Love Edy by Shewanda Pugh
Genre: YA Romance
Published: June 24th, 2014
Publisher: Razor’s Edge
When Edy Phelps falls hard for her best friend, she knows nothing can come from it. Forget actual chemistry, or the fact that she cherishes his mother more than her own; centuries of tradition say that Hassan will grow up, marry the girl his parents pick, and forget his best friend: the dancer with the bursting smile. Except he can’t. In a world erupting with possibilities for the boy with a body of steel and dreams of the NFL, everything seems promised while nothing at all is; when he’s denied the girl he wants most.
Two hearts. Two families devoted through generations of friendship. Could Edy and Hassan really risk all that? And yet … how could they not?
Excerpt :
Friday night. The sky hung heavy, seamless, with heaven’s
stars blotted out by overbearing skyscrapers. Shrieks and a cacophony of cheers
rang out, hysteria supreme in a microscopic stadium rocking on the edge of
Boston’s South End. Thin and buckling bleachers rattled with the stomps of
impending mania, shrill whistles and hefty shouts: those were the true sounds
of redemption. Fourteen years and not a single touchdown against Madison High;
fourteen years, but no more.
It had come at the hands of a freshman running back who
couldn’t stop moving, a last-minute, fidgeting substitution. To others, his
appearance must have seemed a concession, but Edy Phelps knew better. Edy
Phelps knew him better.
He was hunger and discipline, jittery and ravenous, so
rattled that nerves kept him shifting and stretching and pacing along the
sidelines. Obsession fueled him, and kept him keen on an opportunity unwilling
to come. Except that night, chance
came to Hassan Pradhan. His chance. Finally.
It happened in a breath. A snap of the ball. A fake pass and
Hassan thundered downfield at a speed only fear could sustain. His moment. His
only moment. Take it. Take it. Run. Fly.
He could hear her
thoughts—no, feel her thoughts. Edy was sure of it. They’d always had a
connection. And it was in that way she aided him. Fists pressed to her lips,
teeth slammed together, screaming with her soul. Soar. I know you can do it.
Just as the clock whittled to nothing, Hassan vaulted into
the end zone.
A collective roar swallowed Edy and the crowd leapt as one.
A win. Few would recall the last.
On her left, Hassan’s parents cheered: mother in a starched
linen suit and pumps too prim for a game, father in a white button-up, belly
pressing the fabric, sleeves rolled to the elbow. His mother, Rani, was without
the brilliant red bindi she couldn’t do without, giving her forehead that naked
look. On Edy’s opposite end were her parents, their absolute best friends, in
the long-sleeved alumni tees reserved for football season, mother free of the
skirt suits that dictated her days. Edy abandoned them all for the sidelines,
for Hassan. She weaved round patches of shrieking upperclassmen, hopped over
rows of empty benches, apologized to the fat man whose cocoa she sloshed, and
ignored the slice of a sudden, early winter wind.
He’d done it.
All those nights, all those talks, round and round about the
possibility of getting in a game, the two of them in bedroom shadows, careful
to keep their voices low. Some nights he thought a chance would never come;
others, he insisted it had to. Either way, he always said that if it did, when
it did, he would do something worth remembering. And he had.
At the sidelines, Edy’s gaze swept a team clustered so
thick, so honeyed together with the sweetness of victory, that she worried she
might never find her neighbor, her best friend.
Ice cut the air, and the glare of stadium lights had her
like an ant under a magnifying glass in the noonday sun. She remembered the way
the Dyson twins would burn insects and snicker, and she thought no, she’d be
hot if she were a tortured ant, not cold. The fog of her breath seconded her
motion.
She spotted him.
Edy had come to hug someone already occupied, someone
surrounded by sweeping blonde curls, dark curtains of perfect hair, nestled by
an endless supply of short skirts. Hassan draped an easy arm around a
cheerleader with shimmering flaxen locks, mouth curling into a grin when a
brunette of with pouty lips cried foul and claimed him as her own. Soft tans
and the curves of certain womanhood donned them both. Edy looked from them to
her own angular body and knew what she would find: all edges and sharpness,
slender, muscles sculpted from a life of dance. The baggy jeans, football
jersey, and sloppy poof of a ponytail she wore didn’t give her much to run with
either. That hair used to be the brunt of Hassan’s endless jokes. Big enough to
tip you back,” he’d say, before tugging it in absentminded affection. She
fingered that hair with the same sort of absent- -mindedness, before looking up
to see a blonde plant rosy lips on Hassan’s cheek.
Ugh.
Edy didn’t care about the movies, the books, the popular
culture that insisted football player and cheerleader, jock and pretty girl,
were a natural sort of fit. It wasn’t. They weren’t. It absolutely
couldn’t be.
A girl like that couldn’t understand what made him him.
So what if he was . . . obscenely
gorgeous, with sun-licked bronze skin, silken black locks, and eyes an
ever-glimmering, gold-flecked green. He had a quiet sort of beauty, made for
old Greek sculptures and timeless works of art. Not that he was quiet. He was explosive, with good looks and
athleticism. But beyond that were pleasures and disappointments, what he loved
and could not bear. Imprinted on Edy’s mind were the crinkles at the corner of
Hassan’s eyes when he smiled, the clench of his jaw when irritation set in, the
rich and sonorous laugh that had slipped octaves lower in recent years. A girl
like that blonde could be nothing to him—could know nothing of him. She
knew a moment and a touchdown. That was it.
Edy’s hands made fists.
The blonde moved in to kiss his cheek again, just as a
teammate shouted his name. Hassan jerked back, only to be caught at the corner
of his mouth by her lips.
A whoop rang out from the guys.
Heat flushed Edy’s veins and her fingernails dug, digging,
digging, until tears blurred her vision.
Wait.
He was her best friend, family really, if you considered the
way they were brought up. So, she really had no reason to—
The blonde threw her arms around Hassan. The team swarmed
and the two disappeared from sight.
They were kissing, weren’t they?
Edy closed her eyes, forcing back the hottest tears and the
bitterest taste of sudden envy.
She loved him. Dear
God, she loved her best friend.
It fell down on her at once, uncompromising truth and the
weight of reality like a cloak too heavy to bear.
The boy that had grown by her side, promised to another in a
tradition as old as marriage itself, another girl of his ethnicity, religion,
beliefs: that’s the boy she loved. A single line existed between Edy’s family
and his, between the Pradhans and Phelps, who otherwise acted as one.
But Edy loved him.
And, of course, there was no recourse for that.
About the Author:
Shewanda Pugh is a tomboy who credits Stephen King with being the reason she writes romance. In 2012 she debuted with the first novel in a three part contemporary adult romance series, Crimson Footprints. Since then, she’s been shortlisted for the AAMBC Reader’s Choice Award, the National Black Book Festival’s Best New Author Award, and the Rone Award for Contemporary Fiction in 2012 and 2013. She has an MA in Writing from Nova Southeastern University and a BA in Political Science from Alabama A&M University. Though a native of Boston, MA, she now lives in Miami, FL, where she can soak up sun rays without fear of shivering. Her first young adult romance, Love Edy, is scheduled for release on June 24th, 2014.
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