His eyes.
His beautiful, sad eyes.
His eyes were heavy and miserable, filled with a story he was too terrified to tell. He kept something to himself. His hurts? His pain, maybe? His truths?
I wanted to know more about those parts of him. I wanted to study the angles he kept hidden from the world. I wanted to know about the boy I hated and why he hated himself even more. I was absolutely certain there was no one who hated Landon as much as he hated himself, and that idea alone made me feel bad for him.
Not pity him... but just... feel bad.
He had to be the most complex character I’d ever crossed as a storyteller, outside of my dad, and I’d have been lying if I said I wasn’t intrigued by the idea of seeing how his story would unfold.
“Fine. The challenge is still on,” I said, rolling my shoulders back.
His body relaxed a little, as if he was pleased with the idea of the bet being on again. It was as if he needed this for some reason.
“Good. See you when you’re saying you love me,” he said, walking back toward his door.
“Not before you say you love me first.”
“In your dreams, darling.”
“More like my nightmares,” I shouted his way. “And don’t call me darling!”
He flipped his hand in the air in boredom, putting an end to our conversation as he kept moving away.
This challenge was a mistake. We both knew that to be true.
Still, somehow, I wanted it for reasons unknown to me. Whenever I was near him, I felt this heat in my body that I’d never felt from anyone else, and I felt curious. I wanted to know why that was a thing. I wanted to know if he felt it, too.
I wanted to know his story. His ugly, hard novel. I wanted to read his words, even though they seemed to bleed across the page in the most painful way.
7Shay
Every day, I walked to Hadley Park. It was a beautiful place with a huge playground and amazing hiking trails. I’d been going to that park since I was a kid. I’d slid down those slides a million times with my parents and Mima. When my father wasn’t in his best shape, Mima would get me out of the house, and we’d build sandcastles for hours. Then she’d walk me down one of the trails toward the two biggest willow trees I’d ever seen. They were twisted together with their branches intertwined. Together, they were called the lovers’ tree.
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 one into the bark, your love story would last forever and always.
Years before, Mima had carved hers and Grandpa’s into the trees. Mom’s 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.
I had a sensitive heart. Love was something I believed in fully, even though I’d never experienced it on my own. Oneday, 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 would never be the hero in my story. Maybe for some other girl, but not for me.
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.
8Landon
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. For her, loving was as natural as breathing.
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 other things.
Never in my life would I have thought it would be Shay who kept my mind clear, but she was the only thing that didn’t make my thoughts feel heavy. I felt as if I had nothing to look forward to in life, and whenever that happened, I felt stuck, and when I felt stuck, I thought of Lance, and when I thought of Lance...
I didn’t want to think about Lance.
So to avoid such things happening, I ended up on Shay’s front porch with a big smirk to annoy her with. Shay looked stunned to see me standing there as she walked out wearing an oversized white sweatshirt with gray shorts. Veryshortshorts.