Landon & Shay: Part Two (L&S Duet #2)(76)

As we all began to eat, the conversation took a minute to take off. It would’ve been better if Sarah wasn’t there, but it felt as if there was a roadblock keeping me from connecting with Maria and Shay. It was a shame, because I was truly looking forward to the chance to reconnect.

Instead, we were listening to Sarah go on and on about crystals and how it was so important to charge them out in the moonlight, or something along those lines. If I were honest, I’d zoned out when she began telling the differences between quartz crystals.

“Anyway, I’m interested to know more about my costar as a teenager,” Sarah said, nudging me with her arm and breaking me out of my thoughts. Thoughts that had been solely on Shay. She looked over to Shay with wonderment. “What was he like in high school?”

I snickered, grabbing yet another slice of lasagna. “You don’t want to be bored with those details. Trust me.”

“Oh, but I do. I love learning more about my costars. Years before, you were so wrapped up with your girlfriend at the time—even post breakup—that I didn’t get a chance to really get to know you. I’d love to now. So come on, Shay.” She closed her hands together and gleamed. “Do share the stories.”

Shay laughed uncomfortably and shifted around in her chair. “Do you want to know before when I hated him or after?”

Sarah’s eyes widened with excitement. “Oh my gosh! You two hated each other before you became friends? Tell me, tell me!”

“Well, there’s not much to tell. Landon and I butted heads for a million reasons,” she said. “Mainly because he thought I was someone I wasn’t, and I thought the same about him. Then, overtime, we became…” her words faded off and she glanced down at the fork in her hands, swirling it in her pasta. She rose her head toward Sarah. “You want to know who he was as a kid?”

Sarah nodded greedily.

“Landon was a jerk. A big fat, freaking jerk. He treated people awfully and me even worse. He’d walk into school with this bad boy persona and would act like he didn’t care about anything or anyone—except for his core four friends.”

“Ohh.” Sarah swooned. “A bad boy. Me likey. Go on.”

“And just when you thought the bad boy couldn’t get better…” Shay locked eyes with me and the smallest smile fell against her lips. “He does. He opens up and truthfully is this kind, giving person who’d just had his walls up—for good reason. And once you knocked them down, he’d come rushing into your life with so much love and care that you hardly knew what to do with it. Landon as a teenager was complex. Broken, but somehow whole. Angry, yet so unbelievably gentle. And one of the best people I’d ever known in my life. Landon was the kind of boy any girl could’ve fallen head over heels with. I knew one girl who did exactly that. And rumor has it, that she never fully recovered.”

Her words pierced me and I wanted to both hug her so tight and kiss her so hard. There was so much emotion floating back and forth between us that I was certain the whole damn room could tell about the powerful connection we once shared.

All except Sarah, who seemed to have it go all over her head. “Wow. He sounded amazing. I would’ve loved to know you as a youth,” she said, leaning into me and touching my inner upper thigh. Like wayyy upper and wayyy inner.

What the actual fuck?

My eyes landed on her hand and I gave her a half-smile as I took my hand on top of hers and relocated her grip to the table. “I wasn’t that great.”

I looked across the room and noticed Shay noticing the grip that Sarah had against my leg before she shyly looked away.

Don’t think too much into that.

The room grew quiet, and the air thick with questions about what to say.

“So,” Maria took charge, cleared her throat and stood to her feet. “Who’s ready for dessert?”

Just then, the front door opened, and Camila came barging into the room. “Sorry we’re late!” she exclaimed, the biggest grin on her face known to mankind.

I waited to see her dog, Bella, trotting in behind her, but instead a full-grown man walked in with two bottles of wine and a huge grin on his face.

Everyone’s eyes were wide as we all stared at the stranger.

“Who are you?” Maria asked, looking at the man.

He gave her the friendliest smile, and hurried over to her side. He placed the bottles of wine on the table and pulled Maria into a hug. “Oh my gosh, you must be Camila’s mother. Though, that’s shocking, seeing as how you look old enough to be her sister.”

Maria seemed a bit confused by the whole interaction, but her cheeks flustered a bit with color from the compliment. “Well, thank you. But again, who are you?”

“Oh, right.” He stood tall and smoothed out his suit. “I’m David.”

“David,” Shay said, echoing his name.

“Yes, his name is David,” Camila said, grinning wider than I’d ever seen her grin. “He’s my fiancé.”





30





Shay





What in the actual hell was going on? A stranger currently stood tall in Mima’s dining room—David apparently—and was claiming to be my mother’s fiancé.

I cocked an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, what?”