Paige was a fuckboy magnet. And it wasn’t like she ever tried to look for them in the first place. Like new zits before Winter Formal, they came around just when she thought she didn’t have to deal with them anymore. It didn’t help that fuckboys could be just as hard to get rid of, too.
Who even invented the word that was so on point it brought her to tears? While Paige made a forgettable note to herself about looking it up, she did know why “fuck” and “boy” were together: the fuckboy was a boy with no motive other than to fuck.
“Sasha was a total bitch,” Andrew complained as he parked the latest Audi luxury sedan in a tiny parking lot. “All she did was talk shit on everyone, and she always hung out with James and Gary. She didn’t even send me nudes!”
Paige wanted to do anything other than listen to this hypocrite. And she hoped to God he wasn’t going to send her nudes. Sure, while he was kind of hot, she had to wonder, as with every fuckboy she’d dated, if her level of hotness was only what mattered to him. Besides, even before he pulled up in her driveway with a car too shiny to be his first, she knew in the very back of her head that Andrew Chen was still a fuckboy, especially sophomore year when he dated every girl she knew, and not to forget his fashion inspiration being Kanye West. Once a fuckboy, always a fuckboy.
Paige stepped out of the car. “Yeah, I heard she was a bitch to you.” Probably because he’d do things like talk shit about his exes on first dates.
He slammed his door and fixed his hair using the car window as a mirror. “I can’t put up with crazy sluts anymore.”
They headed to the entrance of Cucina Mia, a low-key Italian restaurant on Main Street. With red striped awnings above the windows, it was a cute and modest place, and probably too tiny to fit the customers waiting outside. People probably heard about the zillion and one flavors on the new gelato menu.
Paige suppressed a sigh. Waiting for a table meant more forced conversations with Andrew. And though he’d been the one to ask her out, she blamed this Saturday night on herself, as well as many other past dates that started out this way. After all, this thing called “dating” was an endless cycle of pretending that romance was real and justifying it with lust, only to break it off and claim to be friends when really they were semi-friends or future rebounds. Of course she, as well as her exes, never expected anything from their relationships, and neither did the whole school.
She wondered if Andrew wanted this date because he wanted to fuck, or worse, hit the gossip headlines the very next school day? Or, in the time they waited for their table, he just wanted to rant about his mom yelling at him for always coming home late? And that he couldn’t wait to go to college to be away from them? He should’ve felt lucky the worst thing his parents did to him was giving lectures.
At least the rant made the time pass faster, because the next thing she knew, they were sitting at a table near the center of the restaurant, with a waiter handing them worn-out menus. He looked to be about Paige’s age, but she was sure she’d never seen him around school.
“Hey guys, I’m Mark,” he said as his brown eyes glanced at her and Andrew. “And if you ever forget my name, remember the waiter that made his mark.”
Paige snorted. “Which was making a pun with his name?”
Mark turned to her and grinned. “Good, you’ll remember my name now.”
She grinned back, resting her chin on her fist. “Is this how you greet people? You must be that boring.”
He made a show of pointing his finger at her. “You’ll remember my name, even after you leave this place. Mark my words.”
“I’ve marked your words, Matthew.”
As he slowly turned to walk away with a crooked smile, she stared at his short dark brown curls. She laughed softly and faced forward in her seat, her eyes barely reading the words on the menu.
“Do you know him?” Andrew asked.
She shook her head and glanced at Mark, who was heading toward the kitchen. “Do you know if he goes to our school?”
“Hmm. No, I don’t think so. I only know Colette works here.” He let out a sharp breath. “She has this amazing piece of ass…” But before he continued, he glanced at Paige’s dirty look and cleared his throat. “But yeah, I mean, it didn’t work out anyway.” His fingers started picking at a dent in the wooden table. “She’s a crazy cheating bitch. Faking her feelings and shit. And thank God she works here on weekdays.”
If only their waiter Michelangelo showed up with another one of his lame puns.
“So,” Andrew said, “did I already say you look great?”
“Um…no.” Was he finally going to be decent?
“Oh. Well, you do.” He ran his hands through the extra long hair at the top of his fade haircut. “You always look great, like with the makeup and stuff.”
Widening her eyes slightly, she scooted her chair closer. “Thanks.” Even though it was a compliment from a dickbag, it was always nice to hear someone--especially a guy--praise her makeup. It was like people appreciated her artwork, and was there anything wrong with looking her best every day?
But the boost in her self-esteem died off as fast as it had come when Andrew asked, “You made YouTube tutorials, right? Like in middle school?”
Her heart rate increased as yet another person brought up that part of her past. The bitter images came back as she looked down at the table. “Oh, yeah. It was a while ago.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He leaned forward, his eyes seeming to search for his memory in the space between them before glancing up at her. “And you stopped at the end of eighth grade, right?”
