Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 107949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Skinny Jeans tried again. “You homesick?”
Was I? I hadn’t even thought about it, but when I did, I had to admit to myself that maybe I was just a little bit homesick. Not that I wanted to be back in Holiday, or back in my parents’ house. But it was overwhelming, having no clue what the hell my life would be like a month from now. Or a week. Or, really, tomorrow.
It was more than that, though. As long as I was in Holiday, dreaming of being in New York, anything was possible. It was all potential energy, anticipation, promise. Now that I was here, though… fuck, it was all so real it took my breath away.
He put his arms around me, surprisingly strong for how lithe he looked, and pulled me against him, the scent of something warm, like amber, and fresh, like moss, filling my nose. God, he even smelled expensive. And sophisticated. Like he could choose a cologne because he knew who the hell he was and what he was supposed to smell like.
All the things that Will would want in a boyfriend, right? Someone with taste, who knew about clothes and cologne and boots and how to sit in a stairwell and still look classy.
No, I reminded myself. No, Will didn’t want a boyfriend at all. Will wasn’t interested in a relationship.
I just didn’t get it. Like, I got wanting to go out and party and screw a different guy every night. The concept of it, anyway, though I was pretty sure it wasn’t for me. And I got not wanting to take a relationship further because you didn’t like someone enough. And of course I got not being into someone in particular…. But, not wanting a relationship? Like, weren’t relationships kind of the whole point? The eventual goal?
Having people you connected with, were intimate with, who knew you, understood you… wasn’t that sort of… everything?
Snot was streaming out of my nose, so I pulled away because the T-shirt my face was smooshed against probably cost more than anything I’d ever owned in my whole pathetic life.
“Jesus, kid, how many of those Jell-O shots did you have?”
“Don’t call me that!” I pushed away from him, missing his smell immediately as the stale air of the stairwell crept back in. He put his hands up in apology. I sagged against the wall. “Three.”
“Three Jell-O shots? Good lord.” He patted my back and gazed out past the toes of his boots. Next to the scuffed toes of my Vans, they looked aggressively pointy. “Come with me,” he said after a minute or two of diplomatically ignoring the sound of me sniffling into the silence. He dragged me up by the hand and kept hold of it, pulling me after him up flights of stairs. Finally, he pushed open a metal door and we were on the roof. He toed a brick between the door and the frame and pulled me to the edge.
“I thought you could use some air.”
I took deep breaths, the air thick with the residue of the day’s heat, smelling faintly of something metallic, like blood, but mostly of traffic and pavement and the mush of so many warm bodies in proximity.
In the dark that wasn’t really dark, the rooftop felt private. I could already tell that this city was a place where you had to make your own privacy. Construct a bubble that you carried with you as you moved through the streets. Something to prevent every little thing from getting to you. Every glance from a stranger, or brush of a shoulder, or startling noise. I’d never been very good at that. Things did get to me. Things that maybe shouldn’t have.
Skinny Jeans looked like he belonged on this rooftop. He looked like he could belong anywhere, from a fancy cocktail party to one of the benches in the park I’d seen this morning. Whereas I… didn’t. Looking at all those windows in all those buildings, all of them with lives happening, just made me feel insignificant. Like the more people I could see at once, the easier it was to dismiss them all and myself in the process.
The city spread around me in all directions and, without the guarantee of Will as a touchstone, I was so thoroughly alone I almost couldn’t wrap my mind around it. I didn’t have even one friend from home close enough to text. When I was still in school I’d hung out with a few people, but mostly not. High school had been small, and I hadn’t really fit in any of the groups. I could text Janie, but knowing my sister she was either on a date or recording an episode of her vlog, and either way she wouldn’t want to be interrupted. Which left exactly no one.