Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 61867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 309(@200wpm)___ 247(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 309(@200wpm)___ 247(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
I’m fighting back tears when I pull onto our street, avoiding the enormous, suspension-destroying pothole that’s been there for two years and the town has still refused to do anything about. Nobody cares about us out here.
The only light on in our house is my mom’s bedroom, which means she’s been drinking so much already that she’s either passed out in there or she is on the verge. I take a deep breath and try to calm down, but as I pull into the driveway, my eyes go to his house next door.
Jameson Gray. The only person I could ever say I truly considered a friend back when my life fell apart.
The lights on his house are all out tonight, but that’s no surprise. They’ve been out for years now.
The front steps are rotted away and on the verge of collapse, and the screen door fell away just last month and is hanging aside like a skeletal arm ready to drop off the rest of its corpse.
The sight of the house simply adds to the pain in my chest, and I quickly turn away, brushing at a tear as it falls from my eye.
What I wouldn’t give to see Jameson again right now.
Where are you? Where have you gone?
In the increasing darkness that was continuously surrounding me after my father left, Jameson was my light. He was the only one who was ever there for me. And although it was wrong—although we both knew it was wrong—I started to love him.
And that’s when he ended things. That’s when he vanished.
Three years ago.
And just like my father, I know I’ll never see him again.
Chapter 2
Iris
THREE YEARS AGO…
“Maybe he’s in Thailand. Living like a king with like a different woman every night,” I suggest. “You think?”
Jameson turns away from his motorcycle and glances at me, giving me the look. I know what the look means and instantly start blushing.
“How do you know about men moving to Thailand, Iris?” he asks.
“Uh, the Internet, duh,” I respond, trying to cover up that I am not totally embarrassed for my suggestion.
“What about the Internet?” he asks, turning a wrench that does something to the engine of his bike. I don’t know what it is, but he said he had to do something to get it running right. I always like watching him do mechanical things, and the last place I want to be right now is anywhere near my drunk mother, so I came over to pester him and observe.
“Apparently Thailand is way, way cheaper than America,” I say. “And so these old guys go over there for something called sex tourism.”
“Sex tourism?”
“Yes. It’s where they find girls in need of money, and they basically become their sugar daddies. And they can afford it there because of the strength of the US dollar.”
“And that’s where you think your dad went after leaving your mom and you?”
I shrug. “Just one theory I have.”
“You know,” Jameson says, cranking his wrench, “I don’t think a fifteen-year-old should know about stuff like this.”
I laugh. “If you only knew the kind of things us fifteen-year-olds are up to, Jameson–”
“I’m eighteen, Iris,” he interrupts with a grin. “Not sixty. I’m well aware. I guess I just wish things were different for you.”
“Aw, aren’t you sweet?” I tease. He looks back at me and smirks at my sass.
I hear the sound of bottles clanking together from my house, and Jameson and I both glance next door and see my mom lugging a plastic bag out the door and tossing it aside next to the steps, just next to the trash bins along with several others she’s gone through in the last few weeks.
I audibly groan without even realizing it, causing Jameson to glance over at me.
“Hey, at least she’s actually getting them out of the house and not turning into a hoarder where you have one single path from the front door to the bedroom and the television.”
There’s something about Jameson’s tone, his delivery, that always makes me smile no matter what the circumstance or the subject matter. I swear, we could have just been accosted by kidnappers who wanted to kill us both and he’d be able to add some kind of levity to the situation. I smile and run my hands through my hair and take a seat on an old wooden box that’s become my chair for whenever I come over here.
Jameson and I were never friends as kids, despite having grown up next door to one another. He was a boy with his own group of friends, and I was a girl with my own group, and we never really co-mingled. But then puberty happened, and Jameson joined the basketball team at school and got really, really hot. I found myself glancing out at him through my window at night so I could watch him and see what he was up to.