Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 65712 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 329(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 219(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65712 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 329(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 219(@300wpm)
I follow her into the apartment and realize it’s just a room—a studio apartment. A small kitchen with older appliances sits in an alcove to the left. Her bed—looks like a full size—is straight ahead, placed along the long wall. The bedding is fluffy and white, the bed neatly made. There’s a small gray two-seat sofa under the window facing the door and a dresser on the short wall across from the bed that also serves as a TV stand. A Tiffany blue-painted trunk is serving as a coffee table in the few feet of space between the small sofa and the bed. A small wood table with two chairs painted in the same color as the trunk sit in the corner to my left and completes the apartment.
“Lucky for you I’m just about ready,” she says, disappearing into the bathroom through a door at the end of the tiny excuse for a kitchen.
“Take your time,” I say magnanimously as I inspect an arrangement of frames hanging by the tiny table. It looks like an assortment of shit from a garage sale, to be honest, but I stop to inspect it anyway. There’s a needlepoint of an owl that looks to be at least two decades old. An old ticket to Hershey Park layered on top of a picture of a what appears to be pre-teenager Everly with her arms wrapped around an equally young version of Chloe. And a love note, written in colored pencil to Miss Scott from some asshole named Mark. Based on the handwriting Mark is probably eight, so I’ll let it go.
I walk towards the bed to take a look out her windows. Shit, that bed is small. It’s Chloe-sized, at best. I stop at the coffee table and look over her reading materials, grabbing the book on top and flipping it open as she walks back into the room midway into slinging her hair into a ponytail. “Chloe, you cannot be serious,” I say with a laugh as I flip through the pages. “No one your age is using this,” I say, holding up her copy of Dating for Dummies.
Her eyes widen and she stops midway through pulling her hair back. “That’s a gift,” she says, looking away. “For someone else. I was just about to wrap them up.”
“Nice try, but you highlighted this copy, you little nerd,” I say, closing the book with a shake of my head. I’m about to set it back on the coffee table when I see the second book and it hits me that she said she was about to wrap ‘them’ up. “Sex for Dummies?” Oh, fuck me, if she highlighted this one I will lose my shit.
I lock eyes with her and raise my brows in challenge as I grab it off the coffee table. Chloe shrieks and makes a dash towards me, diving for the book, but I’ve already got it. I raise my arm, holding it out of her reach as she collides with me, her tits pressing against my chest as she stretches her arm out, fingers extended, trying to make a grab for it. The top of her head only reaches my chin, so she doesn’t have a shot at getting this book out of my hand. I should give it to her. I should. I will. In a minute. I hold it up, still closed, and look at the cover again while she makes a futile jump and her tits slide against my chest. She smells like fucking vanilla, God help me.
“Dr. Ruth K. Wertheimer,” I read off the cover. “Chloe, come on. You are not getting sex tips from”—I glance at the cover again—”‘America’s favorite sex therapist.’ She must be eighty years old.”
“Well, I’m sure they had sex the same way in her day,” she replies smartly, making another jump for the book. “And I’m a good student. I’m better with books than people.”
“I can teach you anything you want to know,” I hear myself saying. Jesus, that was creepy. She must think so too because she stops jumping and gives me an odd look. Then she steps onto the couch and yanks the book out of my hand.
“Very funny,” she finally says, stepping off the couch and setting the book on the coffee table. “I know it’s stupid, okay?” She stacks the two books together, squaring them up before she moves away from both me and the table, stopping to pick up the hair band that fell on the floor and sliding it over her wrist like a bracelet. “You don’t have to tease me. I already know how ridiculous I am.”
Fuck.
I need to remember to be careful with this girl. She’s so… unsure of herself. She seems self-reliant, yet there’s this undercurrent of doubt that I don’t yet understand.