Better Than the Best Plan Read online

  As soon as I’d made the decision, a weight had lifted. It felt good to have a home and still have my mom. I felt tethered.

  I won’t lie, though. Looking at this uniform is giving me second thoughts. But I guess what’s done is done.

  “Please tell me there aren’t shoes to go with,” I say to Kris, fingering the hem of the skirt, which is surprisingly short.

  “Funny you should mention that,” she replies, pulling a shoe box out of another bag. Inside are the ugliest brown loafer things I’ve ever seen. Kris must see the look on my face. “What? They’re what all the kids wear!”

  I pull out my phone and snap a photo, sending it to Annie with an SOS. “I’m definitely going to check into that claim,” I tell Kris.

  “Just think of how much time you’ll save getting dressed in the morning,” Kris says, folding all the uniform pieces and replacing them in the bag.

  I gesture down to my usual uniform of cutoff shorts and a tank top. “Does it look like I spend that much time getting dressed in the morning?”

  “Touché,” she replies, then hands me the bag. “Big plans for today?”

  I wave a water-spotted paperback at her, a page marked midway through. “Just following the adventures of a seductive rake,” I tell her. “Care to join?”

  “Sadly, we’re closing in on the school year, so I’ve got to work on my syllabi,” she replies. “I’ll be up in my office if you need me.”

  Down on the beach, I instantly lose myself in the pages of the romance novel. I’m close to working my way through Kris’s collection, and she’s promised to drive me to a used bookstore just off the island to restock. I can probably squeeze in another five or ten before school orientation in two weeks. After that, something tells me that the Harbor School isn’t going to afford me as much free reading time as Southwest did.

  I’m lost in a particularly juicy sex scene when I hear the familiar sound of feet pounding the sand. It can’t be Pete, who’s on doctor-ordered rest from marathon training after some knee pain. Which can only mean—

  I’d managed to avoid Spencer for the last few weeks since our fight, which was sort of hard. His schedule was posted at the club, so I steered clear of the courts while he was teaching and made myself busy during camp pickup so we didn’t have to talk when he was retrieving Ryan. And otherwise, he’d done the work for me. With all his tennis tournaments, he’d been thankfully absent from most group get-togethers, and Annie had been happy to let me know when I should stay home from the Pen to avoid an awkward encounter. I’d feel bad about ditching, except for the fact that he seemed perfectly happy to avoid me, too.

  But the best-laid plans often go awry, as they say, and now here he is, jogging down the beach toward me. I take a quick glance over my book, wondering if he’s going to simply jog right past me, but I see him start to slow immediately. He looks just as I remember him, all tan and trim, his hair a wild mess of cowlicks and curls.

  He slows his pace until he’s come to a stop in front of me, but he doesn’t smile.

  “Hey,” he says, panting and out of breath.

  “Hi,” I reply.

  And then we’re at a conversational stalemate, staring at each other across the sand. Finally, he strides over and drops into the empty chair next to me.

  “Sorry for being a dick,” he says.

  I bark out a laugh. “Seriously?”

  He turns. “What?”

  “After all this time, that’s all you’ve got?”

  He deflates, his shoulders rolling in, his head dropping down into his hands. “I’m really not good at this,” he says. “Just ask my dad.”

  I roll my eyes at him. “You’re still doing that?”

  “What?”

  “That thing where you blame your dad for everything?”

  He shakes his head, sand and sweat flying off him. “No, actually. You can ask my dad because I sucked at apologizing to him, too.”

  Now that I was not expecting.

  “You were right, Maritza.”

  “You made up with your dad?” I couldn’t be more shocked than if he told me he grew wings and flew back to New York.

  “I did. I mean, it’s a work in progress, I guess. But we’ve been traveling for these tournaments the last month, and we sort of couldn’t help but talk to each other. And you were right. He didn’t realize the way he was treating Ryan. And when I told him that I didn’t want to do the finance and law thing, he didn’t totally lose his mind. Especially when I told him what I do want to do.”

  “Spencer, that’s great.”

