Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 124923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 416(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 416(@300wpm)
“Why is your face so red right now?”
Holden squeeze my sides, making me laugh. “It’s not.”
“Oh my God, you’re not alone!” Shayne squeals. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I—”
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says, cutting me off. “Have fun! But not too much fun. Use a condom and all that.”
“Jesus Christ.” I roll my eyes, feeling Holden’s laughter against my stomach. Too late for that. “Goodbye.”
“Love you, bye!”
She disappears from my screen, and I drop my phone to my mattress. “I’m going to kill you.”
Holden pulls me up to stand in front of him before putting his hat back on. “Kill me later. We’ve got shit to do.”
We’ve been walking through campus for a good twenty minutes, and I still don’t know where he’s taking me. The sun is finally out, but the snow still stubbornly clings to the tree branches and sidewalks. Holden grabs my hand, and against my better judgment, I let him. Campus is still pretty dead with four days of break left, so there’s not much risk of anyone seeing us. It’s weird to see it like this when it’s normally so crowded.
“Almost there,” he says, which only confuses me more, because there’s nothing around except for a closed dining hall and the health center. A minute later, we come to a big white building shrouded in the trees with vines crawling up the walls and glass ceilings. Holden opens the door, pulling me inside.
“What is this place?” I ask, following him through a room full of potted plants and flowers.
“Hadley Conservatory,” he says, leading me into a connected room. The next door leads to what can only be described as a jungle. Almost every surface is covered in greenery. I duck under a large leaf, stepping inside. “It’s so warm,” I say. It’s probably twenty degrees outside, but in here, it must be almost eighty. The air is humid, and the glass of the greenhouse allows the sun to illuminate everything.
“You wanted tropical. This is the best I could do within an hour.”
I spin around, taking everything in, those stupid butterflies taking flight again.
“Come on,” Holden says, leading me across a small, wooden foot bridge with a pond underneath. A pond. I look over the edge, surprised to see the biggest, brightest goldfish I’ve ever seen swimming around.
“I didn’t know this place existed,” I say. “Is this where you take all the girls?” I tease.
“Just you,” he says, unfazed by my comment. “Sometimes I come here between classes when I don’t feel like walking back to Hawthorne. Or when I feel like being alone.”
“I can see why.”
I follow him to the other side of the bridge and come to a stop when I see what’s laid out in front of me. There’s a circular, concrete clearing in the middle of all the trees and greenery with a few benches on the perimeter, and in the middle, there’s a blanket spread out with an obscene amount of food. “You did all this?” I ask.
He scratches the back of his neck. “I was aiming for a beach picnic vibe, but I didn’t know what you liked, so I bought a little of everything.”
“Is that…You got me coffee?”
“You’re the only psychopath I know who drinks iced coffee in January.”
I can’t help but wonder why he went through all this trouble, especially when he already got what he wanted from me. Several times. He must sense my inner turmoil because he looks over at me, frowning. “What?”
“Why?” The word comes out clipped, sounding harsher than I meant it to.
“You don’t like it?” He seems almost nervous about my reaction. Holden doesn’t get nervous. “I’m not good at this shit—”
“No, it’s not that,” I interrupt quickly. “It’s just… I mean, clearly, you’re not doing this to get in my pants.”
“Who says I’m not?” he teases.
I roll my eyes. “Seems a lot like a date.”
“A date?” he spits out the word date as if it’s a dirty word. “Never.”
“Good.”
“Can we eat now that we’ve cleared that up?” he asks. “I’m fucking starved.”
I follow him over to the blanket, sitting cross-legged on one end. Holden sits next to me, handing me a sandwich wrapped in white deli paper.
“You had turkey on Christmas, so I figured it was a safe bet,” he explains.
I don’t know what to say, feeling weirdly touched by the fact that he’s remembered so much about my preferences, down to my coffee order. My own parents wouldn’t know what to order for me if they had a gun to their heads.
Holden starts taking the lids off of the plastic containers of every kind of fruit the store had to offer by the looks of it. Strawberries, cherries, blueberries, apple slices, grapes, pineapple, even kiwi.
“This is pretty romantic for a not-date,” I tease. Not to mention excessive. There’s no way we’ll be able to put a dent in this much food.