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    1986: Why Can't This Be Love
    1986: Why Can't This Be Love
    1986: Why Can't This Be Love
    Ebook97 pages1 hour

    1986: Why Can't This Be Love

    By R.K. Ryals

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    About this ebook

    Spring break her junior year is supposed to be Tori Allen's chance to catch the eye of wicked hot Corey Sanders, the bouncer at The Cube, an eighteen and under club.

    Only what should have been a night to remember turns into a grody tryst that chases her into the arms of inner city boy, Dylan Black.

    A malfunctioning photo booth, a crazy game of midnight madness bowling, and suddenly her memorable night becomes one totally rad adventure.

    *************
    1986: Why Can't This Be Love by R.K. Ryals is Book 6 in the Love in the 80s series produced by WaWa Productions. All of the contemporary romance novellas are stand-alones.
    Other titles in the series include:
    1980: You Shook Me All Night Long by Casey L Bond
    1981: Jessie's Girl by Lindy Zart
    1982: Maneater by Cambria Hebert
    1983: Cruel Summer by Amber Lynn Natusch
    1984: Against All Odds by Rebecca Yarros
    1985: Careless Whisper by Misty Provencher

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWaWa Productions
    Release dateJul 29, 2016
    ISBN9781311917157
    1986: Why Can't This Be Love
    Author

    R.K. Ryals

    Born in Jackson, Mississippi, R. K. Ryals is a scatterbrained mother of three whose passion is reading whatever she can get her hands on. She makes her home in Mississippi with her husband, three daughters, a Shitzsu named Tinkerbell, and a coffeepot she couldn't live without.

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      Book preview

      1986 - R.K. Ryals

      prologue

      "Ooh, baby, anytime my world gets crazy

      All I have to do, to calm it

      Is just think of you."

      ~When I think of you by Janet Jackson~

      A note fell on my desk, neatly folded, the paper pulling me out of my thoughts, and I knew immediately by the scent—mandarin and citrus—who it was from. The strains of internal music playing incessantly in my head—Janet Jackson totally understood me—faded, relegated to the land of daydreams.

      Glancing up, I caught Lisa Erickson’s eye. She was leaning over, her teased, curly blonde hair falling over her shoulder, her lemon-colored dress flaring with the movement, the yellow bangles on her wrist clanking together.

      I sniffed the note. Really? I mouthed.

      She shrugged, grinning. Lisa was a Liz Claiborne kind of girl, every neon-embossed inch of her. She even sprayed perfume on her underwear … you know, just in case.

      The note read: The Cube tonight?

      It was the last day of school before spring break, the knowledge infecting the room with excitement. Feet shifted anxiously on the floor, colorful fingernails tapped the desktops, and soft chatter infiltrated the space. Our history teacher, Mrs. Miller, gave up shushing us. Honestly, she was as antsy as we were.

      It had been a bleak new year, the NASA Challenger disaster in January casting a somber shadow over the entire nation. Everyone had tuned into the televised launch, too many eyes on the spacecraft when it exploded, killing all seven crew members aboard including a teacher, Christa McAuliffe. It didn’t matter that most of us didn’t know the astronauts personally. The sick feeling was there lurking in our hearts.

      The memory of Ronald Reagan’s speech, done in place of the scheduled State of the Union address, rang like an echo through the halls, especially the part where he addressed the students.

      And I want to say something to the school children of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle’s takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It’s all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It’s all part of taking a chance and expanding man’s horizons. The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave …

      His speech had stuck with me, firing up my blood. I wanted to do something significant after high school, to find a way to alter the world somehow. I wanted to make the world stronger, even if it meant getting hurt in the process.

      The tragedy taught me that.

      Hell, my mother taught me that. In her time, she’d been an activist, protesting anything she thought was wrong. She hadn’t just followed in the footsteps of revolutionaries, she’d started revolutions. In comparison, I felt weak. Like I was trying to squeeze my foot into a giant’s footprint.

      This spring break, coming on the heels of the disaster, felt bigger than past spring breaks. We all needed to feel alive. I needed to feel alive.

      Not bothering to write a reply, I leaned forward, a smile stealing my lips. Tonight, Corey Sanders is totally mine, I hissed.

      I mean, change has to start somewhere, right? Tiny feet and all.

      Corey Sanders, a college boy with a bodacious bod, was the bouncer at The Cube, an eighteen and under club next to the bowling alley in town. I’d been crushing on him all year but had been too afraid to approach him. Not anymore. Tonight, everything changes.

      Let’s try and keep it down! Mrs. Miller admonished, no bite to her words.

      The clock in the room ticked, each second slower than the last. We watched it, fingers and feet tapping.

      This sucks, Judd Ferris murmured behind me, his long legs kicking the back of my chair.

      Across the room, Farrah Garret dropped her head, throwing a curtain of hair over her face before unleashing a can of hairspray on the strands.

      God, Farrah! Duke Nelson growled, fanning his face.

      She threw him a look, swapping the hairspray for lipstick. I’ve got places to go once we get out of here.

      Planning on riding my joystick, sweetheart? he teased, winking.

      As if. She pretended to gag.

      Judd kicked the back of my chair again. I scooted my desk forward and he stretched his long legs, his perfectly pegged jeans peering up at me from the floor. I won’t lie, I envied him his tight-rolled hem. Mine never looked right.

      Maps covered the back wall, colorful parts of the world taped to tan cinder blocks. A Hands Across America poster drooped next to a large picture of Europe. The clock on the wall ticked.

      At the back of the room, someone flipped through a magazine, the sound amplified by the students’ tension.

      Flip, flip … tick, tick, tick …

      The bell rang, shrill and loud.

      Judd shot to his feet, fist pumping the air. Let’s bounce!

      Lisa caught my arm. Your house. You need to wear something hot and dangerous tonight.

      I chuckled. Because that’s exactly what a bouncer wants. Someone dangerous.

      Don’t laugh at me, she chided. A bouncer wants excitement. Why else would he want a job like that?

      Be safe this spring break! Mrs. Miller called after us.

      No one listened. None of us wanted safe. We wanted the time of our lives. We wanted to feel young and reckless, to forget about the headlines.

      I needed more Janet Jackson. I needed music to drown out the world, music to serenade me into a new year, a new phase in my life, so that I could take the music-drowned world and transform it.

      It was this feeling, this need to be and feel everything all at once that catapulted me into the wildest weekend of my life thus far.

      It was March of 1986 in a small town in Ohio when MTV was life, the Cold War terrified me, and the fact that I was better at crushing on someone than I was at kissing him disturbed me more than reading Flowers in the Attic …

      chapter one: song 1
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