Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 97073 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97073 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Now I’m too curious to stop. I tilt my head and study her. “Because you’re hoping you two will get back together?”
She swallows, and then, realizing she’s been neglecting her coffee, she stalls by taking a sip. She only answers after she’s done. “Because no one has asked me out, to be honest.”
I nearly snort. “I find that hard to believe.”
Her green eyes flare with annoyance. “Well, it’s true. I don’t really put myself out there, and the breakup is relatively fresh, only a few months old.” She frowns hearing herself. Is a few months fresh? Not really. Understanding that, she adds, “I’ve been busy with work, busy preparing to come here.”
“Do you miss him?”
Her blush finally reaches her cheeks. “Why all the questions?”
I shake my head, only now realizing I’ve been giving her the third degree. I lean forward and reach for the booklet. “Just curious.”
“What about you?”
I flip open the front page and see an entire table of contents with page numbers and everything. Summer is nothing if not meticulous.
“Are you single?” she presses.
I smirk. “Single as they come.”
“Because you’re so isolated? I doubt there are Sedbergh dating apps.”
“You’d be surprised.”
She laughs. “Really?”
“I’m teasing. You’re right, it’s harder to date here.”
“But Alice?” she suggests gently. “It sort of seems like there’s something there between you two.”
“I really like Alice, as a friend.”
She nods, understanding. “That’s too bad. She’s really great.”
“She is,” I confirm, not the least bit sad about the prospect of not being with her.
It occurs to me that I would love nothing more than to continue this conversation, to ask Summer more about Andrew. I’m curious about their relationship and how stupid the man has to be to let a woman like Summer slip through his fingers. I’m aware now, wholly, that I’m attracted to Summer in a way that’s starting to feel impossible. Even now, during this conversation, I’ve skated my gaze over her mouth, taken notice when she’s licked a bit of coffee off her lips. I’ve studied her fingers, the delicate hold she has on her coffee cup, and I want to reach out and feel her hand, hold it up and flatten it against mine, measure the difference before we lace our fingers together.
I clear my throat and flip to the next page.
“Should we get started?”
CHAPTER 13
SUMMER
Nate and I have barely come up for air in five days. We’re in an all-out war against writer’s block and imposter syndrome.
Right now, neither of us is allowed to leave the cottage. That’s the rule: from the hours of 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. we have to work. So far, we’ve succeeded only in getting on each other’s nerves. Saturday, the morning after we ate dinner with his friends, we flipped through my notes and he critiqued my descriptions of his characters, even though I pulled them directly from the style sheets produced by InkWell and approved by him! Not to mention, I know what I’m talking about. I’ve cross-referenced from my own read-throughs of his books. I know his characters like the back of my hand.
The next day, we broke down the plots of The Last Exodus and Echo of Hope. In the first book, a catastrophic event devastates earth, leaving only a small group of astronauts with the knowledge and the technology needed to escape the dying planet and find help for its dwindling population. Through The Last Exodus, this group of adventurers prepares for a dangerous journey into the unknown, with the goal of seeking inhabitable planets across the cosmos.
Book one is about this crew leaving Earth, and book two is about surviving in space. Echo of Hope is the uncomfortable middle, the stillness that exists for these twelve individuals as they leave their families and friends in the midst of a global catastrophe. Desolate and hopeless, the band of explorers travels from one star system to another. Echo of Hope delves further into the inter-crew relationships established in book one, dissecting what everyday life would look like on a spaceship of this kind. The crew faces trials and tribulations, losses and grief. In the book’s gripping conclusion, when hope seems lowest, they finally detect a promising exoplanet that could be their new home. All is not lost.
That’s where we’ve left off.
All the readers—myself included—are hungry for answers, and I’m staring at the only man who can give them to me while he goes about making the slowest cup of tea ever brewed. He’s breaking some kind of record.
“You already had a cup of tea this morning. Do you really need another?”
“No, I don’t really want it.”
I rub my temples, exasperated. “Then why are you making it?”
“I need something to do. I’m going stir-crazy.”
He riffles through the tin of tea bags, reading every label with careful attention to detail.
Dear god, I’m going to lose it.