Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 107204 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 536(@200wpm)___ 429(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107204 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 536(@200wpm)___ 429(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
She kept swatting my chest. “You do! You have the hots for me.” She struck a pose. “Is it because of my witty charm? My wicked sense of humor? My undeniable beauty?”
Yes.
And yes.
And absolutely yes.
“Let’s get you to bed,” I said, linking my arm with hers once more. “You’re drunk and tired.”
“You totally like me.” She giggled like a schoolgirl, pleased she came to the realization on her own. As we walked, she slightly danced from side to side, humming to herself before saying, “And to think I thought you hated me only twenty-four hours ago.”
I pushed the button to the elevator, and it opened instantly. As it did, British guy appeared, his eyes wide from seeing both Yara and me.
“Yara. Hi,” he pushed out those two words as if they pained him to say.
Yara and I tilted our heads toward him and arched an eyebrow. In unison, she and I said, “Fuck off,” before pushing past him and entering the elevator as he exited it. Hearing the word ‘fuck’ roll off Yara’s tongue did something to my whole system. Especially in my lower region.
As the door closed, Yara leaned back against the railing as I hit the fifteenth floor. I leaned beside her.
“Can you believe him?” she asked as if she was disgusted, but I saw the hurt in her eyes. “I’m so happy I dodged that bullet. I bet his accent isn’t even real. I’m so happy.” Her words said one thing while her eyes read another. She pretended to be okay. My sweet, complex woman.
My?
WTF?
Shut up, Alex.
I almost debated whether I had any sangria in my system with how my thoughts had been over the past few minutes.
As we entered the apartment, Yara stepped out of my shoes and moved around freely, directly to my bar set up in my kitchen. She grabbed the bottle of whiskey and waved it around in the air.
“I would like to make an observation, if I may,” she said.
“By all means.”
“It turns out I know what the issue is with dating. Do you know what it is?” she asked.
“What’s that?”
“Men,” she blurted out. “That’s it. Penises are the problem!”
I chuckled a little and shook my head. “Women don’t make it easy for us, either.”
She pouted as she stared my way. I wondered how many heads I had floating around in her mind, based on how much alcohol she’d consumed. She then plopped down on the sofa beside the fireplace and stared at me. “Oh yeah. Women can cheat and ghost, too.”
“Unfortunately, yes.” I sat beside her.
“You said someone cheated on you?”
My gut tightened up. How did we get back to that topic? “They did.”
“Did you love her?”
“I did.”
“How long did it take you to get over it?”
I snickered and shrugged my left shoulder. “Pretty quick. She cheated with someone who I knew. It’s easy to get over a person when they do something like that.”
Yara’s eyes glassed over and she looked to be seconds from crying.
“Don’t do that, Goldie.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Cry because you feel bad for me.”
“But…that’s really sad.”
“Sad things happen. That’s life.”
“People suck,” she blurted out before hiccupping and taking a swig from the bottle. She held the bottle out toward me. “Bottoms up.”
I shook my head. “Perhaps one of us should be sober tonight.”
She frowned. “But…if you’re sober, that means I’m just drunk and sad alone. I don’t want to be drunk and sad alone.”
“You can be drunk and sad, but you won’t be alone tonight.”
Tears fell down her cheeks, and I wanted to hug her. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to wake with her in my arms and—what?!
Shut up, Alex!
She wiped her few tears away. “Promise, Alex?”
“Promise, Goldie.”
She smiled a little and even her drunk, sad smiles were picturesque. “I like that, you know. I like that you call me Goldie. At first, I thought it was mean, but it has a nice ring to it.”
I grinned. “Good. It’s a fitting name.” Before she could reply, I leaned toward her and lifted an eyelash from her cheek. I held it in front of her lips. “My aunt used to say if someone picks an eyelash from one’s face, the person has to make a wish and blow it away. Make a wish, Goldie.”
“Glimmer,” she whispered as her smile deepened, revealing her dimples. My gosh, she was beautiful. Every kind of beautiful. The loud kind and quiet. The soft kind and hard. The silly kind and serious. Every type of beautiful lived within that girl, and I almost missed noticing it because I walked within my own cloud of darkness.
“What’s a glimmer?” I asked.
She sat back and clapped her hands together. “A glimmer is like the opposite of a trigger. It’s the micro moments in life that are just so unexpectedly beautiful and quiet. They fill a person with chills of wonder throughout their body instead of anxiety and fear.”