Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 71403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
“Oh my gosh!” She stops her work entirely. “You met someone? Already? Oh, it was just a hookup? Was he hot? Wait, at the club? I thought you swore off clubbing!”
She’s going a mile a minute, reading every shift in my face. I swear it’s a superpower. “I didn’t do anyone. Uh … anything,” I quickly correct myself. “Didn’t do anything.”
“So it wasn’t clubbing? Well, if you didn’t shake it at El Amado, what’d you do? I waited up all night! We still haven’t watched that movie. I’ve waited for months …”
“We’ll have our movie night, I swear.”
“Was it the Tylers? Did you stay up with Kent too late and crash on his couch again? No, that isn’t possible, not since Jonah happened. Also, Eden is a handful on a good day. You didn’t crash at Adrian’s either. Wait … you just said … Oh, did you crash with?—No! You and Chase??”
“I didn’t stay at—” Actually, that isn’t the worst alibi. “I mean … yeah, I hung out with Chase at the Easy. Until he got off. And we talked a lot. It went pretty late.”
“More than just ‘pretty late’! You never came home.” She draws so close to me, I can smell her cotton candy lip gloss. “Tell me … are you and Chase … a thing? A secret little hot thing? Are you seriously secretly rebounding with Dreamwood’s beach town island babe? Tell me. Please.”
She won’t stop until I give her an answer. And I can’t give her the real answer. I can’t tell her I crashed after our high-profile, fugitive, celebrity bungalow guest massaged my back and gave me the world’s worst case of blue balls that I quickly eradicated in the shower this morning.
What else can I tell her? I swallow. I don’t feel good about this. But … “Please don’t tell anyone,” I squeak.
The next ten excruciating seconds are spent watching Brooke make that squirmy, over-the-top groan of delight as she wriggles her body and dances all over the interior of her mononucleosis booth like she just struck gold.
She stops abruptly. “I promise I won’t tell.”
“Not even Chase,” I go on, covering my tracks. “If he finds out I told anyone, I’m done for. I’ll be … super sad. Even sadder than I am right now about the Theo thing.”
“Yeah, you look super broken up about Theo still,” she agrees, voice marinated in sarcasm.
“No one,” I insist again, committing to my role of the desperate spurned ex with a secret lover who is neither the person she thinks nor actual lover. Now who’s the actor?
No sooner does the thought run through my head that I catch sight of him again—across the way, near the entrance to the Parrot, the guy in the leather jacket and shades. He peers over a shoulder at me, then slips right into the Parrot.
I am not crazy. That has to be River, right?
What the hell is he doing here? Getting a bite to eat? In public? Is he fucking nuts?
“Finn, Finn …” sings my sister, smacking my ass with such dedication that I jump as she passes by on her way out of the booth. “I didn’t know you had it in you to be such a bad boy, sneaking around town. I think I like this side of you—late-night Finn, sassy Finn, salacious Finn …”
“I’m none of those,” I say distractedly. “I gotta go.”
“But I was the one going,” complains Brooke. “I was the one making the cool exit.”
I’ve already left her side, heading across the way to the Parrot—the entrance of which is an enormous Parrot beak. Inside, our guests are welcomed (or assaulted) by a bright, tropical-bird color scheme mixed with vague pirate décor and a plastic palm tree against which children can measure their height before boarding the Booty Bridge, a somewhat tame rollercoaster next-door that is our most recent (and most expensive) addition as of this summer. I didn’t vote on the name, but it kept making Brooke giggle, so my dad and his little committee of investors went with it.
The long, wooden, picnic-style tables are mostly empty today. There’s no sign of him. I move slowly down each of the aisles, scanning the room. There’s a family enjoying an afternoon lunch here. A couple of lovebirds feeding each other fries there. A group of skaters thumbing through their phones, looking bored—one of them is Kent and Adrian’s younger brother Skipper, I just realized. Two workers at the counter in their pirate uniforms are talking and cracking up—an act Heather wouldn’t stand for, were she here.
No sign of River.
Or rather, the guy I thought was him.
I’m just about to accept that I hallucinated Mr. Leather Jacket Guy when my arm’s yanked from behind, whipping me through the back door to outside behind the building.
River’s face appears in front of mine, whipping off his shades. “You’ve gotta help me,” he breathes, frantic.