Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 115198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
And that much is immediately apparent. She trips as she tries to climb in. I hold the boat steady for her, but she still ends up getting in backward and then having to awkwardly turn around in the tiny space. I pretend to scratch my shoulder with my chin, glancing behind us. Fuck. Alex noticed.
I climb into the back, pushing us off the shore with the oar, and paddling hard, propelling us forward in a blur. Alex and Blaire are still climbing into their boat. I grin, turning to face forward. “Hell yes,” I hiss with satisfaction.
But then Anna digs an oar in, and we veer hard right, our momentum slowing immediately.
“Just leave it to me,” I tell her. “I’ll get us out there.”
“But I want to paddle,” she says, trying again. With the force of my strokes, her inept paddling just sends us into a wide circle.
“Anna, come on.”
“No, West, it isn’t a competition! We’re here to have fun!”
I look behind us again; Alex is working furiously, close to catching up. In the front seat, Blaire half-ass paddles, yelling something over her shoulder at her husband.
“Please, Anna, I know this is dumb, but I’m in it now.”
She sighs, resting her paddle across her legs. “Fine.”
I get us going, sweating and exhausted from the erotic nonsleep and the run earlier, growing too warm under the sun’s insistent heat. My arms burn, my lower back grows tight, and as the distance between us and Alex’s boat grows, I wonder what the fuck I’m doing.
This isn’t who I want to be.
Just then, Anna looks over and lets out a high-pitched shriek. “West! A sea turtle!” She leans to the side, and her oar slides off her lap and into the clear water.
“Shit—Anna—your oar!” I point to where it starts to float away. “Grab it!”
The kayak wobbles precariously as she leans to get it, and already it’s out of her reach. With a tiny yelp, she dives in, but no sooner has she dog-paddled a few feet from the boat than she screams, scrambling for the side of the kayak. “Oh my God, something touched my leg!”
“It’s just the water moving,” I tell her. “Grab the paddle!”
“It wasn’t the water! It was a shark! Or a ray! Oh my God, West, pull me in!”
I reach for her, but she’s panicking and slippery with sunscreen, and in the chaos, my paddle falls in, too, and I dive in to fetch it. I can’t even see hers anymore; it’s already been carried away by the current back toward the shore.
“Please,” she sob-laughs, seemingly aware how crazy she’s being but unable to help it. “Help me in, West, I’m terrified of deep water and had no idea until right now.”
I set my oar on a stable point in the boat, and then help her climb up and flop onto her seat before hoisting myself in.
“I’m so sorry,” she says, twisting around to look at me. The sky is a perfect stretch of clear blue behind her. A flock of black-headed gulls fly overhead. “I won’t fall in again. And look, I can’t even paddle, so it’s all you now! We can still beat them there!”
I look to the side and realize how far we’ve drifted from the group, our kayak bobbing gently in the current. The other boats are small, colorful dots just passing the small island about a half mile out from shore. It really is beautiful out here. I wish I could pull my head out of my ass long enough to enjoy it.
“It’s fine,” I say. “Leave it.”
She gestures helplessly to the water. “Don’t you want to go snorkeling with the group?”
I shake my head, feeling immense relief the second I decide to let this stupid race go. “It’s nice just to be out here. We can snorkel here if we want.”
“I tell you what: I am not getting back in that water. The ocean is monster soup, and I don’t want to die today.” She lies back against the stretch of kayak between us, and I stare down at her nearly naked body, wondering precisely how fucked I am.
With her eyes closed, Anna says, “Tell me more about your relationship with your brother.”
“It’s not therapy hour, Green.”
“Okay, then I want to go snorkeling with the group.”
“He and I have never been close,” I say quickly, suddenly and deeply uninterested in spending the morning anywhere but right here with Anna. “I think from the moment he was born, the only thing he cared about was impressing our father.”
“What’s the age difference?” she asks.
“He’s three years older,” I say. “Then Jake came four years after me, and Charlotte four years after that.”
“Your mom was pregnant and raising kids for over a decade?” Anna whistles, dropping a hand over the side of the boat to skim her fingertips through the water. Her limbs are so long, so graceful. With her eyes closed I can just look, admiring the shape of her collarbones, the small valley of her breasts beneath her swimsuit, and down the smooth skin of her stomach. “Actually, so was Blaire, now that I think about it. No wonder they always have drinks in their hands.”