When in doubt, Kat Stratford always had a quote to bail me out.

      I first watched 10 Things I Hate About You when I was seven and didn't quite understand what love was. Sure, Mom had read me snippets from her romance novels every night before bed since I was born, but my childish mind couldn't wrap itself around the concept of what theme of the movie really was.

        What it could do was relate my immense hatred for my infuriating next door neighbor to Kat's own toward Patrick.

         While living in a quiet little suburban town on the outskirts of the city had it perks, such as not having to spend every afternoon in gridlock traffic, with them, came disadvantages. The closest grocery store was a half hour drive, the nearest gas station ten minutes. There were only two elementary, two middle, and three high schools in town, and one mall that was almost always full to the brim with teens with nowhere else to spend their spare time.

        But the biggest disadvantage?

        Having to share the same yard with Onyx Hayes.

        The way our quaint, cute little two-story houses were built, the master bedroom and a spacious room sat at the end of the long hallway downstairs, and there was one spacious room that overlooked the flower garden my mother had been nurturing since I was eight-and just happened to sit perfectly parallel to Onyx Hayes bedroom. Most girls, including my quiet, introvert friend Angie, would have given anything to be able to catch even a glimpse of the narcissistic Golden boy. I, however, wished desperately for the boy to understand that the black curtains and sun-damaged blinds weren't just décor.

         Every morning I was forced to watch the seventeen-year-old arrogant blond parade around his big, sparsely furnished bedroom in nothing but a pair of low riding boxers. Sometimes he'd glance my way, smirk, then purposely continue to pace his room aimlessly until I drew my own broken blinds. Under normal circumstances, having a close up view of a hot guy would have made me as weak kneed and nervous as most of the girls at school. But Onyx wasn't just any good-looking guy; he was the boy who'd been a little devil child since the day he was born.

       It would have been great if my daily dose of Onyx stopped there; sadly it wasn't the case. Our mothers were the best of friends, and every Friday night we were forced to sit at the same dinner table. Me, eyes narrowed at the idiot scrolling through his phone through all of dinner hoping if I glared long enough he'd grow uncomfortable and leave as he wasn't present at the table anyway. Of course I'd never get that wonderful opportunity. Instead, he'd occasionally pry his eyes from the bright screen and shoot my parents a perfect, toothy grin that always seemed to get him out of everything, both at home and school.

       "What I'd do to have this view every day." My best friend, Mikey, made it a habit to remind me how "blessed" I was every time he came over. He almost always opened my window wide, pulled the curtains apart, and leaned into the windowsill with heart eyes as he gazed lovingly into the usually vacant room, hoping to catch Onyx coming in from wherever the hell it was that he spent most of the day after school.

            I hadn't always despised the very ground Onyx Hayes walked on, there'd been a time when we'd play together and I had felt as though I was special, because even back then, I had known that all the girls wished to have him within such a proximity and at there every beck and call. But life happened, and when I needed him most, he proved that he wasn't the person I had thought he was.

    "Nyx." Leslie Tubman's voice shook me back into reality, or more specifically, my desk in Algebra II. "Nyx, hey."

         I shot her a warning look over my shoulder, pretending I was interested in the lecture being taught by the plump, old German math teacher. In reality, I just didn't want to listen to the hell that'd be raised if Ms. Greenwich heard her. She was one of the girls on the cheer squad- a friend of Mikey's, her big brown eyes on the devil himself across the room. He had fallen asleep, his arms crossed over the laminate, head resting on them. His mane of unruly blonde hair was fanning his forehead and curtaining his eyes, perfect, full lips slightly parted as his wheezing sounding through the silent room. It was a miracle Ms. Greenwich hadn't heard him yet; a pin drop could be heard in here.

         "Nyx!" the cheerleader tried again, whisper-yelling as she threw a crumbled piece of paper across the room. It missed Onyx by a few inches and hit the stoner behind him, but he was too high to realize what had happened and only stared at the paper, then the ceiling with a quizzical look. Finally, one of Mikey's teammates reached out and smacked Onyx hard upside the head. He jumped, his knee jerking into the bottom of his desk and chair squealing against the tile. His eyes, still glassed over in sleepiness, took in his surroundings before they squinted a fraction as he waited for the blow that was about to come from the loud, strict math teacher.

         It never came. Onyx was quite literally saved by the bell.

        Being closest to the exit at the front of the classroom, I squeezed between two jocks and pressed myself against the wall outside the classroom, hugging my binder against my chest as I leaned forward on my tippy toes to try and find the top of my best friend's dark, buzzed head. He shouldn't be that hard to find-there weren't too many six-foot basketball players in this school.

       "I—" Just as I stepped forward, I rammed hard into a toned chest and hit the ground so hard the wind was knocked out of me. Dazed, I stretched my hand out and reached for my binder, but a tan hand shot into my line of sight and swiped it just as my fingertips brushed the outer edge. I glanced up, hoping to find one of the basketball players holding my binder; of course luck never seemed to be on my side.

     Onyx stood over me, a taunting smile on his face as he crouched back down to clear the ground of the papers that lay in a disorganized pile in front of me. I shot to my feet, only to grow lightheaded and have to press my palm into the cold locker beside me to steady myself.

         "You should really watch where you're going, Amy."

      Seriously? Seventeen years and hundreds of dinners with one another and he didn't even remember my name?

        "It's Aurora." I mumbled, snatching my binder from his grasp. "I do watch where I'm going for your information. It's not my fault I'm a four-foot eleven girl in a school of gargantuan like you."

            Truth was, Mikey was one of the tallest in school and most of the other boys were of average height, I was the one that was small.

