Never Meant for Me
It was an average day in Rosewood when Spencer Hastings walked into The Grille to grab his hourly caffeine fix. It had become a ritual for the dark haired teen to keep himself filled up on coffee when he was out in a public setting, since popping pills in front of strangers probably wasn't the best way to ward off negative attention, which was something he'd grown accustomed to doing, growing up in a family like the Hastings'. They were your typical pedigree stock: Ivy League graduates with high salaries and careers in respectable professions, money pouring from their ears like water from a faucet. It had become increasingly clear to Spencer that he had to stay 'on the ball' at all times in order to please his parents and live up to the impossible standards that his older sister, Melissa, had set for him. His father, Peter, was a respected lawyer and it was basically decided already that he was going to follow in his father's footsteps and study law at UPenn, meaning that it was more crucial than ever for the teenage flight risk to get A grades across his report cards from now until graduation to have any hope of getting accepted into the college. Speencer's experience with speeding had started with a shady classmate offering him pills when he'd fallen asleep in class after a particularly rough all-nighter spent studying for tests and completing extra-credit assignments for every class on his timetable just to stay ahead of the game. Normally, he'd never have accepted the offer but he'd become increasingly more desperate as he got further into the school year. Forever trying to keep up appearances, studying well into the early hours because he couldn't risk appearing like a "pencil pusher" in front of Alison, who would never let him live it down and would bring it up whenever they were alone, like she did with every little thing she knew about Spencer. When she'd caught him kissing his sister's boyfriend in the yard of her house, she'd been open about the fact that she thought he was a skank, not to mention the fact that she now knew he was gay. A fact that she just loved to bring up when they were alone together, calling him "GBF" and that one night on Halloween when he'd come to her party dressed as Rambo and she'd proceeded to mispronounce the name to "Rainbow" every time she mentioned his costume and then faking stupid when someone corrected her. Alison knew things that Spencer couldn't risk his parents or his sister ever finding out about. Speeding helped him stay alert and be prepared for anything that came his way, whether it be from his studies, from his family or from Alison.
Blinking himself out of his internalised monalogue, Spencer realized that he was next in the line to order and stepped forward, putting on a bright smile for the cashier, his coffee order instinctively rolling off his tongue. Fishing into his pocket, he took out his wallet and handed over a note and taking the change before moving to stand and wait for his order to be handed over. While he waited, he scanned The Grille, his overactive brain not allowing him to simply stand around doing nothing. His irritability was the main side-effect of his addiction, not that he would ever call it that, so he had to search for something to do to keep his mind occupied. It didn't take long before his eyes landed on a familiar face. Well, the top half of a familiar face. He would never have even recognized who the boy was if it weren't for those piercing blue eyes. Spencer's view of Toby Cavanaugh's face was obstructed from the bridge of his nose down by aseemingly battered copy of 'Catcher in the Rye', which impressed the studious teen slightly, having never pegged Toby for a reader of great literature. He guessed it was probably for a school test, but the intensity of his eyes on the book made him unsure of that assumption.
Toby was another factor when it came to things he didn't want people knowing about, especially Alison. The blonde had pretty much turned him into a social pariah after forcing him into taking the blame for blinding Jenna Marshall, which Spencer had always believed was in poor taste, even for Alison Dilaurentis. Her blackmail had caused Toby to be put into reform school for a year and had destroyed his social life to no end. People tended to avoid him on the street and in the school hallways. Even there in The Grille, there was a table between Toby and the next occupied table on either side of him. Spencer had never really known whether to believe Alison or not when it came to what she said about Toby at one of their overnighters at the Dilaurentis house. Since he was the only guy in the frienship group that consisted of Alison, Emily Fields, Hanna Marin and Aria Montgomery, they got changed in Alison's bedroom whilst Spencer went to the bathroom across the hall to undress. One night, he had heard exclaimation coming from Alison's room while he'd been changing into sweats and a wifebeater to lounge around in for the night and he'd rushed back into the room, only to find Alison glaring out of the window at what appeared to be nothing. She'd said that Toby Cavanaugh had been spying on the girls through the window while they were undressing.
It just didn't seem plausible to the Hastings boy that Toby would do something like that. He never really showed a real interest in anyone and Alison was known for her dramatic flare and her ability to twist the truth on demand. The girls seemed to believe her easily enough but that was more because they were directly affected by Alison's story. Spencer, on the other hand, was not. Seeing Toby now, sat at a table with a cup of coffee and a bagel, reading hard literature, the dark haired boy couldn't see a single thing that could brand Toby Cavanaugh as a pervert. If anything, Spencer was more of a pervert in this scenario, seeing how he was unabashedly staring at the other, astonishingly attractive, teen.
Suddenly, someone was poking him in the shoulder blade and he turned around to see an annoyed looking customer pointing to the barista, who was patiently holding his coffee out for him to take. Smiling apologetically, he took the coffee and thanked the man politely before heading towards the door, only stopping when he reached it, a sense of uncertainty washing over him and driving him to look back once more at the enigma that was Toby Cavanaugh. Spencer didn't know what the blue eyed teen's deal was, and probably never would, but he was intrigued. However, he knew nothing would ever come from his curiosity. When Alison was involved, curiosity would definitely kill the cat. There was no chance for a social interaction between Spencer Hastings and Toby Cavanaugh. Such things were never meant to be.