Total pages in book: 191
Estimated words: 182070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 182070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
“Bianca,” he started to say softly with the heaviest blue eyes. “I love you, darlin’….”
I tipped my head back with a sigh.
“Can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished you weren’t Boogie’s cousin.”
He was flaying me alive now.
I wish you weren’t my best friend’s cousin, he’d said.
Maybe in another lifetime… those words felt like.
And in the story of our lives, in our friendship, his phone rang.
But he didn’t even look down at it. The “cousin” was perched on his lips. The I love you that sounded so right and natural, he had never needed to say the words out loud because I had known them so well. It was our silent song to each other. The one only each of us understood.
He wasn’t telling me something I didn’t know. Because I did.
It just wasn’t his fault that he loved me, but not… not like that.
It wasn’t either of our faults that we both loved Boogie so much either.
I understood everything.
“Get your phone, Zac. We’ll talk later,” I told him… lying. Knowing I was lying.
He said nothing.
“It might be important,” I warned him.
His chest expanded, and his expression was pained. “I need to go back soon for a meetin’.”
It was my turn to nod. “You need to focus. I know. I want you to.”
But those words weren’t enough because this man I loved just kept on staring at me, mouth slightly gaped with something in his eyes that looked like… something I couldn’t recognize. But finally he exhaled when his phone stopped ringing and then started up again, and his question was low and nearly hoarse, “We’ll talk later?”
I nodded, lying again. He’d forgive me, I knew. Eventually. But more than likely, it wouldn’t take that long because he wasn’t that kind of person.
But I was going to find out.
Because I was leaving.
It would be better that way. For both of us. I just knew it.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Peewee, are you going to tell us what’s going on or are we going to have to annoy it out of you?” my sister asked from across the kitchen as I pulled a tray of chocolate chip cookies out of the oven and set them on top of her range.
I’d made them per my nephew’s request. He’d asked all sneaky and extra sweet, by coming to lay on the bed with me that morning and pointing out a gray hair he’d found about three minutes into his visit. Then he’d made it up to me—in a way—by offering to pluck my eyebrows… then telling me I could trust him with tweezers because his mom was always asking him to pluck her upper lip. And sometimes her chin.
And here this heifer had been lying to me for years—bragging—about how she was “naturally” hairless.
Making Guillermo cookies was a no-brainer after that. That was going to be ammo I could use against her for the rest of my life. The lying cow.
Needless to say, that little tidbit of knowledge had been the highlight of my last two weeks. Under normal circumstances, I would have been full of glee at being able to pick on my sister. But apparently, I wasn’t being very good at hiding that something was bothering me, even though I’d tried my best to play it off.
Because no matter how hard I’d tried, Connie was calling me on my shit. One quick glance at Boogie told me he was in on it too, even though he’d only gotten to her house that morning. It was Richard’s birthday, and we were celebrating it over the weekend. It was mostly going to be a day and a half of doing two of the things he loved the most: going bowling today, and tomorrow we were driving to Houston to watch the White Oaks’ game against the Three Hundreds. Zac’s old team. I was still bitter toward them even so many years later for letting him go.
Thinking about Zac….
My chest ached a little. More than a little. An awful lot.
“There isn’t really much to tell,” I said, trying to keep my voice as nonchalant as possible, smiling and making it seem like everything was fine. Which was what I’d been trying to do since I’d gotten to Connie’s house.
After I’d snuck out of Trev’s house while Zac had been gone, I’d driven up to Killeen and knocked on my sister’s door at eleven o’clock at night. I’d even made sure not to cry so she wouldn’t get suspicious. I’d waited to let go—just a little—until I was in Guillermo’s room to really do it, and I’d covered my face with my jacket so that I wouldn’t make a sound.
Zac had started texting me about three hours into my drive, when I’d figured he’d gotten home and found me… not there.
ZAC THE OLD MAN: Where you at?
ZAC THE OLD MAN: Peewee?