       This only amused him more. I fought the urge to slap the smug look off his stupidly perfect face. "Okay, Aurora. Try and be more careful."

            Why did God have to grace the biggest assholes with the prettiest faces? Everything about Onyx was perfect. He wore the face of a model with the sharp, acute and angular features, striking blue eyes, and purposefully mess of ear length blonde curls. He knew he was good looking too, and it was always the guys who were self aware that made sure that everyone else understood they knew he was above them.

            "Hey, Aurora."

        I hated the way he said my name; he spat it like it was a disease.

       "Here." He extended his hand with the loose papers seeing he had my attention again; I'd have to rewrite them and burn these copies. "Wow, wow, wait. Is that my name?"

      Wait what?

       I opened my binder, my heart dropping into the deep empty abyss of my stomach when I saw that my list was gone. My head whipping up, I nearly gasped aloud when I saw him waving a piece of composition paper in between us, head tilted just the slightest to the left.

      Rather than use logic and tear it from his hands, or possibly even ask for it back, my fight or flight kicked in and I most definitely didn't want to fight Onyx Hayes.

        I took off at lightning speed, weaving in and out of oncoming people until I spotted the green Blink-182 sweatshirt Mikey had been wearing when we parted ways this morning. He was leaning into a locker with his forearm, a half-smile curving the right side of his mouth upward and broadcasting his dimple to everyone passing him in the hallway. His rich brown skin contrasted against the white and red locker under his arm. The guy he was talking to, probably one of his basketball friends, spotted me first, eyes widening as if I'd appeared out of thin air.

      "Mike!" I gasped, grasping my best friend's forearm. The player raised an eyebrow before nodding in Mikey's direction and heading for the front of the school. "Mike, Code Red Code Red times ten."

        His eyebrows drew in concentration. "Code Red? You're on your period?"

        Crap, was that what Code Red was?

        Mikey and I had created a number, color, and shape system for our secretive talks in fifth grade. It'd done a lot of good, keeping embarrassing topics from being broadcasted to our peers or parents, but the older we got, the more we added, thus the more confusing they got.

       "Well, yeah." I answered with a small smile. "But that's not what's going on. What color is it again for Onyx Hayes has my list at this very second?"

       All color drained from Mikey's face hearing my words. "You're joking, right?"

        "Most definitely not kidding."

        His brown doe eyes shot over my shoulder and landed on what I'd assume was Onyx by the look that crossed his face. "He's coming over here."

        "Dammit!" I squeaked, trying to slip behind him. He chuckled, shaking his head as he crossed his arms over his chest.

            Unfortunately,  I knew, without the slightest doubt in my mind, that I was about to have my head served on a silver platter to the entire school.

        "What the hell is this?" Onyx's quiet rasp was very much not what I wanted to hear right now. I jabbed my fingers into the small of Mikey's back, earning a jump out of him, but he forced a smile to his face as he gestured toward the paper in between the other boy's hand.

       "That's about a different Onyx Hayes." Was Mikey's brilliant response.

            Straight A student, basketball point guard, and student council member, and that was the best he could come up with?

        Peeking at Onyx from behind Mikey, I found his blue eyes already on me, pulsating with curiosity as to why he was holding a piece of paper with his name followed by forty nine reasons why I hated him.

       "Aurora?" he said my name with a little less malice this time. "What is this?"

        "A list?"

       He rolled his eyes. "Obviously. Why is my name on it? Do you seriously hate me this much?"

       "Oh, she definitely does." Mikey answered, shooing me out from behind him and draping his large arm over my shoulder with a crooked smile in Onyx's direction. "Makes sure to stomp around her room huffing and puffing about every reason she hates you every night."

       I'm going to kill Mikey.

       "You hate my car?" Onyx snickered. "And my stupidly perfect face? Kind of contradicting yourself there, aren't you?"

        The condescending tone in his voice was enough to break me out of my semi-fearful state and I stepped forward, taking my list from between his fingers before he could stop me.

         "Shut up, Onyx."

          "You can't hate me that much." He said in the middle of quirking an eyebrow. "You hardly know me. You can't hate someone you don't know."

        I snorted. "I know you enough."

            With that, I grasped Mikey's wrist and tugged him forward, nearly sending him into the floor. He grumbled angrily under his breath like a pouting child as he followed me out of the school. I slowed to a stop in front of his silver Nissan, giving him a second to apologize for throwing me under the bus, when he didn't I spun on my heel and flicked his ear.

        "Ouch, Rory! What the hell!" he hissed, touching a hand to the irritated area. "Okay, so maybe I kind of deserved that."

        "Kind of?" I snapped. "You totally just made that whole situation ten times worse!"

        He stared at me with a deadpan expression. "A little dramatic, no?"

         "I'm screwed, Mike." I threw my hands over my warm cheeks. "I bet I'm going to come in tomorrow and everyone is going to be staring and whispering."

      He laughed. "I think we need to stop sneaking into the theater to catch movies during our shift. All those teen dramadies are rubbing off on you."

      I stuck my tongue out childishly while he fished his keys from his pocket and tossed them into the air, catching them a second later with a wink. He brushed passed, knocking my shoulder with his own playfully. I raked a hand through my dark hair, lifting my head with a loud, exaggerated sigh.

  Another one followed.

   Onyx stood outside the school, one of his Jordan's kicked back against the brick wall behind him, the other holding a majority of his weight on the concrete. His head was turned away from me as he whispered to the cheerleader from Algebra II. Then, as if he could feel my hatred fueled gaze on him, his head whipped in my direction and he smiled. Not a smirk, not a taunting or teasing curving of his lips. But a normal, playful smile that one might exchange with a friend.

       Oh how I hated that perfect smile.