Landon & Shay: Part Two (L&S Duet #2)(57)

“You’re going to be sitting for a while, so make sure to buy something else later on. There’s nothing worse than a person who sits in the coffee shop for hours and hours and only orders a one dollar coffee.”

“Don’t worry.” He lifted a daily paper from the stack beside him and tucked it under his arm. “I have an endless addiction to coffee.”

As he spoke, people snapped pictures of him, reminding me once again that to me he was simply Landon, but to the rest of the world he was a star.

“Do you ever get sick of that?” I asked, nodding toward the individuals holding their cameras out.

“It’s a gift and a curse. I know I wouldn’t be able to live the life I do without them, but also I wish there was a way I could do what I love and still be anonymous.”

“Voice acting for the win.”

“I would’ve made a badass Shrek.” He nodded toward me. “Do you ever get sick of that?”

“Of what?”

“Pretending like you don’t want to at least have the conversation we should be having about us?”

Oh yeah. It’s a gift and a curse.

“There is no us.”

“Come on, Chick,” he said, his voice low and controlled. “Just an easy conversation.”

Butterflies. A swarm of stupid butterflies that didn’t belong anywhere near my stomach. Why did I have butterflies from him calling me Chick?

“Go away, Landon.”

“As you wish.”

But he didn’t leave leave. He did exactly what he’d said he would do. He went and sat at a table and he began studying his newspaper as cameras ‘sneakily’ snapped photographs of him. It was so odd seeing the fame side of his life. It’s strange seeing people you grew up with in a different type of light.

I went back to work trying to shake off the idea of Landon sitting in the back of the shop. Wasn’t he a famous actor? Didn’t he have something better to be doing with his time?

Just when I was able to push him out of my head, someone I currently despised even more than him walked into the shop.

“Shay, hey. How are you?” Tina asked as she stood next in line like a freaking psychopath. Her eyes were filled with emotion, and she looked kind of pathetic.

The only thing that separated us was the tray of croissants and bagels.

She combed her hair behind her ears and glanced down to the ground before looking back to me. “I just wanted to come in here to apologize for the things that happened between Sam and me. We never expected you to find out.”

Then, she stopped speaking.

That was it.

Was that what counted as an apology in this day and age? A non-apology was now what people were calling apologies? She simply said they never expected me to find out, not that she was sorry for her bad decisions. She hadn’t said she was upset about the flawed choices she made, just that she was simply disappointed I’d found out about their sexcapades.

Tina shifted in her shoes. “I mean, let’s be honest, you can see why I’m the right choice for him. Sam and I make sense in so many ways, ways you never connected with him.”

What in the hell was happening right now? Was the woman who’d cheated with my boyfriend actually telling me all the reasons she was right for him and I was wrong?

I couldn’t wrap my head around the concept of Tina standing in front of me and saying those words.

I loved women.

I loved women so much more than I loved men. I went out of my way to celebrate females, to cheer them on, to make them understand the power in their existence, and see themselves as the queens they were. I fought for our rights, I pushed for feminine self-discovery, and I was an advocate, a cheerleader for any woman who’d been scorned by the opposite sex. I. Loved. Women.

I knew it sounded odd, but in some ways I was more disappointed in Tina for her actions than Sam. Maybe I was so jaded that I figured Sam would end up being a letdown anyway, but Tina? Tina was supposed to be a part of the sisterhood. She was supposed to have my back the same way I had hers. Yet here she was now, telling me how I wasn’t right for my ex-boyfriend and therefore she felt okay screwing his Jar Jar Binks brains out.

“If you think about it, maybe the universe brought me to this coffee shop all those months ago just so you could connect me with Sam. If it weren’t for you, we would’ve never met one another,” she said with a smile.

With a goddamn smile like a freaking psychopath! What was she going to do next? Start skinning cats as she sipped her coffee?

That was when it happened. That was when the logical part of my brain shut down.

As we stood there, face to face, I lost myself. It was as if I had an out-of-body experience. I held a drink in my hand as Tina spoke my way. She kept moving her mouth and repeatedly kept explaining why she and Sam were meant to be. She kept moving her hands in such rapid movements, and the next thing I knew, the latte in my hand was soaking into her T-shirt.

At some point my hand jerked the drink toward her face, covering her head to toe. It was an iced latte—obviously. I wasn’t a complete psychopath like her, just a semi-nutjob at best.

Tina stood there frozen as everyone in the shop turned our way and stared, including Landon. Oh crap. He was still there, seeing me in the limelight of average joes.

Tina’s mouth was agape in shock, and I would’ve bet my stare mimicked hers.