Page 3 of Landon & Shay: Part One

Happy Birthday, Lance.

I turned my back a little toward Monica, and my eyes widened a bit at Greyson as I whispered, “Dude. She’s nuts.”

He laughed and ran his hand through his charcoal hair. “I hate to say I told you so, but…” He trailed off and snickered. From day one, Greyson had told me that sleeping with Monica was a bad idea, but I hadn’t listened. I was more of ascrew now, consequences laterkind of guy. That quickly came back to bite me in the ass.

Monica tapped me on the back. “Hey, I’m going to go to the girls’ room. Watch my stuff.”

I shrugged, not wanting to give her any more of my words. Talking to her was almost as exhausting as homework. I’d have preferred to do algebra instead of speaking to her, and I sucked at math equations.

As Monica was walking out of the cafeteria, Shay entered the room, and a knot formed in my gut. Since the year before, that knot in my stomach always appeared whenever Shay Gable entered the room. I wasn’t exactly sure what the feeling meant, or if it even meant anything, but dammit, the feeling was there.

Probably gas, I always told myself.

I hated Shay Gable.

If there was only one thing in life I knew for certain, it was that fact.

I’d known her for years now. She was a year younger than me, but her grandmother was my housekeeper, and she used to bring Shay over sometimes when her parents were unable to watch her.

From day one, we never gelled. You know how people have instant friendships? She and I had an instant hateship. I hated her and her goody-two-shoes personality. Ever since we were kids, Shay never misbehaved. She was always getting good grades, always making friends wherever she went. She didn’t touch drugs, and she partied sober. She probably said her prayers and kissed her grandma before bed, too.

Little Miss Perfect.

More like Little Miss Fake.

I didn’t buy her good-girl act.

Nobody could be that good. Nobody could have so few demons in their closet.

We hung out in the same circles, had the same friends, but we were far from being anything more than enemies. I was comfortable with our hate, too. It felt oddly pleasing. Hating Shay was the most constant thing in my life. Hating her felt like a high I’d always been chasing, and as each year passed, I got more and more high off Shay’s dismissal of me. There was something intense about the hate we gave, and the older we grew, the more I craved it.

Shay grew up in ways most girls dreamed of growing. Her body developed as quickly as her mind had. She had curves in every place us dicks hoped curves would exist, eyes that sparkled in every situation, and a dimple so deep you kind of wished she were always smiling. Sometimes, I’d watch her and hate myself for liking what I saw. This year, Shay came back to school looking more grown-up than ever. More curves, more tits, more ass. If I didn’t hate her so much, I would’ve considered screwing her brains out.

Not only was she beautiful, she was smart, too. She was the top of the junior class. Brains and beauty—though I’d never tell her so. For all she knew, my thoughts of her were completely filled with disgust and loathing, but sometimes, I’d watch her when she wasn’t looking. Sometimes, I’d listen to her laugh with her girlfriends. I’d study the way she studied people like they were art and she was trying to figure out how they’d been created. She was always jotting things down in notebooks, too, like her life depended on the words on those pages.

I’d only known one person who wrote as many thoughts as Shay did. She must have filled up hundreds of notebooks with how many damn thoughts she scribbled down on the regular.

Monica stopped Shay, likely to invite her to the party.

Why would she invite her? Everyone knew how much Shay and I despised each other. Then again, it was Monica. She kept her head so far up her own ass she didn’t notice anyone else’s issues. Or then again, maybe she invited Shay solely to spite me. That was one of Monica’s favorite pastimes.

Shay stood there with her closest friends, Raine and Tracey. Raine happened to be one of my closest friends, too, seeing how she was dating Hank, who was a good buddy of mine. Raine was the comedic relief of any gathering. If you needed a reason to laugh, she was the person you went to. She often joked that she was named after the town she was born in because her parents were too lazy to come up with something clever on their own. “Thank goodness I wasn’t born in Accident, Maryland,” she’d always joke. “That would’ve made for a hefty therapy bill.”

Then, there was Tracey. She was Jackson High’s sugar-pop queen. If you were looking for a girl with team spirit, Tracey was the one to feed it to you along with hearty helpings of glitter and rainbows. Currently, it seemed Tracey was trying to force her brightness down Reggie’s throat, and I wasn’t sure he had much interest in it. Reggie was the new kid on the block, having transferred in from Kentucky, and most of the girls were smitten by him due to his Southern accent. Honestly? He seemed like a basic douchebag to me who said y’all every now and then. I was a pro at spotting assholes.

Takes one to know one.

Tracey was too innocent for a guy like him. Though she could get a bit annoying and over the top with her rainbow cheer, she was overall an okay person. She meant no harm to anyone, which was exactly why she didn’t need a guy like Reggie in her life. He’d eat her alive, then spit her out like they’d never known each other.

That was what us bad boys did: we fed on good girls and tossed them to the side once we were full.

What Reggie needed in his life was a good ole Monica. It was a match made in Hell.

The girls kept chatting, and I knew Monica was probably going on and on about this party I didn’t want to have. Shay glanced toward me with an uneasy, disdainful look.

Hello, brown eyes.

If that girl hated anything more than me, it was parties thrown by me, which was why she made it a point never to attend them. The moment we locked eyes, I turned away. We never crossed paths much, but if we did, we exchanged short words with each other. Most of the time, they were rude, too. It was kind of our thing. We both got off on hating each other.

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