Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 70570 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70570 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
By The Way, I Hate You.
His eyes are on mine. He doesn’t move. The door slowly closes itself behind him.
“What?” I snap at once, feeling challenged just by the way he looks at me. “Is there a problem?”
Jimmy’s face flinches ever so subtly. “Huh? No,” he answers. “I don’t have a problem. Do you?”
“I have several.”
He lifts an eyebrow questioningly.
I lean against the sink. My back slips and I’m suddenly against the wall instead. I haven’t even had that much to drink. Or have I? “No,” I say, changing my mind, “I don’t have a problem.”
“You okay?” He takes a few steps toward the mirror, leaving the door. Each step looks like a strut, the way he carries himself with the airy confidence of a hundred balloons, pompous, inflated, destined to float up to the sky. “You seem kind of touchy.”
“Why are you talking to me?” I fire back. “You hate me.”
He squints. “No, I don’t.”
“You wrecked the date I went on with Bobby over three years ago. You acted like you were protecting him from me, like I’m some kind of monster.”
He doesn’t seem to know what to make of that at all. “That … That isn’t at all how that night went down.” He makes a face. “You are still hung up on that? Seriously?”
“No. I’ve moved on. I don’t think about it all the time.” I slap a hand to my mouth, for a second thinking I’m about to burp. But I don’t. I drop my hand. “I am completely over the Bobby-and-you thing. Bobby who? Jimmy who?” I laugh at myself. “Over it.”
If Jimmy’s right eyebrow went any higher up his forehead, it’d get lost in his stupid, messy hair. Actually, his hair is kind of cute. I wish mine did that when it’s messy. Instead, it just looks like the abandoned nest of a family of angry birds.
What am I thinking? I peel my confused eyes away from his hair. “Anyway,” I go on, “your lovely mother wants to make me happy, so she’s worked her magic.” I clear my throat and lift my chin, feeling proud. “I have so many prospects for a boyfriend now, I can’t even count them.”
Two, actually.
I have two.
One, if Samuel’s given up on me.
Zero, if tonight has officially turned Cole off of Team Tucci.
“You look worried, Jimmy.” I don’t know what comes over me right now. All I want to do is see him angry. I want to push all the wrong buttons. “You look worried when you ran into me on the porch of your house the other day, too. Why’s that? Afraid I’ll steal your groom from you the night before your wedding?”
He rubs his temple patiently. “Uh … look, Malcolm …”
“I’m even sleeping in your old bed. How’s that make you feel?”
“Malcolm, c’mon, buddy, you’re embarrassing yourself. I don’t care where you’re sleeping. You can jerk off on it, if you want.”
That’s the next thing I was going to say. He took it from me.
So I try this: “I’m sleeping where you and Bobby probably first made love. Doesn’t that make your blood boil?”
After a breath, he comes up to me and, to my surprise, gently puts a hand on my shoulder. “Look, I don’t got any kind of beef with you, other than whatever delicious meat your dad cooked up for this dinner. Seriously, it’s outta this world, delicious. Maybe I was a bit off when I first saw you in town, but that’s just ‘cause I wasn’t sure where your head was at. You and I haven’t really seen each other in a long time.”
I stare at him. Why isn’t he blowing up at me? “Did you hear what I said? I’m sleeping where you and—”
“I think wine isn’t your friend.”
“I think you don’t deserve a guy like Bobby.”
A statement like that should send Jimmy through the roof, or his fist through my face.
Instead, he swats it away like a gnat. “You think I don’t know that? Malcolm, I’m the luckiest fuckin’ guy in the world to end up with someone like Bobby. He’s nicer than I deserve. He’s way more thoughtful, way more caring, way more sensitive than I’ll ever be. I can’t imagine a worse fate for him than to be stuck with a jackass like me forever.”
I feel like I’m staring at him from across a chasm.
Lost. Blank-eyed. Uncomprehending.
Every word he says takes away another weapon I was holding.
What is happening …?
A wistful smile crosses his face. “But maybe that’s why we fit. I need him in my life to keep my crazy feet on the ground. And no, that ain’t some corny-ass dance pun.” He shakes his head. “I don’t really know you well enough to hate or like you, Malcolm, if I’m being honest. I felt a certain way about you years ago, I’ll admit it. I don’t feel any way about you now, other than thankful that your father’s here to make everyone happy, and whatever part you had in that, I appreciate you for it, too.”