Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 94630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
“Correction. I tried to blow him, but I…um, ran into a little difficulty.”
“What kind of difficulty?”
“I threw up.”
Cam’s lips clamped and his cheeks puffed up with the laugh bomb exploding inside his mouth.
“You…like on his dick?”
“On his dick. On his jeans. On his new sneakers. It was a gag reflex thing.” Jo wondered if her cheeks glowed brightly enough to provide more light than the fireflies. “You guys always wondered why we broke up—well, that was the straw that blew the camel’s back, so to speak. Mark drew the line at vomit in his boxers.”
Cam fell back on the grass, shoulders lifting and shaking. He bit his lip, but laughter kept sneaking out.
“It may be funny now, but—”
“Oh, God, it would have been even funnier then,” Cam said. “Wait ’til I tell Walsh.”
Jo leaned over Cam, pressing one palm to his windpipe and the other into the grass beside his head.
“Breathe one word of that to anyone and I will end you, Mitchell.”
“What are you gonna do, bully?” Cam reached up to stroke a finger down her nose. “Take my milk money?”
Jo laughed, laying her head against his chest and willing her heartbeat to match his. Willing them to be in accord as they got closer and closer to the ash-covered secrets he kept.
“Okay, next low moment.” She sat up and grabbed her glowing jar, insinuating her fingernail into a hole in the lid as far as it would go.
“I could listen to these all day.” Cam lifted and dropped strands of the hair falling between her shoulder blades.
“When I was fifteen, I had a massive crush on this boy.” Jo looked over her shoulder, meeting Cam’s eyes in the dim firefly light.
She’d harbored a crush on one boy, and he was sitting beside her on the riverbank. Cam knew it and so did she.
“He was way out of my league,” Jo said. “I had glasses and braces and was ninety-five pounds wet.”
“He wasn’t out of your league.” Cam sat up beside her, his eyes sober and sorry in the dim light. “Trust me. You were out of his.”
“It didn’t feel that way to me. He was the most…um, the most beautiful boy I had ever seen.”
Cam looked at the ground like the truth in her eyes was too much for him to hold.
“I met him a few years before, but it took me that long to work up the courage and ask him to the Sadie Hawkins dance.”
“I’m sorry, Jo.”
“And he told me no,” Jo pressed on, ignoring his apology. “I knew he would. I mean, even at fifteen, he could have any girl he wanted.”
“Unless he wanted a girl who was too good for him.”
Ignoring that again.
“It wasn’t that he turned me down. I’d been ready for that, but he told me he already had plans with his friends.”
“I was a jerk, Jo. I know that.”
“But you know what? I skipped out of the dance and went to drown my sorrows in a Chunky Monkey sundae at that old ice-cream shop on Fifth. And there he was.”
Cam closed his eyes and ran a hand over the back of his neck.
“With another girl. Not the guys.” The laugh in her throat rattled, and it felt like she was back in that ice-cream shop staring at Cam and some girl who had more than a few cup sizes on Jo. “He could have just told me. We were friends.”
“I wanted us to stay friends,” Cam said. “By the time I was fifteen I was already fucking everything that blinked, and I wouldn’t have changed for you or anyone else.”
“I wouldn’t have asked you to change for me.” Jo licked her lips and tasted bitterness. “I just wanted one night.”
“Baby, I’m so sorry.”
“That was years ago, Cam.” Jo reached for his hand, squeezing to reassure him that reliving that moment hadn’t damaged what they had started building over the last few days. “It was a low moment, but here we are.”
She held on to his stare, not letting him look away. They needed to acknowledge that she had spent half her life in love with him, and he had run from it, avoided it, ignored it. For whatever reason. Maybe she’d find out tonight, but before they went any further, she wanted him to know she forgave him.
“Cam, it’s okay. You were not responsible for how I felt.”
“I could have dealt with things better. Explained things better. How I was feeling.”
“How did you feel?”
“The way I feel now.” He looked down at their hands clasped together. “Like you deserve better.”
“Why?” Jo dipped her head, trying to catch the eyes he had shifted. “Why did I deserve better?”
Cam gave a quick shake of his head, releasing her hand to pick up his jar with its flickering lights and roll it between his hands.