Total pages in book: 191
Estimated words: 182070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 182070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
Ten years had passed, but I recognized that fucking face.
The face that had belonged to a Disney princess—a Disney princess I had thought originally belonged to a Disney prince.
As an adult now, maybe she still deserved a Disney prince… in a different fucking movie.
She was a bitch Cinderella… and I was Mulan. And Zac... Zac was… well, Zac looked like the prince in Sleeping Beauty, but inside, he was an Olaf.
And Olaf was my favorite.
He didn’t deserve this asshole. He never had. Part of me understood he had been thinking with his dick and not his head back when they’d dated for a few months, but it still blew my mind he’d let someone so shitty into his life. Had he not seen it? Had he not known? I wasn’t sure.
What I did know was that now she was here. In front of me. In the fucking bathroom.
I had never looked her up once in all the years since she’d crushed my pride and self-esteem into smithereens. I’d thought about it once or twice but had stopped myself in time.
But that didn’t mean I hadn’t made a promise to myself—a promise I had made the day I’d decided I was going to be more than a little kid someone hung out with out of pity. The day I decided I was going to be proud of myself first.
If I ever see that bitch again, I’m gonna tell her. I’m gonna tell her “thank you for that time you were an asshole to me and you hurt my feelings for years. Eat a dick.”
Most of the time, I thought I was mature, or at least mostly mature. But in that second, with her standing there at the sink, as pretty as ever—part of me wished she’d grown a bunch of facial hair over the years—whatever maturity I had in me, disappeared. Like that.
She looked up, her gaze catching mine through the reflection.
And maybe, maybe, if she had smiled or done anything other than look me up and down, maybe I might have let it go. But the words still rang fresh in my soul.
She didn’t do anything friendly. She seemed to size me up with her still-heartless gaze, found me lacking, then finished rinsing off in the sink. Unimportant and forgotten.
I stood there as she shook her hands off, water flying everywhere, and leaned forward to get closer to the mirror mounted on the wall.
And I knew what I was going to do.
What I had to do. For younger me. For anyone else she might have ever been ugly to that hadn’t stood up for themselves either.
Especially when Zac was standing somewhere close by outside that door, ready to hang out with me after he’d already spent hours in my company. Because he cared about me and I cared about him.
Because we had been meant to be friends. To be in each other’s lives. Over the last few weeks, he’d become my best friend too.
Because it had been both my fault and Zac’s that we had grown apart over the years, but Boogie had been right: you had to work on friendships and relationships, and there was only so much that could happen since I’d basically given up and retreated. Because of her. And maybe if I’d even remotely kept trying after I’d initially given up, he would have reached back out toward me with both hands.
Either way, she had been an asshole, and I wanted her to know that I hadn’t forgotten her words and deeds.
That was when a sliver of a thought of Zac seeing her hit me right in the chest. Of seeing her and remembering that they had dated for a little bit. Of the chances of him still finding her attractive and rekindling something.
But… oh well. If he wanted to start up a relationship with someone like her again all because she was beautiful, then… whatever. It would be on him.
But this, this was about me.
Pushing my shoulders down—I’d slipped my costume back on—I stood exactly where I was and said her name. “Jessica?”
The woman instantly looked at me in the reflection of the mirror, her eyebrows knitting together in confusion. She paused, like she was thinking about it, like she wasn’t sure if we knew each other and she’d forgotten, but answered after a second, “Yes?” She turned around, that confused expression growing on her still-pretty features.
Zac doesn’t have time for you anymore, sweetie. He has things to do, and he’s too nice to tell you that. Maybe if you tamp down how needy you are with him….
“My name is Bianca,” I told her, not expecting her to remember and not surprised when she didn’t react at all. “We knew each other a long time ago. You dated my friend Zac.” And just in case she had dated more than one Zac, I went into details. “Zac Travis.”