Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 114211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
“I don’t sleep with virgins.” I frown at him, confused. He eyes me. “It’s a rule I always followed. I just never felt like I deserved to take anyone’s virginity. Didn’t want to ever be the one to shoulder such a responsibility.”
“Until … me?”
“Until you,” he confesses with a sigh. “You’re the first. Only.”
I blink, stunned. “But … why me?”
He chews his next bite with thought. After a smile to himself, he says, “I’ll tell you once I figure that part out,” and winks at me.
I stare back at him. What the fuck does that mean?
The front doors swing open, the bell rings, and in come Pete and Juni. They find us at once and make a beeline for our table. “I am fucking famished!” exclaims Pete with way too much energy, dropping into the seat next to Bridger, shoving him aside. Juni sits next to me, uncharacteristically plain with no makeup, wearing an oversized t-shirt and shorts. “Boy, oh, boy, am I hungry,” she says as well, then looks at each of us. “Did we interrupt something?”
Bridger and I share a look across the table. He gently taps my foot underneath and smiles at me. I smile blankly back, lost in so many damned thoughts all of a sudden, I don’t know if I’ll be able to swim my way out of them.
Juni picks a funny sweater off a rack with eggplants all over it. Pete laughs his ass off as he holds it up against himself. She loses it next, cackling until there’s tears in her eyes. The two go through rack after rack, each item they hold against each other cracking them up more than the last. On the other side of the store, Bridger and I watch them. “I’ve never seen her laugh so much,” I mutter to Bridger, who was in the middle of checking out a simple button-down shirt on clearance. “The hell is up with them?”
It’s like this at every store we go to. Juni has this glassy look of imminent laughter in her eyes, always, which turn giggly and silly every time she gazes at Pete. I don’t know Pete all that well, but despite their bouts of laughter and stupidity, he suddenly becomes a prince whenever we cross the street, checking both ways before guiding her with his arm, all chivalrous and shit.
It’s not just him. Later, the four of us walk through a park, and as a kid skateboards by, Bridger puts his arm around me and pulls me to his side, even though I was well out of the way of the fast skateboarder. He even eyes him, halfway to shouting at the kid to slow down. “I’m not some fragile piece a’ glass,” I grunt under my breath, but Bridger hears me and, still holding me tight against his side, replies, “You’re right. You’re my fragile piece of ass.”
Those words scramble up my brain, locking my mouth up. I can’t seem to respond to that at all. Maybe that’s the point.
Between Juniper and Pete’s inseparable giddiness and Bridger with his overprotective demeanor, I feel totally outside myself as we stroll through the park in this weird city. Maybe it’s being out of Spruce for the weekend that has me feeling like someone else. Like I’m capable of being anything I want out here. Anyone I want. No one looks twice when I’m dancing my drunken ass off at the club or falling on my face. No one bats an eye when the four of us are guffawing over something stupid Pete does or a funny sound Juni makes when a random duck starts chasing her near the pond.
I wonder what happens when we go back home.
Back to Spruce.
To reality.
“But, like, this is reality, too,” says Juni, sounding her dreamy self, as we stay back to watch Bridger and Pete go to the edge of the pond to feed the ducks. The guys are teasing each other, being funny, taunting one another with the bread and snide remarks we don’t hear. “It doesn’t have to go away when we leave.”
“Things just aren’t the same back home,” I mumble. “With my parents. My dad in particular. The way everyone looks at me. Even Trey sometimes, like he’s got these hopes and dreams in his eyes, hopes and dreams I’ll never live up to. It’s annoying.”
“At least you have people hoping and dreaming for you.” Juni sighs. “I can’t remember the last time anyone expected anything from me. Other than my deadbeat dad expecting me to spot him for another fix, whatever drug he’s on lately.”
“Pete’s probably expecting lots of things from you,” I point out just as he happens to turn around, glance at us, then smile at Juni suggestively, making a face I think he thinks is sexy, but just looks weird as fuck.