Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 65643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 328(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 219(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 328(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 219(@300wpm)
“Destiny, wait,” Garrett called, but he didn’t try to stop me. He took a few steps after me, but he didn’t reach for my arm. He wasn’t going to risk touching me. It was like I’d told him I had leprosy instead of a hymen. Like I’d told him, surprise! I actually am the kid you keep calling me.
Embarrassment burned on my cheeks, and I was grateful for the fog and shadows as I hurried back toward the main party. Once I reached it, the strobing lights kept anyone from getting a good look at my face. I found Danielle and yelled in her ear that I was heading out. She was still with the tall, handsome loin-clothed man from early, and they were both clearly going to end up where Garrett and I had been heading.
Relief and crushing disappointment swept through me when I thought about how calamitously that train had been derailed. I hadn’t waited nearly twenty-five years to have sex with a man who recoiled at the idea that I’d been careful. Righteous indignation got me out of the party and into an Uber. It kept me from crying in front of the nice lady who offered me bottled water and miniature Twix bars. It even got me through the lobby and into the elevator, but by the time the carriage let me out on my floor, the tears that had knotted up behind my eyeballs loosened, and the tears were welling up. They slipped down my cheeks while I fumbled the code to my door, not once but twice. When I finally was in my little sanctuary with the door closed and locked behind me, I stopped trying to hold them back or brush them away.
I didn’t sob the way I did when I got this close to nabbing a part I really wanted only to lose out to their other frontrunner. I didn’t feel like someone had reached in and was trying to tear my heart in half.
It was worse somehow.
When I lost a part, I knew there was always another one around the corner. Maybe one that would be ever better. It had happened before. I only was free to do Magical Melody because the pilot I had filmed for another network wasn’t picked up. I’d cried buckets over it, and then I’d gotten the script for Magical Melody, and that had been that.
But now, as I tried to picture my next move, I couldn’t. In my entire adult life, I’d only ever seriously considered having sex with one person, and it was impossible to imagine the next one coming along.
I wanted to detest him, and I did.
But I still wanted him.
For the first time in my entire life, I wished that Noemi Thompson hadn’t taken me under her wing twelve years ago. Hadn’t loved me like a sister. Because if she hadn’t, then maybe I’d have never even met Garrett. And if she hadn’t, then I definitely wouldn’t be on the very short list of people invited to her wedding.
I thought about canceling. I could tell her I was sick. I could tell her that the production schedule changed. She would understand that second one especially. Noemi had missed plenty of events of her own due to schedule changes.
I even called her three days before, the lie prepped on my tongue.
But then she answered, even though she was only a few minutes from going on set, and she’d gotten off the phone with her wedding coordinator to take my call, and I just couldn’t do it.
“I just wanted to tell you how excited I am,” I said weakly.
“What’s wrong with your voice? You aren’t getting sick are you?” she asked, her own voice ticking into high alert mode.
I cleared my throat. “No, I’m fine.”
Then I hung up and never felt less fine.
My dress was delivered the day before I left for Turks and Caicos. The designer’s assistant insisted on checking the fit, so I let her dress me in the billowing rose fabric that wrapped tightly around the bodice like rose petals before billowing out into long, gauzy panels that floated to the tops of my high heeled sandals. She made me walk around the living room to make sure the panels never revealed more leg than they should. Then I stood very still for several minutes while she added an extra stitch.
“What’s the dress for?” she asked with the casual intimacy that came with being face to face with someone’s thigh for several minutes.
“A friend’s wedding.” I told her the truth absently, instinctively leaving out the details. I’d been guarding my privacy so long that keeping secrets was second nature. So why had I gone and told Garrett the truth?
“Fun.” The assistant stood up, brushed her palms together briskly, a pin clenched between her teeth. “Look in the mirror and tell me what you think.”