Growing up, I always explored those trails and sat near the two willows. It was still winter in Illinois, therefore all of nature was still fast asleep. The leaves hadn’t returned from their slumber, and the flowers weren’t yet in bloom, but the bark of the willows still stood strong. And in their trunks sat deep initials. There were dozens of initials carved into the trees. Legend had it that if you carved the initials of yourself and your loved on into the bark, your love story would last forever and always.
Years before, Mima had carved hers and Grandpa’s into the trees. Mom and Dad’s sat against it, too.
I thought it was the most romantic thing in the whole world—a tree filled with lovers. I wished someday to carve my name into the tree, too, with my future love.
Tracey was right about me. I did have a sensitive heart. I loved the idea of love. I adored the idea of finding someone you’d want to spend the rest of your life with. I craved having that kind of connection with another. I’d written dozens of stories about love, for goodness’ sake. Love was something I believed in fully, even though I’d never experienced it on my own. One day, my initials would rest against that tree bark, just not with the likes of someone like Landon.
I had no doubt that I’d win our bet, because I knew Landon wasn’t the type of person people loved. Lust, perhaps. But love? Never. He wasn’t built that way. He didn’t have the ability to let people in the way they needed to be invited into his soul in order for them to love him. His heart was shut off from allowing others to hear how it beat. In my mind, Landon Harrison would never be the hero. He was always the villain of people’s stories, including mine.
I knew I’d never carve his initials next to mine, because a person like me could never love a monster like Landon. In fairytales, the beauty fell in love with the beast.
In reality, the beast destroyed beauty.
I wasn’t going to let that happen. I wasn’t going to fall in love and be left with shattered shards of my soul.
I might have had a sensitive heart, but I refused to let it be sensitive to him.
7
Landon
My favorite thing about Shay was how easy it was to make her blush. She was a good girl, and you saw it all over her face. Getting her to fall for me was going to be effortless. I’d seen girls like her. I’d hooked up with girls like her. Girls like her fell in love heart first, leaving their brains behind. Loving probably came easy to her like the air she breathed.
Her high cheeks always turned the slightest shade of pink whenever I made some kind of inappropriate gesture her way, and I knew it was driving her crazy.
That was why I kept doing it. It amazed me how annoying her was enough to keep me from thinking about the days coming up.
Never in my life had I thought it would have been Shay who kept my mind clear.
Yet, you could count on Mrs. Levi to remind me of how much these next few weeks were going to suck.
Once a week, I was forced to meet with the guidance counselor after lunch. It was supposed to be my free period, but instead, I had to sit with Mrs. Levi like I was damaged goods or something.
I didn’t even want to be there, but I knew my parents would give me hell if they heard I ditched. Well, my mother would’ve. My father wouldn’t have cared a lick.
The previous night, Mom had left me a voice message saying she wished she could’ve been with me, saying how she’d missed me and hated that she had to work so much lately. After Lance passed away, it seemed she was always coming and going.
“Sorry, Land. I wish I was with you. Left my credit card so you can order in food. You can call the chef, too. The number is on the fridge. I’ll check in every morning and night. Make sure you’re getting enough sleep, too. You need your rest. Also, don’t forget to take your pills. I love you so much, honey. We’ll chat soon. I love you. Okay. Bye.”
She always said ‘I love you’ twice.
Dad texted me instead of leaving a voice message. His was a much more encouraging message.
Dad: We Harrison men aren’t weak. Keep your head up high. Man up.
You got it, Dad.
If there was a bumper sticker for World’s Best Father, it definitely wouldn’t have been on Ralph Harrison’s BMW.
I knew if I ditched my meeting with Mrs. Levi, she’d report it to my parents, and Mom would try to set me up with my previous therapist for after-school sessions. I didn’t know about any other high school student, but the last thing I wanted to do after a long day at school was go to some smelly, stuffy office and talk about my feelings to a sixty-year-old man who had probably just banged his secretary during his lunch hour.
I sat in Mrs. Levi’s office once again, staring at the pictures of her niece and nephew spread throughout the space.
She was smiling her normal smile with her hands clasped together and resting in her lap. “So, Landon, how was your weekend?”
“Same as always.”
“I heard a few mumbles in the hallways about a party you threw…” She started, but her words trailed off as if she didn’t want to seem to be nosey when she was, indeed, being nosey.
“Yeah. Just a small thing.” Lie number one of our meeting.
“Do you want to talk about how that was?”
Yes, Mrs. Levi. Let me tell you all about the underage drinking and drug usage that went on at my place on Saturday.
“Nah, it’s not a big deal. It was a low-key night.”
She narrowed her eyes but dropped the subject as she shifted some paperwork around. She seemed tired that morning, but who wasn’t? Maybe she had trouble sleeping each night, too. The bags under her eyes kind of matched the deep purplish tones of my own.
“So, your birthday is in a few weeks, huh?”
I cringed a little at the mention of my birthday. I was trying my hardest to forget.
When I remained quiet, she kept talking, because if there was one thing Mrs. Levi wasn’t any good at, it was catching a hint.
“Which means it’s been one year since your uncle—”
“Died on my birthday? Yes, Mrs. Levi, I’m aware,” I snapped. I instantly felt bad for snapping, because it wasn’t her fault at all. She was merely doing her job. It just sucked that her job hurt sometimes. It brought up issues I wished to bury deep in my mind. I muttered an apology, and she shook her head.
“No need to apologize. I’d probably feel the same way if an old woman was badgering me about such a heavy topic.”
Mrs. Levi wasn’t that old. She more so had an old-person personality. I would have bet she knit sweaters and drank apple cider in front of the fireplace on Saturday nights.
I slumped down in my chair, and now my mind was doing that thing again.
Thinking.
I hated when that happened.
My thoughts were back on that day. Every time I blinked, I saw Lance in the darkness of my eyelids. I saw him lying there, floating face down in the pool, the water rippling all around as he stayed still.
“Lance,” I remembered hollering. “Lance!”
Each time the memories came, my throat tightened a little more.
“What do you have planned for your birthday?” Mrs. Levi asked, breaking my mind from spiraling deeper, but her question wasn’t going to make me feel any better.
“My mom will be home. I’m not sure what we’re doing yet, but she’ll be there. My dad will probably find a reason to work or something.”
“Do you miss them?”
“Miss who?”
“Your parents.”
I shrugged. “It is what it is.”
“Yes, but do you miss them?”
“Not my father.” I saw him twice a week and felt nothing. If I didn’t see him twice a week, I would probably still feel nothing.
“But your mom? You miss her?”
Every single fucking day.
How pathetic. I was a grown-ass guy missing his mommy.
I shrugged. “It’s not a big deal.”
She brushed the edge of h
er nose. “Do you think she knows you miss her?”
What a pointless question. “It doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t make her come home.”
“Maybe it would,” she offered up.
I didn’t offer anything else on that topic. Not worth my breath.
“Don’t worry about me.” Mom would be back for my birthday. That was all that mattered. She’d be there when I needed her the most.
“I can’t help it, Landon. I care about you, which means I worry,” Mrs. Levi revealed. It made me uncomfortable. When people cared about me, I felt a pressure to try to not let them down. Then, I always ended up letting them down.
I shifted around in my seat, and she must’ve picked up on my discomfort, because she moved the conversation forward.
“Well, until then, perhaps we should have no more parties leading up to your birthday, right?”
“Okay.”
I had no desire to have any more parties any time soon. I always thought being surrounded by people would help me tune out my sadness. Truth was, it only made it louder. Standing in a crowded room when no one was able to truly see you was the loneliest I’d ever felt.
That night, when Shay looked up and locked eyes with me in the midst of my aching, I felt terrified that she saw me, yet also somewhat…comforted? It was an odd sensation, and I wasn’t completely sure how to accept the moment.
When someone saw your pain and didn’t look away, it felt like a gift, like they were allowing you to be exactly who you were without shame or judgments.
I just wished that gift was given to me by someone who wasn’t Shay Gable.
Mrs. Levi rubbed the side of her neck before straightening out one of the frames on her desk. “Last time we spoke, we talked about finding a hobby for you. How are we doing on finding something to keep you busy? Did you find anything to keep your interest?”
“Well, yeah. Kind of.”
Shay.
Shay, Shay, and Shay.
“Good, good. What is it?”
I kept my lips shut.
She raised an eyebrow. “Hopefully it’s legal?”
“It is.”
A small sigh released between her lips. “Good. That’s really good, Landon. But if you need something else, here’s an afterschool program I thought you might be interested in.” She handed me a pamphlet, and I was officially tagged as damaged goods. Afterschool support groups were the final key to that fact.
“It’s a group of teens who have gone through tough situations. They meet up twice a week and just hang out and talk about their issues.”
I pushed the brochure back in her direction. “Nah, I’m not really one for therapy sessions, much less group ones.”
She pushed it back. “I hear what you’re saying, but sometimes, the best thing we can do in life is step outside of our comfort zone.”
I didn’t argue it and took the brochure. I shoved it into my backpack and sat back in my chair.
The conversation dragged on like the rest of the day. Every time I crossed Shay’s path, I made sure to flash her one of my asshole smiles, and she’d get all flustered by it. The next days were a lot of the same, but when Wednesday came around, she smiled back. Her cheeks didn’t redden, and she didn’t hurry away from me. When I sat at the lunch table before anyone else, Shay walked over and set her tray down directly across from mine.
She didn’t look up at me.
She didn’t say a word.
She simply sat and opened her paper carton of chocolate milk. One time, I overheard her talking to some girl, saying how she hated regular milk because it seemed a bit too close to a person sucking from an udder, but chocolate milk was different because it had a more-acceptable-for-humans flavor.
