Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 155405 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 777(@200wpm)___ 622(@250wpm)___ 518(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155405 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 777(@200wpm)___ 622(@250wpm)___ 518(@300wpm)
Grabbing my phone out of my back pocket, I shoot her a text, “Are we being proper Californians now and having a juice entrée for dinner tonight?”
“With some kale chips, of course. What kind of mother do you think I am?”
I crack a smile. “Where are you?”
As I’m pressing send, I hear the patio door slide open. Mom comes in looking adorable in a sun hat and a blue dress. Hayden trails behind her, still dressed from work.
Mom looks so light and happy, like someone who just got back from vacation—or maybe even someone still on vacation. “Hey honey.”
Hayden stops beside the staircase while Mom enters the kitchen. My gaze follows his to the stairs, and a moment later, Landon comes down.
“What?” he demands, his voice heavy with annoyance.
His dad looks up at him. “We’re going out for dinner. Do you want to come?”
“What do you think?” Landon shoots back bitingly.
Ignoring the sullen ass, I ask Mom, “Where are we going?”
“The club,” she answers.
I don’t mean to brighten so visibly, but I could use a pick-me-up, too, and hearing we’re having a Landon-free dinner at the club is much more appealing now than it was even the first time we went.
If Landon had been there, the whole evening would have gone differently. I would have been distracted by him, and I never would have noticed the handsome dark-haired valet. I wouldn’t have been having an enjoyable, relaxing time with my family, so maybe he wouldn’t have noticed me, either.
I don’t know if he’ll even be working tonight, but on the off chance he is, I already feel happier. “Okay,” I chirp. “Do I have time to shower?”
Mom laughs at first, but when she sees I’m serious, she looks at me oddly. “No. Why would you need to shower before we leave?”
My cheeks warm, and not just because I realize now that was a bit silly.
It’s because I can feel Landon’s gaze locked on me.
It’s the sensation I always got at Baymont High when he would catch me off-guard by showing up somewhere I wasn’t expecting to see him.
“Right, yeah, of course.” I shake my head to dismiss the silly idea of needing to shower to go eat when I was perfectly presentable at school all day. “Just let me change clothes real quick, and then I’ll be right down.”
Chapter Five
Landon
There’s a long list of things I know about Parker Johansson, but somewhere near the top is this: unless she’s eating at the fucking White House, she is not the type of girl who needs to change clothes to go to dinner.
Parker isn’t intensely focused on her looks. It’s just not her thing. She’s not into clothes and shoes. She doesn’t spend a lot of time on her makeup, and the only time her nails are painted is when she does them herself—and probably at the behest of her mom or Hannah when they were painting theirs.
Parker is beautiful, but she knows what she has to offer the world has everything to do with what’s inside her head, not what she puts on it.
The only time I have ever known her to change clothes to go to a second location is the night she came to a party I invited her to.
When she showed up, she wasn’t wearing what she wore to school that day. She’d put on a pretty dress, and she’d even gone to the trouble of putting on lipstick or lip gloss or some fucking thing like that. All she ever put on her lips at school was Chapstick, and even that was infrequent.
She made a visible effort that night because she was coming to see me.
So, when Parker comes bouncing down the steps with shiny lips and a low-cut red dress on, all of a sudden, I’m feeling pretty hungry.
She doesn’t even see me as she eagerly approaches her mom and my dad and tells them she’s ready to go.
We can’t fucking have that, now, can we?
“You know what?” I say, pushing up off the couch. “I think I’ll go, too.”
Parker’s brown eyes widen ever so slightly, and I can see the flash of disappointment mixed with alarm that tells me all I need to know.
I smile and watch her guard inch up as she follows our parents out to the car.
I catch up to her easily and fall into step beside her. “That’s some dress,” I murmur.
Her long red hair bounces as she shoots me a dirty look, wordlessly commanding me to shut my stupid trap.
I grin and bump my shoulder into hers. “Hey, you should be happy. I’m letting you win a battle. You wanted me to come to family dinner, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I’m sure you’re doing it for me,” she mutters dryly, but she doesn’t say anything else, and I don’t bother pushing.
I know she won’t rise to any of my bait with our parents in earshot, and I’m not looking to make trouble for her to contain right now, anyway. I just want to go to that club and see who Parker was so excited to see without me around.