Lexi

Music trailed me as I distanced myself from the barn. And while I didn’t see the girls, I knew they were watching. After all, they promised to have my back.

I spotted Sterling standing beside an old well, staring out across the overgrown field and rusted farm equipment. Moonlight streaked his dark hair with silver, and I had to admit something to myself. He was, hands down, the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

The alcohol flowing through my veins gave me a false sense of confidence that kept me moving forward, putting one wobbly foot in front of the other until…

“Hey.”

Sterling turned at the sound of my voice, settling his green stare directly on me. He didn’t immediately respond when I greeted him, but his lips curved into a smirk as he looked me over.

“You drunk, Rodriguez?”

Standing so close, he towered over me, forcing me to tilt my head back to meet his gaze, which made me feel less steady on my feet.

I started to lie, but why bother?

“Yeah,” I confessed, which made his smile grow as he scanned me with another look, maybe trying to figure out who the hell I was dressed as. Then, he turned toward the field again and the smile began to fade.

I didn’t know him well enough to say for sure, but he seemed upset. Or, in the very least, distracted. He was always a little quiet, but this felt different, which made me painfully aware of the silence between us. We clearly didn’t have anything to talk about, so I felt like a complete idiot for bothering him. Maybe he’d broken away from the crowd because he truly wanted to be alone, and I screwed that up.

I glanced over my shoulder to where I expected the girls to be waiting and there they were, motioning for me to keep going. It felt like the ground moved beneath me, but I planted my feet, focusing extremely hard on not falling over.

Part of me wanted to just end this, but a much larger part craved his attention more than I craved an escape. So, I kept talking.

“Are you… having fun?” I asked.

Sterling’s shoulders lifted beneath his hoodie, which likely meant he was too cool for an actual costume.

“Being here’s better than being home, I guess.” The answer gave me the impression there was a lot he wasn’t saying. I didn’t push, though.

“Same. My sister forced me to come so she could fool around with her boyfriend,” I shared, but I left out the part about my dad standing me up. No sense in bringing the mood down even more.

“It’s just you and her, right? I think you mentioned that.”

“Yeah. I mean no. Not really,” I stammered, hearing how my words dragged. “Amelia’s my only blood sister, but we’ve got step siblings. They’re older, though.”

Sterling nodded. “Right. Forgot about them.”

I shouldn’t have been flattered at the realization that he actually listened and retained our past conversations, but I was.

I stepped up and halted beside him, staring down into the depth of the well. As I felt myself teetering off balance, it became immediately clear that this had been a mistake. My fingers braced the well’s rocky edge and the feeling of the ground trying to toss me down into the abyss faded. But it wasn’t only my tight grip on the edge that steadied me.

It was also the set of warm hands that had me by my waist.

It took a moment to piece it all together, to accept that those were his hands holding me, but my head eventually caught up. Then, I found the nerve to peer into Sterling’s penetrating stare and revel in the moment.

“Thanks,” I said just above a whisper.

“You’re welcome.” His smirk returned and it weakened my willpower just a tad bit more.

He removed his hands from my waist but stayed close. I couldn’t decide if it was my nearness to him or the drinks in my system making me feel woozy. Probably both.

Focus, stupid. You’ll blow this if you don’t start at least trying to be normal.

He glanced over and found me staring again, because my reaction time was shit by this point. So, caught, I don’t bother looking away.

Those green eyes of his were glued to me and he didn’t blink. Not even when his gaze lowered to my mouth, making me hyperaware of the breeze that swept over my lips.

“You never said why you came out here,” he said breathily, finally letting his eyes flicker back to mine.

“I… I was just getting some fresh air. Same as you,” I lied.

Despite having kept the part about how I followed him out here to myself, the look in his eyes had me convinced that he knew.

He hit me with a cryptic, “Interesting,” that made me even more certain he was on to me, but he didn’t elaborate. And I definitely didn’t have the balls to ask for clarity.

So, when it became too hard to hold his gaze, I cast a quick glance over my shoulder toward Parker and gang. Surprisingly enough, they had indeed stuck around like they promised.

The song changed and it reached Sterling and I, despite being a good distance from the barn. It was a song I recognized, something sort of slow and emotional. One I didn’t realize at the time would always remind me of this moment, remind me of him.

Suddenly, my entire body felt jittery, anxious, and a thought persisted in the back of my mind. I wanted to see what would happen if, for once, I wasn’t scared to go after what I wanted. Wasn’t scared to take a chance and just… put myself out there.

A collage of memories featuring my father flooded my head. Like my brain was desperate to remind me what happened the last time I let myself be vulnerable, but my defenses were down, completely out of order. I’m guessing this was the reason why, when the urge to turn to him struck again, I couldn’t fight it.

As my heart beat wildly inside my chest, I recalled the words the girls had just spoken—their belief that my crush on Sterling wasn’t one-sided. It was enough to spur an idea, one that swam circles inside my head, going around and around. I debated for several seconds until finally drumming up a small measure of courage. It wasn’t much but was still more than I knew I had in me. This was clearly an alcohol-induced impulse, but I was too young, too inexperienced, to make that connection at the time.

It took one final look at the beautiful boy standing beside me before I stepped out of my comfort zone, preparing to do the unthinkable. I lifted my mask and placed both hands on either side of his face. The first thing I saw in his eyes was confusion, but as I moved closer, that faded, giving way to curiosity.

Giving way to anticipation.

“Rodriguez, what are you—”

Those whispered words, then a reluctant groan, were Sterling’s reaction to me pressing my mouth to his. It was the single-most awkward thing I’d ever done, ever experienced, until…it wasn’t.