I didn’t know what she meant by such a weird statement, but it wasn’t uncommon for me to not understand the mind of Shay. I’d overheard her say a lot of weird shit before, so the milk comment hadn’t been out of the norm.
The next day, she did the same thing—sat right across from me at lunch. Followed by the next day, and the next.
Her oddness was rubbing me the wrong way, and I couldn’t stay quiet about it. “What are you doing?”
“Eating lunch.” She popped a grape into her mouth and then tore her sandwich in half. “Use your context clues, Sherlock.” She smirked.
I almost smiled at her sass level. “I see that, but why are you sitting across from me every single day? You know how annoying it is to sit across from your face each day?”
“What’s wrong, Landon?” She raised an eyebrow. “Does my closeness make you uncomfortable?”
“It’s going to take a lot more than a little close proximity to scare me off, dollface.”
“Don’t call me dollface.”
“Then don’t have one.”
She ate her lunch in complete silence after that, staring me straight in the eyes without any kind of blushing or shying away.
Okay, Gable. I see where you’re going with this.
She was trying to prove a point—that she could be in the same space as me, face to face, and not back down due to nervousness. She was puffing her chest out and pounding her fists against it.
I am Shay, here me roar.
But still, there was something more to it that I couldn’t see, something deeper to her story that she was keeping just for herself. Not being able to crack that open was going to drive me insane.
“Shit,” I muttered.
“Something wrong?”
“What’s your angle?”
“My angle?”
“Yeah. Why can’t I read you, Chick?”
“I don’t know,” she said, offering a quick shrug before she continued eating, “I’m probably above your reading level.”
I smirked.
Oh hell. Shay Gable made me smirk—a genuine smirk—and I was certain she’d noticed it.
I didn’t often give real smiles. Most of the time, when I grinned, it was just an act, because that was what people expected you to do. Grin. Laugh. Be happy.
My true smiles were few and far between, yet somehow, Shay managed to get one out of me. I have been lying if I said it didn’t feel kind of good, too.
“Whatever, reading is overrated,” I stated. That was a lie. Reading was what I did when I couldn’t keep my mind in check, which meant I had a full-sized library inside my head.
“I bet you think oxygen is overrated, too, based on the lack of it going to your brain cells.” She smiled, and damn, it was beautiful.
She was sassy that afternoon. I wouldn’t have ever told her, but her sassiness was kind of sexy.
I reached across the table and snatched up the last of the grapes on her tray before standing up from my seat and walking away.
“Hey! I was going to eat those!” she hollered, irritation coating her words.
“Ask me how much I care,” I replied as I kept walking.
“I hate you!” she shouted.
“I hate you more.”
“I hate you the most!”
I’d never known hatred could be such a turn-on.
I wasn’t sure if I actually had a plan to make her fall in love with me, really. I wasn’t sure if she had an idea for the love angle, either, but what I did know was this thing between us—whatever the hell it was—felt fun.
Fun.
When was the last time something had felt fun to me?
All the days before had felt like wading through quicksand—slow, exhausting, and hopeless—but now with Shay? I felt entertained, refreshed. It felt good to mess with her, to get in her head. We loved pushing each other’s buttons. We loved the way we pissed each other off. We loved the hate we were able to give each other every day we walked into school.
8
Shay
The other day, Landon had stuffed my locker with dozens of pieces of paper that had “Do you love me yet?” written on them. I took every single piece, figured out his locker combination, and stuffed them right back into his with the word NO written in bold.<
br />
Then, he went into my backpack, took my history extra-credit assignment, and wrote “penis” across it, making it impossible for me to turn it in. In exchange for that, I licked my fingers and stuck them straight into the brownie on his lunch tray.
To my surprise, he didn’t seem thrown off by his damaged brownie.
“Thanks, Chick,” he commented as he picked up the brownie. “I love my desserts moist.”
He bit into it as if he wasn’t thrown off by my licks.
The way the word moist rolled off his tongue made me want to vomit. At the same time, it made me cross my legs tighter at the lunch table, and I was certain he saw the redness in my cheeks.
I watched him eat the whole brownie, and then he locked eyes with me as he sucked on each of his fingers.
In.
Slow.
Motion.
Oh my gosh.
Do that again.
Then, he pulled up the bottom of his long-sleeved T-shirt and revealed his toned body. He dabbed the corners of his mouth with his shirt, using it as a napkin as I counted the abs on his torso.
One, two, skip a few…
Landon always wore long-sleeved shirts that were tight enough to highlight his toned arms. If he moved his arms in just the right way, you could swear his biceps were waving at you.
A devilish smirk curved his lips. “If you keep staring, I’ll have to charge you.”
I clenched my thighs together even tighter as I shifted my stare away from him.
It wasn’t fair.
Boys his age weren’t supposed to look like that. Landon made it perfectly clear that there was nothing in the world for him to be embarrassed about when it came to his body. No teenager had the right to be as fit and toned as he was—other than Chad Michael Murray.
Landon & Shay - Part One: (The L&S Duet Book 1) Page 8