Shayne huffed. “Wow, I thought you’d be happy for me. Guess I thought wrong.” She walked off, heading straight for Tyson and Kyle. Immediately she demanded Tyson’s attention and was blind to Kyle’s smile and stare.
Erica frowned. “That wasn’t nice, Nan.”
I threw my hands up. “What? I’m just saying it’s not right to ambush, is all.”
“What’s with you lately?” Edi asked. “You don’t seem like yourself.”
“Yeah, it’s like you’re on permanent PMS or something,” Erica added.
“I’m fine,” I insisted with a little edge in my voice. It was one thing to notice myself how alien I had become, but for my friends to notice as well was a tad bit too much.
I was losing it.
And I lost it even more when Tyson came over.
“Can we talk?” he asked.
In the background I could see Shayne standing with her arms crossed, glaring our way.
Oh great, did she tattle on me?
Instead of giving me a choice, Tyson took my arm and led me out to the hallway between the dining room and the Stones’ back study. I stood against one wall and him against the other. He stared at me, and I hated it.
“What?” I snapped.
Tyson frowned. “What’s wrong with you?”
Crossing my arms, I shook my head. “Right now? You stopping me from working.”
“Nandy... I just don’t get it, okay? Cut me some slack, I’m trying to meet you halfway here.”
“Well, don’t.” Stop it, I told myself, you’re being a bitch and he’s done nothing wrong.
Tyson stood straight, his expression changing to cold. He studied me as he shook his head. “I guess it’s a good thing I don’t care about you, or your attitude would be a big deal to me.”
If he’d said it to hurt me, it worked.
Staring down at the floor, I forced myself to let it go. “Yep.”
“I guess I’ll get out of your way, then.”
“Yeah, do that.”
He was quiet as he remained where he was, and I felt my insides collapsing under his heavy scrutiny. I knew I was wrong. There was no one to blame but myself for being so jealous of my best friend and hating the sight of her and Tyson together.
The little hallway got tinier, and if I reached out, I could’ve touched Tyson. But I didn’t.
Instead, I squared my shoulders and straightened, preparing to go back to what I was doing.
“See you at home,” he said from behind me as I walked on by him.
My cold front dropped at the sound of his voice.
Like an addiction, I found myself looking back, only to find him doing the same. His expression went stoic as he gazed at me gazing at him. He turned away as I did and I went back to my station.
The girls were gone, and Kyle was in their place, packing the cupcakes to be taken to the event.
He was watching as Tyson met up with Shayne. Kyle studied her, the way she smiled, laughed, talked, blinked—everything. He tilted his head, shaking his hair out of his eyes, watching the girl who had it all and yet had nothing. “The only thing worse than existing in a world of notoriety is knowing that you don’t matter to the one you want the most.”
I peeked over as well and watched as Tyson placed his hand on Shayne’s shoulder and smiled at her, then gestured to the door for them to leave.
Frowning, I went back to my cupcakes. But they were all packed. “Shut up, Kyle.”
23 | Trice
Shayne had disappeared. One minute we were watching TV in the Smiths’ family room; the next she was going to the kitchen to get something to drink, and then she was gone.
It wasn’t like the Smiths had a mega mansion, but searching the first floor left me coming up short. Shouting her name garnered me silence.
Something was wrong.
I figured she wasn’t up on the second floor with Nandy, because they’d had a weird vibe between them at the cupcake charity. Shayne hadn’t told me what was wrong, but if looks could kill, she and Nandy were gearing up for war. I didn’t get it, and it was beginning to aggravate my last damn nerve. It was one thing for Nandy to treat me some type of way, but to treat her friends like shit?
The doorbell rang, stopping me en route to search the second floor.
It was nine thirty, and everything reeked of too much quiet.
Through the translucent glass on the side of the door, I could just make out Warhol’s burly figure, which let me know that either Ashley or Travis was ringing the bell.
It was Travis.
When I opened the door, Travis walked in, Warhol and Matt behind him, both managing to greet me whereas Travis just stood waiting.
“Well?” I asked as I shut the door behind the troops.
Travis grinned, reading of pure mischief. “Dude, come on, it’s Boys Versus Girls night, let’s go.”
“Boys Versus Girls?” I questioned.
All of them shared the same look of confusion before Matt took the initiative to speak up. “Every year before cotillion, the boys and girls have a battle of the sexes to make up for the girls bleeding our ears about the event. It’s our way of getting back at them and having some last-minute fun before the big day. It’s basically capture the flag. They got theirs, and we got ours.”
“It usually ends at the beach, and we all have a bonfire. There’s even a big water balloon fight,” Warhol spoke up.
I turned to Travis. “You’re going to cotillion?”
“My parents forced me to take pity on a family friend.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t going to take part in tonight’s excursions, but what the hell? It’s worth it to cause some mayhem for a night. So let’s get started. We gotta join the others, even Bradley.” Travis made a face at the mention of Chad. “We aim to be inclusive.”
I wasn’t interested in the idea of pranks and mayhem, and I was going to decline the whole thing until an idea hit me.