She nodded slowly.
“Why’d you stop?”
“Um…” She struggled to think of a response that didn’t say too much about her personal life, particularly during eighth grade, to a borderline acquaintance in the most gossipy social circle in school. The amount of shit the whole school knew was much more than what she was okay with, and surely at least Andrew knew about the pictures and rumors that turned her life around. They were probably what even got her on this date with Andrew, considering he was an attention-seeking prick. And how much different were her exes?
“Oh, wait!” he exclaimed, hitting the table top. “When your nudes came out everyone started hating your videos.”
Paige wanted to hide right then and there. Maybe move away and live as a hermit for the rest of her life, just as long as no one talked about her anymore.
“Is that why you stopped?”
She wanted to punch his face so hard that it would look like one of his dimples. “Um, can we not talk about that?”
“Oh, sure.” He leaned back with an apologetic look. “Sorry.”
A buzzing sound came from his pocket. When he answered his phone, his mouth formed an O. “Colette? Yeah, we got a table already. Wait, what? Sorry, I can’t hear you, hang on.” He glanced at me. “I gotta talk to Colette. If Mark comes back can you order for me?”
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Uh…” He seemed to look at the first thing he saw and said, “The first one with the scallops and mussels.”
When he went outside, she hoped he was going to pay for his food as she looked at the price of his order. He might as well pay for her food too, since he probably had an allowance larger than what he needed. If she had that money, she’d spend days on end buying clothes and makeup. The mall was always the fastest wallet-drainer, but at least she’d get to stop wearing stuff she owned since the summer before freshman year. Her closet even had some of Mom’s old clothes, which Mom had worn in her teen years just before she left home and got pregnant with Jerry. Then she had Paige two years later.
If Paige were born before Jerry, Mom would’ve paid more attention to her. Parents were always like that with their first kids, right?
“Hey,” a low voice said. “Where’s your guy?”
She glanced up at Mark’s quizzical look, imagining for a split second what it would be like to spend a night with him. If he turned it into a fucking study date, it would be a thousand times funner than tonight, and she just met him.
“He’s on the phone. But I’m ready to order for us.”
After she did, Paige simply stared at Andrew outside, still on the phone.
“What’s wrong?” Mark asked.
“What do you think, Mason?”
Grinning, he raised his eyebrows at her before glancing between Andrew and Paige. “Your date doesn’t want to hang out with you? Damn, and I thought you were the savage one.”
Paige couldn’t help but giggle. “Well, you see why I was savage?”
He nodded. “Sorry he doesn’t seem to like you that much. You’re pretty nice.”
“Sure, from what you knew in the last, what, ten minutes?”
“Well, I’d be down to get to know you better.”
She shook her head and grinned. She didn’t know if she just needed the relief badly, or she never had in fact smiled this much on a date before. Where did this tan and tall eye candy come from and what was his number?
She started with the first part of her question, asking, “Do you go to my school?”
“I actually just moved from LA last week.”
“Which school are you going to?”
“Murdy. I start on Monday.”
“Ooh, so I get to see you more.”
“Ooh, depends. What grade are you?”
“Senior. And let me guess, senior too?”
He shook his head. “Junior.”
“Aw, still a baby.”
“Okay, by one year?”
“You have much more to learn about the world. Like how you’re gonna lose your virginity.”
“If I still had it, I’d let you be the first one to take it.” He winked, and she felt her insides melt a little. “Well I gotta work, so I’ll see you later.”
“See ya, Michael.”
“Oh, wait. I didn’t get your name.”
“Paige.”
His smile grew. “You sure are a page-turner.”
“Just don’t,” she laughed.
She didn’t often check out her waiters’ asses, but she got her fill when he went into the kitchen. As she stared at the vicinity of the kitchen door, she thought of writing her number on the back of the receipt after dinner. Or better yet, just give it to him in front of Andrew. It wasn’t like the latter gave a fuck.
Speaking of which, he was still outside on the phone, probably with the same person. Maybe the juiciest gossip would be Andrew Chen still crushing on his ex Colette Nguyen, an Asian Baby Girl, instead of dating the Ginger Slut, or Ginger Trash, or Ragge-Slutty Ann. She personally liked Gingervitis, just because the word matched how sickening and damaging people’s gossip was when it came out of their mouths.
She bet Andrew was referring to a few of those names right now, even when he glanced at her a few times as he talked.
In the corner of Paige’s eye, she caught a waitress approaching her.
And when Paige looked up to see who it was, she froze. A giant shiver crept up her back and arms and her breathing grew fast.
What the fuck was she doing here?1077Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡl5Wvw782UC
