Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 98226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Anxiety crept in like a storm cloud, low and menacing. I hated that Joel was sick, but I hated even more that he still hadn’t apologized, that he was still making me feel like it was me who had something to be sorry for.
He was asleep — or pretending to be asleep, I wasn’t sure — by the time I had my bag packed and my camera strapped around my neck. My chest was still tight as I climbed the stairs up to the main deck, but the moment I laid eyes on Theo, the anxiety faded like a pencil mark under an eraser.
Theo leaned against the railing, sunglasses in place and a smirk on his perfect lips. He stood taller when I approached, slipping his hands into the pockets of his grey Chino shorts.
“Ready?” he asked.
And I couldn’t help but feel like that question held more weight than it appeared, that he wasn’t just asking me if I was ready to get off the boat, but if I was ready for something else entirely. A new adventure, perhaps.
Or a new life.
I nodded on a smile, stomach fluttering again when I took in the breathtaking view behind him. The coast of Positano was peppered with sailboats and speed boats alike, colorful buildings sprawling up the cliff above the pebble-covered beach. My finger itched where it hovered over my camera.
“Ready,” I whispered.
Theo smiled, gesturing for me to follow him.
Wayland was our driver in the tender, taking us safely to shore before he told us to have fun and that he’d be back thirty minutes before sunset to retrieve us. Theo and I walked the dock toward the beach in silence, both of us looking around at the sights.
“I can’t believe this is real,” I said, turning my camera on. I paused on the dock, adjusting the aperture and focus to get a shot of the gemstone water, the sepia-tone beach, the charming kaleidoscope of houses and stores and restaurants that stacked up from the water’s edge all the way to the top of the seaside cliff.
“Just wait,” Theo said. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”
Click.
I smiled, pulling the camera away from my eye to glance down at the playback screen at the photo I’d taken. It was going to be difficult to capture the magic I felt on that dock, the enchanting personality of Positano that was already infecting me. That was the true challenge with photography — how do you let the viewer feel exactly what you did when you took the shot?
“So, what business do you have here?” I asked when we started walking again.
“I don’t have any.”
I frowned, pausing at the edge of where the dock met the beach. “But you said…”
“I lied.”
Theo smirked at my confusion, and my stomach somersaulted.
He lied.
He lied to get me on shore with him.
I fought the urge to lift my camera and take a photograph of him there on the edge of the beach, Positano stretching out behind him, turquoise water sparkling off to his left. I wanted to capture that moment, to store it away in a place only I could find for a lonely night when I’d long to remember what it felt like to stand on the coast of Italy with Theo Whitman smiling at me like we had nothing but possibility ahead of us.
Besides, I needed that camera as a buffer.
He was so heartbreakingly beautiful it hurt to look at him without a lens to mute his allure.
“Come on,” he said, steering us toward the pebbly beach. “I told you I have something to show you.”
“You’re joking,” I said on a laugh. “You really dressed like a baby and sucked your thumb for a college presentation?”
“It was to prove a point,” Theo said, gesturing to a shop on our right. It was a small boutique with dresses and swimsuits hanging in the window. “Let’s go in here.”
I followed him in. “I think the point is lost on me.”
“The code we were learning, the data structures…” Theo shook his head, sliding his hands in his pockets as we walked the walls of the shop. “It was all juvenile. Outdated. I mean, none of it would be useful in the real world. So, in lieu of doing an actual presentation on the bullshit he was teaching us, I thought I’d prove my point.”
I arched a brow. “You were a little shit, weren’t you?”
Theo’s eyes bulged. “Wow. I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you curse,” he said as I flushed, looking from him to a flowy, orange maxi dress. I let my fingers wander over the soft fabric as he continued. “But yes, I was,” he agreed with a grin. “To be fair, I dropped out the next day. So, it was kind of my fare-thee-well.”
“I’m sure they never forgot you at that school.”