“Anything goes?” I wanted to know.
By the devious expression on Travis’s face I had my answer. “Pretty much.”
“I’ll meet up with you guys later. I have an idea,” I said as I stood back.
Travis bobbed his head. “All right, I gotta go make nice with Chad. What should I tell him about you?” He tossed me a walkie-talkie.
I fiddled with the device. “That we’re going to win.”
* * *
A half hour passed after the boys left before I was finally able to put my plan into motion. I was beginning to think my stakeout wasn’t going to work, but then I heard her door open.
Nandy came out of her bedroom with her gaze glued to the carpet. I took her aloofness as my cue to seize the moment.
I grabbed Nandy and pushed her against the wall, turning her around so she couldn’t see me.
“What the hell, Tyson?” She protested, trying to wriggle away, but it was no use.
“It’s Boys Versus Girls night, which you conveniently didn’t tell me.”
“Travis—”
“You did it on purpose, and now you’re mine.” I pushed her legs apart and began patting her down.
“Really?” Nandy asked as she peered down at me while I patted her calves and ankles. There wasn’t much covering Nandy in her sheer hoodie and shorts. Looking at her, I knew she wasn’t carrying, but I had to go along with the role.
“You can never be too sure.”
Nandy smirked as she turned around after my search. “Oh gee, do I get to check you for weapons, then?”
I stepped closer to her, invading her space. “I’m always packing a weapon on me.”
She swallowed, as if unable to reply for a moment. “I thought you didn’t care about me.”
“I lied.”
Nandy slowly bit into her bottom lip. I noticed that her two front teeth were slightly lon
ger than the rest, not that it was a big abnormality. She was no longer that pretty little girl from my youth, but someone who had blossomed into a beautiful woman. Her hair was up in a disheveled bun and her face was bare of makeup, except maybe that banana lip balm she was always rolling across her lips. She was staring up at me with pure wonder in her dark eyes, and it was distracting, just as it had been when we were kids.
I recovered quickly and focused on the task at hand, finding guilty pleasure in tying her up.
I pulled the string from my pocket and gathered her hands and tied them together.
“Seriously?” she questioned as she looked up from her hands to me. “What are you going to do with me?”
“Don’t worry, Chad won’t be too upset about it.”
From there I grabbed hold of her arm and helped her down the stairs, out the front door and into my truck.
Once we were on the road, my walkie was paged.
“Yeah?” I asked as I answered it.
“Chad wants to know what’s going on,” Travis said over the radio. “He’s being a bitch about waiting.”
In the background I could hear the whiny redhead swearing at Travis.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m kidnapping Nandy.”
There was some arguing, and then I was greeted by the sound of Nandy’s boyfriend. “What the fuck are you doing, Tyson?”
In the passenger seat, Nandy frowned and bowed her head.
“I’m going to let that one go,” I told her before holding up the walkie and pressing on it. “Deaf much? I said I’m kidnapping her, we have to capture her flag, and I’m going to make her tell me where it is.”
Chad still wasn’t on board, and I could hear the boys arguing over the walkie on their end. I tossed mine in the back seat and kept driving.
“Why couldn’t you take Shayne?” Nandy asked from beside me.
“Because Shayne disappeared,” I replied. “Besides, Shayne’s cool, you’re not.”
“All the more reason to be with her.”
“I just need some answers,” I said. “I deserve to know what the hell’s wrong with you, and if I have to use this shitty night as an excuse, so be it.”
Nandy merely sat there, facing forward. “Where are we going?”
“To the model home,” I told her. “No one would know to look there.”
Nandy sighed. “I don’t even care about this damn game. I’ll tell you where our flag is if you take me home.”
I shook my head and pulled onto the street where the model home was located. “I don’t give a fuck about the battle, I just care about you. Okay?”
Her silence should’ve been enough to turn the car around and take her ass back home, or leave her on the side of the road, but deep down, I knew something was wrong. Lydia wanted me to care despite my body shutting down and refusing to absorb or emit emotions. I hadn’t spoken to Prophet or any of the others in a minute, making my entire world Pacific Hills.
It was new and it was different, but I liked hanging out with Warhol and watching movies, or playing video games with Kyle, or shooting the shit with Travis and Ashley, or hanging with Shayne. They were safe, they were normal, they were my friends.
But none of it felt right with things on the outs with Nandy.
Nandy came before all of them, and if I was gonna endure life in the Hills, I wanted to do it with her. Who else was gonna show me around but the princess of Pacific Hills herself?
I snuck a glance at her. Or maybe she was, as her name suggested, the queen of the Hills.
At the model home, I led Nandy up the stairs and explored until I found the master bedroom. The rest of the rooms were empty, but the master was set up with furniture to allude to how the room would look if someone moved in. There was a four-poster bed, and a couple of chairs by the fireplace in the room, and a couple of nightstands, and that was it.
Nandy sat on the bed, and I grabbed a chair and sat before her, staring her down.
“Aren’t you going to tie me to the bed?” she questioned with a smirk.
