Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 88143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
“Is that so?” he says, and I swear I could picture him smiling. A smile I’ve looked at for an hour now. Fucking Pinterest.
“I mean, I usually fly off the handle, but this one was a bit more than anything else.” I laugh. “It didn’t help that I had two shots of tequila in me, and it was nine a.m.”
“So you drunk tweeted me?” He laughs now. “Interesting.”
The way he says that word makes me sit up. “Why is that interesting?”
“It’s just if you didn’t have the tequila in you, you wouldn’t have tweeted me?” he asks me, and I lie back down, thinking.
“Probably,” I tell him the truth. “He loves you so hard. At first, I thought he did it just to get a rise out of Matthew and Max when he used to throw out your stats, but …”
“Yeah, your brother isn’t my biggest fan, especially now,” he tells me, and I turn over in the bed.
“Jesus, did he call you?” I ask him, holding my breath. This is so embarrassing.
“Yeah, he did,” he says. “I mean, the conversation lasted maybe five seconds, and he said maybe four words. I heard Max in the background throwing clout.” He chuckles. “But—”
I stop him from talking. “I am so sorry you got dragged into this. I totally understand if you don’t want to come with me.”
“I’ve never crashed a wedding before, but it’s on my bucket list.” I laugh now when he says that. “Do you even know when he’s getting married?”
“According to his latest Instagram post, he can’t wait to make her his wife, and he said beginning of June,” I tell him. I don’t tell him that after that happened, I had a couple more shots of tequila, but everyone held my phone hostage. They also hid their own phones.
“If you can get me the date, I can check my schedule and see if I’m available,” he tells me. “It should be the playoffs by that point,” he says.
“I didn’t even think,” I say, and I turn over again. “Listen, Evan, I get that you probably think this is the stupidest thing that has ever been done, but if you knew me, you would know it’s probably not, and I’ll probably do something to top this.” He laughs. “But I don’t want to blow up your life.”
“I got a thousand phone numbers today,” he tells me. “My DMs were blowing up.”
“Fuck,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why? It’s not every day a gorgeous woman takes a stand for herself and, in return, asks me out.”
“We’ve never even met,” I tell him, waiting for him to answer.
“No, we haven’t,” he starts telling me, and his voice goes softer, “but after I agreed to be your wedding crasher date, I checked out your picture on Twitter.” My heart starts picking up, and I put him on speakerphone while I go on Twitter and check the picture. It was taken on the beach when our family went to St. Barts.
“Do you know that you have hundreds of Pinterest boards dedicated to you?” I tell him. He laughs now but not just a small chuckle like he did before. This one is deep, and I can picture him leaning over and laughing. “What? It’s true.”
“You were checking me out,” he says between the fits of laughter.
“Well, I knew what you looked like. Sort of,” I tell him. “I mean with a helmet on and a visor.”
I have seen him play before.
“Where do you live?” he asks me when he finally stops laughing.
“New York,” I tell him, and I know he lives in Dallas. He plays for Dallas.
“I leave tomorrow night for Jersey,” he says, and I literally hold my breath. “I’m there for two days.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Zara, can I take you out?” he asks me. “I mean, I think it’s good if we meet before we just crash a wedding.”
“You want to drive into the city and take me out?” I ask him in shock, not expecting this at all. I expected a couple of texts, and then we would just mutually show up at the wedding and pretend we like each other and then go our separate ways.
“Yeah, we actually have the whole day free. We are flying up at night so we can rest,” he tells me.
“I have a couple of appointments that day,” I tell him, “but I’m free late afternoon.” This is another bad idea.
“Well then,” he says heavily, “it’s a date.”
“So a date before a date.” I make sure I understand what’s going on. “Or is it a meeting before a date?”
“What?” He chuckles again. “I don’t even know what that means.”
“So a date is wine and dine,” I tell him, “and a meeting is sitting down and getting things on paper so there is no confusion on what is going to come.”