  “It is,” he says. “He’s actually taking me to look at a few schools that have biomedical undergrad programs. You were right.”

  “So I have to ask … why did it take you nearly a month to come and tell me this?”

  “Because I didn’t know how to face you after what I said,” he confesses. “I was such a complete and total asshole. I didn’t think you’d forgive me. I wasn’t sure if you should. And so I just stayed away.”

  “Well, that was the wrong choice,” I tell him.

  He glances up through sweaty curls, his cheeks red from running, and maybe from something else.

  “Yeah?”

  I nod. “Yeah.” I close my book, carefully marking my place before dropping it into the sand. “I missed you.”

  He stands from the chair and comes in front of me, reaching down for my hands. I take his, and he pulls me up to him. His skin is warm and sticky from the salt and sweat, and he smells a little bit like a locker room, but also like detergent and the woody, piney smell that’s just so Spencer.

  He looks me straight in the eye, his blue eyes practically glowing neon in the late summer sun. “I’m sorry, Maritza. Truly sorry, for what I said, and for avoiding you.”

  I think back to what Mrs. Ford said in the car on the way to Lainey’s, about leaving the door cracked for him. And now here he is, flinging it wide open, letting in everything I’ve been missing.

  “Apology accepted,” I tell him, but the words are barely out of my mouth before he bends down, his lips on mine. The kiss tastes salty, and sand is swirling around us in a heavy ocean breeze that’s kicking up, but I don’t care.

  All I care about is that now, finally, I feel like I’m home.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you first and foremost to my agent, Stephen Barbara, a genius matchmaker and strategist who found this book a home and a champion with Joy Peskin.

  Joy, I owe you an enormous debt of gratitude for making this book so much better. It was a long road to get to the final draft, but I loved every conversation we had. This book would not be this book without you.

  Thank you to the team at Farrar Straus Giroux, including Nancy Elgin, Elizabeth Lee, Nicholas Henderson, and Trisha de Guzman. And thank you to Aimee Fleck for this glorious cover.

  Thank you to Jackson Pearce for being the person I can say things to and for eating all that Jeni’s ice cream with me while we talked about books and writing.

  Thank you to my family for being my biggest cheerleaders. Special thanks to my sister, Claire Prisock, a former social worker and current awesome children’s librarian. Thank you for answering all my many questions. Any mistakes are solely my fault.

  But my biggest thank-you is reserved for my husband, Adam. You never let me feel sorry for myself, even when publishing was hard and scary. I had to write this book through pregnancy and birth and newborn days and a toddler in a body cast twice. But you always made sure I had time to write. Freddie, Leo, and I are so, so lucky to have you. And thank you for making me buy those Hamilton tickets. This book probably wouldn’t exist without that trip. I love you more than Picard loves Earl Grey.

  About the Author

  Lauren Morrill is the author of several young adult novels, including Meant to Be and My Unscripted Life. A graduate of Indiana University, she has worked as a cashier at Target; a khaki-folder and greeter at the Gap; a balloon-animal-making, face-painting clown; a receptionist at a
real estate agency; and a curatorial assistant at the world’s largest children’s museum. She has also held many jobs in higher education, from admissions to residence life and back again. She is now proud to call herself an Author—with a capital A. Lauren lives in Macon, Georgia, with her husband, Adam (a journalism professor), and their two sons. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers

  An imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

  Copyright © 2019 by Lauren Morrill

  All rights reserved

  First hardcover edition, 2019

  eBook edition, June 2019

  fiercereads.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Names: Morrill, Lauren, author.

  Title: Better than the best plan / Lauren Morrill.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2019. | Summary: Seventeen-year-old Ritzy’s carefully made summer plans are ruined when she is sent to a foster home with a cute boy next door, but when her old life catches up with her, plans and hopes collide.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018035462 | ISBN 9780374306199 (hardcover)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Foster children—Fiction. | Mothers and daughters—Fiction. | Family life—Florida—Fiction. | Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. | Florida—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.M82718 Bet 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018035462

  Our eBooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945 ext. 5442 or by e-mail at [email protected].

  eISBN 9780374306205