome to Merlot, CA, an idyllic all-American town in wine country where love is in the air, the boys are grown as fine as the wine and the town is a breeding ground for second-chances, weddings, and brand-new beginnings.

  The All-American Boy Series gives you a taste of 15 of your favorite bestselling authors’ brand new stories in this shared world experience. All books are standalone but may include cross-over in characters or scenes.

  Grab a glass of wine, put your feet up and let us whisk you away to wine country.

  Read them all now!

  The Boy Next Door by Sierra Hill

  Boy Toy by Poppy Parkes

  The Boy Scout by Evan Grace

  The Boyfriend Hoax by Emily Robertson

  Boy Trouble Kaylee Ryan/Lacey Black

  Celebrity Playboy by Kimberly Readnour

  Backroom Boy by Marika Ray

  Boy on a Train by Leslie McAdam

  Bad Boy by K.L. Humphreys

  Hometown Boy by Nicole Richard

  That Boy by Remy Blake

  The Boy She Left Behind by Stephanie Browning

  About a Boy by Stephanie Kay

  Lover Boy by Renee Harless

  Saviour Boy by S.L. Sterling

  Boy On A Train

  My best friend Tate and I have plans. Big plans.

  1.Get the hell out of Merlot, California.

  2.Ride trains around the world.

  Though I have a secret third entry on the list of things I want to do ...

  3. Tate Lemieux

  But when my family gets a life-changing diagnosis just as I'm about to graduate, all my plans look like they’ll go up in smoke.

  Right when I finally get the chance to be with the boy I’ve always loved ...

  Will it end before it’s even begun?

  Boy on the Train is a standalone new adult friends to lovers romance from USA Today bestselling author Leslie McAdam full of sweet tension, fun banter & a side of family drama.

  One

  The Anti-Bucket List

  Audrey

  If I had any idea today would be the day my life would change, I probably would’ve spat my gum out first.

  But since I had no idea, I kept right on licking my blow pop, aiming for the bubblegum inside.

  It was a normal Thursday afternoon, and I lay plopped on my stomach on my bed with the bedroom door open while Tate Lemieux watched me.

  Platonically. Fully dressed. As friends.

  “So, Audrey. Tell me what’s on your list.” Tate gazed at me with an expectant expression, as if I had any idea what he was talking about.

  I didn’t. “What list?” I said it loud enough so Dad could hear that Tate and I weren’t sucking face from where he watched the Giants game in the den all the way down the hall.

  See, Dad. Nothing to worry about. Boy in my room? No big deal.

  A shudder ran through me from the memory of various lectures I’d received throughout my high school years to never be alone in my room with a boy if the door was closed.

  Dad needn’t have worried at all though, because Tate had never kissed me.

  Even though I wished he would.

  Despite the warnings, my dad probably had some weird psychic certainty that Tate had barely so much as held my hand, which accounted for me being able to spend so much time with him.

  Which was a lot.

  Every day Tate gave me a ride to and from Merlot High in a huge purple truck, carried my one-ton Statistics book to my class no matter how many times I told him I could carry it—and even though he didn’t have that class with me—and spent lunch period feeding me catered gourmet food and Skittles.

  He treated me like I was the most fascinating creature in town. Maybe all of Sonoma County and into Napa.

  Evidence? Last Saturday night he ignored nonstop texts and come-ons from Jade Lopez, the most beautiful girl in school, in favor of a trip to Target to buy me a new toothbrush.

  More evidence?

  Almost every afternoon, Tate hung out with me from after school until dinnertime. We did our homework together then talked or watched Netflix until he headed home to his parents’ huge, ranch-style house high atop the dusky green hills overlooking Merlot. He never stayed for dinner, even though my parents invited him most nights.

  We’ve repeated this daily pattern since the middle of our sophomore year. But the lack of kissing meant we were just friends.

  I mean, we must have been friends, right? Because if we were more than that, I’d know.

  Right?

  Not knowing drove me crazy.

  I sucked hard on the watermelon blow pop, keeping myself from the holy (and wholly satisfactory) bliss of biting into the bubble gum in the center, because once you did that, the flavor vanished in an instant.

  It was infinitely more fun to draw it out.

  I needed to savor these last days of high school since the amount of time till graduation was thinning out, and I didn’t want to find that once I got to the end, the flavor had disappeared.

  I glanced up at Tate sitting in my chair like a prom king. He was the most desired boy in school with his athletic build, golden-haired looks, old money, and cheeky charm. His appeal was of the stereotypical variety—he looked like an all-American boy from an eighties movie. Thankfully, all-American boys now came in more varieties and colors to choose from, with optional features. Tate just happened to be the one in my life.

