Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 149510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 748(@200wpm)___ 598(@250wpm)___ 498(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 149510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 748(@200wpm)___ 598(@250wpm)___ 498(@300wpm)
The last person in the world I’m expecting is Ace’s mom. I jolt at the sight of her, and she bites her lip in apology. A gift bag hangs from the fingers of her right hand.
I imagine she doesn’t want me to miss the gift-opening either.
“I’m just going to the bathr—”
“Finn,” she cuts me off. “I wanted to find a quiet moment because I had a feeling you wouldn’t want me making a scene.” My eyebrows draw together. “Fuck knows my family has a special flair for it.” She lifts the bag in front of herself, directly toward me. “Happy birthday.”
“How do you know it’s my—”
She lifts her hand, cutting me off. “What are you, a cop? The how of how I know isn’t important. Just take it.”
Unsure what else to do, I take the bag from her hand and nod. She pats me on the shoulder and walks away, and I go into the bathroom as originally intended.
But now, I have a gift to open.
My hands shake as I pull the tissue paper out of the small blue bag, lay it on the sink, and dig around inside. One item at a time, I empty the unexpected gesture of its contents and study each of them closely. There’s a brand-new pair of headphones and a card with a thousand dollars inside signed with all our love. There’s also a pack of condoms, which is weird, but not outside the realm of expectation.
I have to sit down on the edge of the tub as a wave of awareness moves over me.
Dickson University isn’t turning out to be what I thought it would be at all. There’s conflict and pain and hard choices and everything in between, but there’s so much more.
People care about me. People who hardly even know me but accept the things they do.
Dickson’s not just a fucked-up family—it’s also the good kind.
Scottie
All thanks to Blake Boden’s second game-winning touchdown of the year, Dickson beat the Duke Blue Devils twenty-one to fourteen. The cheerleader bus is bustling with all the markers of perfect season excitement, Kayla and Emma even doing a rendition of “We Are the Champions” in the seat right behind the driver.
I’m trying really hard not to be a downer, but one more karaoke special from the Excitement Barbies and I’m going to have to put in my AirPods and drown out the happy noise.
My playlist titled “Sad Girl” I made a week ago and started listening to on repeat feels like just the vibe I’m looking for. Adele, Sam Smith, Lana Del Rey, Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa, Bon Iver, and David Gray, this playlist is a rite of passage for every pathetic girl trying to drown out thoughts of the boy who got away while she cries herself to sleep at night.
It’s cathartic, in a way. Though, Veda, the therapist my dad had Wren and me go to when we were young to talk about our mom’s addiction, might say listening to sad, depressing songs about losing someone you love over and over again could also hinder your ability to get over them.
Maybe that’s the point, I think sardonically.
As much as it would improve my quality of life to do so, I don’t want to get over Finn.
I want to get back under him. Being in his arms was still the most special experience of my life, even if I ruined it all shortly after.
After two full weeks of not seeing him at all, he finally came to Professor Winslow’s class yesterday. He avoided me completely until we split up into our groups to work on our The Winter’s Tale project, and even then, he only said what he had to to keep Nadine off our back. I tried to catch up to him to talk to him after, but he was gone, vapor in the wind, before I crossed the classroom’s threshold.
I don’t think he gave Professor Winslow the journal entry again, and I also don’t think our professor knows that Finn is his brother.
It’s all just assumptions from my end, but Professor Winslow is a guy who actually cares about his students. I’ve witnessed him on multiple occasions ask a student to stay after class because he could see they were having a rough time. He’s known for that.
And I have a hard time believing he would’ve been that oblivious to Finn’s surly mood if he knew they shared the same father.
“Where’s your football?” Kayla’s voice fills my ears, and I look up to find her leaving her seat beside McKenzie to cross the aisle and take the empty seat beside me. “C’mon, Scottie. Where’s the football Hottie McHotson gave you tonight?” She waggles her brows at me, and I roll my eyes.
“It’s packed away in my duffel.”
She doesn’t hesitate to jump up and locate my duffel above my seat, the dumb football clutched in her hands as she plops down into the seat again. She turns it over in her hands, and when her eyes spot the numbers Sharpied on the back of it, she squeals. “Holy shit! He gave you his number!”