Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 88447 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 442(@200wpm)___ 354(@250wpm)___ 295(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88447 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 442(@200wpm)___ 354(@250wpm)___ 295(@300wpm)
It couldn’t be Mark. It had to be some weird coincidence. He’d made it pretty clear last night that he didn’t want to hang out with me. My last breakup had been brutal, and Mark had been the only guy in months to interest me. I normally wasn’t bold enough to make the first move, but something about him had just…clicked with me. Or at least I thought it had. When he touched me, my whole world shifted.
I sighed and twirled in my chair, remembering how good it had felt to be in his arms.
He was hot…sooooo hot, and charming, and amazing. He had absolutely no reason at all to be interested in someone as nerdy as me. Sure, he’d said he wanted to game with me, but he was probably just humoring the freaky girl who’d had a complete mental meltdown on him. Guys don’t find crazy girls attractive, trust me on that. Two of the guys I dated ghosted on me after I had little…episodes around them.
Who could blame them? I was a freak who couldn’t even go to a crowded restaurant without having a crying fit in the corner. No one could date me and have a normal life. I would never have a normal life. I’d always be the special girl that got private classes because I couldn’t handle large groups of people, the one who went grocery shopping at two in the morning to avoid crowds. The one who managed to graduate with an associate degree in art without ever stepping foot in a classroom. I was the girl you could never take to a concert or a football game, the one you’d have to marry in a private ceremony because a full-on wedding might trigger me.
I’d never have kids. Who wanted a mom who wouldn’t be able to attend their school events or take them to the park on a busy day? No matter how much I personally wanted children, I couldn’t subject an innocent child to my inner demons.
Hell, my face would probably scare my own baby. It would be cruel to give birth to a child who’d be rightly ashamed to be seen with me. I’d have to be extra vigilant about wearing makeup around their friends, so they didn’t get bullied because their mom looked like something from a horror movie.
Bullied like I’d been.
The thought depressed me, and I had to fight back tears. I was so tired of being alone. So tired of being trapped by my own mind. Some days I hated being alive and secretly wished I wasn’t. Sometimes being alive hurts.
The ping of a message dinged again, pulling me out of my morose thoughts.
When I connected to the chat, I got a blank screen with a generic ‘newbie’ avatar. “Who is this?”
After a few seconds of silence, a familiar male voice said, “Hello? Can you hear me?”
I activated my video chat and waved with a big smile. “I can hear you! Press the little icon that looks like a green camera in the top left corner.”
A second later, his image appeared on the screen, and I let out a silent gasp.
Yep, it was Mark, and he was even hotter in a pale blue tank top than he was in a suit. His dark brown hair was damp, making it appear black, and he wore a white towel around his neck. He had lots of thick, dark chest hair that peeked out of the neck of his shirt, and his shoulders were magnificently formed with defined muscle, I wanted to lick him. He had the kind of body my anatomy sculpting class would have drooled over.
My nipples grew stiff as I imagined what Mark would look like naked, casually posed before a classroom of artists trying to capture his grandeur.
I bet he was hung like a horse.
“Uh, Layla?” A confused expression deepened the lines around his pale blue eyes. “Is that you?”
For a second, I was puzzled, then I remembered I always wore my avatar in chat. Right then, he saw me through the video chat’s filter, which changed my image to that of my in-game character. It was actually kind of cool, and I loved ‘looking’ like Slayla as I talked with people. The character matched my every move and made it really appear like Slayla was real. I felt braver as her, able to talk with anyone and everyone.
“Yeah, it’s me,” I said in a high-pitched voice, then cleared my throat. “This is my character, Slayla.”
“Wow.” He gave a slow blink then said in a growly tone, “Video games have changed a lot since I last played.”
“What? On your Atari?”
“Hey, I’m not that old.”
“How old are you again?”
The side of his mouth quirked. “Older than you.”
“Well, duh, the gray hair told me that.”
His eyebrows flew up. “What? I don’t have gray hair.”