Alex and Sarah (eBook)

A Sweet Contemporary College Sports Romance

Celeste Lorentzen (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2026 | 1. Auflage
495 Seiten
Lofty Dreams Publications (Verlag)
978-0-00-113730-1 (ISBN)

Infos

Sarah is the sharp-witted editor of the school paper, content to pine silently for her next-door neighbor and lifelong confidant, Alex Ford-the charismatic basketball captain whose easy charm captivates everyone but sees her only as his quirky best friend. Their mornings begin with his playful wake-up rituals through connected windows, a tradition that tugs at Sarah's heartstrings while Alex navigates the pressures of senior year, a picture-perfect girlfriend, and unspoken doubts about his scripted life.

But as senior pranks and heartfelt confessions unravel their comfortable dynamic, Alex begins to question if the girl he's always protected is the one he's meant to love. When jealousy sparks and vulnerabilities surface, their unbreakable bond teeters on the edge of something profound. Will they risk their friendship for a chance at forever, or let fear keep them in familiar shadows?

This tender friends-to-lovers tale explores the ache of unrequited feelings turning into passionate discovery, blending small-town nostalgia with emotional depth. Perfect for fans of slow-burn tropes and sports heroes finding true connection.

Textauszug

Prologue: Windows at Dawn

 

Sarah

 

The space between sleeping and waking is my favorite place in the world. It’s a grey, shapeless land where deadlines don’t exist, where the complicated social ecosystem of high school dissolves, and where I don’t have to think about the heavy, confusing thing that lives in my chest. Here, I am just Sarah, warm and weightless.

 

The sound of my name punctures the haze.      

 

It’s not spoken, not really. It’s a vibration, a familiar, persistent frequency that my subconscious recognizes before my ears do. It comes from the other side of the wall, through the open window, across the ten feet of damp morning air that separates my bedroom from his.

 

Sarah.

 

I burrow deeper into my comforter, a fortress against the inevitable. Go away, I think at him, pouring all my will into the thought. Let me have this grey place. Let me stay where I don’t have to see you, where I don’t have to perform the exhausting, daily magic trick of being just your best friend.

 

But he never does. Waking me up is his stubborn, inexplicable hobby. A ritual. My parents think it’s charming. “It’s so sweet Alex looks out for you,” Mom says, as if I’m a toddler who might wander into traffic and not a seventeen-year-old capable of setting an alarm. They don’t understand the exquisite torture of it. They don’t see the way my heart performs a frantic, traitorous drumroll against my ribs every single morning, a Pavlovian response to the sound of his voice.

 

Because it’s Alex. And I have been in love with my best friend since I understood what the word meant.

 

It’s the most cliché, pathetic secret in the history of secrets. The nerdy girl next door pining for the golden-boy jock. A story so worn-out it’s a wonder the pages don’t turn themselves. I feed the narrative with my oversized sweatshirts and my square-rimmed glasses, with my sharp tongue and my retreat into the school paper. He fulfills his role with effortless grace: varsity basketball captain, easy smile, a kindness that isn’t performative but is somehow more devastating because it’s genuine.

 

We are a study in contrasts, a living before-and-after picture. He is the ‘after’—vibrant, assured, loved by everyone. I am the ‘before’—fuzzy at the edges, hiding in plain sight, loved by him in a way that feels like a consolation prize.

 

The shouting stops. I hold my breath in the sudden quiet. Has he given up? A foolish spark of hope lights in my chest, followed immediately by a darker, more foolish plunge of disappointment. The silence is worse. It’s an absence of him.

 

Then, the music starts.

 

A rap song, loud and abrasive, thumping through the talkie—the ancient, crackling walkie-talkie system we rigged between our windows when we were twelve. He knows I hate it. He knows the grating beats feel like an assault on my peaceful, rock-and-roll soul. It’s his newest tactic, and it’s fiendishly effective.

 

I bolt upright, the grey world shattering into a million sharp pieces of reality. I fumble for my glasses, shoving them onto my face. The world snaps into focus, and there he is, standing in his window across the way. He’s already in his jeans, pulling a t-shirt over his head, and for a heart-stopping second, I see the lean, defined lines of his back before the fabric falls. My face heats. I am a cliché with a heartbeat.

 

I stomp to my window and slam my thumb on the talkie’s button. “Alright, alright! I’m awake! You can stop the auditory torture!”

 

He grins, that slow, easy smile that makes the corners of his eyes crinkle. Victory. My daily defeat. “Not until you’re actually vertical and moving,” he says, his voice tinny through the speaker but still undeniably his.

 

“Wow,” I snap, the sarcasm my oldest, most reliable shield. “I didn’t know you could be this bossy, Dad.”

 

He raises an eyebrow, a playful challenge. “Do I look like an old dude to you?”

