ONE WEEK UNTIL BREAKING TACKLES IS ON SALE AND OUT IN THE WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!
Which means that you still have to wait a week. Which means that today you get a new teaser!
One thing that my teasers thus far haven’t touched on is one of the main plot lines of the book—Courtney’s weight loss. I haven’t talked it up a ton because I don’t want BT to come across as An Issue Book. But then I realized that that’s bullshit. I need to talk about the fact that this book is, in part, about a slightly insecure young woman facing monumental life changes who is dealing with both self-esteem and body image issues.
Because feeling insecure or self-conscious or unconfident isn’t An Issue. It’s normal. We all have self-esteem and body image issues. It’s something that needs to be discussed, both in fiction and real life.
So this week’s teaser hits more on that side of the book. And it features the entire girl squad. Including one Ana Cabral.
Happy reading!
“Lord,” I say, looking at the photo of me. “Is that what I really look like in this dress?”
“What do you mean?” Willa asks. “You look great.”
“I look like a cow.”
“Oh, stop,” Sophie says. “You look amazing in that dress and you know it. And Adam knows it.”
“Girl,” Kate says. “You looked smokin’ last night. Everyone was talking about it.”
I roll my eyes.
“No, seriously,” she continues. “Everyone online kept saying how gorgeous you looked.”
“What?” I nearly scream.
“Yeah,” she says. “I think there was a blogger who put you in the top twenty hottest girlfriends of the draft.”
“Please tell me that’s a lie.”
“It isn’t,” Willa says.
“You’ve seen it, too?”
“I might have a Google Alert for Adam,” she says. When we all look at her without saying anything she says, “I don’t read that much about sports! I just wanted to know what was going on with him without having to freaking Google him every time. So I set up a Google Alert.”
“You’re such a nerd,” Ana says to Willa, before turning to me. “This is the kind of thing that’s going to happen a lot from now on. Just do your best to ignore it if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“I guess I just never thought that anyone would talk about me,” I say. “The attention should be on Adam.”
“But you and Adam are a package now,” Ana says. “So, like it or not, there’s going to be some attention on you, too.”
I mull that over before I realize exactly what Kate said.
“I made top twenty hottest girlfriends?” I ask.
“Yeah you did,” Kate says. “Let me pull the article up.”
We crowd around her phone, and sure enough, there I am at number eighteen.
After Adam Kistler and his girlfriend, Courtney Narducci, made their relationship status public, we were used to seeing the tomboy University of Missouri student dressed down. But she sure does clean up nice!
Beneath that is a photo of me from last night next to one of me in a Mizzou jersey and jeans, standing in the bleachers at a game. My hair is pulled back in a ponytail and I have on not a trace of lipstick. I’m wearing sunglasses in the photo, so what they don’t know is that I wasn’t wearing any makeup at all.
I usually don’t. I’m not good at putting it on and it makes my face feel weird.
“Where the hell did they get this photo of me?” I ask, pointing at the one of me in the jersey.
“The photo credit is from AP,” Sophie says.
“What is AP?”
“The Associated Press,” she says. “They have freelance photographers cover loads of events every day and upload their photos to their server. Then news sources pay for the photos to run alongside stories.”
“So what you’re saying is that there have been photographers taking photos of me for months now.”
Sophie shrugs as if it’s no big deal. “Apparently.”
I look back at the article and don’t know what to think. I feel like my privacy has been violated somehow, but know that I shouldn’t feel that way. I was in a public place. I just wish I had known professional photographers were taking pictures of me.
Kate pulls up another photo of me and Adam from last night. “God, your hair looks so great.”
“Thanks to Willa’s mom,” I say. “She made an appointment for me at some fancy salon called John Barrett.”
“Seriously?” Willa and Ana yell at the same time, clearly aware of the Bergdorf Goodman salon.
“She asked if I needed help getting ready before the draft and I told her that I was just going to put my dress and heels on, and maybe a little mascara. Then she told me that since this was a special occasion, it called for special pampering and made the appointment.”
“How was it?” Willa asks.
“It was fancy,” I say. “I felt weird and out of place.”
“Well, you looked absolutely incredible,” Kate says. “Did you buy any of the products they used?”
I shake my head. It never even dawned on me to ask.
“That’s okay,” she says. “We can go raid Sephora and have a beauty night.”
“That isn’t really my thing,” I say. They know this about me. I mean, I like getting ready to go out with them every now and then, but the idea of sitting around and playing with hair and makeup sounds, well, stupid.
“Please?” Kate asks, pouting. “It would be so much fun.”
“I could go for a makeover,” Sophie says. “I’m sick of my hair. I’m actually thinking about chopping it off.”
Thankfully, that takes the attention away from me and I’m able to try to process everything that’s happened in the last forty-eight hours.
As I attempt to wrap my brain around the fact that not only is Adam moving to New Orleans, I suddenly feel bone tired.
Like, can’t-keep-my-eyelids-from-closing tired.
“Hey, guys? I think I’m going to head to bed.”
Willa looks at the clock and says, “Yeah, it is getting pretty late. We’ll move out into the living room so that you can get some sleep.”
Once they’re out of the room, I snuggle into Willa’s bed, feeling a little bad about kicking her out of her own room, but I’m asleep before I’m able to reconsider the arrangement.
The next morning, I wake up with the thought that I was number eighteen. On the day that I looked the best I ever have in my life, I was only eighteen.
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