Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 90919 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90919 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
“Oh, yeah,” I scoffed, kicking off my shoes. The long car ride had been an opportunity for a whole range of emotions, from embarrassment to sadness to anger and back to embarrassment again. The current frontrunner was anger. “He asked if he needed to get a skywriter to tell me to go home or could I for once think about what someone else needed.”
“That motherfucker!” Frankie yelled from her bedroom.
“How can you even hear me?” I yelled back.
“I have hearing like a bat!” She appeared in the hallway. “You know that.”
“Yeah, so anyway, I bailed,” I said, pulling off my jacket. “Like my ass was on fire.”
“The audacity,” Lou griped, her face scrunched up in disgust. “I swear to God. You’re a full-grown adult, loser, control your emotions.”
“I was being a little pushy.”
“You drove all day to get there when he needed you,” Lou argued. “You get a pass.”
“He’s all fucked up,” Frankie said, grabbing a soda out of the fridge.
“Is that my soda?” I asked.
She looked down at it. “Yep.” She cracked it open and took a long drink. “Everyone noticed it.”
“And we watched the whole bathroom situation.”
“It wasn’t a big deal.”
“He was breathing fire, ignored everyone else, and dragged you into a small room and locked the door,” Lou said dryly. “I think there was a little cause for concern.”
“He just needed a minute.”
“Why?”
“He said Richie fucked up,” I said quietly. “I don’t know what it meant, but it was bad.”
“Well, he was shot,” Franky replied. “I think we all knew something was stinky about that whole thing.”
“Did you ever get the whole story?” Lou asked.
“Nope.” I stretched my arms above my head and groaned. “But I’ve gotten used to only knowing bits and pieces. No one ever tells me anything.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Lou commiserated.
“Aoife and Aisling are coming out here, right?” Frankie asked, boosting herself onto the counter.
“Yeah. They’re going to stay with Ashley and Saoirse for a while.”
“That’s good. A change of scenery will help.”
“For sure,” I mumbled.
“Okay, yeah, we’re dissecting this,” Frankie said after a few moments of quiet. “What exactly did Cian say?”
I broke down the entire situation, and like always, Frankie and Lou had wildly different interpretations of what had gone down. While Lou murmured that Cian had a lot on his plate and was obviously overwhelmed and pulled in a million different directions, Frankie ranted about how she wanted to cut his balls off and make him eat them.
I was somewhere in between.
“I think I need to just give him some space,” I said as they finally wound down. “I mean, he obviously wanted me out of his face. He made that perfectly clear. And even before that, it was pretty obvious that he was trying to let me down easy.”
“I care about you,” Frankie mumbled snarkily under her breath.
“It’s just the back and forth that’s driving me nuts,” I said, throwing my hands up. “He’s so hot and cold. He’s curling up with me in the tent and then telling my dad he was just doing me a favor because I was wasted. Then he’s coming over here to yell at me about going to a party that I hadn’t even heard of, but the minute I tell him to make a move, he retreats and says he cares about me. I show up at the hospital and he’s relieved as hell to see me, wants me with him constantly, makes me sleep plastered against him on the couch, then spends the next two days telling me to sleep at the hotel. Jesus! Make up your mind already.”
“What’s this about the tent?”
“I fell asleep alone in the sleeping bag and woke up curled up like two caterpillars in a cocoon,” I replied dryly. “I didn’t mention it?”
“You guys have always been like that,” Lou exclaimed. “It drives me crazy!”
“I know, right?” Frankie said, rolling her eyes. “‘Tonight I’m going to party with Cian and fall asleep in his bed, but two days from now he’s going to go out with someone else, and I’m going to go to a bar so I can flirt with guys.’ You two need to figure your shit out.”
“I tried, remember?”
“Well, then—” Frankie sighed. “Maybe it’s time to give up?”
“I don’t want to be with anyone else.”
“That doesn’t mean you need to wait around for his ass,” Frankie said seriously. She smiled sadly. “Because whatever this is? It doesn’t make you feel good. It doesn’t make you happy.”
I nodded and looked at my feet. “It just feels weird to make any decision when he’s already dealing with all of this, you know?”
“Honestly,” Lou said quietly. “I mean this in the absolute nicest way possible, but…he is already dealing with a lot. Do you think he’ll even notice?”
Her words hit the mark so perfectly that my stomach sank.