Thick & Thin (Chubby Girl Chronicles Book 3) Read online

  Thick & Thin

  Copyright © 2020 by Tabatha Vargo

  All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events or real people used are fictitious. Other names, characters, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Thick & Thin/ Tabatha Vargo

  Cover Art by Regina Wamba/MaeiDesigns

  Editing Services Provided by Editing 4 Indies

  Formatting provided by Tabatha Vargo

  Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9861173-7-4

  For Jax-

  My rainbow baby and the sweetest of the sweet.

  Joshua Black.

  What can I say about him?

  He was my best friend until he wasn’t.

  He was my childhood until I was no longer a child.

  Now he’s something else entirely.

  A man instead of a boy—a soldier instead of a high school quarterback.

  He’s forbidden thoughts and secret desires.

  Our situation has changed and so have I.

  I’m no longer the love-sick tomboy he left behind. I’m a woman with needs, a secret, and an extra fifty pounds.

  We promised through thick and thin, but I’m not sure how thin the lines are or how thick he’s willing to go.

  Also from Tabatha Vargo!

  The Chubby Girl Chronicles

  On the Plus Side

  Hot and Heavy

  Thick & Thin

  The Sons of Sinister Series

  Shattered Skull

  Dirty Saint

  Ruthless Crow

  Joker’s Wild

  The Blow Hole Boys

  The Blow Hole Rock Hard Box Set

  Playing Patience (Zeke)

  Perfecting Patience 1.5 (Zeke)

  Finding Faith (Finn)

  Convincing Constance (Tiny)

  Having Hope (Chet)

  The Black Trilogy

  Little Black Beginning

  Little Black Book

  Little Black Break

  Little Black Box Set

  Standalones

  Slammer

  Black Sheep

  Vanilla & Vice

  Vengeance & Virtue

  1

  Jenny Michaels

  It was scorching outside. The kind of heat where dumbasses would try to do stupid shit like bake cookies on the dash of their truck or cook an egg on their hood. The summer before, a guy in town put steaks out on the tailgate of his truck and let them cook all day. He had the balls to eat them, too. Used steak sauce and everything as if he had grilled them himself on a charcoal grill.

  Again … stupid.

  The month of May in South Carolina wasn’t usually hot and suffocating. It was the exit of spring on the verge of welcoming summer, which meant cool nights and warm days, but that changed when the rainstorms rolled through. The moisture in the air made it feel hotter and sent the humidity skyrocketing. It had been raining every other day for the past month, so the humidity was extreme.

  The good news was, lots of rain also meant tons of mud, which Josh, my best friend, and I loved. His truck, which had recently been painted black, was covered in it. The dried mud was crusted around the wheel wells, chipping off and into the wind as we drove the backcountry roads.

  The day before, we spent hours getting bogged down and pulled out. We had on boots and jeans, and my ponytail stuck out the back of a trucker hat I had stolen from behind Josh’s truck seat. There was laughter and mud fights—tires rolling through the brown sludge surrounding us until we caught a dry spot that was thick enough and climbed our way out.

  Afterward, when I got home from playing in the mud, you couldn’t even see what I was wearing. My jeans were caked in mud, my shirt covered, and my bra full. It had taken me nearly thirty minutes to get the mud out of my hair later in the shower.

  Good times.

  We pulled up next to a group of familiar cars, and Josh put his truck in park. Vaughn, a friend from school, popped his head into the driver’s side window and pushed playfully at the side of Josh’s head.

  “What’s up, fuckface? ’Bout time y’all got here. What took so long?” he asked.

  Vaughn was a beast on and off the football field. His height alone was scary, but he was also wider than your average high schooler. He lived in the gym, but I had once heard his size had more to do with steroids than with the weights.

  “You asked for beer. We brought beer. Help me get the shit out the back.”

  Josh popped the door open, the hinges screaming out with age, and climbed down. Vaughn stuck half of his massive body inside the truck with me.

  “You got the good shit?” he asked.

  “We aren’t in the middle of a drug deal, Vaughn. It’s just beer.”

  Reaching between my legs, I grabbed the twelve-pack of beer and held it up.

  “Good girl. That’s a good girl.” He spoke to me as though he was talking to a dog.

  I set the beer down on the floorboard and pretended something had my hand.

  “Something’s got me!” I called out, acting as though my hand was being pulled beneath the truck seat.

  Vaughn’s eyes went wide. “Oh, shit. What is it?” he asked, ready to climb into the truck and help me.

  I pulled my hand up with my middle finger in the air. “It’s this.”

  He sighed and leaned back, shaking his head. “Smartass.”

  And then he was gone, leaving me alone in the front seat while he helped Josh at the tailgate. My eyes traveled over the road we had just pulled off. Foggy waves of steam rose from the asphalt like a mirage in a movie. A short shower had passed when we were on the way to the river, leaving the streets sizzling and the humidity unbearable.

