Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 96178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
He blinked away, back to the TV, uneasy with how quickly he found himself softening to someone who, only hours ago, was deep on his shit list.
And as if some power in the universe knew he needed to remember how annoying she could be, she hit play on the movie and peppered him with constant questions.
“Have you ever been to Beverly Hills?”
“Do you skateboard?”
“Was your high school like that?”
“Does anyone really have a closet like Cher’s?”
“What do people do at parties?”
When she asked Fitz to explain the joke about balls flying toward faces, he grabbed a pillow and pretended to smother her with it. “All right,” he said, laughing in spite of himself, “let’s just watch the movie.”
Thankfully after that Ren fell quiet, grabbing the pillow and hugging it to her chest as she watched with wide, absorbing eyes until the credits finished rolling.
Fitz walked into the bathroom, pulling his toothbrush out of the toiletry bag and running it under the water. In the other room, the TV turned off, and footsteps padded across the tiled entryway floor.
“That movie was so good,” she said, walking into the bathroom with him and running her own toothbrush under the water. “But as an adaptation of Emma?” She jammed her toothbrush in her cheek, speaking around it. “I found it a little lacking.”
Fitz raised his brows, watching her begin to brush, her mouth turning foamy. “By all means, join me,” he said wryly. He’d never even had a girlfriend long enough to create a bedtime routine with, and here Ren was, standing with him at the sink in her pajamas, unselfconsciously opening her mouth wide to reach her molars.
“Shher ish sho cwearwy bootiful an schpecial,” she garbled out, and then bent to spit.
“I caught none of that,” he said.
“Cher is so clearly beautiful and special,” Ren repeated.
“So?”
“So,” she said, leaning back against the counter to face him, “Emma is a book about a girl who is considered prized and special relative to everyone in the tiny, isolated town around her, but who is otherwise completely average.”
“Okay,” he said around his toothbrush.
“It was a cute movie but makes me think whoever wrote that missed one of Jane Austen’s most important messages.”
He bent, spitting his toothpaste into the sink. “Go write about it in your notebook, Ren, I honestly don’t care this much about Emma or Clueless.”
She followed him back into the bedroom with a brush in her hand. He hadn’t noticed during the movie when she took the towel off to let her hair air-dry, but it fell down to her butt now in gleaming metallic waves that she began to painstakingly brush through.
“I may be the first to mention it,” he said, sitting in the desk chair and spinning back and forth in a slow arc, “but your hair is super long.”
She laughed a playful har-har sound. “You don’t say.”
He watched her work through a small tangle. It was mesmerizing. And then he realized he was staring. Blinking away, he looked down at his feet instead. “Brushing it looks like a lot of work.”
“It is.”
“You ever cut it short?”
“No, but I trim it a couple times a year to keep it healthy.”
“Did you ever want to chop it off?”
She hummed, considering this, and then smiled over at him. “I never really thought about it like that. Isn’t that weird? Gloria—my mom—always had strong opinions about not cutting it, so I just went along with whatever.” Ren sighed. “I knew there would be ways that I’m different from other girls, but there are so many things I didn’t realize were weird about me until I got to school.”
The words were out before he could consider where the impulse came from: “Your hair isn’t weird. It’s just different, but not in a bad way.”
Fitz didn’t miss the way her cheeks went pink.
“I guess when I was little it was so blond it was almost white,” she said. “As I got older and read more about symbolism and the types of tokens humans in various cultures and backgrounds carry with them through life, I began to understand that my parents equate my hair with how unspoiled our lives are on the homestead.” When he looked up, he found her staring in contemplation at the wall. “They can’t go back and perfect their pasts, but they can make my upbringing perfect, you know? They took a lot of pride in raising me in the way they think everyone should be raised: without the influence of pop culture or the internet and with the ability to be completely self-sufficient.”
“Seems like your parents still have a lot of say in what you do.”
Ren sighed, breaking her trance to look over at him. In that moment, she looked so much older than she had even three hours ago. “Not as much as they’d like.” She began the complicated process of braiding her hair, and he fell silent, watching her fingers capably wind strands around and around until she had a thick, tidy braid draped across one shoulder. He noticed the heaviness in her eyes, and she yawned suddenly, then clapped a hand over her mouth. “Wow, sorry. The sleepies hit me hard all of a sudden.”