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)
“No, it’s not about that,” Anae says, waving me off. She taps and swipes at the screen, then tilts the phone so Hannah can see. “Look at these tattoos.”
Tattoos?
Hannah frowns at whatever she is seeing on Anae’s phone screen. I’m curious, so I walk over and sit on Anae’s other side so I can look, too.
I am somehow shocked to see a picture of Dare—specifically, a picture of Dare and Aubrey on a beach in Italy. His arms are locked around her and she’s laughing. There’s a smirk on his handsome face and his dark hair’s a little wet. His eyes aren’t always expressive, but in this shot, you can tell he’s having a good time. His caption reads, “I caught a mermaid.”
“Are we really going to cyber stalk your ex right now?” I ask. “I thought we were focused. New start! Party! Whoo!” I say, pumping my fist into the air.
Anae ignores me and focuses on Hannah, since she’s been successfully drawn in.
“What am I looking at?” Hannah asks, uncomprehending.
“He added to his tattoo.”
“Okay. Why do I care?”
“Because you’re on his arm.”
Hannah’s eyes widen. “What?” she asks sharply, scowling and looking closer at the screen.
“He has a Cinderella tattoo,” Anae states, pointing to an exploded clock tower on his upper arm. “Look, the crow is him, he got that at the start of senior year to symbolize his house—he’s onyx, wisdom, a black crow. Anyway. He changed the crow, it has a crown now. The crown is for me. He stole my crown. He was my evil king. I’m sure he told his dumb twat scoop of vanilla some other bullshit, but we all know I’m the evil queen. So, the crown is his tattoo to remind him of me. The mermaid is her, of course,” she says, rolling her eyes. “But this clock tower with the hands set to midnight? This is clearly you, and the shard of glass in his mouth? Makes me feel like he’s responsible for breaking Cinderella, and I do sense a darkness in you that was not there before.”
Hannah eases back warily. “You’re reading too much into this, Anae.”
“I’m not. He got this ink for a reason. He’s not one of those guys that just likes the way they look. I need to figure out what they mean. What’s the significance of those of us who get tattoos? Initially, I thought it might be his trophy. He was never into physical trophies like I was, but what if this is his trophy? He’s turning his skin into a tapestry of all the lives he fucks with, you know?”
Anae’s eyes are bright with excitement. This girl is entirely unhinged.
“But not everyone’s on there. That dumb girl who wrote the haiku about Aubrey? Not on there, and a nail would have been incredibly easy to incorporate into the artwork. That dorky kid, Frank something, he’s not on there, and that dumbass is in jail for a crime Dare committed. There are other people that didn’t make the cut, too. He didn’t ink them all into his skin. Only us. You, me, and Aubrey. Aubrey and I have both fucked him.” She looks Hannah in the eyes. “So, I’m going to ask one more time—have you?”
“I told you I didn’t, Anae.”
Tapping Anae on the arm, I point out, “He could have tattoos for the other people. Maybe he just put them in a different place.”
“Oh, that’s true,” Anae says, as if she hadn’t considered that. A crease mars her perfect brow and she backs out of that picture, checking other posts to see if she can find ink anywhere else on his body. Since she’s looking through a few beach posts, there’s a lot of skin to look at.
While Anae is distracted, I glance over at Hannah. She’s chewing on her bottom lip.
I’m concerned about her getting sucked back into this twisted web now that Anae is back. It was really hard on her last year. I thought she was finally clear of it once they moved and Anae wasn’t around, but if Anae keeps bringing her focus back to the past, and especially if she finds new wrinkles Hannah hadn’t considered…
I never met Aubrey and I have nothing against the girl, but being with Dare was her choice. I’m all for helping people when you can, but sometimes you have to let people live with their choices.
Hannah insists Aubrey didn’t really know what she was getting into with him, that he deliberately misled her and only revealed the truth about himself once she’d fallen for him, but at the risk of sounding like an uncaring asshole, that’s Aubrey’s problem. If she’s truly in trouble with him, then I hope she finds a way out of it, but not at Hannah’s expense. I don’t want my too-caring-for-her-own-good friend getting sucked back into Aubrey’s vortex of dysfunction trying to save her. I don’t know if she can make it out again.