  My skin felt wet, and my ponytail had become a frizzy mess. Quickly, I slid the tie from my hair and smoothed it down before pulling it back up. I tugged at my T-shirt, hoping to let some cool air under it, but no matter what, I couldn’t cool off. I had on a bathing suit, but I had never been comfortable showing my body. So, T-shirts and shorts it was.

  I climbed from the passenger side of Josh’s lifted Ford and slid on my flip-flops. I rarely wore shoes in Josh’s truck, instead opting to rest my bare feet on the dash while we rode through town with the windows down. He didn’t mind. At least, he never said he did. I think he secretly liked how comfortable I was in his truck. I was the only person in the world he would let drive it on occasion. I had dibs on Josh, and his passenger seat was my spot. Everyone knew it.

  The space where everyone was parked wasn’t technically a parking lot, but the top of the hill over St. John’s River was right off the road. People had parked there for years, and after years of teenagers doing the very same thing we were here to do today, an easy walking path to the water had been cleared.

  Senior skip day.

  It was a rite of passage. At least that’s what Josh said to talk me into going along. To me, it was just like any other day I decided to skip and hang out on the river, but I guessed since the entire senior class was coming along, it was a party.

  Usually I was there with a fishing pole and some worms, but this was an entirely different event. Everyone brought floats, some people linking their floats together with rope, and coolers full of cold drinks sat on floats and were tied together for everyone. We would float the river with our feet dangling in the
water and the sun on our legs.

  “You want me to carry that?” Josh asked, nodding toward the twelve-pack of Budweiser I pulled from the floorboard.

  I rolled my eyes, hating when he treated me like I was weak, and let my shades fall over my eyes in answer. He chuckled and shook his head, knowing I would never accept his help. Even if the beer had been heavy, I never would have admitted it.

  “Guess that’s a no,” he muttered.

  Technically, I couldn’t buy alcohol, none of us could, but Glen, the old man who ran the country corner store in town, was too old to care. Not to mention, even if he did attempt to ID us, everyone in town knew the man couldn’t see for shit.

  The tailgate on Josh’s truck squeaked with age when he pulled it down, and the truck bed lowered when he leaped inside to push the small Styrofoam cooler to the edge and grab our towels and floats. Vaughn took the cooler and towels, leaving Josh to carry our two floats. Once we collected our stuff, he locked his truck, and we started toward the path behind the large group of seniors ready to get trashed and celebrate the end of high school.

  The Carolina sun blazed, burning our backs as we maneuvered our way down the steep hill to the water. The weight of the twelve-pack of Bud, my contribution to our end of the year shindig, tugged my arm down at my side and knocked against my hip with every step I took. I wouldn’t drink the nasty shit, but the guys liked it. While everyone else got trashed, I was usually the designated driver for Josh. I didn’t mind it. I wasn’t much for drinking, but I did like to make sure my best friend made it home safely.

  I pushed my aviator shades back against the bridge of my nose when they began to slip and then looked back to make sure Josh was close behind me. He was walking alongside Brandy, one of the less annoying females in the senior class and the prom queen to Josh’s crown. They had never dated, but it seemed everyone, including the staff at school, liked to link them together.

  She wasn’t too bad, I supposed, and the guys liked to look at her. Her highlighted hair was in a messy bun. She was wearing a two-piece, the straps of her top wrapped around her neck, and her flat sun-kissed stomach was on show. Her jean shorts covered her bottoms except for the strings that stuck out at the sides.

  She laughed at whatever he was saying, her perfect white teeth blinding me, while she pushed his arm playfully. It was obvious she had a thing for him, but then again, most girls had a thing for him.

  Joshua Black.

  What could I say about him?

  The ladies loved him. The guys wanted to be him, which was the most cliché thing ever, but it was true. Hell, the entire town fawned over him. He was my best friend, and I knew him better than he knew himself, yet Josh was much more than my friend.

  He was my first time riding a bike and making mud pies in my backyard. He was summer days fishing and mudding with four-wheelers behind my house and lying in the grass watching the lightning bugs blink in the darkness around us. He was the reason I knew how to ride a horse and spent days playing in the hay on his daddy’s farm. He was video games and candy. He was everything—my childhood and my life for as long as I could remember.

  Even though it was exciting to be graduating from high school and growing up, I was terrified of what that meant for Josh and me. Who were we if we weren’t getting into trouble and bogging in the mud? If we weren’t teasing Vaughn about his size or getting crazy at the pep rally?

  I didn’t know who I was without Josh, and I didn’t know who he was without me. It was scary, and nothing scared me.

  I looked back once more, taking him in from the top of his ball cap, which was turned backward, to his strong feet, covered in a pair of Adidas slides. I couldn’t help myself when I grinned. Josh was beautiful, though I would never tell him that. His head would likely explode if I did. While he was my best friend in the entire world, that hadn’t stopped me from noticing how fine his contribution to the female eye was.

  He had taken off his shirt and slung it over his shoulder. He too was wearing aviator shades so I couldn’t see his eyes, but it didn’t matter anyway since he was facing Brandy as she talked animatedly at his side. The bill of his hat was curved in with a thick fisherman’s hook stuck on the side, and while everyone else was already wearing their swim trunks, his were peeking over the waist of his ripped jeans.

