Total pages in book: 171
Estimated words: 164459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 822(@200wpm)___ 658(@250wpm)___ 548(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 164459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 822(@200wpm)___ 658(@250wpm)___ 548(@300wpm)
“Hmm… you know, I wanna tell myself to stay away, but something about that is drawing me to him even more. They are bad, Jen, real bad. And I should be trying to stay away from that right? I should avoid him like the plague but… now I want to find him again. I want to talk to him. I have so many questions. I want to get to know him, but I don’t know.” She paused. “Is that bad?” she asked, nearly whispering the last question.
Her eyes were focused on me, and when I caught the hopefulness in her eyes, that familiar spark, that longing, I knew. I knew exactly what she was feeling.
“No,” I said. “It’s not bad, Kylie. It’s human.” And it wasn’t bad because I’d wanted the same thing from Drake since I was ten years old and swinging on the playground.
Chapter 7
Jenny
Kylie and I finished cleaning when the sun was nowhere in sight.
Mom rang me four times. When I didn’t answer her, Dad called. I ignored both.
Flopping on top of Kylie’s peach and gray comforter, a soft spell of breath fell through my lips and I stared up at the ceiling.
Kylie had gone downstairs to take more aspirin. Her hangover was much worse than mine. I actually felt much better now. There was still an aggravated feeling at the front of my head, but it was easy to ignore when I focused on something else…like Kylie’s flat ceiling and the roundish-jagged looking chandelier she bought from Ikea.
My phone buzzed beside me and I groaned, snatching it up and expecting Mom or Dad to appear on the screen.
I was wrong.
It was an unknown number, one I’d never seen before. For the briefest moment, I felt my heart skip a beat as I sat up straight. There could only be two reasons for this number. A collect call or…him.
“What’s up?” Kylie asked as she walked through the door. She looked at me oddly, taking note of my shocked expression.
My eyes widened as I lifted the phone, pointing at the screen. “I’ve never seen this number before,” I said softly.
She frowned. “Okay…” She didn’t get it. It took a while for it to register to her. When it finally clicked in, her eyes went as wide as china plates and she rushed in my direction. “Oh my God! You think it’s him?!”
“Yeah. I think so.” I realized then that I didn’t know how to react. Should I answer? Should I ignore it? Should I pretend I never got the call if I ever happened to run into him again? Because I was certain I would see him again.
“Well, answer!” Kylie urged, demanding with a wild flap of her hands. “Hurry!”
“Okay, okay!” I looked at the screen, the strange number, and then answered. “Hello?”
“Told you I wouldn’t text you,” he said. I caught the laugh in the bass of his voice. I liked the sound of it. Smooth, but with a rough edge.
I held my breath, feeling Kylie’s eyes on me, knowing he was listening to me mildly hyperventilate. “I… I thought you meant—”
“That I wouldn’t talk to you at all?”
“Yeah,” I murmured. “I saw you crumple my number. I saw you throw it away. You seemed upset that I even gave it to you.”
“I was, at first.”
“You went back for it?”
He scoffed. “Get the fuck out of here. No. I remembered it.”
“So you just wanted to pretend that you weren’t going to call or text?”
He stopped talking for a few seconds, sighing as if he were fed up. “I want you to leave me alone,” he said bluntly. I swallowed hard, losing that moment of glee I’d gotten when I knew it was him calling. I didn’t say anything, so he continued. “I can’t focus on more than one thing right now. My life is already complicated.”
“No one’s asking you to focus on me,” I said, pushing off the bed and walking towards Kylie’s window. I knew she was still listening, even though she’d turned on the TV and was picking at the chipped paint on her fingernails.
She wasn’t paying attention to the TV; her face was pointed towards the wall across from her, one ear pointed in my direction, the other at the TV.
“Yeah, but I already know that I will. I got caught up thinking about you—” He stopped himself and I really wished he would have finished. “Like I said this morning and last night, things are different now. I’m not a good guy or someone you should be looking to for friendship. You know what I am. I’m a fighter. All I know is violence and blood.”
“Oh.” I cringed after he said the word fighter. I knew what he was, how dangerous he was, and yet I didn’t give a single damn. “So you called to tell me to leave you alone?”