Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 133655 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 668(@200wpm)___ 535(@250wpm)___ 446(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133655 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 668(@200wpm)___ 535(@250wpm)___ 446(@300wpm)
My girl? Pretty sure she’s Drew’s girl now.
Suddenly, the party’s too loud, too bright, too hot.
Fuck me. I want to rip Drew’s arm right off his fucking shoulder. I want to step in between them. I want to flip tables and cause a fucking scene. I want to do a lot of things, but not a single one of them feels sane or safe.
I see Finn and Scottie and Blake on the other side of the room, taking notice of the group that’s around Julia and her new fucking stupid dickhead asswipe boyfriend.
Before they can see me, I duck back through the crowd. I keep my eyes to the floor and try to avoid talking to anyone. Someone tries to high-five me, and I miss their hand completely. I hear a girl call my name, but I don’t turn around.
Right before I make it outside, someone claps me on the shoulder and says, “Legendary night, Prez.”
I smile without conviction.
When the still-warm night air smacks me in the face, I suck in a breath that doesn’t help at all.
Tonight, I was supposed to tell Julia I’m in love with her. I was supposed to find the perfect moment to finally put my heart on the line and tell her how I feel.
I planned to die in the quad and get resurrected, but I didn’t expect to be murdered at the after party.
Julia and Drew are official, leaving me with nothing but false hope and my dick in my hands.
So much for the plan. I was wrong.
Apparently, one week was absolutely enough to wreck it all.
Ace
I don’t remember leaving the after party.
One second, I was inside, living it up and soaking in praise like it meant something. And the next, I was walking home, every footstep echoing louder than the last while my mind raced with the reality that Julia said yes to Drew’s stupid fucking question.
“Will you be my girlfriend, Julia?” What a douche. What an idiot.
But she said yes…
She said yes. She wants to be Drew’s girl.
Which is a total fucking mindfuck because she’s my girl, right?
Wrong, buddy. Clearly, she’s not your girl.
It wasn’t supposed to go like this. I was supposed to find the perfect moment tonight to tell her that I’m in love with her. Instead, I stood in the middle of my own after party while someone else made Julia his girlfriend.
I didn’t even get to say hi to her tonight.
I close my apartment door behind me and immediately regret how loud it slams.
But the silence after is worse.
I walk to the kitchen and open the fridge. Close it two seconds later without grabbing anything. I turn on a lamp and turn it back off. Fold the blanket on my couch and then scramble it like I’m Gordon fucking Ramsay.
None of it leads anywhere, and more than that, none of it helps.
I start fucking pacing. Back and forth across the same stretch of hardwood floor, like if I walk it enough times, it’ll turn into a path that leads to a version of tonight where none of this happened.
I should let it go. I should sleep it off.
But instead, I stop by the front door and listen.
It’s stupid. I know it’s stupid. But her apartment’s right across the hall, and some part of me—the part that hasn’t caught up to what just happened—wants to know if she’s home. If she’s alone.
If she noticed I left the party and came to find me.
I wait and I wait and I wait. Before I know it, I’ve managed to shower, change my clothes, and pace my hardwood floor another fifty times while listening for any signs of Julia coming home.
But then, I hear it. The sounds of footsteps and keys and a soft laugh that I know better than my fucking own.
Stomach churning, I push my ear to the door, trying to listen harder.
Julia’s voice is low and easy and so fucking sharp inside me I can feel the score. “Thanks for walking me back.”
Drew’s voice is a lot of shit, but mostly, it’s closer than I want it to be. “Of course. Tonight was…yeah. It was perfect.”
A beat of silence.
Then Julia says, “Good night.”
I look through the peephole before I can talk myself out of it. Julia is standing there, and so is that asshat Drew. They’re facing each other, smiling, eyes locked. And then, he leans forward and kisses her.
It’s soft and quick, but adjectives don’t matter when it’s a fucking kiss that shouldn’t be happening at all.
He says something I can’t hear and walks off down the hallway, and Julia watches him go like she used to watch me.
I try to get a read on her face, try to figure out if she’s happy. But this fucking peephole is so goddamn small it makes it hard to make out much of anything, and when she turns and walks inside her apartment, I can’t make out anything at all.