Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 131789 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 659(@200wpm)___ 527(@250wpm)___ 439(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131789 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 659(@200wpm)___ 527(@250wpm)___ 439(@300wpm)
“Thought I told you—”
“We both know I’m not gonna listen,” he interrupts. “So let’s skip ahead to you telling me what time to pick you up tomorrow.”
I tip my head at him. “Still living in the land of delusion, huh?”
When I don’t take the joint, he pulls a drag and shrugs.
“I’m almost rooting for you.”
RJ grins to himself and slides his phone in his pocket. “I know.”
It’s an entirely different thing meeting him in the daylight. The last time we were standing here, he could have been anyone. Some mangled figure in the darkness trying to lure me to his murder basement. Now, tucked in the forest shade from the too-bright sun, he’s definitely not a monster. It’s his hazel eyes, though, that capture my attention most. Flecks of brown inside a moss-green ring. Bright against the locks of chestnut hair the fall across his forehead.
“Why aren’t you out with everyone else?” I don’t know him at all, but I do know trouble when I see it. He’s absolutely the type to be getting up to no good. “Most of the guys go into town on Friday nights.” Which basically amounts to getting drunk and hitting on townies’ daughters and the unfortunate wayward private school girls who wander into their lecherous paths.
“I don’t care much for most people.”
“Yeah? I’m just lucky, then, I guess.”
“You’re different.”
Despite myself, a little flicker of pleasure tickles through me. “How’s that?”
“You’ve got a better ass.” A devilish grin spreads over his face. It’s a nice smile. Honest. If completely full of itself.
“Walked right into that one, didn’t I?” I say with a sigh.
“It’s fine to say you’re fishing for compliments. I don’t mind.”
He’s got a bottle of water with him. That, I will take a hit of. I sit down beside him and chug about half of it.
“Sure, help yourself,” he drawls.
I don’t miss the way his gaze focuses on my mouth as I drink his water. “So, what, you didn’t get invited to hang out with the cool kids?”
“Nah. I just prefer to be by myself.”
I’m following the contours of his forearms as he raises the joint to his lips when it occurs to me I’m spending more time than is prudent cataloguing his features. He doesn’t strike me as an athlete of any kind, although he’s lean and toned.
When I catch myself staring, I find a fascinating trail of marching ants on the ground to watch instead.
It was a lot easier to ignore him when RJ was only a blank face in my head.
“Fenn said you’ve changed schools a lot.”
“Five times in three years,” he confirms. “This makes six. Mom was always chasing some guy across the country. So here I am.”
“That sucks.”
“It’s whatever. Eventually you learn there isn’t much point to making friends. Everything’s temporary. You just end up with a bunch of people in your timeline you follow out of some misplaced compulsion to like their posts and appear interested in their bullshit. No thanks.”
It’s weird, but in some ways I recognize parts of myself in RJ, both of us keeping other people at a distance while living most of our lives in our own heads. Both of us guarded and maybe a little misunderstood.
Or maybe I’m reading way too much into his whole loner persona.
“I changed schools this year, too,” I admit.
RJ again offers me the joint, and this time I take a quick drag. “How’s that going?”
“It blows. I go to a Catholic girls’ school—”
“Yeah?” He perks up, raising a cheeky eyebrow.
“Trust me, it’s the opposite of sexy. Imagine a Victorian orphanage for the Amish but where they beat you with guilt and unsalted food.”
“I don’t know… That could be sexy.”
“You want to borrow my skirt and attend in my place, be my guest.”
“See? Already getting you undressed.”
“It’s cute you think you’d even know what to do with this,” I hit back.
“Please, sweetheart. Try me.”
He swipes the tip of his tongue across his teeth as he smirks. Just a subtle reflex that for a moment pulls me in.
“In your wet dreams.”
“Constantly.”
I roll my eyes and steal another drag of his joint.
The way the boys were talking about him, they painted RJ as some maladjusted social defect, sitting in his room reading incel manifestos. Turns out, he has a personality. He’s funny. Knows how to flirt. Stupidly hot. That initial intrigue I felt that first time is still present, something that hints at what’s still under the surface we’re skimming. I’m not about to call it a spark, but maybe a tiny glow of interest. A teeny tiny urge to get to know him better.
“So the running,” he says. “That your thing?”
“I run track, yeah. I’m aiming for a scholarship, but I sort of let my grades slide last year.”
“If you ever need a tutor…”
I swallow a laugh. “Right, sure.”
“I think you’d be surprised.”