Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 61867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 309(@200wpm)___ 247(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 309(@200wpm)___ 247(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
Giggling, I leap onto his back and hang on as he takes the steps into the house. His mom, Miranda, gives me a cute little wave from the stove as I drop off and kick off my shoes by the door. “Hello, Iris! How are you? I guess Jay told you I was making my world-famous meatballs tonight?”
Jameson and I exchange silent smiles as he unlaces his boots. World famous? he mouths.
“That’s right! I would never turn down Miranda’s world-famous meatballs,” I reply.
“That’s because you’re smart.” She nods, signaling approval to me with her spatula. “What were you gonna go to school for before your no-good daddy bailed on you? Law, wasn’t it?”
“Medical school,” I reply. “I wanted to be a doctor.”
“Miranda, don’t you know not to bring that up?” a voice bellows from the living room. Jameson’s father, Charles, enters, holding an enormous mug of steaming tea in his hand. “Leave the poor girl alone when it comes to her family, for Christ’s sake.”
He puts an arm around me and pulls me in for a friendly hug as Jameson mouths I’m sorry at me. I smile back at him.
It’s okay.
“Okay, you two,” Jameson says. “I’m gonna rescue Iris here for a second and get her opinion on my new shirt. Call us when dinner is ready.”
Without hesitation, he takes me by the hand and leads me from the kitchen down the hall to his room. Jameson always seems to speak like he’s older than he actually is. He may be eighteen, but to me, it’s like he’s already graduated college and is a working mechanic with his own shop or something.
“No nonsense back there!” I hear his mom call out behind us. “And leave the door open!”
Maybe it’s just because I look up to him, but I can feel my cheeks burning as I follow him down the hall. Just the sensation of my hand in his is way too much for me. I mean, I haven’t even had a boyfriend before. I’ve never sat in the movies and held hands or gone to the dance with a guy or had my first kiss yet. But I can picture myself doing all of those things with Jameson.
The question is, can he see himself doing those things with me?
He lets go of my hand as we step into his bedroom. “Sorry, I probably just got grease all over you, but I wanted to save you from that conversation.”
“Oh, no. It’s no problem,” I say quickly. And it’s not. It’s totally not.
“So check this out. What do you think?”
He grabs a black T-shirt off his bed and holds it up for me. It’s of his favorite band, The Viking Blades, a punk-rock group that I always tell him I like so I don’t offend him, but the truth is, they’re way too hardcore and way too loud for me. I also hate the lead singer. He sounds like one day someone told him he didn’t know how to sing, so he decided to just kind of scream-sing instead.
The shirt looks like it could be a movie poster, though. It has three Vikings on it, one of them being the obvious leader, and all of them wielding swords and looking like total badasses, fighting off some other guys who look way less badass.
“I…like it,” I lie.
Jameson cocks his head to his side. “You paused there.”
I instantly start to panic. “No, I didn’t–”
“You probably just need to see it on me,” he says. Before I can even begin to react, Jameson is stripping out of his work shirt, exposing his bare chest to me.
Oh God. What do I do?
Stay cool, Iris. Stay cool!
But it’s impossible. I feel my cheeks turning into tomatoes. The heat from the blush spreads through the rest of my body like a rapid infection. I don’t have a clue what to do, so I just stand there, frozen in place, fighting to keep from letting a dumbfounded look come over my face as he slides into his new shirt.
“So? What do you think?” he asks, stepping forward. But as he does, his foot catches on a pair of his jeans lying on the floor. He stumbles forward and falls straight at me with both hands out to brace himself.
But there’s nothing in front of him but me.
“Oh my God!” we both cry out in unison.
I put both hands out as though somehow I can catch him or prevent him from falling. But it’s futile. Jameson is twice my size. He’s coming down, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
He lands right on top of me. Luckily, he manages to somehow catch himself with both hands as though he had planned to land in a pushup position like a total gym bro. Maybe it’s a move they’ve practiced in basketball training or something. Either way, the move totally saves me from being crushed beneath him. Still, our bodies bump against each other, and pure panic flows through me.