The Stand-In Boyfriend (Grove Valley High #1)(87)

She smiles ruefully. “That’s because I was a nobody for the first couple of months.” She sighs. “I was really excited to start high school, you know? We’d just moved to town and I’d had tons of friends at my old school and I just kinda assumed it would be the same here. I mean, my older sister was crazy popular, a cheerleader and prom queen, and I just thought the same would happen for me.” I don’t say anything as she pauses. I don’t know where she’s going with this. She is crazy popular, and she was homecoming queen last year. “Anyway, I walked in there on the first day, all dressed up and excited, and nobody gave me a second glance.” She smirks. “I’d tried so hard, all my makeup done, the latest clothes, and nobody even looked at me. I tried to make a few friends but nobody wanted to know me. It was like I was invisible.”

I wait as she pauses, clenching her hands into fists. I’ve never seen Abigail vulnerable before. I didn’t know she could be.

“Anyway, that continued on for months, me just kind of hovering around, never making any real friends, never feeling like I belonged. I kept thinking about how I was missing out on everything and letting myself down, and then in history I got paired up with Chase on a project.” She smiles at the memory. “I knew who he was, obviously—who didn’t know who he was, even then. I had such a huge crush on him, had been staring at him all year in our class together, tried to walk past his table at lunch, hovered by his locker, hoping he’d come by.” She chuckles. “God, I was so pathetic. Anyway, Chase was as awesome as I’d imagined he would be: funny, carefree, kind, popular, insanely hot”—she locks eyes with me—“but then you know all this now, right?”

I don’t say anything in response. He’s all those things and more.

“Anyway, just talking to him in the halls made people notice me, made me stop being so invisible. He invited me to eat with him and pretended not to notice that I was completely friendless. Anyway, after that people started paying attention to me and I started to gain a small bit of that popularity I was so desperate to get. Some of that Chase Mitchell magic rubbed off on me, and I swear I was half in love with Chase by this point. He was all I could think about, all I would look for, and that’s when I noticed what he looked at. At first, I didn’t get it. He was subtle, would just be glancing away from me or pausing to wait for something, and then one day we were in the library and he was telling me something or another and he just stopped midsentence.” She sighs. “I turned around to see what he was looking at, and you had just walked in.”

“What?” I blurt out.

“Yeah, you walked into the library, hair scraped back, no makeup on, and he lost his train of thought.”

My mind starts reeling. She cannot be serious.

She shrugs. “That night I dyed my hair blonde, tried to get it the same shade as yours, and then at Aaron’s house that weekend, I threw myself at him.”

My jaw falls open.

“I knew it wasn’t me he wanted, but any idiot could see you barely knew he was alive and couldn’t see past Jessie Stephenson. I mean, honestly, Stephenson has to be the dumbest guy on the planet. Anyone with half a brain could see you were crazy about him.”

I blush. I thought I’d been so subtle all these years and it turns out everyone who cared to look knew all along.

Abigail shrugs. “It worked for me that you were obsessed with Stephenson. It meant you never noticed Chase when he watched you in the cafeteria or held a door open for you. I swear you were so oblivious, Livy, but it was good for me because it meant I could have Chase.”

“So you kissed him?”

She nods. “He wasn’t expecting it and just kind of froze. He didn’t kiss me back, not right away, and it was enough for me to confirm that he wasn’t into me at all. But then, when I tried to kiss him again, he let me. Then the third time I kissed him, he kissed me back.” She shrugs. “I think he thought of me as a distraction from you at first, someone else to think about, and after we’d hooked up a couple of times, we started dating.”

I shake my head. “You can’t…you don’t mean…”

“And then I’d catch him glancing at you, or talking to another girl, just as friends, and I’d get crazy jealous. I’d flip. I didn’t trust that it was me he really wanted so I’d cause a fight, be a total bitch to him, and we’d break up. Then I’d see him move on and I’d miss him like crazy and want him back. I’d talk to him, tell him I was sorry and I’d change, and then we’d get back together and the whole thing would happen all over again.”

Aaron was right—their whole break-up-and-get-back-together act was her way of proving he cared about her.

Her eyes find mine. “When I heard the two of you were dating”—she shrugs—“I knew it was different. I knew this time he wasn’t coming back.”

“I don’t…I don’t know what to say.”

“That’s what happened, Livy, and that’s why I always hated you—for no reason other than the fact that Chase has always been into you. I mean, he hid it well for a long time, but seeing him with you the last couple of months, it’s confirmed everything I tried to hide. Chase Mitchell is into you, has always been into you, and when he got the chance to be with you? He took it.”