I can still recall the moment it no longer felt like I was kissing him, but suddenly, we were kissing each other. The heat of his hands was back, moving through every part of me he dared to touch. He squeezed me tight, drawing me closer to his tall, lean body, and I had no idea what I was doing, no idea what was happening, because I’d never done this before, had never kissed someone. But somehow, I, Alexia Rodriguez, was having my first kiss with Sterling Golden.

The rest of the world had all but fallen away as energy reverberated between us, electricity that built more and more as the seconds passed. I wasn’t sure how much time had gone by, but it felt like forever when I first heard the laughing, the footsteps rushing toward Sterling and me. He pulled away first, with one quick, jarring motion. And by the time I opened my eyes, he had a hand up, shielding himself from the flash of Parker’s camera.

“Gotcha!” she beamed, so proud of herself for getting one over on me.

Sterling’s eyes landed on me next and, right away, I sensed the disconnect. Sensed his mistrust as his brow gathered. “This was a setup?”

I was at a loss for words, still reeling myself from Parker and crew’s sneak attack. Before I even had the chance to mount a defense, Parker was squealing again, moving her fingers across her phone screen at the speed of light.

“Pandora is gonna love this!”

“How do you think she’ll caption the pic?” Ariana asked, making Heidi’s eyes light up.

“Oooh! I know! MrSilver—a prince of our beloved city—was spotted testing an age-old theory at tonight’s Monster Bash: Does kissing frogs really turn them into princesses?”

The girls erupted in a sickening cacophony of laughter that made me feel ill, dirty. Within seconds, my eyes were stinging, blurred with tears, and despite myself, I flashed a look toward Sterling. I don’t know why, but I expected him to jump to my defense, now that it was clear I’d been a victim in this, too. I even expected him to tell the three bitches who’d just ruined our moment to back the fuck off, but… those words never came. Instead, he kept that sharp glare trained directly on me.

A flare of frustration, then anger, sparked within him, neither of which I deserved. But Parker and her bitchy friends? They deserved that and then some.

“So, how was it Sterling? Mouth still taste like pondwater?” Parker asked with that wicked cackle of hers.

How the hell did I fall for this? How could I think girls like that were actually my friends? On my side? Rooting for me?

Sterling’s gaze finally shifted to Parker, but I only felt more disappointed after he spoke.

“You better not send that shit,” he warned her, like a pic of us kissing circulating on social media was the worst thing in the world.

“Too late. It’s in Pandora’s inbox as we speak. But… this is kind of on you, Golden. None of us actually thought you’d make out with this reject. We expected you to tell her weird ass to back off, but…”

Parkers words trailed off when she and her friends broke out in another fit of laughter.

“We weren’t making out. She kissed me before I got the chance to push her off.”

Feeling the depth of the emotional wound he just inflicted, I snapped a look toward Sterling. That wasn’t at all how it went down. He hadn’t forgotten that quickly how he touched me, how he pulled me closer. I mean, yeah, I kissed him first, but he definitely kissed me back.

“That’s how you remember it, dickhead? Why are you lying to them?”

The words flew from my mouth like a dagger aimed straight for Sterling. He responded with another of his wicked looks. The deadly kind.

“Shut the fuck up, Rodriguez. You’re the reason I’m in this mess,” he snapped, igniting rage within me.

How had he flipped so quickly? Was I so bad, so repulsive, that he couldn’t even admit that he felt something? Because I sure as hell did.

“Tell them the fucking truth. Your drunk ass nearly fell in the well and after I caught you, you kissed me before I could push you away,” he growled.

A wave of fury rolled through me, and my hands ached with unshed tension. I wanted to punch something.

No, I needed to punch something. So, I did.

And that something…was Sterling.

“Oh my gosh!”

“Told you she’s insane!”

“What the hell?”

I’m not sure which of the girls said what, but this was the collection of stunned words that immediately followed me decking that asshole across his jaw. Already, my hand throbbed and I knew I’d likely regret this by morning. But in that moment, all I felt was the satisfaction of having just caused Sterling a fraction of the pain his dismissive bullshit had caused me.

That green stare of his burned brighter as he glared, but he never said a word. Hell, he never even reached to grab his face in pain. He just took it, letting the sudden swell of bad blood between us grow from the size of a puddle to an ocean in record time.

I couldn’t believe that had all just happened, but as I panted, doing my best not to show any emotion other than anger, I was broken. All those days together, going from strangers, to friends, to… whatever it became, it’d been for nothing. Because he was just like all the others. Just like my father—full of shit.

Not every girl can pinpoint the day she turned cold, the day she decided being a loner was better than being one of ‘them’, but I could. And this was that day.

I shot Sterling one last glare before taking off down that dark road, regretting that I’d let my sister talk me into coming tonight. But even then—feeling embarrassed, betrayed, broken—I made up my mind not to let those elite dickheads shame me into a hole. Sure, I’d take the weekend to lick my wounds, to accept the fact that I’d been made a fool of tonight, but I wouldn’t retreat from this. If anything, that Halloween made me come out of my shell, made me more of the reject psycho they already thought I was.

It made me bolder, made me more… me.

Unapologetically Lexi.

I spent months trying to analyze exactly what happened beside that well, wondering what it was about me that spurred Sterling’s harsh reaction. Like being caught kissing me was the absolute worst thing Pandora could spread around. But eventually, I stopped pointing the finger at myself and let it go. And by let it go, I mean I pretended he didn’t exist. In fact, I did such a good job of that, it would be years until we’d speak again, and that was more than okay with me.

The gulf between us meant we failed our project with flying colors. Which I guess you could say was the poisonous cherry on top of our shit sundae.

Aside from setting me on a journey to owning just who the fuck I am, another good thing came out of that tragic, soul-crushing experience. It’s the night I met my one true friend. The one who never left me no matter how bad I fucked up in the years that followed. My ride-or-die. My bestie. The love of my damn life.

Tequila.