Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 111676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 558(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 372(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 558(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 372(@300wpm)
I worried that if I let it, this would be the thing that irreversibly fucked up any possibility of… Of what? I didn’t even know what I wanted. What I needed. That was a lie; I’d needed Jade since the first time I’d kissed her.
Want to get out for a bit?
Bubbles danced across the screen, then stopped, then started again.
Thanks, but I’m about to go to bed.
Or maybe she wasn’t upset that I’d stopped her. Maybe she was upset that anything had happened to begin with. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a shadow approaching.
“Hey, Wolf.” Nora stepped into the light coming from the house behind Hendrix’s. Her dark hair had been pulled back into a ponytail, and she had on the same yellow sundress she wore to most parties back in high school.
I hadn’t seen her in months, but laying eyes on her didn’t stir a damn thing inside of me. Not like it did every time I looked at Jade.
“You didn’t tell me you were coming into town.” She stopped in front of the trampoline, clutching a Solo cup to her chest.
We still talked. We’d been friends before we dated, and when I’d ended things with her, it wasn’t a fight. Wasn’t full of fuck yous or hatred. I told her the truth—that I wasn’t in a place to give her what she wanted or deserved. It wasn’t her fault that I’d tried to use her to get over Jade, and it didn’t seem right to cut her off.
“Yeah. Last-minute decision.”
She handed her beer to me, then climbed onto the trampoline beside me. “How’s school been?”
“All right. How’s work?”
“It’s work.” She shrugged. “Boring.” She stared at me through the dark for a second. “Why aren’t you at the game?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay.” She sat in silence for a moment, swinging her feet over the edge. “You know, ever since I’ve started work, I don’t really talk to anyone anymore.”
“What about Frank?”
“Fred? We broke up.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
She sniffed a few times. “It’s okay. He wasn’t good for me anyway. At least that’s what Dad said.”
Just like Jade’s dad had said about me. She must have glanced down at my phone screen still open on mine and Jade’s WhatsApp thread because she asked how Jade was.
“Good,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” God, this was awkward.
I’d never been so grateful to hear the war cry Hendrix let out from the back deck. Any time he did that, a fight usually ensued. “To the death, Star Wars Kyle!” he shouted.
I glanced across the dark yard. Hendrix wielded the plastic flamingo like a sword while Kyle—the scrawny guy he’d wanted to kill in high school because he had thought Lola was dating him—stood stock still a few feet in front of him. “Come on, Kyle. Come to the dark side.”
Lola stepped between them, took the flamingo, and whacked Hendrix’s stomach with it. “Just take the damn picture, Hendrix.”
A group of them lined up. Hendrix snatched Carl back from Lola and raised him above his head before a flash went off. After the group split up, Hendrix’s attention drifted to us. “Well, well, well…” he staggered through the tall grass. “If it isn’t Snora Nora.”
“God…” she mumbled.
He stopped in front of us, stabbing Carl into the ground. “Is Nora the Explorer trying to find out what’s in your sack, Wolf?”
“Shut up, dickhead.”
Sighing, Nora shoved off the trampoline. “I’m going to go refill my beer.”
Hendrix watched her leave. “I brought you an offering of girls, and you just want to rotate through your exes…”
“I’m not rotating through shit.”
“Lies.” He snatched up the flamingo, mumbling something about pimp penalties as he wandered back to the porch.
Half an hour later, everyone at the party was shitfaced. Carl had been tea-bagged more times than I could count, and I was bored out of my mind. I opened mine and Jade’s chat. She was still online. Wondering if she was talking to Brent, I pocketed my phone, grabbed a case of beer from the fridge, and snuck outside without telling anyone I was leaving.
The noise of the party faded as I made my way toward Jade’s house, zigzagging through the rundown neighborhood.
The Anderson house had always been the only one on the street without faded paint and a weed-littered lawn. Most likely because they were one of the only couples in the neighborhood without a drug problem… The only light on in the single-story house was Jade’s room. I crossed the dark lawn, placing the beer by the flowerbed before I tapped on her window. Her shadow appeared behind the thin curtain, and she peeked out from the corner before shoving the drapes to the side and cracking the window.
The warm glow of her lamp highlighted the confused crease in her brow. “What are you doing here?” she whispered.