  His hair was wild and sticking out from beneath his hat from having the windows down on the backcountry roads, and his skin was tan even though we hadn’t reached summer yet. His skin was always a brown tone, no matter the season, but that probably had something to with the fact that he worked on the farm in the sun every day. We didn’t really get winters in South Carolina, which meant sometimes it could get hot enough in December for him to have to take his shirt off while he was working, and it showed.

  My eyes slid over his wide shoulders, thickened from weight training during his final season of high school football, before dipping over his chest and washboard abs. Dark hair trailed beneath his navel, dipping into his jeans and the blue and white trunks beneath them. His clothes hung loosely from his hips, showing just enough of the cut outs on his sides. I exhaled, wishing I could rid my mind of the thoughts that filled my head lately.

  Thoughts like Josh’s lips on mine.

  His hands on my body.

  It felt unnatural to think these things about my best friend, yet my body agreed so perfectly with the sins of my mind.

  Josh has changed over the years, going from a skinny boy with a bird chest and a gapped smile to a teenager on the brink of manhood. He grew tall, his chest wide and hard. His hair, which has always been unruly, grew darker and his eyes more intense. His voice was deep, rumbling like a dark cloud across my skin every time he spoke to me. It was unbearable, and I found myself thinking about skipping out on our usual activities.

  It was a slow change; one I didn’t see coming. I had seen him almost every day for the past twelve years. We had grown up together—meeting in elementary school, the years when we refined our mud pie-making skills, before tackling middle school, the time in our lives when after school meant lounging in his room and playing video games until my daddy called me home. Once we entered high school, our best friend status was known county-wide, and together, we dominated West Ridge High School.

  Well, it was more like he dominated, being the hot quarterback and all. I was in by association since I was the best friend. He could have become the golden boy and left me in the dust, but he didn’t. Instead, he pulled me along to every game. Every party. Every event. No matter how much I hated being social.

  We were opposites in so many ways but alike at the same time. While he was being the playboy, I was his wing woman, which meant girls only befriended me to be close to Josh. The guys treated me like one of the team, even slapping my ass after a winning game as though I had been on the field with them. It didn’t bother me. Even if I was feminine and the guys saw me as a girl, they still wouldn’t dare come near me. Though none of them would admit it, every one of them was afraid to get on the bad side of my big brother, Devin, who was known around town as lethal.

  That had been our life for the past twelve years … school, life, and fun, but always together unless I was working at the garage with Daddy and Devin. On those days, Josh worked the horses on his parents’ farm, which was less than five miles away from my house.

  Josh and I had a rhythm, and we were comfortable in that beat until our vibe changed sophomore year. At least, it changed for me. Josh got his first real girlfriend that year, a chick named Amanda who had more boobs than brains. The jealousy and anger of losing my best friend’s attention pushed me into doing something I would have never done before.

  I went on my first date with Justin.

  Little did I know, my date with Justin was to a house party full of people old enough to drink. Justin was a heavy drinker and passed out on the stairs, leaving me to fend for myself in a house full of drunken men. I ended up in the hospital and almost got my now sister-in-law, Lilly, killed when two
guys decided they wanted to try to take from me.

  Even now, two years later, I could taste their forced kisses and feel their touches on my skin. It was a night I refused to talk about—a night I pushed to the back of my brain and locked away—a night that changed me forever.

  Jealous and angry or not, dating wasn’t something I was ever going to bother with again. It wasn’t until our senior year and Josh’s fifth girlfriend that I realized my jealousy stemmed less from sharing my best friend’s attention and more from me wanting the part of Josh his girlfriends were getting.

  I stopped paying attention to his highest scores on our favorite games and started noticing other things like the way his ab muscles flexed when he threw the ball or the way his football pants hugged his perfect ass. How he calmed a horse with soothing strokes and how sexy he looked when he rinsed off with the water hose by the barn and shook his dark hair dry.

  These were all things I never mentioned to anyone. It was hard enough to admit those things to myself. And when those nasty little thoughts of Josh’s smile or laugh, of his body or the way he looked when he was hot and sweaty, began to creep into my mind, I would push them away and try to replace them with disgusting things only I knew about him. Like how he once ate a beetle on a dare or peed the bed until he was seven. Our junior year, he puked out the window of Marshal Wade’s truck after drinking too much at a party and sprayed the car behind us with chunks of pizza.

  Thinking these things worked.

  Kind of.

  My flip-flop caught on a rock, and I stumbled, but before I could fall, Jimmy Jones, aka JJ, caught my arm. He grinned down at me, his eyes moving across my T-shirt covered boobs, and I jerked my arm away.

  “Whoa, Scrappy. I was just making sure you didn’t trip and drop the beer.”

  I had earned the name Scrappy our freshman year when I had climbed over the lunch table to punch Jody Samuels for calling my dad an alcoholic. Sure, he was a drunk, but only Devin and I could call him that.