Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
I recognized Swim Shady immediately as I moved over to look at them. But the other three were equally as striking. One, black, white, and orange. Another, pure orange. The final, black and white.
“I feel like it’s wrong I only have a print of one of you,” I told them before moving across the room to pull open the curtains to let the sun in for the plants.
Moving back to the kitchen, I rummaged around in the cabinets to find the coffee, then started brewing a fresh pot.
In another cabinet, I found her plates and cups. As I expected, not a single one of them matched. And they were all colorful or fun. One mug featured hand-drawn flowers. The other was covered in various bird eggs.
The bathroom door opened, bringing a burst of hot air and the scent of lavender from, I assumed, her body wash or shampoo.
I exhaled hard, trying not to imagine her naked as I heard her move across the hall and close the door to her bedroom.
She emerged just a few moments later as the coffee machine beeped, looking refreshed.
Sure, her eyelids were still puffy and she still had the sleepless smudges underneath her eyes. But she looked less haunted.
Though, what I couldn’t seem to look away from the way her wet hair was soaking through her thin white cutoff tee. That she wasn’t wearing anything underneath.
I forced my gaze down, finding her wearing some sort of loose, flowy pants of some paper-thin light blue material.
“That smells good,” she said as I poured each of us a cup.
“Everything okay?” I asked again now that she’d seemed to have recovered a bit.
“Yeah. I just didn’t sleep well last night,” she said, shrugging it off. “This should make up for that,” she added, ducking into her fridge for some half & half.
“Please tell me you’re not one of those people who hates sugar,” I said as I took some of the creamer. “Because I’m gonna have to go borrow some from the neighbors then,” I admitted.
“Nothing wrong with cutting the bitter a little,” she said, reaching for a sugar bowl. “I don’t have coffee often, but when I do, I need something to sweeten it too,” she said, scooping one teaspoon into her cup. “Oh, wow,” she said, barely holding back a laugh as I put three.
“Yeah, the guys give me shit about it all the time too,” I said, taking a sip. “So, hungry?” I asked.
“Starving,” she said as I put my mug down to reach into the bag, pulling out two different cream cheeses and some butter before putting her cinnamon raisin on her plate and a sesame on mine.
“Oh, cinnamon sounds amazing,” she decided, producing a bread knife, and slicing her bagel before tossing it in the toaster. “You can’t eat this kind of bagel cold,” she explained. “Did you bring any to your uncle?”
“I dropped them on the island. He was still sleeping.”
“Yeah, he seems to keep odd hours,” she agreed. “So what did you guys do last night after I left?”
“Well, Teddy and I cut out after the first club,” I told her.
“Why?”
“Just wasn’t feeling it,” I said. Adding silently without you there. “And Teddy had an early morning, so it made sense to crash with him.”
“Are party buses a common occurrence for you guys?”
“This was a first. But Zayn always has something interesting planned. He once had his yacht docked around here and had a giant-ass party that went on for three days or so. I don’t even remember much of it. I think we were all wasted the whole time.”
“Zayn seems to be a party starter for sure,” she agreed.
“To be fair, the club has a lot of parties too. But his always go over the top.”
“Is he in real estate or something?”
“He’s… into international business,” I told her.
I wasn’t sure why I didn’t tell her the whole truth. It wasn’t like I was ashamed of my job and our connection to Zayn.
Maybe it came from growing up in such a disenfranchised neighborhood where I brushed shoulders with drug dealers and pimps almost daily. Amongst other criminals. And, to an extent, they were all kind of decent guys. They just saw a market and sold to it.
That was what we did as well.
There was just… something soft about Jade that made me want to protect her from the truth.
No.
That wasn’t exactly right.
It was that I didn’t know she would still want anything to do with me if she knew what I was into.
Was I probably a shitty person for keeping it from her? Yeah. But it wasn’t like she’d outwardly asked me what I did, or the club did, for a living.
I never felt so conflicted about my profession before. I guess that in the past, the women around us knew who we were and what we did since they were, you know, club girls. Or when it wasn’t club girls, it was all just fun and casual. I never knew their last names. They didn’t need to know my job.