Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 98789 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 494(@200wpm)___ 395(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98789 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 494(@200wpm)___ 395(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
“Jesus!” He scrambled backward, but since it was a twin bed, he didn’t get very far before he tumbled off the other side. Popping to his feet, he grabbed a pillow and held it in front of his crotch. He spoke in a furious whisper. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I wanted to be alone with you.”
“Why?”
I took a deep breath. This was my big line. “I want to give you something.”
He paused. “What?”
“Me.” Getting to my knees, I lifted the T-shirt I’d worn to bed over my head. My heart knocked crazily against my ribs—I’d never taken my shirt off in front of any boy. “I want you to be my first.”
“Oh my God. This is not happening.” Without looking at me, he reached for my shirt and tossed it onto the bed. “You need to put this back on and get out of here.”
“But don’t you want to—”
“No! Ari, listen to me.” He turned away from me and spoke to the opposite wall, like he didn’t want to see my breasts. Like I was a hideous monster he couldn’t bear to look at. “I don’t—want you that way.”
“But you kissed me back.”
“That was a mistake. I was . . . confused,” he finished. “You’re like a little sister to me.”
Mortified, I tugged the shirt over my head.
“You don’t really want this either. Trust me,” he went on, his tone becoming a little cocky and condescending. “I’m older and wiser and I know you’d regret it.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” I said as hot tears of humiliation splashed down my cheeks. There was no way he could know how many years I’d spent pining for him. Attending every one of his football games. Sitting rapt in the audience at every school play. Pouring coffee for him when he’d come into the diner and sit at the counter, my heart pounding with glorious agony every time he smiled at me and asked for a refill. I’d dreamed about this night forever—and he’d just ruined it by rejecting me.
I would never get over this.
“I hate you,” I said impulsively, because I loved him so much I couldn’t breathe.
Finally turning around, he watched me scoot off the bed. “Look, let’s just forget this happened, okay? No one ever has to know. Can’t we be friends?”
But I was already hurrying out of his bedroom and back down the hall toward Mabel’s, where I crawled back into the second twin bed in her room and sobbed silently into the pillow.
He didn’t love me. He didn’t want me. I wasn’t pretty enough or old enough or sexy enough. He thought of me like a little sister and always would. Why had I ever thought it could be different? Why did my heart have to want him, of all people, so badly? Why did this have to hurt so much?
I hated him for real, I decided. And I’d hate him forever.
Okay, fine—the hate was a shield for my annihilated pride, but cut me some slack, okay? I was sixteen, I was highly emotional, and I’d been in love with Dashiel Buckley since I was twelve years old. I needed to hate him to get over him.
So I perfected the art of the eye roll when his name was mentioned, the dirty look if we were in the same room, and the dismissive sniff when he tried talking to me like nothing had happened. But when he left for California a couple months later, I cried myself to sleep.
Of course, eight years had gone by, and by now I realized that Dash had done the right thing. Didn’t take the sting out of the rejection or make it any less awkward when he came home for a visit, but over time, I was able to see things from his point of view.
Not that I’d admit that to him.
After all, he’d gotten his big Hollywood break. He had tons of adoring fans. His picture splashed all over the internet. His name linked with gorgeous it girls. He didn’t need me to like him.
So I didn’t.
Much.
I glanced up at his perfect smile again, dismayed when my heart fluttered the way it always did. No other guy had ever compared, and I’d never had those feelings for anyone else.
Maybe I’d find that Sharpie and black out a few of his teeth.
Around four-thirty that afternoon, I let myself into the Buckleys’ house without knocking, same as I’d been doing for twenty years—as soon as my parents had let me walk around the block by myself.
I’d always loved being at their house, which seemed like so much more fun than mine, since I was an only child and Mabel had four rambunctious older brothers. Mrs. Buckley had died when Mabel and I were only three, so my mom had been like a second mother to Mabel, and Mr. Buckley had always been wonderful to me. He was even helping me with some of the painting and carpentry on my new house. So when he asked me to look after Fritz, his German Australian Shepherd mix, while he was away for a few days, I was more than happy to say yes. He’d given me a key to use, but even if he hadn’t, I knew exactly where the fake rock containing the spare key was hidden—beneath Mrs. Buckley’s rose bushes to the left of the patio.