Total pages in book: 188
Estimated words: 179812 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 899(@200wpm)___ 719(@250wpm)___ 599(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 179812 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 899(@200wpm)___ 719(@250wpm)___ 599(@300wpm)
His words, all of them, growled and bordering on tortured, sit heavy in my belly. Like instead of saying them to me, he fed them into my veins. He fed his words into my pulpy, messy heart and all I can say is, “I d-don’t taste like strawberries.”
“What?”
“If anything, I taste a little musky and tart and—”
“Are you really fucking describing to me what you taste like in this goddamn motherfucking café with all these people around us?” He leans closer. “Because if so, then everyone here is going to get a hell of a show along with their morning coffee.”
My eyes go wide and my belly spasms really hard at that. I know I should let this go but I can’t so I stay on the topic. “Is that why you smell like strawberries? B-because you’ve been eating them all night?”
His nostrils flare. “Yeah.”
I claw my fingers on the glass. “This is not the first time you’ve done that, though, have you? Binged on strawberries like that.”
“No.”
I lick my lips. “Right. Because you… You always smell like strawberries.”
He notices my action before correcting me, “If by always you mean this past year, then yes.”
“Because that’s how long you’ve known me,” I conclude.
“Yeah.”
“And I’m a strawberry.”
“My strawberry,” he corrects again.
I swallow, my heart thudding and thudding in my chest. My mind racing a million miles a second with all these thoughts and questions and God, things I can’t even name.
So I focus on small things first. “I never said George bothered me.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I never said I hated my job either.”
“Again, you didn’t have to.”
Right, because he’s a mind reader. Well, not a mind reader, my mind reader. Then, “Is that why you remembered my favorite heels? Because y-you remember things about me.”
He grits his teeth as if he doesn’t want to answer me, but then he does. “I remember what you wore the first time I fucking saw you, so yeah.”
“What did I wear the first time you saw me?”
He doesn’t want to answer this question either, but I don’t feel bad about it. I feel bad about myself. About all the things he just told me that now I have to contend myself with. Then, gritting his teeth once again, he says, “A green t-shirt and a pair of shorts.” He waits a moment before he continues, “You had a purple band in your hair and a pair of sneakers. Same color.”
“Purple is my favorite color,” I tell him because why not? The world is all upside down right now anyway.
“I’m aware of that.”
“You’re aware of a lot of things.”
His eyes flick back and forth between mine. “Apparently.”
“But you…” I give myself another few seconds before I can ask the real question. Then, I burst out, my heart racing, my head spinning, “You don’t even like me. You find me annoying. You think I’m pathetic and desperate and a schoolgirl and your little sister’s best friend who has this stupid little crush on you and—”
“I do,” he states.
My heart clenches. “So then—”
“Because every time you came around, for some insane fucking reason, I couldn’t stop watching you. I couldn’t stop staring at your red hair and your sparkly skin. And I hated it.” He moves his jaw back and forth, as if remembering all those times. “I hated that I wanted to fucking count the freckles on your face instead of paying attention to my girlfriend. I hated that everything about you, your smile, your laughter, your voice, the little purple things you always seemed to have on, the way you watched me not-so-secretly, took up all the space in my head instead of the girl I should’ve been thinking about. So yeah, you are annoying because you’ve been my goddamn distraction since the moment I saw you when you shouldn’t have been.”
“Distraction,” I repeat, the thing he so desperately needs right about now.
That’s me. That’s always been me.
“Yeah,” he says, his voice low. “All I’m doing is fucking embracing it and making it official.”
“So then,” I keep going, my heart slamming in my chest. “I was… I was the other girl.”
I was, wasn’t I?
Not in action but in thoughts. I took up his thoughts when he should’ve been more focused on his ex-girlfriend, and I don’t think it’s a very good thing. I don’t think any girl wants to be the other girl, the other woman. So then why do I want to throw myself at him and close this distance? Why do I want to kiss him? Finally, at last, after years and after ages.
“Right about now you’re the only girl,” he says, breaking me out of my thoughts.
“Who can help you move on from the girl you—”
“My problem,” he says, his voice tight, cutting me off as if he didn’t want me to actually say the words.