Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 86495 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86495 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
“To Madison!” Blythe choruses.
“She’ll be picking up the tab tonight,” Mia says with a cheeky smile.
“No, she will not be,” I retort. “But nice try. Just because I have a new boss to take orders from doesn’t mean I get a raise.”
Since it’s Wednesday night, Flying Saucer is packed. My friends and I are in our usual booth, ready to defend our title of trivia champs three weeks running.
I sip my beer and glance up, fidgeting in my seat as I wait for Aiden to arrive. He usually beats me here, but not tonight. My eyes are trained on the door, and my breath catches in my chest when I spot him.
He holds the door open for two girls to walk in ahead of him, backlit by the yellow glow of the streetlights outside. The girls aim huge smiles his way, and one of them says something. She’s probably thanking him for holding the door, but then he nods his head in the direction of our table and her smile falls. So it was an invitation to join them then? For some reason, the thought irks me. With Aiden, it’s always like that. For him, the world is a perpetual bread basket of options.
I avert my attention to my beer as he heads over, pretending to be totally unaware of his arrival until he’s right at our booth.
“Sorry I’m late,” Aiden says, holding up a grocery bag I hadn’t noticed before. “I had to stop at the store on my way.”
“What’s in there?” Mia asks, peering inside.
“A gift for Maddie,” he says, aiming a cheeky smile my way before shoving the bag in front of me.
Inside, I find chocolates. Not just any chocolates—a Whitman’s Sampler. It’s my favorite guilty pleasure. Every Christmas when I was growing up, my grandmother would gift my parents a box. They’d share it with my sister and me, but we were only ever allowed to have one chocolate a day. Aiden knows that every now and then, when I pass the boxes in the grocery store, I’ll greedily shove one into my cart, knowing how much freedom comes from having the entire thing all to myself.
“What’s the gift for?” Blythe asks.
“Maddie and I got into a fight this morning,” Aiden says, waving his hand so Mia and I will shove over. He takes the seat beside me in the booth, crowding me so I’m forced to smell him. His scent is a combination of his deodorant and body wash and aftershave. It’s slightly spicy with a touch of pine that I can’t get enough of. I inhale deep.
“A lovers’ quarrel?” Blythe teases.
I stick my tongue out at her then make quick work of wrapping up the sampler in the grocery bag again so none of them try to steal a piece. My parents might have shared theirs, but there’s no way I will.
Aiden nudges me with his shoulder.
“Forgive me?” he says, staring down at me. His eyes are the lightest green. His hair is tousled from work, inky black and flopping over his forehead. His permanent dimples tease me into relenting.
“All’s forgiven.”
Blythe clears her throat, and I move away from him.
Everyone is glancing at one another, having silent conversations. They do this a lot with Aiden and me. We’ve been down this road before. Blythe and Mia love to corner me in the bathroom and ask point-blank if I have feelings for Aiden. I deny it. Always deny it. Feigning complete obliviousness like, Aiden is hot? What? You think I like him? Noooo.
I know they all talk about me behind my back. I know they think it’s pathetic that I’ve been silently in love with him for this long and haven’t done anything about it. My cheeks heat up and I reach for my beer. They don’t understand. Aiden and I walk a tightrope. He’s not just my best friend. He’s not just my roommate. He’s not just related through marriage. It’s all of those complicated strings tangled together to form the world’s tightest knot around my heart. Screw things up with him, bare my soul, and get rejected? Then what? Where do we go from there?
Chapter Four
Maddie
“So then I had to force her to try a dress that was a little more formfitting and guess what?!”
There’s a long pause as my sister stops talking.
Oh, shoot. She’s expecting me to actually guess.
“She loved it?” I venture tentatively.
“She loved it!” she confirms.
Phew. I was barely listening. That was a close one. I don’t normally make a habit of ignoring my sister; it’s just that she called during the worst time. I just left the salon after fitting in a quick haircut after work, and I’m walking home to the condo. City noise is a nightmare, and my brain is scrambled from trying to keep up with Elise and her wild ramblings all day.