This is the eighth excerpt from AFTER ON: A Novel of Silicon Valley, which will be published August 1st. The first excerpt is right here.
“Heyyy, Champ!” Ellie Jansen’s mahogany eyes glittered merrily as she took her seat one row behind Mitchell in Creative Writing class. Champ. It was an odd sobriquet for a guy with dim college prospects in baseball and none in football. But kindly exaggeration was Ellie’s hallmark. And while a real athletic future would’ve been nice, having Ellie call him “champ” was a fine consolation prize. Although to be clear, it was a thoroughly G-rated delight! Though gorgeous (quite), and charming (utterly), Ellie was the opposite of smutty, and Mitchell had lost all interest in demure cuddling. He was a high school junior with three varsity letters, and his virginity was somewhere between an embarrassment and a flat-out disgrace!
On top of that, he was pretty sure Kuba was hot for Ellie. True, he didn’t know this factually (because you try clawing that sort of fact out of him!). But as Kuba was an odd mix of best friend and SPCA rescue, there was no way Mitchell was about to take any chance, however slim, on breaking his precious, fragile heart! At least not if Ellie wasn’t going to fuck him senseless as part of the deal, and this seemed unlikely. Not that he’d want to do that…
