Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 84322 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 422(@200wpm)___ 337(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84322 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 422(@200wpm)___ 337(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
Tyler and I sat in the second row, with a chair between us, and we hadn’t said a word to each other all day.
When I gave a long, dramatic huff and closed my laptop, scrubbing my hands over my eyes, I opened them to find a smirking Tyler staring at me.
“Tired?”
I shook my head.
“Head hurt from the screens?”
I shook my head again.
“Bored and tired of sitting still?”
My eyes widened, and I nodded emphatically, which earned me a chuckle and Tyler closing his laptop, too. He stood, abandoning his laptop in the empty chair between us and stretching his arms up to the sky, twisting his spine this way and that. My eyes wandered the length of him, smiling a little at how much he looked like a boy in that moment. He wore flannel sleep pants and a simple white t-shirt, his hair somewhat disheveled. It reminded me of winter weekends we’d spent with Morgan just lounging around the house, having movie marathons, playing games by the fire, never changing out of our pajamas.
“Come on,” he said when he finished stretching. “Let’s take a walk.”
I was still in the clothes I’d gone running in that morning — capri leggings and a tank top — and I reveled in the way the cool breeze coming off the lake slicked across my skin as we walked the edge of it. The Wagners had a little sliver of beach alongside their dock, and we walked the length of it before Tyler plopped himself down in the brown sand.
I wrinkled my nose.
“Oh, come on,” he said, patting the sand next to him. “It’ll wash off.”
I didn’t know why that moment made me feel like I was on an adventure when, in reality, I was just in my childhood best friend’s backyard — but for some reason, I felt it. I had that same rush that I always did on the flight to a new place, or in the car on the way from the airport to check into a new bed and breakfast.
It was a slow, constant rush, like that of a steady stream.
The sand was cool and soft when I sat down, and I tucked my legs under me criss-crossed, my eyes on the lake as it glittered and waved. The sun was slowly setting, already hidden behind the thick trees of forest and the distant outline of the White Mountains. But there was enough golden light to flood the lake with an amber glow, and I sighed, closing my eyes and soaking it all in.
“I love the way—”
“Shhh.”
I frowned, opening my eyes to shoot a glare at Tyler for shushing me.
“No talking,” he reminded me.
I huffed, and Tyler chuckled, shaking his head before he looked at me. “It kills you, doesn’t it? To be silent?”
I shot lasers at him with my eyeballs.
That made him laugh hard and deep in his chest. Then, he pulled his phone from his pocket and thumbed to the notes app in it, handing it to me.
I stared at it a moment before cocking a brow at him.
“You want to talk, so talk,” he said, nodding at the phone in my hand. “Just don’t use your voice.”
Tyler’s eyes were a golden-brown in the evening light, a shade I hadn’t seen in years. I remembered it though. I remembered the way those little flecks of gold lit up when the sun was angled like this, from summer nights so long ago that they seemed like another lifetime.
My fingers hovered over the keys on his smart phone, and suddenly, I didn’t know what to say. Yes, I wanted to talk, because, quite frankly, I really didn’t know how to be quiet. I mean, I started a podcast to listen to myself talk, for Christ’s sake.
But what did I have to say to Tyler?
I frowned, because there was a whole lot I could say, but none of it would be nice.
And none of it would matter.
So, instead, I aimed for the light and shallow, something to entertain the both of us. After all, we hadn’t talked since we were kids, and we’d spent an entire day locked inside in complete silence. Would it be so bad to just have a normal conversation?
I typed in the note and passed the phone back to him.
“How’s work?” Tyler read, chuckling as he handed the phone back to me. I figured starting there was easy, since it’d been what he brought up on the dock last night. “It’s fine. Work. Lots of boring numbers to most people.”
Not boring to you, I typed out, showing him the screen.
He smiled. “No, not to me. You know I’ve always been a nerd for this stuff.”
Your teenage fanbase seems interested, too.
“You can’t stop yourself from getting a jab in, can you?” He shook his head, but there was the hint of a smile on his lips. “Believe it or not, most of my followers are in the twenty-three to thirty-eight age range. And I like to think that, hopefully, at least half of them are people who are actually interested in learning more about their finances, as opposed to staring at my abs.”