The First Date Dilemma: Brazos High, #5

By Amy Sparling

Brooke and Oliver are best friends. They're also both single. The infamous Brazos City Winter Ball is in just a few weeks, and it's guaranteed to be the most romantic event of senior year. As excited as they are, there's just one big problem: Brooke and Oliver don't have dates yet.

Brooke promises to find Oliver his perfect match and Oliver promises to do the same for her. With the Winter ball just around the corner, the race is on to find perfect dates for each other. Only each girl Brooke introduces to Oliver is a total bust, and each guy Oliver introduces to Brooke is the worst possible match ever.

Do these two best friends not know each other as well as they thought they did?

Or are Brooke and Oliver too scared to admit the truth?

The Brazos High Romance Series is a collection of flirty, sweet young adult novellas that each feature a different couple. They can be read in any order. Download your copy now and dive into this heartwarming romance!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amy Sparling
• Release date: Aug 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223599715

Amy Sparling

Amy Sparling is the bestselling author of books for teens and the teens at heart. She lives on the coast of Texas with her family, her spoiled rotten pets, and a huge pile of books. She graduated with a degree in English and has worked at a bookstore, coffee shop, and a fashion boutique. Her fashion skills aren't the best, but luckily she turned her love of coffee and books into a writing career that means she can work in her pajamas. Her favorite things are coffee, book boyfriends, and Netflix binges.  She's always loved reading books from R. L. Stine's Fear Street series, to The Baby Sitter's Club series by Ann, Martin, and of course, Twilight. She started writing her own books in 2010 and now publishes several books a year. 

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

BROOKE

The sunlight peers into my bedroom window, casting a gorgeous golden glow on my pile of books. This is bad. Sure, the sunlight is beautiful and all that, but it’s bad because sunlight means I’m running late. The perfect time to walk out the door in December is just before the sun rises. Any later, and my teacher will send me to the office for a tardy slip. Tardy slips mean detention.

I am Brooke Holiday. And Brooke Holiday does not get detention.

Crap, I mutter as I frantically run the hair dryer through my bangs, desperate to make the strands dry enough to look cute and not frizzy. I thought I had enough time to re-dye the hot pink long bangs that frame my face this morning, but clearly I did not. My natural hair is light brown, cut in a straight line a few inches below my shoulders. It’s usually strait and shiny, but sometimes frizzy, depending on the weather.

Before the first day of my senior year of high school a few months ago, I had taken the plunge and dyed my bangs hot pink. I don’t have short bangs, just long feathery layers that frame my face. Those are pink now. Brazos High School stopped banning wild hair colors a few years ago, and my mom doesn’t really care what I do—she thinks I’m too much of a goody-two-shoes to do anything truly bad—so I went for it. I became the girl with hot pink bangs. It’s pretty sweet. I’ve made more friends this way, now that more people don’t see me as the nerdy future librarian.

Now they see me as the nerdy future librarian with pink hair.

In a rush, I finish my hair, slip on my shoes, grab a granola bar from the kitchen and rush out the door. Mom has already left for work, so I know I’m really late. Usually I leave a few minutes before she does.

Oliver sits on the wooden bench on my front porch. His eyes are closed, head tilted to the side.

Wake up, I say, kicking his foot with mine. We’re going to be late.

Oliver’s head jerks up, his eyes blinking a few times from beneath his black-rimmed glasses. Your hair is pink.

It’s been pink for months now.

He yawns and stands up, slinging his backpack over his shoulder. Yeah, but now it’s pinker.

I did a touch up to make the color more vibrant. Why are you sleeping on my porch?

I guess I fell asleep waiting for you.

You could have knocked on the door, I say with a snort.

He shrugs. I didn’t think you would take this long. But once college starts, I am not missing out on the lecture if you’re running late.

Oliver is my best friend. Well, my best guy friend. I have plenty of girl friends, like Talia and Haylee, but I’m closer with Oliver than anyone else. We’ve been neighbors at the Lake Brazos Condos since we were born. We both have single moms and they’ve been best friends since before Oliver and I were born. I guess you could say it was destined that we’d be best friends, especially since we were born only two months apart, me coming into this world last and therefore, the younger, cooler one.

(Oliver would object, but he’d be wrong.)

We’re both seniors at Brazos High and we both got into the same college, although we’ll be on slightly different career paths. I am going for my Master’s in Library Science so that I can spend my adult life being surrounded by books all day. Oliver will also be surrounded by books, but in a more capitalistic way. He’s getting a degree in business ownership because his heart is set on owning Brazos City’s only (and therefore best) bookshop and café. He wants to do what Barnes and Noble does by combining a coffee shop and book store, but he wants to do it better. Make it be some cool place for people to hang out, socialize, and buy books.

Since the first two years of college are boring mandatory classes, we’ll probably have the same schedule for a while. It’ll be fun, because despite growing up in the same school district, Oliver and I have rarely ever had classes together over the years. I get the feeling he would make a great study partner because he’s a huge nerd, in an academic way. Not the cool way of being a nerd like yours truly.

Yep…I’m extremely cool, bookish, nerdy but fun. And I have the hair to prove it.

Oliver on the other hand… is power walking to school in the hopes of not being late. He’s tall, with light brown skin and dark hair that he always keeps neatly trimmed by going to the hair salon every two weeks. Those black-rimmed glasses make him look smart; not that he needs it because he is smart. He’s nerdy, for sure. A total book nerd. But I don’t care because he’s also a great friend and an amazing person.

Thanks to his power walking, I slip into my chair right when the bell rings in my first class of the day. Saved from getting detention! Any my hair looks great, too! I’m feeling like today will be awesome until just before the bell rings for lunch and I realize I forgot my wallet at home. I am not someone who can just skip lunch and be fine. I’ll be starving and grumpy all day if I don’t eat something.

I text Oliver.

Me: Hey…. Best buddy… amazing awesome and perfect friend of mine…

Oliver: lol, what do you need?

Me: lunch money?

He agrees to buy me lunch today, knowing I’m good for the cash to repay him. We meet up in the English hallway and walk toward the cafeteria together. The hallway is always crowded this time of day, but it’s even worse today. We get stuck at the back of a crowd that’s making their way into the cafeteria, slowly shuffling forward while my stomach grumbles its dissatisfaction about being late for food.

A booming male voice echoes through the hall, but it’s not until we get a little closer that I can tell what’s going on. Some guy—I can’t remember his name, but he’s one of Mark Caputo’s friends—stands on top of a chair holding up a posterboard. By the looks of his ugly posterboard that’s written with a thin marker line, he put zero thought into his new business venture, something he’s calling Ball-posal.

Get your ball-posal here, he calls out, shaking his poster, which has cheap metal bells taped to it. "Don’t miss out on the infamous