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Mad looks up at the clock. “I thought you said you’re working the afternoon shift. You don’t have to go into work for three hours.”
“I know, I need a cold shower.”
As I stomp off, I try not to think of that round two. But of course, it’s all I think about. More delicious hate sex with Alec. Kissing and biting and sucking and having orgasm after amazing orgasm with that hot piece of man flesh. A total risk. He knows too much about me, and he knows my weaknesses. He knows when I have my guard down.
A memory floods in as I run the water, trying to get it hot. My first few months at Sapphire Shores High were the worst. I didn’t fit in with anyone outside of Tenley and Campbell. My parents had suggested that Cooper and Aidan show me around and try to help me fit in, but at the end of the day, I wasn’t interested in being friends with anyone in their circle. When I wasn’t with my two best friends, I spent most of my time buried in the computer lab, working. Grades felt like the one thing I could control. It wasn’t long after that, though, that I’d started getting all these terrible anonymous messages from Yours Cruelly, starting with, Roses are red, violets are blue, your glasses make you look like you’re 82.
It was the lowest point in my life.
And then a text message pinged my cell.
It was something innocuous at first. Hi, I think.
And the sender had a local area code, but it wasn’t programmed in my phone.
I remember looking around, wondering who’d sent it. But I’d been alone in the room. The person send a second message after that, something like, How are you doing?
I know, I was silly. But I was alone. Hardly anyone spoke to me. They thought I was nerdy. And I guess I was. So this anonymous person, paying attention to me, excited me. That person seemed to care about me more than anyone else in my life. They asked me questions about who I was, what I liked. They cared about me. I was naïve, never thinking the person could hurt me.
Eventually I started to think of that person as my friend. My only friend. I even told them about Yours Cruelly.
They told me that people were just jealous because they saw something in me that they didn’t have. They told me I was beautiful. They told me they stayed anonymous because they were afraid of rejection. As if I, the major reject, had the capacity to reject anyone?
And then they asked me to the homecoming dance.
By then, we’d been chatting for weeks, telling each other the intimate details of our lives. According to him, he went to school with me, saw me in the halls. He played sports, but wasn’t really jazzed by any of them. He felt like he was in a prison, bound by peoples’ expectations of him, so he couldn’t reveal himself to me. I felt like we understood each other. I’d never been in love before, but that felt like it. Butterflies and all.
So I said yes, that I would love to go to the dance with him. I even turned down Rob Conrad, who cornered me in the cafeteria after months of sneaking looks my way. He was cute and I’d have said yes if I hadn’t already committed to someone else. Rob seemed crushed, but I was so excited about finally meeting my mystery guy I didn’t have time to worry about it.
But the next day, my mystery guy went silent.
I texted him, over and over again, thinking I’d done something wrong.
The dance came and went. I even dressed up for it in case he showed up and I sat on the stoop outside, hoping as hard as I could as my brothers, Alec, and their dates took pictures in the front yard.
Months later, I finally pieced it all together. I figured out who that anonymous person was.
I also realized I had done something wrong: I’d been born into his best friends’ family.
I’d always had the suspicion that Alec was Yours Cruelly—cold, evil, unfeeling. But he was also my anonymous texter, too—sweet, understanding. Bound by peoples’ expectations of him. I knew how his parents rode his back about academics. Played several sports, but not really jazzed by any of them. Alec was captain, but he was always self-deprecating. He always gave more credit to my brothers, said they were better.
The biggest giveaway though?
The messages, emails, and DMs all stopped at the exact same time, right before homecoming.
I wasn’t sure what was worse—falling for a faceless stranger and getting ghosted? Or realizing I fell for yet another one of Alec’s cruel ploys. As much as I hated him, I cried my eyes out every time I thought about what he did and how he stood in front of our house taking homecoming pictures with Carlina, the prettiest girl at Sapphire Shores High.
