Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 51122 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 256(@200wpm)___ 204(@250wpm)___ 170(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 51122 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 256(@200wpm)___ 204(@250wpm)___ 170(@300wpm)
Which was how I found myself in a car with triplets who were under the age of six.
All of them were very well behaved, but still emitted random cries.
Random cries that sent my heartrate skyrocketing and my headphones on within five minutes of our car ride to the circus. The circus that was luckily only twenty minutes away.
Once we were out of the car and at Singh Circus—I had to give Ellenie credit, she’d chosen the best one to take them to, and lucky for her it was even in town—I removed my headphones and hung them around my neck for ease of access.
“What are you doing on your phone?” Ellenie asked.
I showed it to her, and she rolled her eyes. “I can’t see. You have that protective screen on that hides what you’re doing, remember?”
That was right.
I’d put it on there when people started to ask questions about my job.
When I was twenty-one, I’d taken a theater class in college that had just the perfect person there at the perfect time. Six months later, I found myself being a remote worker for a production company that helped position people and props for sex scenes.
“Well? Are you going to tell me what you’re doing?” she asked as she fished out money from her purse.
Instead of coming out with ones and tens, she came out with a wad of hundred-dollar bills.
Most people had loose change like coins in the bottom of her purse. She had wadded up Benjamin Franklins.
See? Rich bitch.
I wiggled my phone at Ellenie. “Oh, nothing. Just messaging Mr. Tinder.”
At that, Ellenie started snickering.
Mr. Tinder wasn’t actually anyone I ‘knew.’ Well, I’d thought I knew him.
Funny enough, I’d met ‘Mr. Tinder’ on a dating website for people who liked to travel a year or so ago. The website was called ‘Wander with Me.’
He was actually the one I’d given up my apartment for.
I’d thought we’d hit it off great, and that we were going to turn into something way more.
But then…well, then he ghosted me. He’d gone from calling and texting me every single day, multiple times a day, to absolute radio silence.
It was only weeks after I’d been supposed to meet him that he said ‘something had come up’ and he ‘couldn’t do it anymore.’
But that was after he’d stood me up for our first date. But also, after I’d driven six hours to meet him.
Needless to say, I wasn’t too happy with him.
But I still liked to reach out every once in a while, asking him if we were still ‘on to meet’ when he had time.
Most of the time he ignored me.
Sometimes, he sent me the middle finger emoji.
All I knew was, if I ever saw him again, he was going to get a piece of my mind.
“Where to first, kids?” Ellenie asked.
Two of them grabbed her hand and started pulling.
The third caught up mine and said, “I should’ve brought my own headphones.”
Speaking of headphones, if I was going to start following, they needed to go on.
But first.
“Listen, Buddy,” I said to the kid. “If you need me, yank on my hand. Otherwise, I won’t be able to hear you, okay?”
It was discussed beforehand, and Ellenie gave me the easiest of the three. Buddy.
Buddy was a lot like me. Not a freak or anything, but a little person who didn’t like large crowds, people too close to him, or social interaction.
We got along famously from our first introduction.
He nodded once, and I put my headphones on and started to walk.
Buddy kept his hand in mine just as my phone buzzed with an incoming text.
I checked my watch and felt my lips twitch.
Today, it wasn’t a middle finger from Kristoff.
Today, it was a narrow-eyed emoji and a gif that said ‘you’re extra.’
Maybe I was.
But the man freakin’ stood me up for a date I’d had to travel six hours to. What did he expect?
Honestly, I felt he was getting off easy.
Though, at this point I didn’t know why he hadn’t blocked me.
Buddy yanked on my hand and when I looked down he pointed.
His siblings and Ellenie had walked into a tent.
I’d totally missed it after getting the text, so when I went in a few seconds behind them with Buddy, I couldn’t see them at all.
Sighing at Ellenie’s lack of forethought—you know, like keeping up with us when we were supposed to be with them—I started looking around.
My gaze at first traveled right over the man on the stage as I searched for the platinum blonde hair of my friend.
But then, almost as if the universe wanted me to look at the stage, I did.
And what I saw made me freeze in my tracks.
The man on stage with his phone in his hand, a smile on his face, and listening to something someone else beside him—a beautiful redhead with perfect tits—was saying instantly caught and held my attention.