Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 72655 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72655 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
“By all means, I’ll just bail on my bestie here to satisfy your timeline.”
Ha. Good for her. I like that sass runs in the friendship.
Evilla reaches over and sets her hand on top of Genevieve’s. A look passes between them, one that’s all secret best friend code that I can’t crack.
“Alright then.” Genevieve leans against Evilla, who slides out of the booth to let her out. “I guess we’re going now.” She picks through the tray of appetizers and takes a few crab sticks, a crab leg, a mysterious ball I haven’t tried, as well as a stuffed hot pepper with crab meat and cheese. “But you owe me a crab milkshake.”
“It’s a crab banana split,” Evilla corrects as she arranges herself back into the booth. Her face says you don’t have to do this since the guy is probably a sociopath.
But Genevieve’s face says, I’m doing this, and you’re going to be fine. I care about you, I want you to be happy, and things will work out for all of us, I promise. Also, she gives a nose wrinkle that seems to confirm she can handle herself, sociopath or not.
Connor isn’t a sociopath. Most of the time, he’s perfectly nice. Something must have happened. Something huge. He’s brutally honest, but generally, he cloaks it in a funny way that’s manageable. There’s nothing wrong with telling things the way you see it. The world needs more honesty and less fluff unless the fluff comes in the form of whipped cream. I have a secret weakness for real whipped cream with the perfect amount of powdered sugar added and the smallest splash of vanilla.
“Alright.” Genevieve’s hands are full, kind of like Evilla’s purse on our first date disaster. I can see that Evilla notices, and she’s trying not to laugh. I don’t know how she can even smile right now. “Come on, future lover, let’s go angry talk and see where it leads.”
Evilla’s hands shoot to her mouth, and I watch her shake as Connor exits the booth, but I can see that it’s silent laughter. She doesn’t stop until Genevieve and Connor are gone, and even then, she waves her hand at her eyes. “Holy ravioli. I’ve never seen a better match.”
My mouth drops, and I quickly say, “I’m so sorry about all this.”
“Gen finds it supremely entertaining. Can’t you tell?”
I can tell that you’re beautiful. That you’re brilliant. You have this unbreakable spirit, you don’t get mad about the small things, you’re generous to a fault, and you want the world to be a better place, but you do it instead of just talking about it.
“She was my ride. I knew I should have driven, but she told me she’d pick me up. Would you be able to drop me off? If not, I can call for a taxi.”
“You live close by?” I don’t know why I said that or how I’m even having a borderline normal conversation right now. I do know where she lives because I looked her up. I have the address bouncing in my brain, but I can’t make the location stick or compute the distance between there and here at the moment.
“Not at all.”
“A taxi would cost a fortune. I can give you a ride if you want to take one from me. If you’d…if that would be okay. After we finish eating. Or not. I can understand if you want to leave immediately. I truly didn’t mean to sabotage this. Connor is really a great guy. He’s just had a rough go of it with his family. He normally doesn’t talk about that, so something extreme must have happened. I can only imagine.”
She tries a crab quiche while she’s thinking. I wish I knew what was going through her mind. I wish I could apologize again. More profusely. All night. “I think there was some truth in what he said.”
“Not all of it,” I counter.
“Not all of it. But some of it.”
I don’t know if we’re on the same page about the some of it part. I just know I’m not brave enough to confess that I haven’t stopped thinking about her. That I’ve had zero peace since I first met her, and my whole life has been upended in a number of weeks, and the only thing I would do differently is everything. I would be kinder, and I would try to hurt her less.
Fuck, I would do everything differently.
But if I had, we wouldn’t be here right now.
“As cheesy as it is, I think a beach walk might be nice. We could get the crabanana splits to go,” she says.
“Or come back for them another time.”
I expect anything from a very direct stare to her telling me there won’t be another time because this was supposed to pretty much be a final hurrah sort of deal before we each go off and live our respective lives that don’t involve each other.