Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 85135 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85135 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
“You’re a doctor?” she asks. I nod. “That’s good. So you’re not burned?”
“Not this time,” I reply, acknowledging I know she’s seen my scars. I’m not embarrassed by them. It was so painful for so many months, but those burns changed my life in all the right ways.
“Right.”
“Can I walk you somewhere, Adele?” I offer.
She sucks in a breath, like she’s remembered where she is. She shakes her head.
“It’s a beautiful day, what about a saunter around the park?”
“Saunter?” she asks. “That’s funny.”
“It is?”
She shrugs. “Kinda. It’s very British.”
“Not very New York,” I say.
“Is it beautiful?” she asks.
“The park?” I ask. “You’ve never been? It’s lovely. Come on, indulge me in a ten-minute detour. Then you can feel like you’ve made up for throwing your coffee at me.”
She glances around, almost like she’s waiting for someone. Then she takes a deep breath like she’s about to step off the platform at a bungee jump. “Okay.”
We start to walk toward the park. “Here,” I say, holding out my coffee. “Take this if you can cope with black coffee.”
She folds her arms. “I’m not throwing my coffee at you and then taking yours. That’s a step too far.”
I smile. It’s more words than she’s said to me in total in the twice I’ve seen her. “Share it with me?”
She shakes her head.
We cross the road and head into the park.
FOUR
Vivian
It’s like my heart knows this guy is being genuine, but my body has this weird reaction to new people. It’s as if someone presses a “reject” button inside me. If I hadn’t thrown scorching coffee over this guy, I wouldn’t be walking in the park with him, despite how hot he is.
“You live in London, Adele?” he asks.
He’s using the Adele name a lot. I can’t decide if he’s just one of those people who uses names a lot or whether he knows I’m Vivian Cross and he’s testing me. Even though he’s a stranger to me and I owe him nothing, I can’t help but feel bad because I’m not telling him the truth. I don’t know if it’s me or him making me feel like that.
“No, just staying a few weeks.” The park is nice. The canopy of trees makes it feel so much fresher, almost like we’re not in the city. It’s been months since I’ve been in Central Park. After the breakup, I didn’t want to go out of my apartment. Everywhere felt unsafe. And then after TMZ found out where I lived, there was no going out even if I wanted to. Even inside didn’t feel safe at times.
“Is it your first time in the UK?”
Not if you count my world tour two years ago. Or when I played Glastonbury three years ago. “I’ve been here a few times before,” I say.
He nods like what I’m saying is really interesting. “For work? Or…”
“Mainly for work,” I say. I don’t want to lie exactly, but he doesn’t need to know who I am. “Tell me more about your job. Must be pretty exciting to be a doctor, huh?”
He chuckles next to me. His laugh makes the corners of his eyes wrinkle adorably and it makes me want to smile. His face is just as much of a Ralph Lauren model as the rest of him. He has a strong jaw and perfect sun-kissed skin—the kind of gorgeous that just gets better with age. “Not exciting exactly, but I enjoy it. I like helping people.”
I spot something on the side of the path. It looks like a skeleton on a chair. “What the hell is that?”
“I’ll protect you!” He holds out his arms and creates a wall of hard body between me and the skeleton. Then he drops them. “It’s a sculpture.” A skeleton is draped backwards over a brass chair, which is set on a bowl that’s filling with water. “Seasonal, but it’s here year round.”
“Okay,” I say. People want to make art about all sorts of things, I guess. “You think it’s real?” I ask.
“The sculpture?”
“The skeleton,” I ask.
“It’s not.”
“How can you be sure?” I ask. “It looks pretty realistic.”
“Well,” he says, lifting his hand and scratching the back of his neck. I try not to look at the exposed skin on his taut, brown stomach as he speaks. Partly because it’s rude to stare and partly because I’m not sure I should be noticing a man’s skin. A man’s hands. A man’s smile. I’m supposed to be nursing a broken heart. And I’m absolutely, definitely, one hundred percent doing my best to ignore the way a breeze tumbles down my spine when he looks at me. “I’m a doctor. But also, my brother knows the artist.”
I look around and find the plaque describing the work. “Urs Fischer. Your brother knows him?”
“Yeah, I think he commissioned some stuff from him. I remember my brother telling me about this piece and how it’s not a real skeleton.”