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)
“How about Friday?”
“I’m busy every day, all the days.” I’m backing away from him, leaving him in front of Patsy’s. “All the rest of ‘em.”
“I think it’d be good for us.”
“You and I … whatever this is you’re tryin’ to do … it … it ain’t gonna happen.” Then I’m running off, putting his pretty face and terrifying kindness behind me for good.
14
ANTHONY
I don’t even know where to start.
I’m so disoriented that I try to open the apartment door with the wrong key six times in a row.
Then I’m standing in front of my closet staring at a bunch of shirts with no idea what I’m looking for.
Then I’m in the shower with the water pouring over me and can’t remember if I already shampooed my hair.
What the hell is wrong with me?
Why did I panic like that?
How humiliating, to run away from him like my pants caught fire, giving him that power over me. Now he knows for sure how much he bothers me. I showed my cards. He’s probably smirking proudly to himself right now, sitting in that big house he doesn’t deserve to be in.
Or maybe he’s just hoping I change my mind.
I do gotta ask myself: what harm could hanging with Bridger a little bit really cause? Is he gonna eat me alive? Nice me to death?
The shower curtain sweeps open. “Do you know where I put my pink pussycat curling iron?”
Again, with the boundaries. “Juni, I don’t know where my own ass is. Why would I know where your pink pussycat anything is?”
“Is it true you got fired from the restaurant?”
I glance over my shoulder at her. “Where’d you hear that?”
“From Bonnie, who’d heard it from her husband Kirk, who’d heard it from his pal Harrison, who’d—”
“You’re turnin’ into one of ‘em,” I cut her off. “Stay in Spruce for too long and you start talkin’ about everything and everyone except your dang self. It’s a disease. Besides,” I go on, “don’t trust anything Kirk or Bonnie say. Those two are known for starting all sorts of rumors ‘cause their own lives are boring. You don’t wanna turn into Trailer Park Gossip Barbie, do you?”
“So it isn’t true?”
I sigh and look away, not answering, as I shampoo again. She rummages through the drawers beneath the sink next, humming to herself. I’m no musician, but I know when her melody’s off, and she has no hope or desire to find it any more than I have a hope or desire to figure out what it is about Bridger that has me feeling like a mess no matter how hard I scrub myself with soap.
Next, I’m sitting in a fold-out chair on the gravel outside our apartment with the crickets, an opened bag of Doritos in my lap, and the door behind me cracked and spilling out whatever music Juni’s blasting—some girl-power indie band she discovered a week and a half ago and became obsessed with. Despite my hand being thrust halfway into the crinkly bag in my lap, I haven’t eaten a single chip. I’m just staring off into goddamned space.
Staring off and picturing Bridger’s face.
Hearing Bridger’s words—and hearing them differently.
It’s okay to want to be held, he said. Maybe this is … something you need more of. Being held. No shame, saying that.
I wish I could stop seeing his eyes. Stop hearing the patient, caring tone in his voice. I used to think he sounded like a superior douchebag talking down to me, but it was different tonight. It felt less like putting me down.
More like lifting me up.
Does that even make sense?
What changed?
A balding, freckled head of a man pops out of the unit three doors down. “Please, I don’t want to be a broken record, but turn that racket down! I got a job interview in Fairview at eight in the morning and can’t even hear my own thoughts!”
It’s recently-divorced Mr. Joy whose head that is. “Fairview?” I snort back at him. “Must be scraping the bottom if you’re lookin’ for work in Fairview.”
“Speak for yourself, you bum!”
“You wanna say that to my face?” I shout lazily back with zero intention of getting out of this chair.
“Just turn down the music! I don’t wanna call the cops!”
“They have more important things to deal with,” I shout, “like speeding teenagers aiming for an innocent pedestrian just tryin’ to cross the street on his way home while bein’ pursued by a guy who acts way nicer to me than I deserve and has no dang business bein’ so handsome all the time.”
When my response is met with silence, I turn to find Mr. Joy staring back at me with a baffled expression.
“Is my music too loud?” comes Juni from behind.
Mr. Joy transforms from an outraged neighbor to a flustered schoolboy. “I, uh, I’m, it wasn’t, heh, sorry, I …”