  Virtually every girl and quite a few of the boys wanted him, but he ignored them in favor of paying attention to me. And for the life of me, I couldn’t figure him out.

  Did he want me or not? Was he asexual? Did he not like anyone?

  I was too scared to find out the answers to those questions, so I settled for not asking them. I didn’t want to find out my crush on Tate only went one way.

  I’d also b
een anxious about what would happen after graduation. Our plan was for not much to change. After this summer, Tate and I would keep going to class, hanging out, and perhaps not eating dinner together, but our venue would change to New York City. He’d study International Relations at Columbia. I’d start to build my tweedy, tailored empire at the Fashion Institute of Technology, my first choice school. We’d both leave town.

  Leaving town would coincidentally save me from my underlying fear—peaking in high school. Being like those locals who never stopped talking about the past.

  I wanted to live in the future, one with fashion and food and travel and … Tate.

  For now, though, my desires were simple: one kiss from Tate.

  A serious kiss. No pecks on the cheek. I wanted a real kiss.

  And yes, I wanted him to do it to me.

  Don’t be hating. I could take the initiative and kiss him, but I didn’t want to. After all this ambiguity, I wanted to be sure he wanted me. I needed him to show me he liked me before I did anything stupid that wasn’t reciprocated. Was that too much to ask? I didn’t think so.

  So, I did ask. Sort of.

  On my last birthday a month ago, I blew out eighteen candles and wished for him to make the first move.

  He didn’t.

  If he had, then I’d know for sure I wasn’t misinterpreting any of our interactions, because for all I knew, even after all this time—especially after all this time—Tate just wanted to be friends. The uncertainty drove me to extra purchases of blow pops.

  I might have a tiny candy addiction.

  Still, sometimes I thought he saw me as more, especially when I caught his eyes on me. Like now, as he watched me suck this bright pink lollipop.

  Pretending I didn’t notice his laser-focused attention on me, I tossed a tendril of my long, spirally auburn hair over my shoulder, hoping he’d watch. I was maybe a wee bit vain about my hair, but I couldn’t help it. I adored the compliments.

  My hair didn’t stay in place, though, falling back to where it had been.

  As slyly as possible, I peeked at him through the curtain of my locks to see if the move worked.

  It did. He noticed, judging by the way his mouth paused on an inhale, lips slightly open, breath stuttering to a halt. Of course his classically handsome face distracted me—tan, with a beautiful jawline and cheekbone ridges like the sharp-peaked hills around Sonoma. His blond, wavy hair was nothing to disparage, either—thick and mostly unruly. We locked eyes, and the world held its breath.

  Does his attention mean what I think it means?

  Every time I was about to conclude I’d systematically read our interactions all wrong for years and his interest in me was nothing beyond friends, he did something like this.

  He made me feel wanted.

  But as usual, we both blinked and re-situated, as if we’d been blocking a scene for a school play and now were starting over from the top. I pretended not to preen from his approval, although it warmed me from the inside, pinking my pale cheeks. He bluffed too, staring at his phone, as if he hadn’t just gotten entranced watching me flip my hair. Everything went back to normal again.

  That’s how we roll.

  It sucked monkey balls. Actually, I’d never sucked monkey balls—who had?—so perhaps it sucked like getting to the mushy, gross paper stick at the middle of a lollipop. Yuck.

  “What list?” I repeated.

  “I wanna make a list of what we’re going to do when we’re done with high school,” he explained in his gruff voice.

  Note: I love his rumbly voice.

  “Like, a bucket list?”

  He paused and glanced up from his phone. “No. I don’t wanna call it a bucket list, because I’m not planning on waiting that long, and I’m not kicking the bucket early.”

  I turned over to my back and stared at my bedroom ceiling. Nothing to look at but ceiling, but this position meant I wasn’t staring at Tate. “So it’s an Anti-Bucket List?”

  Then my eyes went to him.

  Tate tilted his head from side to side, contemplating. “I see it as an organizational document to guide future decision-making.” He sat back in my desk chair, scrolling on his phone, like he had a notes app open, but then he set it down and started riffling in my desk drawers. “So, I repeat. What do you wanna do after we graduate?”

  Be with you. “How should I know?”

  “You could start thinking about it.”

  I already know. I want to be with you. “Okay. Umm. Go to New York City.”

