Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 115198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
“You, too, huh?” a voice says from the shadows, and I squint into the darkness to see Reagan. She’s sitting on a low tree branch in a blue-and-white-checked dress and glittering ruby slippers. An adorable Dorothy.
“Did I just say that out loud?” I ask.
She looks up at me with the trademark Weston eyes. “Say what?”
“About how I hope the storm lands directly over us?”
She laughs. “No. I just meant you ditched the party, too?”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“What’s your reason?” she asks, looking back down to where she’s drawing with a stick in the sand.
I squint at her in the darkness. “What’s yours?” I bounce back.
“Grown-ups being annoying.”
“Hey, bestie, same.” I walk closer, offering a high five and sitting down beside her. “Didn’t you go snorkeling with Eko today?”
Blaire mentioned Reagan having zero interest in spa day, and frankly, after West’s weirdness made an appearance, I wonder if I should have made the same call.
“Yeah, she took us to the reef off the north side of the island. It was amazing. I asked her to please not bring us back here.”
I laugh. “Bet she didn’t pack enough food for the boat trip back to Singapore, eh?”
“Sadly, no.”
“Ugh. Planning fail.”
Reagan laughs down at her sand drawing. “Five more days,” she says. “I’m having fun but I miss my dog and my friends.”
“Bet it feels like an eternity.”
“It does.”
I remember this feeling, the sense that everything was boring when I was home but that being away for even an hour meant that I was missing something intensely fun and irreplaceable, that everything, always, was completely out of my control. Being an adolescent fucking sucks.
But I know that in all the times Dad sat with me on the swings in the backyard while I cried over friends or boys or school or my mom, never once did he tell me to cheer up, to try to see the bright side, to have a positive attitude. He knew I was an upbeat kid, and when I wanted to feel bad, he let me feel bad. The only thing he ever said was “It’ll get better.” And he was never wrong.
“It’ll get better,” I say to Reagan now.
“I hope so.”
“It will,” I assure her. “In a few years you’ll have more independence. More autonomy. Do you know what that means?”
She shakes her head.
“It’s like having control over your own decisions,” I say. The tide is coming in about twenty yards away, and I wiggle my toes in the cool sand. “Soon you’ll be old enough to say no to things you don’t want to do. Right now is the time in life that teaches you you’ll get through it even if you hate it.”
At least I get a small smile out of her. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“Boredom never killed anyone.” I bump her shoulder with mine. “It just made them wish it would.”
She laughs and we both turn as a twig snaps behind us.
West steps into view, one hand in his pants pocket, the other drawing back a branch so he can see us. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Reagan says, and it’s for both of us because I don’t bother.
“What’re you two doing out here?” he asks in that low, soothing voice. I straighten my back, reminding myself I’m mad.
“Planning the downfall of the patriarchy,” I tell him.
He laughs. “Cool.”
“What are you doing out here?” Reagan asks him. “Looking for Anna, probably.”
“Yeah… I was wondering if my wife would like to dance with me.”
I tilt my head to the convenient excuse of the kid at my side. “I’m Reagan’s ride-or-die tonight.”
The way West’s smile falls hits me like a shove. The confirmation that he got my meaning isn’t as satisfying as I’d expected it to be.
He blinks away, aiming a wry laugh down at the sand before he looks back up again. “Shots fired, okay.” He looks over at Reagan. “Then would my niece like to dance with me?”
Reagan recoils. “Absolutely not.”
“You sure?” He huffs out a surprised breath. “You sound a little conflicted.”
“No offense, Uncle Liam, but I wouldn’t even know how to dance to this old-timey shit.”
I pull back, looking at her in feigned surprise. “She swears!”
“Sorry,” she mumbles.
“I could teach you,” I tell her.
West’s honeyed voice slides between us. “Or we could teach her.”
He holds out a hand to Reagan and I can’t blame her for the way she seems to enter a trance and take it, following him inside. I can’t resist following, either, and I was actively trying.
Just as West sets his wineglass down on an empty table, the band breaks into a song I remember from high school band—Benny Goodman’s laid-back “In the Mood”—and West leads Reagan to the floor, where she absolutely refuses to move her feet. Laughing, he steps back and shows her the basic choreography of a dance I’ve definitely seen on Dancing with the Stars.