Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 148704 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 744(@200wpm)___ 595(@250wpm)___ 496(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148704 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 744(@200wpm)___ 595(@250wpm)___ 496(@300wpm)
She chews on that lower lip of hers and turns to her nightstand, straightening items already straight to give herself something to focus on. “There’s not some deep thought process or reason, Crew, and maybe that’s the worst part, I don’t know.” She pauses, and when she turns to me, it’s with a soft sigh and timid smile.
“I’m twenty-one years old, graduating college in a couple weeks, and I haven’t done or experienced half of the things the people my age have, but I’m not dumb. I don’t have some naive notion to be like everyone else, and there’s no peer pressure involved. My mind isn’t stuck in high school repeating ‘all the girls are doing something and so I want to do it too.’ It’s nothing like that. It’s just…”
“Just what?”
She takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders, all to pull them in close. Her gaze turns toward the empty hall and stays there. “This might sound really bad, shitty or trashy, I don’t know, but the honest truth is I want to have sex. I want to know what it feels like and not to feed some deluded sense of curiosity, but because I want to experience it. I want the excitement that comes from lust. I want the rush. I want the sense of closeness with a man. I want to drown in need, shake with desire.
“And this isn’t about being homesick or pitifully lonely. It’s like I said, there’s not a deep-rooted reason other than I want to. I’ve waited long enough. I’m ready to look into the eyes of a man while he makes me come undone, and I want to know how to do the same to him.”
I don’t realize I’m stuck where I’m standing, silently staring at her, until she looks over. The second our eyes meet, unease clouds her features, and she looks away.
The strange thing is I hear her, understand everything she’s saying. I’ve felt those same desires, still do here and there, so it’s not all the things she admitted causing my chest to feel a little tight, or my limbs a little heavy. All right, it kind of is.
Lonely. She said she’s lonely.
How long has she felt like that?
Why does she feel like that?
Why do I feel like that?
I have a gang of friends who ask for my time, and I work with a lot of people. My brother moved home a while ago, and yeah, we don’t always see eye to eye, hardly ever do in fact, but he’s here and we hang. Sometimes. I don’t have a woman of my own, but I choose it to be that way. A normal day for me is getting up, going to work, and going to bed. Shit, sometimes I’m so busy busting my ass trying to get ahead that I forget to eat and I’m stuck with beer nuts for the night. This last year was spent trying to get back on my feet, getting debts paid off and accounts into good standing. I haven’t paused long enough to think about life outside of the bar.
Not until she showed up in it and I carried her ass out.
I didn’t even know she drank.
Does she drink alone?
Spend all her time alone?
Growing up, it was always me and Memphis… and Davis. She never did have her own little crew. To know she’s never dated means she’s spent all her nights alone, but what about the rest of her time?
Work and school are important to her, so I’m sure those things keep her pretty busy, but what about after that? She did mention pizza night with her friend Jess, but there have to be more people in her life than those who have to be, and the one girl who lives in her complex. Right? She has a roommate; do they not go out together? I’m pretty sure there was a picture on the fridge of her and a couple girls at a concert, looked new enough.
Maybe one was Jess, and the other was Jess’s friend?
“Why are you still here, Davis?” I say suddenly, and I almost want to take it back.
I really want to take it back when she winces, her eyes cutting to the carpet. She’s quiet a long moment, and then she peeks up at me, her chin still pointed to her chest as she whispers, “Why are you still here, Crew?”
And isn’t that the fucking question.
Southern California isn’t our home.
It’s not the place we planned to stay forever.
I followed Memphis out here, and his baby sister did the same.
Now he’s gone, and look at us, two people who once knew more about each other than friends should, asking questions we should—and maybe did—already know the answers to.
But Memphis was home to us, until he wasn’t; he was the link between us, until he wasn’t, so how the hell are we supposed to leave this town now?