Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
“Done looking for love in all the wrong places?”
“Isn’t that a song?”
He comes around and holds out the straps of my bag. I slip my arms through, feeling his fingers graze my skin. My skin tightens, tingles spreading.
“I enjoy this town more this time of year, too,” he says in a low voice. “The college kids are gone, and the snowbirds haven’t arrived yet. For a little while, it’s just ours. Nothing else really changes. It’s always summer here. But the nights do cool down a little, and the streets are quiet enough that you can hear the wind in the palms. The air smells better. We finally come outside. It’s the locals’ turn to play.”
A taunt laces his tone, and I swear I feel his breath on my neck.
He’s right. I never really thought about it like that. Saint or Swamp. We’re both still locals.
“I’ll kind of miss you, kid,” he almost whispers. “I hope you had some fun in Sanoa Bay at least. While you played.”
A jolt hits me low in the belly, and I turn around, but he’s already climbing back on his bike. I watch him speed off, and for a second, time slows as he leaves, turns, and disappears behind the hedge wall.
A knot twists in my stomach for just a second. I said I was done there, but it suddenly hits me that I don’t know when I’ll see him again. I almost take a step as if I’ll catch up to him, but I shake it off and head inside.
I’ll miss him.
I step into the house, hearing the buzzer on the stove going off, and rush into the kitchen. Bateman, Paisleigh’s nanny, pulls a sheet of fresh-baked pastries out of the oven, and I exhale. I forgot he was going to be here today.
“Morning,” I call out, dumping my backpack on the chair next to my sister as she sits at the island. I lean over her. “What are you working on?”
“Drawing dinosaurs.”
Her hair, just a shade lighter than mine, is styled in two reverse French braids that Bateman undoubtedly did when he got her up this morning. I think my mother stopped doing her kids’ hair with me.
I peek at the triceratops walking underneath a rainbow. “Nice,” I tell her. “You know they weren’t purple, though, right?”
“We don’t know for sure that they weren’t,” she replies too assuredly for a five-year-old. “No one is actually sure what they looked like, just made guesses based off nutrients they found in the bones and other things like climate and vegetation at the time.”
She goes to a really good school.
I kiss her head. “Touché.”
She continues drawing, and I ask Bateman, “Is she upstairs?”
He nods, his eyes flashing toward the ceiling.
I grab my phone and head up the staircase, that job at Mariette’s feeling like heaven right now.
I scroll through my notifications as I head up, spotting a few pictures of Liv and Clay at breakfast this morning. I smile. Liv’s in town. I didn’t expect her back before the holidays. She went up north to Dartmouth for college. Clay loves her to death, but it’s really fucking cold up there, so Clay stayed home for school.
But I think the real reason is that she’s reconnecting with her parents. Years ago, they lost her younger brother to leukemia. Now they’re divorcing, but it’s only made all of them closer. She doesn’t want to lose that.
And I also see a follow request from Jerome Watson.
I close my eyes, exiting out of social media.
I pass my brother’s closed door and stop at the doorway of my mom’s bedroom as she comes out of her bathroom, dressed in a pretty white dress with short sleeves, a square neckline, and a tight fit around her body.
It’s mine.
She pops her head up, carrying some toiletries to an overnight bag. I guess she plans on being gone tonight, too.
“Oh, you’re here,” she chirps. “Good. Sit down.”
I shuffle to the chair at her vanity, seeing all her jewelry in a pile on top. What is she doing?
“I’m taking your brother to church,” she tells me. “You come, too.”
She hasn’t attended since my father left nearly a year ago. She wanted to avoid the stares and fake sympathy. I know why she’s going now.
Jerome Watson will be there.
“Why don’t you marry him?” I ask her.
At forty years old, she’s only eight years older than him. They’re closer in age than he and I are.
“Because I’m not having any more kids,” she retorts.
And I’m certainly not having any anytime soon, either. “I’m not going to church. And I’m not accepting his friend request, so you can stop encouraging him.”
She zips up the leather satchel, removes her glasses, and walks over, reaching around me to get her perfume. “He will make sure your brother and sister stay with me instead of your father and that paid-for piece of ass,” she bites out, not missing a beat. “He will make sure I don’t grow old in some assisted-living center surrounded by early bird specials and denture cream. He will secure the lifestyle you’ve always known. You’ll have everything, Krisjen.” She peers down at me, spraying a shot of Guerlain, and cocking an eyebrow. “You’re coming to church, and he’s going to bring you home. You may stop off for lunch, and then later in the week, you’ll invite him over for a barbecue, where you’ll laugh and play with your brother and sister and show him what a good girl you are before you present him with those caramelized onion, roast beef, and goat cheese focaccias you make so well.”