Even highlighted some crap in it.
Ever since, I’d been doing my best to look at Shay in a way I hadn’t before, and to my surprise, I was seeing parts of her that reminded me of myself.
I’d have to thank Raine for sliding me Shay’s number, even though she said she hadn’t meant to text me the seven digits. Raine couldn’t help herself from wanting to play matchmaker to the beauty and the beast.
Shay was timid when I picked her up from the address she’d texted me. I hadn’t ever seen her as quiet as she was when she climbed into my car. We drove ten minutes without her saying a word. Normally, within seconds, she was throwing some kind of insult my way, but that night, she was mute.
I wanted to ask her if she was all right, but since she was sitting in a car with a boy she could hardly stand well after midnight, it was clear that she wasn’t. I wondered what the storm inside her head looked like. I wondered if her thunder rumbled as loud as mine, if her lightning struck her soul repeatedly, if she drowned in her own thoughts.
As I pulled up to my house, I put the car in park and went to open my door.
“No,” she whispered, her voice low.
“What?”
“I don’t want to get out. I don’t want to go into your house.”
Now I was confused. I didn’t know much about how girls’ minds worked, but I knew it was a shitshow in there. Therefore, confusion was always going to be likely.
“Then why did you...?” I started.
She shrugged. “I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts tonight, that’s all.”
“Oh.” I raised an eyebrow. “You can be not alone inside my house.”
“No. I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve been thinking about kissing you.”
I smirked a little. “Oh?”
“Don’t let it go to your head. I just mean, at some point, we have to kiss for the show, and it’s just been on my mind a lot. Just for show purposes, of course. If I go inside your house, I’ll keep thinking about kissing you because I’ll think you’re thinking about kissing me, and I can’t be thinking about kissing you inside of your house, because in that house is your bedroom, which contains your bed, and I don’t want to be just another girl you’re kissing in your bed, even if it is solely for bettering our performances.”
Well, that was an earful.
She lowered her head. “You can take me back if you want to. I know this isn’t what you signed up for tonight.”
“It’s fine,” I muttered. “I didn’t really feel like being alone tonight, either.”
“What are we doing, Landon? This bet, this stupid challenge between us, this back-and-forth pettiness—what is this? Why are we even bothering with something so dumb? A challenge that was forged by Reggie, who probably hasn’t even thoughtabout it since the night he brought it up... what is this?” She sighed, begging for an answer to her loaded question.
“I don’t know,” I told her truthfully. I didn’t know what to think about us. All I knew was that when I thought about Shay, my thoughts didn’t feel so heavy. “It’s weird, right?”
“Yeah, it is.”
“It’s just...” I sat back in my seat. “If I’m thinking about you and this stupid bet, it gives me less time to think about me and the shitstorm that is my life.”
“Same,” she confessed, turning her stare to mine. Those deep-brown eyes burned holes into my soul with such ease. Her eyes were my favorite part of her, too. They told full-length stories without any words. Her eyes always showed the truest forms of her emotions, and that night, they were saying something so heartbreaking.
“You’re sad tonight,” I whispered.
“Yes,” she replied.
I combed a fallen piece of hair behind her ear. I wasn’t certain I was even allowed to touch her, but I did, and she let it happen. I placed my head against the headrest and kept my stare locked with hers.
“Can I ask you a question?” she asked, leaning back against her headrest, too.