Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 75720 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75720 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“Your friends are funny,” Jake said, delicately grabbing three glasses in his big hands.
“And ridiculous. Don’t take anything they say seriously.”
His eyes glittered under my kitchen lights, as if he’d gotten fistfuls of blue stardust and used that as contacts. It was almost surreal. I wanted to paint him—and I wasn’t even an artist. The furthest I’d likely get was a blocky stick figure with sapphire eyes, and still, I wanted to grab the nearest stack of papers and pens and go to town.
“Thanks for inviting me,” he said, crossing his arms and leaning against the kitchen counter. “It’s nice seeing you outside of work.”
I cocked my head. A small ember nestled into the base of my spine, warming me from the inside out. Something about the way he said “nice seeing you” fanned the ember and made the flames lick down my back. I tried stamping it out, ignoring the way my briefs started to tighten.
“Yeah, of course,” I said, turning my back to him in a futile attempt to break whatever spell this man was beginning to cast on me.
“I love your house, too. You’ve got a really great style.” His eyes roamed around the kitchen, which had been renovated right before I bought the place about a year ago. There was an Italian countryside–inspired backsplash—all clean blues and whites swirling together in an intricate and repeating pattern—with a polished and eye-catching white marble countertop. The island had a leathered black top that matched the black door to the walk-in pantry, currently open and letting in the last dying sunlight of the day through an arching window.
“Thanks. I’ll give you a full tour once the book club’s over.”
“I’d like that,” he said, a slight gravel in his voice, the ember lighting into a full-blown bonfire. What the hell was going on with me? Jake was off-limits. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure on his sexuality, but the safest bet to make was that he was straight and likely just being nice to me.
Unfortunately, that didn’t mean much, considering I had the syndrome most gay men were afflicted with: Hetero-Cockholme Syndrome.
Sure, I’d made that up, but I would bet anything that it was an actual phenomenon.
It occurred whenever an even minimally attractive straight man was being nice to a thirsty gay guy, rewiring the gay guy’s brain and creating an explosion of rainbows and dick, making the gay guy think that the friendly and benign gesture (whether it was bringing an extra coffee to work because the barista accidentally made one or holding the elevator door open for you) meant that mind-blowingly great sex would immediately be had.
Somehow, someway, likely by the grace of glittery gay Jesus, I was able to pull myself out of the trance. We went back into the dining room with the wineglasses, the room full of laughter and warmth. I said hi to Jess and Tia, girlfriends whom we met at a Pride parade and became besties with ever since, and Yvette Gomez, one of my close friends from college. They gave me tight side hugs before I grabbed the moderator seat at the head of the table. This week, I’d been the one chosen to lead the discussions, which was usually a fun job since we all liked to get creative (and a little power-hungry) with the role.
Today, I had whipped up a drinking game for the group. “Okay,” I said, lowering the music so that it was just background noise. “Today’s game is Buzz Word. Each one of us has a secret word that only that person knows. Every time that word is said, you have to take a drink within five seconds. But be sneaky about it because if someone can guess your word, then you lose your chance at winning this twenty-five-dollar gift card.”
I pulled out the cards with the words on them and shuffled. I had purposely created over twenty cards so that I could hand one out without knowing what was on there, which made it easy to adapt to having one extra player.
“Alright, should we start?” I asked, taking a peek at my card. “Murder” was my word.
Great. I’m going to be trashed five minutes into this.
We slipped into book club mode, opening up the discussion on chapter ten, where we had last left off. I focused heavily on character, honing in on Gabrielle Munoz, the main character who orders the necklace and becomes the target of the twisted killer. The first murder had just occurred a couple of chapters back, and in this one, Gabrielle ends up ordering one of the morbid pieces of jewelry without realizing it was made of real human bones collected from the victim.
“That’s wild,” Tristan said, taking a sip of his wine. He picked off a fluff from his black T-shirt and flicked it in Yvette’s direction. “Did you make sure your necklace wasn’t sourced from a fucked-up murder?”