Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 108636 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 543(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108636 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 543(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
I wave goodbye to both of them, and I don’t look back. My dignity won’t allow it.
Knowing I’ll wake up tomorrow morning still in love with the guy who sees himself as my brother is more than bad enough.
Avery pulls her black Mercedes G Wagon through the entrance of Altos Del Mar, the exclusive community in Miami we both grew up in, and I scroll my phone to distract myself.
There are a lot of wonderful memories here, but a number of bad ones all the same, and the more I look out the window, the more they come rushing back to me.
Sitting on the front steps of my house, hoping one of my parents would come home and surprise me on the night of my twelfth birthday and ending up opening gifts sent by mail while my newest nanny looked on.
Hearing my parents fight like cats and dogs while I hid my head under my pillow and cried when my dad told my mom he wanted a divorce the year before.
Hoping for a family vacation but getting a guided solo tour of Europe with my nanny the year before that.
My dad still owns the house I grew up in—he kept it after the divorce—and I go to it on very rare occasions, but eleven bedrooms and their corresponding baths can’t fill the empty space being alone in ten-thousand square feet creates in your heart. Even though it’s still filled with staff who keep it maintained, it feels emptier than a morgue.
I don’t even have to text my dad to know he’s not home today. He’s never home. Between running his real estate empire and his wife, my twenty-seven-year-old stepmom, Lola, Richard Perry’s life is one of jet-setting and expensive hotels on endless repeat.
And my mom isn’t any better. After my parents divorced when I was eleven, she turned herself into Julia Roberts and Eat Pray Love-d with reckless abandon. She never stays in one place and is always going on unconventional spiritual retreats in places like Fiji and Bali to find herself. After twelve years of doing that, you’d think Jackie Perry would have a handle on who she is, but it’s a never-ending quest. Maybe it’s all just a guise to spend her days relaxing on exotic beaches while living off all the money she got in the divorce settlement, or maybe she really is lost. I don’t know.
All I know is she isn’t here. Ever. And the only way I know her whereabouts is from the sporadic texts she sends me. The last one came in two days ago and consisted of Hi, my darling. Sending you love from Milos, Greece.
That message was followed up with a picture of my bikini-clad mother standing on the beach with some tanned, muscled-up, shirtless guy I’ve never seen before.
Ironically, not even twenty-four hours before that, Lola sent me a picture of herself and my father standing on some fancy yacht in the South of France and a text message that only made me roll my eyes.
Lola: Your father and I miss you, Avery! When we’re back in town, let’s have a family dinner together, okay? I have a killer steamed mussels recipe that you need to try! Kisses from France, sweetheart!
I don’t have anything against my father’s wife, but her trying to act like she’s a mother figure in my life when I’m a grown adult and she’s only four years older than me is the world’s biggest joke. Plus, she doesn’t cook—my father’s staff does that—and the last time I had a family dinner with my actual family was years and years ago, before Lola was even in the picture.
Needless to say, everything about my family life is nonconventional at best. Completely dysfunctional and devoid of true love and affection at worst.
Avery pulls up to the gate blocking the entrance of her parents’ home and types the code into the security keypad. Once the gates slide open, she pulls inside and parks in the circular driveway of the Bankses’ eight-thousand-square-foot mansion and shuts off the engine.
I click out of my dad’s message telling me to “Have a good first day of work next week” from this morning and figure his assistant Shirlene must have gotten the calendar entry wrong by a week. I also laugh to myself—because crying is useless—over the fact that my twenty-seven-year-old stepmother makes a bigger effort than my own father. At least her messages come from her.
Avery is the first out of the car, and her mom Diane has the door to the house open shortly after.
Diane Banks is the definition of a woman who ages gracefully. She’s fairly tall, with shiny dark hair, and her face showcases just the right amount of wrinkles to make her look sophisticated and wise but still ten years younger than her actual age. She’s also one of the kindest human beings I’ve ever known. A true mother, that’s Diane.