Page 2 of Landon & Shay: Part One

“What the hell? Where’s my milk?” she asked.

“Didn’t hear you,” I dryly replied.

She reached over, took the milk off my tray with no concern for my thirst, and opened it. She was lucky I didn’t have the energy to argue with her. I hadn’t been sleeping, and I reserved my anger for things and people who actually mattered to me. That list was short, and her name wasn’t on it.

“I’ve been thinking—you should have a party at your place this weekend,” she said, chugging down my milk. On the plus side, it wasn’t low fat, so at least she didn’t completely get her way.

“You always think that,” I replied, diving into my lunch. It was only the first week of school since winter break, and it was nice to see that the cafeteria was still serving us the same crappy food as the months before. If there was one thing I liked in my life, it was consistency.

“Yeah, but you should really have one this weekend, seeing how it’s Lance’s birthday. We should celebrate his memory.”

I felt a small fire starting to burn within me as she spoke of Lance as if she’d known him or she cared. She said it for that exact reason, too—to get to me. To push me. To make me the monster she had recently been missing. In her mind, she couldn’t use me to forget her scars if my wounds weren’t freshly opened.

It had been almost a year since Lance passed away.

Still, it felt like yesterday.

I gritted my teeth. “Don’t push me, Monica.”

“Why? Pushing your buttons is my favorite thing to do.”

“Don’t you have some older dicks to chase?” I exhaled heavily, and she gave me a sinister smile. She liked when I brought up the fact that she messed around with older men. It was how she had tried to teach me a lesson when I didn’t want to sleep with her. She’d hook up with some older guy and tell me all about it.

Too bad her plan was idiotic, because I didn’t care.

If anything, I felt bad about her lack of self-esteem.

Monica was a classic case of a rich girl with daddy issues. It didn’t help that her father was actually a huge dick. When Monica told him one of his business partners felt her up at a holiday party, her father called her a liar. I knew she wasn’t lying, though, because I’d seen her go to her bedroom that night and fall apart. People didn’t cry like that unless there was some truth to the story. It turned out it wasn’t the first time one of her father’s partners had messed around with her without permission, yet every time she went to him about it, he called her dramatic and desperate for attention.

So, she became exactly what her father told her she was: dramatic and desperate for attention.

She clamored for attention from the men her dad claimed never wanted her. She had issues with her daddy, so she slept with men his age. She even called them daddy in bed, which was disturbing on so many levels.

Once, she called me daddy in bed, and I stopped screwing her right there. I didn’t want to feed her demons; I wanted to help shut my own up for a while.

Truthfully, I was glad she and I weren’t messing around anymore.

Monica pushed her tongue into her cheek and cocked an eyebrow. “What? Are you jealous?”

She wished, she hoped, and she prayed.

I wasn’t.

“Monica, you do know we aren’t together, right? You can do whatever you want with whomever you want. We aren’t a thing.” I was good at making it perfectly clear to chicks what we were—or more so, what we were not. I never misled them with the idea we’d be anything serious because I didn’t do serious. There was only so much free space in my head, and I knew I wasn’t relationship material. I didn’t have the energy to be someone’s someone—just someone’s fuck buddy.

Honestly, I wouldn’t have even said buddy. I wasn’t their friend or confidant, and I never would be.

Monica winked my way like she thought I was the cat and she was the mouse I was trying to chase. I blamed myself, really. The worst thing a broken person could do was hook up with another broken person. Ten times out of ten, it turned into a disaster.

Monica pulled out her cell phone and started texting nonstop, blabbering about something or other as her lips flapped open and shut. She talked about other people and how ugly, stupid, or poor they were. As hot as she was, she was one of the ugliest people I’d ever seen.

Couldn’t really judge her on that, though. When I used to be drugged up, I was a bigger dick than I was now. It turned out your level of compassion for others when you’re high is extremely low. I said and done a lot of shit I was certain karma would get me for at some point down the line.

“Rumor is there’s a party at your place this Saturday,” Greyson said as he walked up to the table with Hank and Eric.Thank God.Sitting alone with Monica was a nightmare.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He waved his phone toward me, showing me a text from Monica.Figures.I was sure that same message had gone out to a ton of other people, and no matter what, they were going to show up to my house for a party. So, lo and behold, it appeared I was hosting a party.

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