Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76272 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76272 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Her eyes flash and her face flushes. She scoots closer and wraps her legs around my waist, pressing her body against mine as the last of the smoldering embers in the pit die out. My dick gets hard at the feel of those luscious thighs holding me closely and my hands run appreciatively over them. I can’t stop touch her. It’s an affliction. A compulsion. It’s love.
“We can meet Brenda for lunch one of the days she comes down to see her shrink,” I go on while planting a kiss on the side of her bare neck. Her body is a map of freckles marking all the spots she needs to be kissed and I’m the right man for the job.
When she doesn’t answer, I pull back and find a carefully blank expression on her gorgeous face. She can’t fool me anymore. By now, I know all her faces and this one tells me she’s nervous.
“It’ll be fine.” A slow smile spreads on my face as I go back to kissing a path from the curve of her shoulder all the way up her neck. “That’s what you said to me when you sacrificed me to your parents. Karma works fast sometimes.”
Chuckling, she pushes my shoulders. “So d-dramatic. I left you alone with them for a f-few minutes.”
“Jay deadlifts five-hundred pounds. Do you know how much damage he can inflict in that amount of time. One minute is too long.”
“He t-told you that?” The surprised on her face is almost too cute.
“He showed me his weights…”
In the quiet, she searches my face. “There’s s-something else you want say…” Her amusement drops and her voice gets quiet, slips under my skin and soothes me. “Y-You c-can tell me anything, Dall. You know you c-can.”
Her delicate fingers thread through my hair and scratch the back of my scalp. Closing my eyes, I lean into her touch, let her have me anyway she wants. Because this…this is where it’s at, where I belong, what I needed without even knowing it.
“Will you move in with me at the end of the semester?” Her fingers still and my eyes blink open. Her face is blank, her eye wide. My heart starts to race and panic sets in. What if I read too much into it?
“Yes…” Her grin is so wide it takes up her entire face. “B-But I’m warning you right now––we’ll face resistance.”
“Your parents. We’ll find a way to work it out with them.”
Parents don’t matter. No one matters but us. As long as I’ve got her, nothing else matters.
She yawns and I check my phone. Almost eleven. “Let’s go to bed,” I murmur and pull her up off the chair with me. We walk inside and I remember Banjo needs a walk.
“Have you seen Banjo?”
“S-Sleeping on his new orthopedic bed,” she tells me as she walks into the kitchen to grab a bottle of water.
Rounding the other side of the couch, I see that Dora’s right. My boy is sound asleep on his new bed with his back to me. But something about him raises the hair on my arms. Something feels off. My steps slow as I take in his prone unmoving shape on the mattress.
Getting down on my knees, I run my hand over his fur, his body already cold. My throat closes. My eyes sting. Banjo’s gone.
Everybody leaves. My best friend. Banjo. Before long Brock and Cole will be moving out too. Then there’s Dora. She’ll be gone in a year. It’s gonna kill me to let her go. I can already feel it––my insides trashed––and it’s a year away.
“Have you had enough for today?” I ask her, the girl I love, the one that’s gonna leave me soon and take my heart with her.
She paddles back to me with a huge grin on her beautiful face. It’s covered in freckles from all the time we’ve spent surfing lately. She straddles her board and we drift for a while, staring out at the horizon.
“I’m e-x-xhausted.”
“Let’s go home.” Then I catch what I just said. My house isn’t a home. It’s barely mine and certainly not hers. Home is not a place, it’s the people who fill it.
“The house feels weird without him…empty. First Rea now this…”
“I know. I m-miss him too. It’s g-going to take time.”
“Except every time I think I’m clear of one mess another one takes its place.”
Dora catches me spacing out and brushes my thigh. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. Taking my wrist, she pulls me closer. Our boards kiss. Then our lips.
We paddle to shore, and while Dora grabs our things, I carry our surfboards back to the new G-Wagon I bought the other day. Community service accomplished. Traffic school completed. Driver’s license reinstated. Thank the fucking heavens.
One at a time, I secure the boards to the roof while Dora towels off her hair. My chest aches as I watch her behind my sunglasses. Can you love someone so much it physically hurts? Because I feel that all the time now and it scares the shit out of me.