Dear Love, I Hate You (Easton High)

“The hell you talking about?” Dia pushes.

“It’s—” Theo stops talking abruptly, eyes dead set on something in the distance. And it’s not just him. The entire student body has gone quiet.

Dia and I track Theo’s gaze to the school’s main entrance, more specifically to the two six-foot-something morons being escorted out of the building by the sheriff.

The first person I see is Finn.

Then I see him.

Xavier Emery.

Finn’s brother—I’d say best friends, but these two are practically family. They literally wear matching chains for Pete’s sake. Xavier is a lot of things: popular, captain of the basketball team, so beautiful it’s almost painful, but to me? He’s the asshole little boy who cut off one of my pigtails when we were kids.

Dia loses it. “Cox, so help me God, if you don’t tell me what’s going on right now, I’ll—”

“Chill.” Theo caves. “I heard them talking about some prank after practice yesterday. Thought it was just locker room talk. I didn’t think they were serious.”

Is that why we were evacuated?

The basketball team’s star players pulling a prank?

What could they have done that was so bad they had to pull the fire alarm and evacuate the whole school?’

“What sort of prank?” Dia’s voice wavers with worry.

Theo shrugs. “Something about stink bombs, I think?”

Dia squeezes her eyes shut and exhales a long, exasperated sigh. Worst part is, she doesn’t even look surprised. Finn Richards has always been the troublemaker.

That impulsive, reckless kid who, if it weren’t for his rich daddy, would have been expelled many moons ago. But, hey, what can you do? Easton High needs the funding, and just like Xavier, Finn is one of the team’s most valuable players, so they sweep his behavior under the rug.

Objectively, Finn is a no-brainer. It’s the Xavier part of it all that makes no sense to me. Dude hasn’t so much as breathed wrong since freshman year, so to take part in a prank like this? I don’t get it.

“Wait, isn’t setting off a stink bomb illegal?” I realize.

“Sure is. Jesus, what are they, dense? This could cost them the rest of the season.” Theo tsks.

I haul my attention back to the boys. Finn seems to realize just how horribly he messed up when he catches sight of the six hundred kids standing in the rain. Meanwhile, Xavier doesn’t give a semblance of a fuck.

Not one.

It’s the droop of his shoulders, the way his eyes glaze over the crowd with boredom. Even his walk feels like a statement. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Xavier and Finn switched bodies in the world’s worst remake of Freaky Friday.

A police officer pulls Principal Emery aside—yep, Xavier’s mom is the principal. Might come in handy right about now, but the cherry on top? Xavier’s dad is also employed at Easton High. He’s our PE teacher. The one we love to hate.

I get Silver Springs is a small town and all, but they could’ve at least tried to branch out.

The cop tells Principal Emery something we can’t hear, to which she replies with a “Do what you have to do” nod. That’s the universe’s cue to drop the entire Pacific Ocean on our heads.

The rain picks up again, harder than it was moments prior, and I can’t help watching Dumb and Dumber get dragged toward the cop car out front.

Remember when I said Xavier Emery was so beautiful it’s almost painful? The way he looks right now… that’s what I’m talking about.

Even soaked, about to get his ass thrown in the back of a cop car, with his shirt sticking to his hard, sculpted body and his light brown hair dripping down his forehead, he’s every girl’s wet dream—pun intended.

Granted, the guy was an asswipe when he disappeared from my life at age eight, but I can appreciate the blue-eyed Adonis just as much as the next girl.

“Never a dull moment in Silver Springs, huh?” Theo remarks as Xavier and Finn are shoved into the back seat and the police car takes off at full speed. “Man, I hope this means we have the day off tomorrow. I haven’t even started Ms. Callahan’s paper yet.”