Chapter 5
Landon
You ever lie in bed with no desire at all to get up?
When morning came, I was tired.
Not only physically, but my mind yawned, too.
I shouldn’t have had a party. I shouldn’t have made that stupid bet. I should’ve taken Greyson up on a night of video games and pizza.
I hadn’t slept. I’d closed my eyes but opened them right up when the visions of the past kept knocking on my brain.
When the sun rose, my phone screen was full of messages from people who thought they were my friends, telling me about how amazing the party had been.
None of those people were my friends, though.
Greyson, Hank, and Raine were the only people I’d ever consider such a thing, and we’d known each other for pretty much all our lives.
Everyone else was just shadows that passed by me day by day. White noise.
I didn’t reply to any of the messages, because they weren’t really talking to me.
They were talking to the person I pretended to be on the regular.
They talked to the rich boy who hooked them up with weed and booze.
They talked to the rich boy who gave them popularity cred.
They talked to the rich boy who changed their social status.
If they’d been talking to the real me, they wouldn’t have been impressed by the fact that it took every inch of strength for me to pull myself out of bed each morning.
For a while, I wondered if it was this hard for everyone—getting up each day, dragging oneself out of bed.
There were days when all I wanted to do was bury myself deeper into the blankets and not emerge from my room until weeks had passed.
I couldn’t sleep, but I wanted to sit there in bed, alone with my dark mind.
That was what I wanted to do that Sunday morning: be alone, stay in bed.
Yet when I saw the messages from my parents, I knew I had to pull my shit together before Maria came over.
Mom: I got text messages and calls from our neighbors about a party. Are you OK? Call me when you get this. Love you.
Dad’s message was different.
Dad: Get your fucking act together.
Love you too, Papa.
I glanced at the time—it was already 10:01 a.m.
I sat up and called Mom. She answered on the first ring. She always answered on the first ring. “Hey, Landon.”
“Hey, Mom.”
“How are you? How are things there? The neighbors seemed concerned.” Her voice dripped with worry.
“I’m OK. Things just got a little out of control, that’s all. Sorry.”
“It’s fine as long as you’re doing OK.”
“A few vases broke,” I told her.
“Oh, honey, that’s OK . . . those are just material things.
Those can be replaced. I’m more concerned about you.
” She got interrupted by someone in the background and began talking about different kinds of fabrics.
She was working on some fashion projects, it seemed.
She’d been gone for three weeks. Before that, she was gone for a month.
Truthfully, I figured she’d rather be in Hawaii than near me.
I didn’t blame her. I’d want to stay away from me, too.
When she came back to our call, she asked me if I needed her to come home.
I said no.
“OK, well, sweetheart, call me before you go to bed tonight, or whenever you need me. I’m here. I love you. Remember, I’m just one call away. I love you.”
“You too,” I said before hanging up.
After taking a shower, I got dressed and moved throughout the house, doing my best to straighten things up.
I collected all the empty beer cans and vodka bottles and tossed them into garbage bags.
Then I pulled out the mop and vacuum, following that up with scrubbing the disgusting toilets throughout the house.
High school kids were repulsive, especially when it wasn’t their own property they were trashing.
That was my least favorite part of having parties—the aftermath.
Even though I knew Maria would’ve come and left the place spotless, she didn’t deserve that cleanup.
Contrary to how I felt about Shay, I adored her grandmother.
It was pretty hard not to love Maria. She was feisty and unapologetic about her strong, bold personality.
I was certain that was where Shay got her fire from.
I didn’t know why I hated those qualities in Shay but loved them in Maria.
Maybe it had something to do with the nurturing side of Maria’s personality, the gentleness and care she gave me when I didn’t even deserve it.
Or it was the fact that I never knew my grandmother and always wondered what it would have been like to have one.
She always showed up with food, though. The food certainly helped.
When Maria came over that Sunday afternoon, she smiled bright. She was always smiling, always humming some tune whenever she walked inside.
“You look like poop, Landon,” she stated, carrying a dish of food in her hands. “You need to sleep.”
“I’m working on it.”
“Liar.”
My eyes moved to the dish.
Please be lasagna, please be lasagna, please be—
“I made a lasagna for dinner,” she said.
Yes!
It was my favorite meal in the history of meals—besides Maria’s enchiladas. Maria’s food was the highlight of every single week. It was like she baked everything with pounds of her heart and soul, adding an extra touch.
