Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 137433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 550(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 550(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
She shoves her Froyo cup into a trash bag with a huff. “Welp. I’m fed up being interrogated.”
“I want you to piss into a cup,” I hear myself say.
“Excuse me?” Her eyebrows are about to jump off her forehead and attack me.
“Problem?” I drawl. “I piss into a cup every other month. I can do it in my sleep. And I know a lab that gives back test results within six hours. Prove to me you aren’t using. Put my mind at ease.”
“Your mind is none of my concern.” Her face bricks up. “Maybe I should be asking you to piss into a cup, family history considered.”
“Being a bitch ain’t winning you any sobriety points.” I shake my head. Old Bailey was never this prickly, this testy. And she’d never smoke a joint. She called cigarettes “cancer sticks” and joints “dumb wands.”
Which sounded kind of erotic, but whatever.
“Being an overbearing asshole doesn’t make you my BFF again, either.”
Dove has officially parted ways with her faculties. That’s how I know she’s a user.
There’s no way my ex–best friend would ever say something so nasty. She knows my older brother overdosed back when my mom was dying. She was the first person I confided in after Luna told me.
“If you don’t have a problem,” I grit through clenched teeth, “then how come everything I say makes you jump out of your skin? Why do you look like you have a Victorian wasting disease? Why are your pupils the size of dinner plates?”
“Well, that’s because when I was discharged they gave me—”
But I don’t let her finish. “You have two options—either you let me help you or I walk away from this clusterfuck and we’re back to being strangers. Because watching you destroy yourself is not a possibility. I’ve watched the person I love more than anything in the world die, and she didn’t have a choice. She didn’t do it to herself. I won’t let you kill yourself on my watch. Got it?”
“Nice little speech.” Bailey hops off the canvas, making Andromeda flee over her shoulder. She dusts off her knees and looks around, her nose up in the air. “I’m ready to go home now, GI Jackass.”
A fucking joint.
She straight up pulled out a fucking joint.
My thoughts swirl inside my head. We exchange zero words on our way back. After I drop Bailey off, I go home.
I feel like crap.
Bailey is okay like I’m a fighter pilot. Which, unfortunately, I never will be, thanks to Dad and Knight riding my ass about going pro and, you know, avoiding getting myself killed.
It’s not like Bailey to pussy out of stuff. Normal her would piss into a goddamn milk jug to prove me wrong.
I push the door open and drop my duffel bag at the entrance. Dad is shuffling on the patio. His phone is pinched between his ear and shoulder. His voice is muffled through the glass doors, “Lev’s home. I’ll call you later, Dix.”
He slides the glass doors open and steps inside, a kitchen towel slung over his muscular shoulder. There’s a pile of juicy steaks on a plate in his hand. Dad’s a silver fox. And a hedge fund manager.
He could have anyone he wants. But what he wants, apparently, is to friend-zone Knight’s biological mother, Dixie, into the next century and live like a monk.
He also calls her Dix, which is too close to dicks. Now I’m not a big romantic, but I would never call anyone I wanted to bump uglies with Dicks.
Or any kind of genitalia, really.
Maybe I don’t know shit. Maybe he hung up with her in a hurry because they were having phone sex and are actually screwing on the reg. I hope that’s the reason. But he doesn’t seem like he is ready to move on.
When Mom died, they buried his heart right along with her. There’s a huge hole in his chest. And the only thing that seems to somewhat fill it is my football.
“Why so secretive?” I steal a pickle from the salad, popping it into my mouth.
“Why so paranoid?” He drops the steak-filled plate on the dinner table. “Just wanted to greet you. Wasn’t Thalia supposed to come for dinner?”
Dad walks over to the designer kitchen, where there’s a freshly tossed salad and Hawaiian bread rolls waiting at the crystal table, along with San Pellegrino.
I follow him with my eyes as I wash my hands at the sink. “I canceled.”
He produces a sound from the back of his throat. “Gee. Didn’t see that one coming from a hundred miles away.”
“Sarcasm is the lower form of wit, Dad.”
“Still wit, though. I take my victories where I can find ’em. How was practice?”
Shit. “Good.”
“Yeah?” His eyes linger on the side of my face. “Funny, ’cause I saw Coach Taylor at Whole Foods a couple hours ago and he said you were off. In fact, he said that he’s met offensive football signs more capable than you were in practice today.”