Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 102355 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 512(@200wpm)___ 409(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102355 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 512(@200wpm)___ 409(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
Cristiano brought a bag from the car that contains a blanket and a few pillows, a radio, and a flashlight. Once we find a nice spot, he arranges everything while I watch. Apparently even a pillow is too heavy for me to lift in my condition.
“How long are we planning to be out here?” I laugh once I see everything he’s packed. In addition to dinner, he’s added fresh watermelon and peaches, figs and grapes. There’s flaó, too, a flatbread with a sweet cheese filling, sort of like a Spanish cheesecake. It’s my favorite dessert and he must have picked it up from a bakery on his way home from work.
Cristiano smiles as he looks up, his eyes filled with mischief.
“It said ‘watch the sunrise,’ didn’t it?”
I frown, confused. “What did?”
“The bucket list.”
He reaches back into the bag and pulls out Winnie’s worn journal. He sets it down carefully on the blanket between us, and seeing it lying there makes my heart thunder. I haven’t held it since the end of my first summer on Ibiza, when everything became a whirlwind. I packed Winnie’s journal up along with all my other things when I had to rush to Marseille after Lita’s accident. When I returned to Ibiza later that summer and moved in with Cristiano, I put the journal in the top drawer of my nightstand and somehow… I forgot about it.
How?
I still wear Winnie’s ring. She’s with me every day, and I think of her endlessly. Always. My company is named Three Little Birds Surf Shop, after her. I still wear so many of the clothes and bathing suits she purchased years ago, though these days, with my growing pregnancy body, that turquoise bikini is more than a little obscene. Cristiano, obviously, loves it.
But the journal was forgotten until now.
I lean forward on the blanket and flip it open so I can trace the pad of my finger over her familiar handwriting, turning pages slowly as I reacquaint myself with my sister’s words. Winnie’s journal was always less of a diary and more of a collection of random notes and doodles. It contains the names and dosages of medications scratched beside a list of fantasy books a nurse recommended to her. Beneath that, the phone number for Nick, a cute, young resident she was flirting with before… before.
I look through the journal until I land on the all-important bucket list. I could laugh thinking back on my first summer here. I did a good job of it, crossed off quite a big chunk of her tasks, and I’ve completed even more since. Cristiano must have marked off things for me, because only two items remain, and judging by the secluded beach setup he’s arranged for us, we’re going to check them both off tonight. I smile as I read over the list, recalling all the special, sometimes ridiculous, memories.