Total pages in book: 112
Estimated words: 107667 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 538(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107667 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 538(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
I move to the next bookshelf, taking down photos of my family and then one of Lindy, Josie, and me at a UT game when we were kids. We look so happy, attached at the hip, and it’s crazy how quickly things change. Just thinking of what Josie said, wanting me to settle for Denis, has a laugh bubbling in my chest. Settle for him? When a man like Dart exists? A man who consumed my body like it was his last meal. A man who made me feel things I thought I could only dream of. Things I had never experienced in my life.
I drop my hands holding the photo into my lap and look at where my phone is lying on the counter. I work my upper lip between my teeth and then go to get it. I lean on the counter and turn it on. As I assumed, it dings and dings with voice mails and texts. I open my texts and find Dart’s thread. The photo of us truly pains me to see. Both of us flushed and grinning from ear to ear. His hair had fallen into his face, and his lips were swollen from the many kisses I pulled from him. My gaze shifts to my face, how bright it was, and I notice how red my neck is in the photo. I press my hand to my neck and swear I can still feel him there. I close my eyes as my heart pounds like a jackhammer ready to break through my chest. Heat pools between my legs, and God, I wish he were here.
A knock at the door snatches me from my thoughts, and my brows come together. The stupid and irrational part of me prays it’s him, but I know it’s not. I go to the door, opening it to find my mom on the other side. She looks distraught with worry, and I sigh in annoyance. “Mom, I don’t have it in me.”
“Tennessee Lynn, do you know how worried I’ve been?”
I turn as I nod. “Yeah, I’m sorry. It was a long night.”
A deliciously long night.
“So I heard!” she yells, slamming the door behind her. “You blew Denis off, his momma is pissed at me, and now she’s saying she won’t donate to the softball field anymore.”
“Mom,” I say, turning to look at her. I could pass for her twin if I were half my size and had my natural wheat-colored hair. “I don’t give a shit about Denis or the softball field. I don’t. I freaking don’t. He is nothing to me.”
It’s as if she didn’t know this. As if this is the first time I’ve said it. It’s not.
With her brow furrowed, she wails, “Lordy, Tennessee. How can you be like that? He’s been in your life for so long.”
“Good riddance is what I say,” I tell her, sitting on the stool in front of my kitchen island.
Her eyes widen as anger sets in. “And what about Josie? She said you said you’d never speak to her ever again.”
I run my hands down my face. “Did she tell you she told me I would never be thin enough to pull a guy better than Denis?”
I look up at her then, and her eyes soften. “Well, that is unkind and untrue,” she says tensely. “And she sure did not tell me that.”
“She always says sly shit like that, and I’m tired of it.”
She nods. “I’d feel the same. And I don’t appreciate that at all, but you can’t stop being her friend. You guys have known each other since you were babies.”
“I can,” I tell her simply. “I don’t deserve that.”
“No, but she loves you.”
“I don’t want that kind of love. Especially when she then runs and tells you a version that makes her the victim. She’s always done that and has always painted me as the bad guy, when, really, it’s her.”
“Tennie, it’s not that bad.”
“It feels that way,” I insist. “And Lindy may not twist stories, but she sure doesn’t support or defend me against Josie.”
She gives me a pitiful look. “I think maybe y’all have just grown apart a bit. You should talk. Maybe a girls’ trip.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Tennie, don’t be like that. It’s not kind.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be kind to her. Lord knows she’s not to me.”
She eyes me. “I really think you should talk to her. She was so worried about you when she couldn’t find you.”
“I was just fine.”
“So I heard,” she says, giving me a stern look. “It’s not very ladylike to sleep with men you don’t know.”
Kill me now. “Mom, see? She’s supposed to be my best friend, but she tells my mom I had a one-night stand?”
She winces since perfect Marcy Dent would never do such a thing. “That’s beside the point. You don’t know what you could have caught.”