Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 117601 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 588(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117601 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 588(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
“What are you doing?” she demands. “Ugh, he gave me big-dick energy! Let’s go back.”
“Nope.” The air-conditioned pharmacy spits us out to the tree-lined avenue. “I’m not going to let you fall in lust and disrupt our entire girls’ trip by planning your schedule around some guy.”
Apparently, this is the reason for our early departure. I pulled it out of my ass, but now that it’s here, it’s my hill to die on.
“Oh my God, you nutcase. Is that why you did this?” She stops when we’re on the corner of the street, then slaps my hand away. “You thought I was about to hit on him?”
We’re a good yard away from the pharmacy. I come to a halt, glancing around me.
“Or he was about to hit on you. Whatever. Same stuff.”
“Well, joke’s on you, Lawson, because when I said he was cute, I meant for you. He looked like a reflection into your soul. I’ve never seen anything like it. You smiled like two idiots when you were talking. I was going to make sure you got each other’s numbers. It’s not every day my best friend shows signs of life.”
Now it’s my turn to be speechless. “That’s why you did it?”
She smacks my arm with one of her shopping bags. “Yes, dufus!”
“But you two stared at each other.”
“He was giving me make-yourself-scarce looks.” She laughs. “He wasn’t subtle about it either.”
I want to throw up. In fact, I think I did, a little, in my mouth. Just now. “So why didn’t you?”
“I was trying to make sure he didn’t mess it up.”
“Oh, Pippa.”
“Don’t Oh, Pippa me. Run back in there and give him your number!”
“Just like that?” I blink, still rooted to the ground.
She hitches one shoulder up. “You can flash him your boobs for dramatic impact, I guess.”
I cut through the air like a bird of prey. I burst inside the pharmacy, whipping my head from side to side. If Smoker Dude asks why I’m here, I’m going to tell him I lost my wallet. I pace the aisles. I check the restrooms. Even the photo booth. Smoker Dude is nowhere to be seen.
Panic grows inside me. What if he left? It’s not like he really came here to buy a lip pencil. What if I’ve missed him? What if this is it? I’ll never find out his name. Where he lives. Whether he is Team Guns N’ Roses or Nirvana (he’d better be Team Guns N’ Roses, or he’ll have a lot to answer for).
“He go after you,” tsks the pharmacist over the counter in a thick Spanish accent.
I turn to him. “He did?”
“Yeah, he was fast.” He smiles apologetically. “But you, faster.”
TWO
For the next week and a half, we eat and drink and visit cathedrals and Camp Nou and Bershka. Pippa hooks up with guys in clubs, I shop till I drop, and Smoker Dude becomes almost a myth, someone I’m not sure even existed anywhere but in my head.
Four days before we’re scheduled to go back to the States, we even find a good deal to Gran Canaria and hop on a plane. Pippa makes fast friends with a group of American girls on the plane, and this is how we find ourselves at a beach party the night before we’ll board a flight back home.
The moon is fat and white. It hangs over my head like a lollipop. The sand, tan and cool between my toes, is different from the blond grains of San Francisco.
I sit in front of a bonfire, pop music blasting from the speakers. There are probably a hundred people here, all in different stages of undress, drinking and dancing.
Pippa is somewhere among them. She disappeared twenty minutes ago with three girls from Tallahassee for a game of flip cups.
I sip my bottled beer and think about Smoker Dude. More specifically, how brutally random life is. All that separates me from him in this day and age is his full name. I want to be Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors. I want to make it to the train. I want a do-over. To choose right this time.
Beside me, I notice a black canvas backpack. There’s a notebook spilling out of it. It looks abandoned. Thrown haphazardly, looking for a new owner. My fingers tingle to touch it. The girl hasn’t met a book she didn’t want to read, my mom often brags, and it’s true.
I’m aware that reading this thing without permission is wrong. Still, temptation crawls over my limbs like ivy.
I mean, it is strewn here, on a beach full of people, with the bag open. If it were private, its owner would carry it with them.
I decide to give the owner of the notebook ten minutes before I read it. If they went to the bathroom, they’ll have a chance to stop me. If they are somewhere else, well, then they don’t care so much about anyone reading it.