Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 67465 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67465 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
CHAPTER 11
Remi
I wait in the car because Van says he’ll only be five minutes. He’s back in ten, smelling like man, cedar, mint toothpaste, and a fresh shower. His hair is wet and tousled like he quickly attacked it with a towel. He has a new button-up black shirt on—rolled up at the elbows—and a fresh pair of jeans. He’s so beautiful that I want to lick the man-veins that run from his hands to his elbows and maybe pop a finger or two in my mouth.
Right, so the creep meter just ratcheted up a good ten notches, and I’m pretty sure it only goes to ten. I want to tell him that he’s so beautiful, it hurts. I want to tell him about all the times I used to doodle his name in the margins of my notebooks with a bunch of little hearts and stars and how he’s filled up my dreams for as long as I can remember. I want to say that I’m furious on his behalf when it comes to how Tina treated him. I want to treasure his broken heart and get out my glue and mend the pieces. I also want to ask a thousand more questions about what really happened and why he left and then tell him how my gluing skills suck because I was never able to put my own heart back together.
Instead, I just put the car in drive and concentrate on that. Even still, I nearly speed through a stop sign that I see at the last minute and have to brake hard, which just about shoots the frozen containers of gravy—transferred from Van’s rental to my car before we left my house—from the backseat to the front.
“What did you tell your mom about me?” I ask, doubling my attention on the road and the sneaky stop signs. To be fair, that last one was set way in the middle of nowhere and covered up by a tree.
Van smooths his palms down his jeans, and I try very hard not to recall any of my ten million fantasies about his hands on my body. “I told her the truth. How Nanny was trying to play matchmaker and then trapped us into going together.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to blurt out that he’s never truly seen me once in his freaking life, and I’d just really like to be seen. I think he’s the only person who doesn’t know how I feel. Trapped into it. Yeah. That’s how it went down. Van isn’t ready, which is so obvious. He has a lot going on, and I’m not going to push him. Not even if he did kiss me. I’m not going to tell him what I feel, and I’m not going to drop any more hints. No more friendly hugs either because they’re dangerous.
“Because we’re friends,” he tacks on, seeming to sense that he’s hurt my feelings.
I’m just Miss Ultra Pathetic over here because being friends with Van perks up my sad, wilted heart and the rest of my body parts, all in tandem. I’d really like to be his friend. I’ve never been his friend before. Just Kimmy’s. I’m warmed by the unexpected sentiment, and it carries me through the rest of the drive. By the time we pull up in front of Mary Carlson’s house, even my palms are damp, and the spine-tingling warmth I felt has been replaced with a stomach full of butterflies. I’m nervous for Van. I feel bad for him—the fact that he was sick to his stomach and said he was terrified.
“Are you okay?” It’s a stupid question since I know he’s not. He’s staring at his mom’s sprawling house with the three-car garage, huge driveway, and impressive architecture, including a bank of windows that looks like it goes all the way up to the heavens. Those windows also look like they might grow legs and stomp us flat on their way out of the gated community.
I didn’t grow up here. Van’s parents moved several times after my parents went bankrupt, but once upon a time, we lived in a neighborhood just like this one. When I was younger, I had no idea of the costs involved in maintaining a lifestyle like this. I can still barely imagine because I know what the costs are for our household, and they’re enough, let me tell you.
“They moved up in the world,” Van says dryly. He’s never been here before. He’s never even seen this house before. “Didn’t think it was possible, but I guess it always is. I suppose, to be fair, it could have been worse. There could have been eight bays to the garage and another two levels to the house, an extra six thousand square feet, security guards at the front door….”