Summary: They were the perfect couple-- the closest of friends. But after a bitter split, they turn into heartless enemies who strive to ruin each other’s lives. Will the spiteful nemeses’ heated relationship be worthwhile?

Prologue:

Perfection Never Lasts

Cutest Couple: James and Karmi

Why did they even have superlatives like that in the yearbook? High school couples never last and things like that served only one purpose and that was to remind and forever haunt us of how naïve we were during those four years. I asked James later on in our lives if being named “Cutest Couple” had been our downfall. He looked at me and rolled his eyes. Then, with that impulsive style that I had always hated about him, he laughed at me.

After he finally settled down, he told me that our downfall hadn’t been something as trivial as a yearbook superlative. It had been our stubborn egos that had pushed us over the edge. He said that our relationship had been as enjoyable and as perfect as it could have been at our age, but it wasn’t “perfect” perfect like our peers had imagined it to be-- how we had imagined it to be. And the fact that we didn’t realize that until it was too late only gave more reason and justification to why things hadn’t worked out in our relationship and in our lives.

We had developed a strong and seemingly unbreakable friendship after we first met during our freshman year of high school. Our middle school friends had become nothing more than minor acquaintances when we met each other. James and I had this connection that made me feel as though I had known him all of my life. We trusted each other more than we trusted our families and we were very close to our families.

Our friendship and trust in each other grew in the duration of three years. All of our friends and even people we hardly knew constantly teased us about having a secret relationship. James even told me that all of his football friends kept urging him to ask me to officially be his girlfriend.

Finally, in the summer before our junior year of high school, James and I were playing a PS2 video game in his bedroom when he asked me if I wanted to be his girlfriend. It would have been totally unromantic and awkward and I normally I would have said no, but he looked so sincere and nervous when he asked me that I said yes. I hated labels, which was another reason for me to say no to James, but I liked him too much to say no.

That summer was easily the best summer of my life. I truly fell in love with him in those first two months of our relationship. Then school started, we were juniors and word spread about the two of us being a couple. Suddenly, we became the most popular people in the school and things were definitely looking great that year all due to the fact that we were together as “boyfriend and girlfriend.” James and I were at the top of our junior class rankings and he scored the starting quarterback position for our school’s football team. Life was good and our relationship started to become more intimate and stronger, seeming as if we were inseparable-- indestructible. We were considered the perfect couple, happily envied by all.

Our feelings towards each other had grown so passionate and truthful that I remember our declaration of love for each other. The football team had won the state championship that year and I was watching in the stands with James’s family and my family. He said we were his good luck charms. James ran up the stands in celebration, hugged all of us, kissed me, his mom, and even my mom, ran back down the stands, grabbed the megaphone from Coach Tyler and announced to the whole stadium that he was in love with me.

That was junior year, the magnificent, glorious year. I thought that James and I would be together forever, as much as I hate to admit it. Then the summer before senior year came.

My family and I went to our new vacation home in Santa Maria and, as lovely as the place had been, I remembered how much I had missed James. We called each other and spoke on the phone for hours during the first few weeks we were separated. Then I met a boy my age who lived in the beach house right beside ours. He was very attractive, smart, kind, and he reminded me of James. I wasn’t proud of how much I flirted with Brek, the boy next door, but I couldn’t take back what I had already done.

Two weeks after meeting Brek, I noticed that I hadn’t spoken to James and he hadn’t called me since then either. I wasn’t really suspecting anything because, after all, I was the one who felt guilty-- spending so much time with a boy I hardly knew when I was James’s girlfriend. Then, a week before school would start, I returned home to find James sitting on our porch frowning.

Somehow he had found out about Brek and I remember how much I cried and pleaded for his forgiveness. After hours of crying, James finally forgave me and we kissed. Only hours later, my closest girl friend, Alex, instant messaged me and told me that there was something I needed to know. Apparently, James had been spending a lot of time with my best friend in middle school and she had seen them kissing at the movie theater.

I drove to James’s house where, luckily, his parents weren’t home. We screamed and argued heatedly for a long time. I couldn’t believe that he didn’t deny what Alex had told me and that was the end of our relationship. The perfect couple, voted “Cutest Couple” in last year’s yearbook, had crashed and burned to ashes after a year.

That was the day that marked the beginning of our merciless, vengeful last year of high school “together.”