Prologue
Toby's POV
I don't know when I noticed Spencer; she was always just…there. I had known her practically since the day she was born. She was always Spencer; bitchy Melissa's mature little sister. Then, the summer after she turned 16, everything changed, and I never looked at her the same way every again. After she stepped out of her sisters' car wearing white short-shorts with her black back pack slung over her right shoulder, something changed, for the both of us.
Spencer's POV
I've always known Toby Cavanaugh and his step sister Jenna Marshall. We had been living in the same house for summer vacation since I was in the womb. It's all because of Sarah Marshall, now Sarah Cavanaugh after marrying Toby's dad. My mom has known "Marsh" since they were seven and my mom moved into the house next door to Sarah's. They became best friends and when Sarah and her new husband Eli Cavanaugh bought a beach house in the Outer Banks, of course we just HAD to dedicate our summers to living with them at the beach.
I had never really minded spending my summers with the Cavanaugh's, in fact, we all got along really well despite everything. You see, Toby being the only boy, he despised the fact that it was always me, Jenna, and Melissa together over the summer. He didn't have anyone else, so he was forced to either hang with us or suffer from boredom. Most of the time the four of us got along, but there were always those times when Jenna and Melissa would go off on random spurts of bitchiness that would piss off me and Toby, resulting in the two of us going off on our own to hang, leaving Melissa and Jenna with "hurt feelings". I loved them both unconditionally, but they started to piss me off perpetually as we got older and they got girlier and girlier. By the time we were fourteen, Jenna and I didn't talk beyond pleasantries.
So from the age of twelve onward, Toby and I got closer and closer as I drifted farther and farther from the rest of the people in the house, besides Sarah. Sarah was like the mom I never had, because my own was either too busy with work (yes, even in the summer) or too busy fussing over every little thing that Melissa ever did to give a crap about me. Sarah always had time for me though. She said that even though Jenna was her biological daughter, she wasn't anything like she expected she would be. She said Jenna was too secretive, and I had to agree, 'cuz it was the truth. Jenna would disappear into her room for hours at a time, and no one knew why.
After two years of Jenna's strange behavior, late night talks with Sarah, and spending every waking moment at the beach, Toby and I were best friends. We did everything together as a general rule. You couldn't find one of us without the other, and everyone was shocked on those rare occasions when we weren't together. That was, until the summer I was fifteen. That summer, Toby didn't have time to hang with me anymore, or do the things that were practically ritual by then. He had his own set of friends, and he didn't need, nor want me. I was cast aside, and forced to find my own friends. I did, I met a group of girls that were the best people I could ever ask to meet, and I soon got over Toby. I was okay, thanks to Emily Fields, Aria Montgomery, and Hannah Marin. I didn't need Toby, just like he didn't need me. And that was the summer our friendship ended.