Page 2 of People Like Us

“I think,” I said carefully, “we were worse than Andy was, Em.”

“I know,” she agreed softly. Emily cleared her throat before going on, “I know we were. But it’s behind us now, right?”

I nod even though she can’t see me.

Honestly, if I could just confess to every other tiny little sin I’ve ever committed in my life—just vomit it all up onto the dining table like puzzle pieces of my life to be put together—I wouldn’t mind my husband seeing a damn bit of it. But it’s just those few months of my senior year, everything that I did to him, that had me swallowing the rest of the wine before I said, “Okay, I’ll go.”

Chapter One

Lemon and honey coated my throat as I swallowed around the cough drop in my mouth. It’s thin wrapper folded deftly in my fingers around the pep talk, an innuendous ‘Keep going!’ printed in blue text, as our biology teacher rambled on about something it was far too early in the morning for my brain to comprehend.

I reached across the lab table’s black surface to set the wrapper beside the computer of the guy sitting across from me. He eyed it with more disdain than the paper really deserved, then aimed that unimpressed glare at me. I smiled brightly, but he didn’t return it. At least, I was pretty sure he didn’t, though I couldn’t really tell with his open laptop covering the lower part of his face.

The pinch of his thick brows over his deep green eyes seemed like a good indicator of his disinterest.

Heavily ringed fingers picked up the wrapper without reading it and tossed it in the trash can behind him. I frowned and pulled another cough drop from my pocket and popped it in my mouth, tucking it into my cheek next to the previous one. I smoothed out the wrapper around the edge of the table and got to folding again. This one was even better: ‘You’ve got it in you!’

I placed it neatly on the edge of his keyboard, right on top of the Esc button. This earned me another deep scowl. Again, he didn’t read the text and threw the paper in the trash. When he turned back, he pinned me with a look I couldn’t quite read, considering the features missing from the equation.

I didn’t really mind only being able to see his eyes. August Brooks had the most captivating green eyes, like a whole ecosystem of foliage lived in his irises. I hadn’t noticed them in the previous twelve years we spent in the same grade until this semester when assigned seating forced me to spend an hour each morning observing those green eyes.

The rest of him wasn’t hard to look at either, when the laptop wasn’t in the way. He had a strong jaw, full lips, and cheekbones you only saw on men in magazines. His hair sat in long curls, in a shade of boxed-dye black that reflected blue in the fluorescent light of the classroom.

He’d started dying his blonde curls the inky color sometime our junior year, and often went too long between touch ups. Like the reversal of valley girls feigning platinum when they didn’t have the funds to keep up with their roots. Not that he could’ve been spending more than eight dollars on a dye that barely lasted three weeks. I suggested at the beginning of the school year that he should use a color protecting shampoo, but he’d only mumbled: “I’ll get right on that, Sin.”

He wasn’t the first one to make the play on my last name, Sinley, but coming from him it sent an unwanted wave of heat through me.

He’d come in the next day with it freshly dyed. I could tell he did it himself, because the front was always perfect, while the backs of his ears were stained with little impressions of his curls.

By most standards, August was devastatingly handsome, which could’ve made up for his gloomy attitude if only he’d kept his sarcastic comments to himself every once and a while. Though I didn’t think most girls at our school would admit it, due to the fact that he was lanky and often had his face in a book. Not to mention his preferred fashion choices of dark baggy clothing and more rings than any man had business owning.

Our classmates liked to call him a Misfit. Not just him specifically, but the whole group of kids he hung out with. The collection of them could be easily spotted with unnaturally colored hair and too much metal clanking together when they walked.

I thought all of this might’ve been forgivable by our peers had he been bulkier. My boyfriend, Andy, for example, shared many of the same features: strong jaw, light eyes, that classic, all-American type of handsome. But he was large. Not taller, but thicker in all the places that seemed to be important to people our age.

Personally, I didn’t really get why it mattered, other than Andy’s ability to perform on the football field, which brought a lot of funds to our school. But as far as attraction went, August was an easy contender to anyone who wasn’t too prideful to admit they liked someone who didn’t fit in.

The corner of my mouth twisted up in disappointment that he didn’t want to join my game. I was already moving on when I noticed Wyatt, another member of the Misfits, glaring at me from my left.

Wyatt didn’t have a single redeeming feature about him. He was bulky enough that he could’ve been a football player if he hadn’t been shorter than my five foot, three inches and had the athletic ability of a newborn calf. I wasn’t sure if his features were always scrunched up as if he smelled something terrible, or if it was just having to sit next to me that brought out his consistent state of disdain.

“What?” I mouthed. Wyatt rolled his beady eyes and turned his attention back to the notes he was taking on his computer, deeming me unworthy of a response.

I looked at my own screen, glowing too brightly in front of me. The cursor sat on the blank white space, blinking at me tauntingly. I clearly overestimated my academic dedication when I signed up for such a heavily weighted class to start my day. My eyes flickered down to the clock in the bottom of the screen, the tiny numbers reading: ‘seven forty-eight a.m.’

I hadn’t realized I’d actually groaned until I heard Mrs. Deal call out across the room, “Am I boring you, Lola?” I straightened my spine and gave her an apologetic smile.

“No ma’am, sorry. Just battling a sore throat. Do you mind if I get some water?”

Her lips folded inward, her chin jutting toward the door before she turned back to the presentation on jellyfish projected on the whiteboard.

I took my time in the empty hallway, swinging my metal water bottle by its handle as I began to tap out a tune in my head across the tiled floor. I spun too fast on the last one, and the bottle flew out of my grip, clattering loudly down the hall.

A teacher stuck his head out of his class, Mr. Hayward—who happened to be one of my favorite people on the planet. “What are you doing out of class, Lola?”

“Just getting some water,” I said, pointing several feet ahead to my bottle, which was still rolling even further away.

A disapproving grunt escaped his thin mouth before it pulled into a flat line. “Heard you’re failing science,” he said matter-of-factly.