The Bad Boy's Girl (The Bad Boy's Girl #1)(2)
I was in for a rude awakening.
The first time I saw Jay after that summer was in the school hallway just before the bell for first period rang. I had worn my best pair of skinny jeans, which coincidentally made my butt look good, a fitted top showing just a hint of cleavage, and some pretty badass biker boots. I’d painstakingly styled my blond hair into beachy waves with my makeup expertly applied. However, my eye makeup ran down my face not five minutes later when I saw him.
He had his tongue down my best friend’s—excuse me, my ex-best friend’s—throat. If I’d eaten anything at all, the contents of my stomach would surely have made their way back up. I remember clearly feeling a viselike grip around my heart, like someone was squeezing it tightly, cracking it up into minuscule pieces. Tears stung my eyes and my throat closed up. It was the worst I’d ever felt.
I had lost Jay Stone, the love of my life, to my ex-best friend, and boy, did she rub it in my face. It was like losing all that weight made no difference to them. I was destined to remain Fatty Tessie, friendless and invisible to the only guy I’d ever wanted.
***
Fast forward two years and here I am, a senior going into my second week of high school. Not quite shockingly, a senior sitting at home on a Saturday night and stalking the love of her life on Facebook. Yes, I’ve grown into referring to myself in third person because that’s what mind-numbing boredom does to you.
I’m scrolling down his profile, which seems to be filled with photos from his girlfriend in different stages of a selfie. Sickening, that’s what this level of self-obsession is.
His display picture is one of the two of them on the beach. He’s lifted her up around the waist and is kissing the side of her head as she grins that evil, Grim Reaper grin at the camera. I try blocking out the various pictures of Nicole as I veer deeper into Jay’s profile. He’s perfect, utterly beautiful with his messy golden hair and ocean blue eyes. His smile kills me, those dimples in his cheeks, the freckles on his nose, those sharp cheekbones . . .
How lovesick do I sound? But he won’t even look at me because he’s too busy swapping spit with freaking Nicole Andrea Bishop. They’re the perfect couple. The kind that’s most likely to be voted Prom King and Queen. The kind who would eventually get married one day because it seems like the only logical conclusion. Perfection ends up with perfection, even if said perfection has a rotten, rotten core. Why can’t he see how evil his girlfriend is? How could he be blind to all her faults?
Oh wait, I remember. The fangs only come out when I’m around, and around him she’s as harmless as a Chihuahua. To give him credit, Jay always goes out of his way to say hello to me, and whenever we have class he offers to carry my books. Obviously I never let him because Nicole’s always just a few feet away with fire coming out of her nostrils.
I refresh his profile a couple of times because I’m feeling particularly sadistic. But my fingers freeze midway when I see a post. Not just any post, it’s The Post. The one that makes me want to shriek and throw the laptop fifty feet away. The death decree staring me right in the face says:
“I’m coming home, brother. Better throw me a killer party, Jay Jay.”
Curious to know who on earth could make me cower in fear, tremble in my proverbial boots, and wish that we still lived in the day and age of moats?
Well, the name that’s glaring at me viciously from the screen is Cole, Cole Stone, and it’s a name right up there with Nicole Andrea Bishop. The universe tends to work in mysterious ways, right? Well, at times I feel like with me the universe works with a slightly sickening sense of humor. What else would explain why the two people who have wreaked so much havoc in my life have rhyming names?
But I digress; my problem isn’t rhyming names, it’s the fact that Cole is . . . wait, Cole’s coming back? Oh crudsticks.
Cole, for those unaware of why my skin crawls at the sound of his very name, is Jay’s stepbrother and the one person apart from Nicole who seems to have made a hobby of making me miserable. He bullied me relentlessly all through elementary school and junior high. However, before we started high school, he being the delinquent that he is, inevitably ended up where all the miscreants do. Military school has kept him away from me for three years now.
And now he’s coming back.
Cole Stone, the reason why the nurses in the emergency room and I are on a first-name basis, is coming back to town. Oh my God, now there’s going to be two of them! Cole and Nicole will combine their evil satanic powers to make my life a living, breathing slasher flick.
I gulp and shut my laptop down, tossing it aside like it’s possessed.
Score one for the universe’s sickening sense of humor, and none for the blonde who always ends up dead in the bathtub.
Chapter One : He’s Bush and I’m Like His Mini Afghanistan
Monday morning when my dad drops me off at school, I stealthily pull on the hood of my jacket. It is a remnant of Fatty Tessie days and hence is so baggy that it almost swallows me. The mission is to be as invisible to the human eye as possible, and what better way to do that than wear something that “the new me” wouldn’t be caught dead wearing? A potato sack would be more flattering.
My father eyes me curiously as I tiptoe toward the building. I can always explain it to him later that I’m trying to save my life. When he finally drives away I rush, still on my tiptoes, imitating a bad spy thriller, and merge into the crowd of ALHS—so far, so good.