Sharks & Boys Read Online Free Page B

right.
    “Who uses the word ‘fling’ anymore? You’re asking me if Wick would hook up with a hot girl who has long-standing interest in him? I guess it’s possible.”
    To my surprise, now I really am crying.
    “Don’t say that.” I let the tears run down my face.
    “I’m just being honest,” he says.
    “But if he did do that, if he hooks up with Simone, maybe he and I could still work things out, right?”
    “Is that what you’d want?”
    “I love him,” I say. “I really do.”
    Landon sits up. He blinks at me. “Enid, you’re too young to love a guy.” He grabs a tissue from a box beside his bed and hands it to me. “It hurts now, but you’ll move through it. It’s part of life.”
    “Or we could get back together,” I say.
    “You’re thinking like a girl, Enid.”
    “I am a girl.”
    “Try to think like a guy.”
    I shake my head. “But I’m not attracted to Simone.”
    Landon scratches his head and yawns.
    “Listen, the thing about guys is, well, we’re animals. You want us to be all kind and cuddly, like baby ducks or something. But we’re not. We’re visual beasts.”
    “So you’re saying Simone looks better than I do?”
    “You’re thinking like a girl again. I can safely speak for all straight guys when I say that when it comes to the female population, we really like to look, and we’re always tempted to pursue.”
    “You’re not helping me at all,” I say.
    Landon unleashes another yawn. I feel like I’m boring him. And that hurts too.
    “Enid, you need to give him space. Dudes love space.”
    “But if I give him too much space, he’ll leave my orbit.”
    “Your orbit? You can’t control what happens. If Wick moves on, Wick moves on. And you’ll meet somebody else. You’re a great catch, Enid. You’re nice. You bake cakes. You’re smart. You swim.”
    Landon has no clue what a brokenhearted girl wants to hear. I ignore much of what he just said and roll down onto my side. “But it hasn’t even been a whole day yet. Has he told you he’s moving on?”
    He shakes his head no. “I’m just thinking like a guy.”
    “He can’t.”
    “He’s a guy. He’s going to move on.”
    “God, Landon, you make it sound like you’re all apex predators. You’re wrong about a lot of things. First, I don’t bake cakes; I decorate them. Second, Wick is not moving on. Third, I saved a llama yesterday and that makes me more than a good catch; it makes me brave and totally interesting.”
    He lies back down.
    “Enid, I don’t want to argue with you. I accept point one. And I caution you against deluding yourself by believing point two. And I saw point three on the news last night. That’s too bad.”
    “What do you mean that’s too bad? What do you have against llamas?”
    “It died.”
    “No, that’s not the story. It almost died and then I helped save it.”
    “After that, it died. I saw it late last night on the news.”
    “Are you serious?”
    “As a heart attack,” he says. He buries his head under his pillow. “Go online and see for yourself.”
    I hurry to his computer desk and open up his laptop.
    “Can’t you check it out in your room?” he asks.
    I ignore him. I Google: llama rescue in Burlington, Vermont. The stories pop up. I click onto the first link. He wasn’t lying. The llama did die.
    “Its name was Pilsner Urquell,” I say. “His owner said he was twenty-two and died of natural causes. Or possibly exhaustion.”
    “Twenty-two is a lot of years for a llama.”
    I didn’t save anything. I’m not a hero. Nothing about me is special. I’m a nice high school junior who decorates cakes and swims. This makes me freaking dull.
    I close his laptop and get ready to leave. I’ve got an entire lame day ahead of me. I have marzipan to arrange and a wedding cake to assemble. I pat Landon’s computer. It didn’t mean to deliver soul-crushing news.
    “Are you hitting my laptop?” Landon asks.
    “No.”
    And it’s at this moment that I see the