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’d lit that piece of paper on fire one night in college, a night when I was wrapped up in thinking about Tyler and wanted to do everything I could to try to erase him.
“I told you this the day she left, and I’ll say it a million times until you believe it,” Tyler said, after a moment, pulling me from my memory. “She’s an idiot for not wanting to be a part of your life, and that’s on her, not on you.”
I looked at him then, and he watched me for a beat before pulling his eyes back to the road.
“You’ve been through so much hell, Jaz,” he said, shaking his head. “I mean, living with your aunt in that little apartment, dealing with your parents — or lack thereof. And you never asked for anything,” he continued. “Even when you had two spoiled best friends who threw a fit if we didn’t get whatever we wanted.”
I smiled. “You weren’t so bad.”
He arched a brow at me like he knew better, but a smile settled onto his face, and he loosened his grip on the steering wheel just a touch.
I marked it as a win.
“I didn’t really realize it, not then. I couldn’t wrap my head around everything you were going through because I just had no idea of what it was like. But when you left,” he said, and he paused for a long time, letting those words hang between us. “I don’t know, I started thinking back a lot. And I thought about what I was going through, but even more, what you were going through.” He looked at me then. “You’re the strongest person I know, Jasmine. You’ve been through darkness most people never have to face, trudged through the mud, been hurt by the people you trusted most.”
Those words seemed to strike us both, and they lingered between us for a long time before he continued.
“And still, somehow, you persevere. You come out even better on the other side.” He smiled, but it slipped quickly. “You’re a warrior.”
I chuckled, glancing out the window as Boston faded away and we continued south. “I don’t feel like a warrior,” I confessed. “Most times, I feel like a lost little girl, like I’m trying to find my way home but keep coming up short.”
Tyler nodded when I looked at him. “I know that feeling,” he said softly.
I waited for him to continue, but he fell back into silence, and for some reason, I was desperate to hold onto this part of him that was opening up again. I didn’t want to fight, I didn’t want to have all this tension between us.
And I realized, distantly, that what I wanted, I couldn’t have.
But maybe there was something in the middle that I could.
“Where’s your favorite place that you’ve traveled?”
Tyler raised a brow at my question, but I didn’t miss the smirk that climbed along with it. “Iceland.”
“Really?”
He nodded, shifting hands on the steering wheel, and I thought I saw him relax marginally — which I took as a sign that I was breaking through the ice. “It’s beautiful there, and the people are so nice. I swear, it felt like coming back to a place I’d lived my whole life rather than visiting a country I’d never been to before.”
“That’s how I felt in Italy,” I said, thinking back to my solo trip there after college. I smiled. “I remember sitting outside at this quaint little restaurant in Florence, eating the best truffle ravioli I’d ever had in my life, drinking an entire bottle of red wine all by myself and just listening to people as they walked by. I had no idea what they were saying, obviously, but… I could imagine. You know? I could look at their smiles and hear their laughter and feel alive with them.”
“There’s nothing else that makes me feel the way traveling does,” Tyler added. “It’s magical.”
“Where do you want to go that you haven’t yet?”
Tyler scoffed. “Everywhere.”
“If you had to pick just one place.”
He paused, chewing the inside of his lip as he thought, and the way the sun came through the windows of the truck, the way his hair was disheveled and unruly, the way the Sagamore bridge sprawled before us, welcoming us to the Cape as it always did — it grounded me like nothing ever had before. My stomach tightened at the warmth of it, at being in a car with the boy I grew up with, heading back to a place where we had made so many memories.
“French Polynesia,” he said.
“Shut up.”
“What?”
I shook my head, smiling like a doofus. “Those islands have been number one on my bucket list since I watched a travel documentary on them in college.”
“No shit?” Tyler grinned, and the sight made my heart flutter. “Dad sailed there with one of his buddies when he was younger. He has a whole album of pictures, and an old VHS tape that he showed me when I was in middle school. The water…”