  He refrained from rolling his eyes. “You’re such a dork sometimes,” he said, his tone fond. “That’s already on the list. What about when we aren’t in school? We can travel on weekends, holidays. Hell, maybe I’ll talk you into ditching class or taking a semester to study abroad. We can do whatever we want.” The way he growled out “whatever” sounded sexual, and it made me shiver. That shiver was nowhere near platonic.

  I’d never done that, but I didn’t want to put that down on the Anti-Bucket List. I had no idea if he had, and I didn’t want to find out, because it wouldn’t have been with me. I clung to his other words. “Can’t we already do whatever we want? We’re both adults.”

  “And get written up for truancy and hauled before the principal? Or have to explain what we’re doing to our parents? Nah, no thanks. I’m talking about after we leave Merlot. When we’re really free.” He reached out to touch my hand. His long, lean fingers felt warm on my skin.

  He moved his hand back almost too fast for me to register the contact and kept talking. “My mom says we need to make plans, or we won’t live. I don’t wanna wake up at forty-five having never experienced half the things I wanted to do. I want to go on the Orient Express and learn to sail in Denmark and climb mountains in Argentina. As a famous pirate said, if we don’t have a personal map, we’ll never find the treasure.”

  I sat up and narrowed my eyes at him. “No pirate said that.”

  “True.” He grinned, and I laughed, reached over, and shoved his shoulder. He wasn’t that close, and my shove wasn’t very hard. I tried not to linger on the muscly shape of his upper body.

  “You’re the dork.”

  Tate was always planning. And doing. He’d show up with my favorite pizza on a Saturday afternoon or haul me to the BART station to go to the city for an indie movie. I think he liked riding the Bay Area Rapid Transit.

  Or maybe he just liked trains.

  He also brought me presents all the time. A cute new pair of knee-high socks with taco cats on them to wish me luck before an important test. Strawberry-flavored KitKats from Japan because of my obsession with candy. Pink Himalayan salt—that he got in the Himalayas—because, yeah. That was what Tate was like.

  And why he confused me as to whether he was my friend or more than friends.

  Constant gifts equaled more-than-friend behavior. Right?

  God, he made me feel stupid sometimes. Not by anything he said—and he never belittled my intelligence—but because I couldn’t figure him out.

  My dad called him William Randolph Hearst—Hearst’s mother took him to Europe at age ten, which influenced the later construction of Hearst Castle in San Simeon—because he said Tate was the spoiled boy whose parents dragged him everywhere. I usually argued back that Tate had brothers, so he couldn’t be a Hearst, who was an only child. That argument went nowhere.

  Tate remained on his Anti-Bucket List, dragging me from my thoughts. “Start easy. Where do you want me to take you shopping?” He licked his lips, and my brain stumbled to a stop wondering what it would be like to lick his lips.

  “Oh. Lemme think.”

  As I contemplated, I sucked my lollipop, getting dangerously close to the flavor-laden gum in the center. I pretended to think about the future since I was really just wondering what Tate tasted like. But after a moment I had a few things to rattle off.

  “I want to buy gold sparkly Doc Martens in London. Wouldn’t those look amazing with a bouclé jacket and jeans? And go
to F.A.O. Schwartz in New York City for a limited-edition Barbie. If they have one that looks like me, all the better.”

  “Uh huh,” he muttered, scribbling these in a small memo notebook decorated with cats that he’d found in my desk. “Get an Audrey Barbie in NYC. Anything else?” He grinned. “You know I love going with you for retail therapy.”

  He actually did. I’d never met a guy more willing to hang out while I tried on shoes. He usually encouraged me to purchase both pairs of shoes that I liked, not pick one. Once, he even returned to the store to buy a pair I didn’t have enough money for and gave them to me as a present.

  I should marry him just for that. For a brief moment, I imagined what it would be like to wear a white dress and walk down the aisle to Tate wearing a tuxedo, his blond hair and blue eyes shining in the sunlight.

  Of course, not at age eighteen.

  Or before I knew what he was like when he was naked.

  Or before I confirmed he liked me like that.

  “Any other shopping? Or other places to visit?” He asked this as if all I needed to do was just say what I wished and I could have it.

  “All the Harry Potter filming sites in the UK. Venetian glass in Italy. A real Fabergé egg. A meat pie in Australia.”

  “Meat pie?”

  “I heard they’re good.” I shrugged.

  “Any other food?”

  “Sushi in Japan. The more challenging, the better. I want tentacles.”

  The serious look on his face as he concentrated on the page, recording my comments, made my heart swell. But all he said was, “Got it.”