I rose to my feet, going and hovering just over her, planting my hands down on either side of her. I watched as she inhaled, her pupils enlarging as she gaped up at me. Her lips—her tempting lips—were parting. For some reason, I wondered if the redheaded fuck boy was kissing her right, or—
“Don’t tempt me,” I told her, stepping away from her.
Nandy quickly recovered, looking elsewhere. “Perv.”
She had the prettiest brown skin, reminding me of this song “Brown Skin” by India Arie that my mother used to play. Nandy was hella distracting. No, she wasn’t that same little girl I once knew, she was every bit a woman.
“Start talking, Nandy,” I ordered. “What’s your problem? What did I do wrong?”
She pursed her lips and remained quiet.
It wasn’t a surprise that she was choosing to be stubborn. If she wanted to play it that way, we could take all night. I had no other plans, and no one knew where we were.
“Why does it even matter?” Nandy asked after a while.
“Because it does.”
She glared at me. “Why? You’ve got Shayne, Travis, Warhol, and the rest of them. Why me?”
I shrugged. “Because you came first. Now, I’m sorry if I’ve done anything to offend you, but you gotta let me in.”
Nandy frowned, and I just didn’t get her angst. Something told me that was the problem—she expected me to be a mind reader and know what I’d done to ail her.
She shook her head and sighed. “It’s not you, it’s me.”
At least we were getting somewhere.
I leaned over, holding her attention. “What’s up?”
She seemed ashamed. “At first, it was because you chose the wrong group. I had a seat ready for you with us, with our group, the group to be with around here. And then, you never cared if you were on the outside and I watched you be happy with them, with her. And it burns.”
“Burns?”
She wouldn’t look at me anymore. “I’m jealous.”
As much sense as it made, I was still surprised. I didn’t push it, not wanting to make her more embarrassed than I could see that she already was.
“Really?” I asked.
She bowed her head. “You surrounded yourself with my friends, my people, and they embraced you. And then you took Shayne and made her obsessed with you, and you became obsessed with her. Before all this, when I was a kid, all I had was you. You were mine, and then you left. After you came back to me and we were okay again, I thought you’d still be mine, but you’re not. You’re theirs, and Shayne’s. No matter how hard I try, I can’t hack it, I can’t control how I feel. I don’t wanna share you, and I don’t want to see you with her. I want you to myself.”
I stood from the chair and went and sat next to her on the bed. I untied her hands and massaged away the imprints the string had caused.
“All to yourself?” I repeated with a perked brow.
Nandy nodded. “I want to be your favorite, Tyson.”
For the first time since we’d become reacquainted, Nandy was vulnerable. Yet she had never been stronger to me.
“I like Shayne,” I confessed as I reached out and placed my hand on hers, “but I like Kyle more. I don’t really know this town or these people, and I’m not about to step on anybody’s toes. He’s completely into her. I have a lot of love for her too, but I’d rather just be friends.”
“Just friends?” Nandy repeated.
I nodded. “Only friends.”
“Okay.”
I moved closer to her, calculating my moves and assessing the situation for what it was and how far it could go. “Now, what are you willing to do to become my favorite?”
Nandy opened her mouth and I held up my hand to stop her.
“Are you going to stop givi
ng me attitude and be nicer to your best friend?” I wanted to know. “You and I can be friends, Nandy, but I’m also going to choose who I want to kick it with, and it’s not about to be that boy you love so much and his crowd of friends.”
“Chad isn’t—” The sound of her cell phone going off interrupted her, and she reached into the little pouch of her hoodie and got out her phone. “What should I tell him?”
“That your clothes are on.” I stood from the bed, deciding that she and I could talk later. We had a game to continue. I grabbed her phone from her and answered it. “Hey, Chad.”
“Seriously, dude, what the hell are you doing with my girlfriend?” he demanded to know.
Looking at Nandy, I asked, “Where’s your flag?”
She rolled her eyes. “At the Crab Shack, taped to the back of the building. Erica and Edi are guarding it at the front.”
I recited the info into her phone and hung up after agreeing to meet up with the boys at our territory, which was just outside of the Hook.
“We can talk after all this, okay? I know that when we were kids, it was just me and you and no one else, but it shouldn’t matter that Jordy’s here, or the others—we can still have our time. You’re important to me, Nandy, more important than anyone else in this situation.”
She offered me a smile and gestured to the door. “Come on, before we’re late to the show.”
And that was the end of it, if only for the moment.
* * *
By the time we made it to the boardwalk, the others were chasing each other around and the boys had declared their victory. The night was still young and, according to Travis, the mayhem had just begun.
Chad took Nandy’s hand and led her toward their friends while I stood back with Travis and Matt.
“He was being a bitch the entire time,” Travis whined. “You should’ve just taken Shayne.”
“It wouldn’t have been as much fun if I just took Shayne, you know?” I elbowed Travis as I joked around. Things weren’t quite squared away between Nandy and me, but it was nice to know the reason behind her cold shoulder.
She was jealous.
Jealous.
A Love Hate Thing Page 19