 

The answer is a physical ache in my throat. No. You look like everything. You look like the first morning of summer vacation and the last page of a perfect book. You look like my favorite secret and my biggest regret. I swallow the words. They taste like loneliness.

 

“You sure as hell sound like one,” I say instead, turning away from the window, from the sight of him, and heading for the bathroom. My sanctuary. The one place his voice can’t follow.

 

As I close the door, I lean against it and let out a shuddering breath. This is my personal struggle, my unresolved feeling. It’s a love that feels too big for my body, a secret that has grown roots around my ribs. It’s the fear that one day, he’ll look at me and truly see me, and the friendship I cling to will evaporate in the awkward aftermath. It’s the greater fear that he never will.

 

 

Alex

 

She calls me “Dad,” and something in my chest twists, sharp and uncomfortable. It’s a joke, our oldest bit. But this year, it feels different. It feels like a label, a box she’s putting me in. The ‘fatherly’ best friend. The reliable, sexless entity next door.

 

I watch her disappear into her bathroom, a swirl of faded sleep t-shirt and messy brown hair, and I run a hand through my own hair in frustration I don’t fully understand. Waking Sarah up is the cornerstone of my day. It has been since the third grade, when she slept through her alarm and cried because she missed the field trip to the planetarium. I’d felt like a hero, climbing through our connected treehouse to shake her shoulder. The ritual stuck.

 

But lately, the ritual feels… charged. The jokes feel like landmines. Her sarcasm, which I’ve always found hilarious, sometimes has a new, brittle edge that slices in ways I can’t predict.

 

Maybe it’s senior year. The pressure is a low, constant hum. Captain of the team. College scouts. Everyone’s expectations are a weight on my shoulders. Chloe, my girlfriend, is beautiful and fun, but when I’m with her, I feel like I’m playing a part—the attentive boyfriend, the popular athlete. It’s a good part, but it’s exhausting. The only time the hum fades is in these stupid, early-morning battles with Sarah. Or during our late-night talks through the windows, when the world is dark and quiet and it’s just her voice, telling me about some obscure film theory or ranting about the editorial policies of the school paper.

 

My phone buzzes on the dresser. A good morning text from Chloe, complete with a sparkle emoji. I type back a heart, feeling like a fraud.

 

My problem isn’t past heartbreak. It’s present confusion. It’s the feeling that my life is a checklist I didn’t write: get the grades, win the games, date the cheerleader, be the guy everyone expects. And in the middle of that checklist, there’s Sarah—a chaotic, constant, essential scribble in the margin. She doesn’t fit in any of the boxes. She makes fun of the boxes.

 

I head downstairs, grabbing a piece of toast. My mom gives me that soft, knowing look. “Still on your morning mission?” she asks.

 

“Someone’s gotta do it,” I say, but my usual cheer feels forced.

 

The walk to her house is automatic. Letting myself in is automatic. Greeting her parents is automatic. It’s all part of the ritual. But when I get upstairs and push open her bedroom door to empty silence, a jolt of something like panic hits me. She’s not in bed.

 

Then I see the faint light under the bathroom door. I push it open gently.

 

And there she is. Curled on the closed lid of the toilet, still in her pajamas, toothbrush dangling from her mouth, and utterly, completely asleep. Her glasses are slightly askew. A soft snore escapes her lips.

 

The twist in my chest returns, but this time it’s mixed with a wave of fondness so powerful it steals my breath. This is Sarah. Not the sarcastic editor, not the cynical nerd, but my friend. The girl who fights sleep like a warrior but loses in the most ridiculous places. The girl whose internal world is so vivid and consuming that the external one just… fades away.

 

For a second, I just look at her. There’s a vulnerability in her sleep that she never allows when she’s awake. The guardedness is gone. The sharp wit is silent. She’s just… soft. And beautiful, in a way I’m not supposed to notice.

 

The observation shocks me. Beautiful? Sarah? I’ve always known she was pretty, in an abstract, “of course my best friend is pretty” way. But this is different. This is a concrete, physical feeling in my gut. It’s the curve of her cheek against her palm, the dark fan of her eyelashes, the quiet puff of her breath.

 

It’s also completely, wildly off-limits.

 

The rules are clear. Sarah is my bedrock. Messing with that, confusing it with something else, is the single most dangerous thing I could do. I could lose her. The thought is a void, a sudden drop in my stomach.

 

So I do what I always do. I retreat into the ritual. I get the glass of water. I pour it. She shrieks, she glares, she calls me cruel. We fall back into our well-worn roles: the annoying jock, the disgruntled nerd. The moment of dangerous observation is buried under the familiar, safe terrain of our friendship.

 

But as we run for the bus, her hand...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 9.1.2026
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-10: 0-00-113730-1 / 0001137301
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-113730-1 / 9780001137301