“You’ve been sleeping this weekend?” she asked.
“Yeah, pretty good.”
“More lies. You have bigger bags under your eyes than I do, and I’m like four hundred years old.”
“Oh please, Maria. You don’t look a day over forty.”
She smiled. “I always liked you, you know that, right?” She handed the dish over to me and instructed me to put it in the refrigerator. “What did you do last night?”
“Just hung out with Greyson. Nothing major. Video games and stuff. Very low-key.”
“No party?”
I smiled. I couldn’t lie to her again, and she knew it, too.
“How’s your college search going, Landon Scott?”
I swore, Maria was the only one I ever allowed to get away with calling me by my middle name. I actually kind of liked that she used it, too. It felt like it made our relationship somewhat personal, more than client-and-employer status.
“Good.”
“And have you chosen a major yet?” she asked.
She already knew the answer to that, and she still always asked.
I’d be studying law, per my father’s request, and I was supposed to go ahead and follow in his footsteps.
I went along with it because what else was I supposed to do?
I didn’t know what I wanted to be, so it made it a little easier having my father tell me what to become.
“You can go undecided,” Maria said gently, as if she could read my thoughts.
“You don’t have to know everything right this second.
You just need to decide on a few topics you think could make you grow the best. You’re a smart, talented young man, Landon.
You could do anything if you put in the work, and it doesn’t have to be law just because your father said it should be. ”
“You don’t think I’d make a good lawyer?” I joked.
“You’d make a good anything. I just want you to be passionate about it.”
I kept quiet because I didn’t want to spoil the mood by notifying Maria that I wasn’t passionate about anything.
I headed to the kitchen to put the food into the fridge.
Before Maria dove deep into her cleaning routine, she peeked her head into the kitchen and nodded in my direction. “How’s your heart today?” she asked me, the same question she asked every time she stopped by.
“Still beating.”
“Good.”
If anyone else had asked me an overly dramatic question like that, I would’ve flipped them off, but since it came from Maria, I figured she deserved at least some kind of response.
I couldn’t be rude to that woman even if I tried, probably because I knew she’d whoop my butt and toss holy water at me if I ever spoke back to her.
“And yours?” I asked because I cared, which was shocking. I could count on one hand the number of people I cared about, and Maria held a steady spot on that list. I swore, sometimes, she even darted in and out of the number-one spot.
She smiled. “Still beating.”
She left and later came to my bedroom, knocking on the door. When she opened it, she had a bra dangling off the end of a broom. “Just a low-key night with Greyson, huh?” She glared.
I laughed. “Things got weird after midnight.”
She shook her head and muttered something under her breath—probably a prayer for my soul—before going to finish up her work.
A few hours later, I tossed the dinner into the oven, and Maria set the table for two. Sundays with Maria; it was our ritual. Before we ate, she always took my hand into hers and said a prayer.
My eyes stayed open, but she didn’t care. She always said one didn’t have to close their eyes to receive their blessings.
She talked to me about school, reminded me to not be a dick to people, and gave me advice on just being a good person.
I never really said it, but her Sunday dinners meant the world to me.
I needed her around, and she was always there.
If there was someone you could always count on to show up, it was Maria.
Maria often went on and on about her family—mostly Shay.
For the past few years, I’d tuned out the Shay conversations.
I didn’t care to know more about the girl I hated and how happy she was, but now that the bet was going on, I wanted to know as much as I could.
I knew I could use the information to get her to fall in love with me.
“Shay is getting ready for the upcoming auditions for your high school’s theater show, so that’s all that’s been going on in the house.
She’s spending the whole summer rehearsing her piece before auditions in August. She’s amazing, though.
Writing and the performing arts are her gifts to this world.
” Maria beamed as she spoke about her granddaughter.
“The arts are in her blood. It’s her bread and butter.
It was the one good thing her father gave to her—his talent. ”
“Acting, huh?” I questioned, taking a bite of the lasagna.
So. Good.
“Yes. She’s amazing. Truly gifted.”
I wanted to know more about Shay, but I knew Maria would get suspicious of me asking too many questions.
My current list of facts: Actor. Writer. Beautiful, too.
That last one didn’t matter, but it crossed my mind enough to make note of it.
I collected the small clues Maria gave me about her granddaughter, and I put them in my back pocket. I was certain they’d come in handy down the line.