Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 100713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
He poured without asking why.
“What’s going on?” Moretti was eyeballing me shrewdly.
“Nothing.”
“Is it the toast thing?”
“No.”
“So what’s with the mad face?”
I tried to replace my scowl with a blank expression. “Better?”
“Not really,” he said. “Is your dad okay?”
Everyone glanced over to where my dad and Cole’s mom stood chatting. “He looks okay,” Cole said.
“My dad is fine, I’m fine, everything’s fine,” I said in a tone that clearly communicated nothing was fine. I tossed back the second shot. My eyes watered.
My friends watched me plunk the shot glass back on the table.
“Uh, Beckett?” Cole rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not judging you, and it’s totally cool with me if this is your choice for today, but do you realize one of your fingernails is painted pink?”
“What?” I held out my right hand, and sure enough, hot pink polish still covered my pinkie nail. “Fuck. Maddie must have missed that one.”
“Maddie painted your nails?” Griffin asked, tilting his head in confusion.
“No. Elliott did. Maddie took the polish off last night after Elliott went to bed, but I guess she missed one. We sort of got distracted while she was doing it.”
Griffin laughed. “I’ll bet you did.”
“Not like that.” I took a deep breath and let it out. “We had a fight. Or not a fight. I don’t even know what to call it, but it did not end well.”
“Oh, shit,” Moretti said.
Griffin poured everyone a little more whiskey, and they threw back their second shots. But I didn’t touch my glass.
“It’s fine,” I said again, trying to brush it off. “It was going to end sooner or later. Might as well be now, before she did something rash like move back to Bellamy Creek.”
Cole’s eyes widened. “She was going to move back here?”
“She was thinking about it.” I dropped my eyes to my empty glass. “We . . . discussed it.”
“So what’s the problem? Elliott’s dad?” Cole asked.
I shook my head. “We didn’t even get that far. I fucked it up too fast.”
“Why?” Griffin asked. “Don’t you want her to move back?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit,” muttered Moretti.
“Okay, fine,” I said defensively. “Maybe I do want her to move back, but I don’t want her to do it for me.”
“Why not?” Cole asked.
“I don’t understand why I have to fucking explain this to everyone,” I said heatedly. “Especially to you guys. Why can’t you just respect my decision without asking me to defend it?”
“Uh, maybe because we’re your best friends, and we can see that you’re fucking up a great thing?” Moretti said with a shrug.
“If she wants to be with you, and you want to be with her, why not encourage her to move back?” Cole asked. “Wouldn’t that be so much easier for you than dating long-distance?”
“Yeah. But that’s not the point,” I argued.
“So what’s the point?” Griffin asked. “I thought it was pretty obvious Thursday night when I saw you guys together that she’d move here. Why put it off?”
“Unless you’re not sure of your feelings for her,” Cole said. “If you’ve got doubts, I could totally see why you wouldn’t want her to take that kind of leap.”
“I have no doubts about my feelings for her,” I said. “I have other kinds of doubts.”
“Such as?” Griffin asked.
I closed my eyes a second, then opened them and threw back my third shot. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
My friends were silent, and I felt like the world’s biggest dick for ruining the moment.
“Look,” Cole said, “I don’t know exactly what your doubts are, but if they’re anything like mine were when Cheyenne and I started dating, it might help to say them out loud.”
“Fuck that,” I said irritably. Then I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Sorry, you guys. I hardly slept last night. I know I’m being a total asshole.”
“You are,” agreed Griffin, “but I think we all were when we were in the place you’re in right now. In fact, I distinctly remember Cole calling me an asshole when I broke up with Blair and told her to leave town.”
“That’s right, I did.” Cole looked happy about it.
“Another thing he said was that given how long we’d been friends, he’d expect me to tell him if he was fucking something up in a big way.” Griffin paused. “So I did.”
“He did,” Cole confirmed. “But I needed to hear it.”
“I think it was Blair who called me an asshole when I messed things up with Bianca,” Moretti chimed in.
“She definitely said it to me,” Griffin informed him with a laugh. “Even if she didn’t say it to your face.”
“The point is, Beck, we’ve all been there,” Cole said. “We’ve all fucked up a good thing because it seemed like the safer way to go.”
I stared at the empty shot glass. “For fifteen years, every time I’ve had the chance to tell her how I feel about her, I can’t get the words out. I either say nothing at all, or I say the wrong thing.”