"words you're spitting out."

                                                         "something I can't live without, at least you can be happy now."

       Charis Forrester is trying to hold on. Trying to hold on to anything she can, really. The poor thing hated change, and growing up was proving more complicated than it should. Everything in Charis' world was changing, from realizing she's not into the same bands any more to noticing that she spent a lot of her past doing things or making decisions she wouldn't have now and wishing she could have that time back. She's  never felt accepted, realizing that she isn't anybody's 'favorite person'. Charis feels adrift in the ocean, waiting to be saved by a passing cruise ship. Her over-competitive, athletic family doesn't help her much either: an artist and an intellectual in a house full of athletic, sports loving baboons. Of course, she can't hold it against T.J, who has never been anything but nice to her. But her parents, who've played blissfully into believing that Charis is fine and normal, as well as inadvertently becoming the reason she became a lorazepam addict? Hell yeah, she's holding that against them.

   Nate Macauley had to grow up too quickly. His mother needed psychiatric care, and he had to deal with his mother's mental health as well as his father's alcoholism at a very early age. Now, he's a playboy delinquent with nothing going for him except a job as a full - time drug dealer. If he can stay out of jail. Charis is one of his clients, reliant on a hefty dose of lorazepam to keep her emotions and her anxiety under control. Sure, he feels guilty about being the reason the bookworm-artist-archetype became an addict, but he's not about to let a payday slip out of his fingers, especially since  Charis is friends with the one and only Simon Kelleher, who's been making Bayview's teenagers gossip-hungry mongrels with nothing better to do with their lives than judge other people and be assholes about it.

   Fate is a funny thing. One could call it a coincidence that both teenagers found themselves in the same alleyway on a dark California night. Fate? Perhaps. Neither of them actually expected to witness an underworld gang murder behind a sketchy-ass tanning salon. I mean, why would they? But Charis and Nate were exactly where they needed to be at just the right time, even if they almost got each other killed in the process.

   Now, both teens are running for their lives after a drug deal going bad leads to the two becoming witnesses to murder. Not only is the criminal underworld not far behind, Nate and Charis, dealer and addict, both have too much at stake to be found by the police.

"anybody tell you rock and roll is dead, sweetheart?"

                                                                                     "anybody tell you you're an ass, sweetheart?"

olivia de jonge as charis forrester

cooper van grootel as nate macauley

logan lermon as jeremy ruffalo

also featuring

chase stokes as tj forrester

younger! ted levine as iain lords

emmy raver-lampman as detective henley roy

dax sheppard as detective duncan lamante

mark mckenna as simon kellher

jaz sinclair as alexia staedtler

jacob elordi as flynn jacobson

"we're in deep, charis. i don't blame you if you want out."

                                                                                                                 "you called me charis."

CF spotted getting cozy with JR, the coach's son, for all you uneducated minks. But not the one that you're all thinking of. Not the one that watches Attack on Titan and wears the ugliest graphic tees that Wal-Mart sells. He's too nerdy for Bayview's punk rock princess. Sorry, former punk rock princess.

I mean the one who studies business at Harvard on scholarship. The surfer boy womanizer who used to make all the underclassmen swoon. Well, underclass women, mostly. I wonder how TF feels about his twin cozying up to- and likely getting some- from an older man. But of course, TF has some of his own relationship skeletons, like his supposed summer fling with AP. So he really can't judge dear C, can he?

"i think i made a mistake, nate"

                                                               "whatever you did can't be that bad, princess."

                                                                                                                             "yes it can."

DEDICATIONS!

wheelerblossom nvptxne  BRNTROMANCES  bbyzules lalax0x0 ateenagewitch summerrxses RoseMellark4711 -gcldrush 80scherrybomb -Iolitas beeehappi Comealongpondz  
thisisnotafamilyshow cobracade cobrakais

NOTES!

so i've had this in my drafts since i finished reading the book-

this is the original cover by nvptxne from about a year ago, before I changed the title to coffee at midnight !!

charis is baby and i love her so much. . .  this is my outlet for all of the angst i have about life and growing up a shit so if i get sentimental in the notes, don't mind me-

xx, tasia