Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 153268 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 766(@200wpm)___ 613(@250wpm)___ 511(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 153268 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 766(@200wpm)___ 613(@250wpm)___ 511(@300wpm)
Pacing, I wondered if there was even a point in sticking around. I knew my former best friend. If holding a grudge was an Olympic sport, Dylan’s neck would break from all the medals.
A minute passed. Then two. Five minutes melted into seven. The rain fell down harder, in thick sheets. God, what was I doing here, soaked to the bone, pining for a childhood friendship that had collapsed in a spectacular fashion? This was silly. It had been five years. It was time to let go.
Not yet, Callichka, Dad chided in my head. Have faith.
Shut up, Dad. You were an atheist.
Seven minutes passed. Then ten. Then twenty.
Twenty. Whole. Minutes.
“Sorry, Dad. She isn’t coming out,” I murmured. I took one last look at the Casablancases’ cottage—dilapidated, the rotten wood wet and sagging, yellowish windows, and a rickety front porch.
I tried, Dylan. I really did.
I put the dish down on the first step, turned around, and walked away. A screeching sound assaulted my ears. An old window cracking open.
“Calla Polina Litvin, you are such a quitter.” Dylan’s head popped through the window in her attic. Her dark locks danced in the wind, thick and glossy. She was waving a white shirt in her fist. A white flag? “It’s like that time we went to the regional hockey finals and you bailed ten minutes in because there weren’t any hot players.”
“Hey,” I yelled back. “No one on that rink was over a six, and you know it.” I stabbed a finger in the air in her direction. I remembered that day. I had left because Dylan was clearly PMSing and needed cake, not eye candy.
“Whatever, Dot. We were fifteen. It’s not like you were going to reproduce with one of them.”
“Did you stare at me through your window to see how long it’d take me to break?” I squinted, somehow still unable to be mad at her.
She mimicked zipping her lips and throwing the key out the window. I pretended to catch the imaginary key and tossed it back to her pointedly. She “unlocked” her lips and sighed in defeat. “Ugh. Fine. Yes. But in my defense, I hardly have any source of entertainment these days. I’ve watched everything worth consuming on Netflix.”
I pressed my lips together, fighting a smile. “May I come in?”
She rolled her eyes. “Guess so. It’s high time you say your piece.”
“Actually, I am pissed. You let me stand in the rain for twenty minutes and watched?” My mouth hung open in disbelief.
“Hey, you let me have sex with Tucker Reid.” She pointed at me.
“I would never.” I clutched my chest, staggering backward as if she had shot me. “You shunned me from your life, so I couldn’t be there to remind you that you are all that and a bag of chips and deserve so much better. You betrayed both of us.”
“Not me, my vagina.”
“Dylan Maria Casablancas!” her mother roared from downstairs. “Watch it before I wash your mouth out with soap.”
“What about your betrayal?” Dylan demanded, ignoring her mom. “Which part of your body was in charge the night you—”
“I regret that night every single day of my life.” A lie. I didn’t regret it, even though I should have. I only regretted getting caught. Row was the only man other than my dad who made me feel safe.
“Whoa.” Dylan puffed her cheeks. “Was he really that bad?”
“Not bad! Not at all!” I pretzeled inside my soaked clothes. Great. Now I had offended her beloved brother. “He was great! Wonderful.”
She made a gagging sound. “But…?”
“But he is…uhm, gifted.”
“Like, talented?”
“Like…the length of my height?”
“Dylan! My goodness! I’m coming out there with a broom!” Zeta threatened from inside the house. China crashed noisily in the kitchen, followed by more cursing in Italian. “I spilled all my minestrone. God forgive both of you girls because my ears never will.”
Dylan and I stared at each other…before dissolving into deranged laughter.
I grabbed the foiled dish and made a beeline for the door. She opened it before I could knock, and we were face-to-face, flushed, panting, shaking with exhilaration (and me, possibly also with hypothermia).
“Holy crap, you look so pathetic!” Dylan said cheerfully, gathering my cheeks in her hands. “I love me some good groveling.”
Inside, the house looked totally different from how I remembered it. Growing up, nobody in this town had a lot of money. But the Casablancas took the blue-collar cake. Doug had been a solo fisherman with a rickety old boat, and Zeta was a homemaker. Some days, especially at the end of each month, the electricity hadn’t worked and they’d rationed cans of food. Until Row had started working when he was a teenager and turned things around.
Now I saw that the inside was completely refurbished. The wooden floorings were gleaming and brand-new. The lights were bright, the furniture substantial and modern, and there were shutters. Row’s doing, no doubt.