Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 98023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 490(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 490(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
“Just a water,” Scottie says with a smile.
Finn presses a kiss to her forehead and meets my eyes for a brief moment.
“I’ll stay here,” I tell him, and he nods, clearly grateful, and pushes his way through a crowd of twerking girls to head toward the back of the house where the kitchen is located.
It’s taken me a long time to be able to pick up on social cues or unspoken words, but the quiet exchange with my technical half uncle makes me feel confident in the progress I’ve made. I still have a lot of work to do and I know I’ll never be perfect, but my evolution is certainly trending upward.
“Do you think I should be scared?” Scottie asks, and I look down to where she sits in her wheelchair, her eyes solely fixated on my face.
“Scared?” I question as I kneel down to get closer to her. “Of what exactly?”
“The surgery.”
Oh. The surgery. As in, Scottie has decided to move forward with the surgical and medical treatment plan my father wants to do. It’s a complicated surgery that involves nerve grafting, and the follow-up medication will require months of treatments.
“Are you scared?” I ask her, and she shrugs.
“Sometimes I am,” she answers and shrugs again. “And sometimes I’m excited for what this could all mean for me. But then, having that kind of excitement and knowing that nothing is a certainty scares me too. Would you be scared?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “It’s hard for me to place myself in your shoes and know exactly how I’d feel, but I think I’d probably be feeling like you are. A mix of lots of things.”
“Really?” she questions, her eyes going wide and a smile cresting her lips.
“You’re surprised by that?”
“Um, yeah.” She nods several times. “You’re Lexi Winslow. You’re, like, the strongest, most brilliant, powerful girl I know.”
My head jerks back at her words. “Well, thanks, I guess?”
“It’s definitely an accomplishment,” she adds and reaches out to touch my forearm. “I wish I had your poker face.”
My poker face. As in, my face that almost never shows emotion, even though, on the inside, I have plenty of emotions rolling through me. I know she also means that as a compliment, but it makes me feel this strange sense of vulnerability. Like I’m in the middle of one of those dreams where I forgot to put on clothes and I’m stuck in a public place.
Finn appears through the crowd, a bottle of water in one hand and a red Solo cup in another. He hands the bottle to Scottie. “People are fucking insane,” he mutters, and Scottie just laughs.
“Holy shit!” a boisterous voice exclaims, and I know without even turning around the culprit is the guy who dragged us here. Ace barrels into our little group, wraps his arm around Finn’s shoulders, and tugs him to his side. “Is Finnley Hayes enjoying an alcoholic beverage tonight?” he asks, looking down at Finn’s red Solo cup.
Finn rolls his eyes. “It’s Mountain Dew.”
“Fuck me.” Ace groans. “And I thought you weren’t going to be lame for once.”
“Stop being a dick, Acer.” Julia shoves Ace in the chest on a laugh. “You’re like one of those bullies on an afterschool special, trying to get everyone to drink his parents’ booze.”
Ace cracks up. “Damn, Jules. Don’t hold back.”
She just offers him a sweet smile, and he proceeds to let go of Finn’s shoulders and take hold of Julia’s, his arm comfortably wrapped around her. She rolls her eyes like she’s annoyed, but her body easily falls into place against his side. And I don’t miss the way Ace’s mouth morphs into this soft, gentle smile as he gazes down at her.
Ace is in love with Julia. It’s quite literally written all over his face. But Julia still appears oblivious to the way he’s looking at her or the way he always seems to find a way to touch her, hug her, hold her.
Ace starts to regale us with a story about how he and Julia got drunk off her dad’s favorite scotch when they were sophomores in high school, and since I’ve already heard this story, I let myself look around the room, taking in all the partygoers who are celebrating the start of another college year.
Some of the faces, I recognize as people who are in Double C, but most, I don’t know at all. I can imagine some of the kids here are a new generation of freshmen, just starting their college journey at Dickson.
But my gaze comes to a screeching halt when I spot the familiar strawberry-blond hair of a guy I’ve thought about way too often since I made the decision that we needed to move on from each other. Blake stands in the middle of a small group, his face etched into a smile as he chats with another guy I know is a running back on the football team. He has a bottle of water in his hand, and he’s dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt.