Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 84322 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 422(@200wpm)___ 337(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84322 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 422(@200wpm)___ 337(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
I had to fight every urge in my body not to roll my eyes up to the sky, or sigh, or huff, or grab my best friend and shake some sense into her. Instead, I smiled, nodding and squeezing her shoulder before I made my way to Tyler’s truck.
He seemed just as surprised as me when I climbed into the passenger seat, and all I had to do was shrug and point to his sister for him to understand.
Still, his hands gripped the steering wheel like he wanted to break it as I strapped my seatbelt on, and when we all pulled out of the driveway, I knew it would be a long road trip to the Cape.
An hour passed by torturously slow, with an old Eagles’s album playing on the radio and the New England summer landscape flitting by. I watched out the window as the rolling hills and thick, lush green trees slowly gave way to the city, and only when the buildings stretched up around us did I chance a look at the driver.
Tyler still wore the look of frustration that had settled over him when I climbed in the truck, his brows bent, two perfect lines creasing his forehead and his knuckles all but white now with how they gripped the steering wheel. He seemed to sense me watching him, because he tried to relax, but failed, glancing at me before his brows furrowed even deeper.
“So, this is just how it’s going to be for the remaining two hours of the drive?” I asked, folding my arms over my chest. “You’re going to break the steering wheel, or give yourself an ulcer, or both, at this rate.”
Tyler let out an unamused sigh, shifting his grip on the wheel to try to appear more relaxed.
I cocked a brow, but still — no answer.
“Come on,” I said on a sigh. “What happened to us trying to be friends?”
Tyler barked out a small, almost nonexistent laugh at that — one that came out like a puff of smoke from his chest. He raised an eyebrow at me, like I already knew the answer to the question I’d asked.
And I did know it.
But I didn’t want to accept it.
I sighed, casting my gaze out the window again, and my chest squeezed as we rolled through Boston. In another world — the one where Tyler never let me go — I would have been here. I would have gone to college in this city, built a life with him, with Morgan.
I almost laughed out loud at myself for the picture I’d painted, because I also could have moved to Boston for school and then been dumped by Tyler when he realized he didn’t want anything serious with his little sister’s best friend.
Why was I so latched onto an alternate reality that could have gone a million different ways?
But there was another life I pictured when I was in Boston, too.
One with my mother.
My heart ached, and I shifted in my seat, which drew a cautious glance from Tyler before his eyes were back on the road again.
“My mom used to tell me when I was in high school that when she got through rehab and came back for me, this is where we’d go.”
The words came from my mouth without me realizing I needed to say them, and they felt like a paper cut to my tongue.
“She said she’d pick me up, pack up our things, and we’d move to the city. She said we could live together while I went to college and while she built a career, and we’d explore all the places we’d read about, like the museum of science, and go see the Red Sox play at Fenway, and stroll the harbor, and eat cannolis in the North End.” I smiled, remembering just how she’d said it, how her voice was light and airy and she’d even said cannolis with an Italian accent that she completely botched. “She made all these promises, and though it seems impossible to me now, I can still remember what it was like to be the little girl who believed her.”
I felt Tyler’s eyes watching me as I looked out the window, but I didn’t dare return his gaze.
“You know it’s her loss,” he said after a while, the first words since our day at the lake. “She missed out on all your growth in high school — all the cross-country meets you dominated, the way you cared for others more than yourself, how you fought so hard to be valedictorian and managed to pull it off, your award-winning morning show.”
I chuckled at award winning because it had been he who had printed out a certificate he made with Word that said the morning show I did every day at Bridgechester Prep was The Best High School Morning Show to Ever Exist, Ever.