Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 137433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 550(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 550(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
She learned how to make my comfort everything—waffles (with a dash of cinnamon and silan), chicken noodle soup (celery, dried onion, yolk), chocolate cake (extra-eggy).
All the Rosie Cole staples. She would push Mom’s wheelchair into our kitchen and make her watch as she made my favorite food and get pointers.
“One more yolk.”
“Generous with the salt.”
“A little parsley never killed nobody, Bails.”
If watching your best girl-friend race against the clock to ensure she knows how to make your favorite homecooked meals doesn’t make you fall in love with her, then I don’t know what does.
No wonder I’m trash for this girl. My entire history, my making, is in the palm of her hand.
One time, when Bailey was already at Juilliard and we were no longer technically friends, she sat on the phone with me and we FaceTimed for forty minutes at three in the morning Eastern time while she taught me how to make Mom’s waffles just because I felt nostalgic and couldn’t fall asleep.
She had an important exam the next morning, but that didn’t stop her. That was always the problem with Bails and me. We were pretty crappy with setting boundaries with one another.
I look across the table at the girl who spent six months of her life shadowing a dying woman so I can still enjoy Mom’s waffles and decide I’m being unreasonable.
In the past six months alone, two guys from the team have woken up in the ER after partying too hard, Coach barely saying a word. As long as they perform, they’re golden.
Bailey has made some poor choices, but I can’t deny living up on a sky-high pedestal must get pretty boring, never mind lonely.
I should know—she and I are both considered the “perfect” ones.
She’s banged up from ballet. And so what if she experimented with drugs a little? Who the fuck am I to judge?
I shift my hand under the table and find hers. Squeeze. She brushes her thumb over my knuckles. A shiver runs down my spine. A silent truce.
After we eat, I drive to YoToGo and get us huge frozen yogurt cups, then we make our way to our secret spot in the woods. Now’s probably a good time to tell her about Thalia, but something stops me.
Maybe the fact that there’s not much to tell—it’s just a steady hookup—or maybe it’s that I know if she doesn’t care, I’ll die a little inside.
Fine, a lot.
Bailey finally penetrates the silence and asks, “Are they still there?”
She’s referring to the turtle doves we found all those years ago. I nod. “They have a tin of food up on that tree. I top it up every week or so.”
Bailey slouches back against the passenger seat, plucking at her lower lip. “Why do you think they never had babies?”
“Maybe they’re the same gender. Maybe one of them is infertile. Maybe they’re platonic. Maybe they value their independent lifestyle and don’t bow to outdated societal norms. Also, kids are fucking expensive, yo.”
Bailey laughs, covering her face with her hands. “I forgot how funny you are.”
I let loose a little smile but refuse to show her how I glow inside out at her words.
“I think they’re both female.” She pouts. “The doves.”
“That’d be my fault.” I scratch the stubble on my chin. “I probably manifested it. You know two chicks is my fantasy.”
“Didn’t think you’d be so literal.”
Now we’re both laughing, and the ice might not be broken, but it sure is cracked.
It was freaky, the way we found these doves. The day we found these doves. An omen. A message from above. Turtle doves aren’t common in North America, which meant they were runaways. Just like we were that day.
We park and hike the way to our corner in the woods.
A while back, I stretched a huge piece of canvas across four valley oaks and tied it to each of the trunks, so now Bails and I have a giant-ass hammock raised off the ground to hang out on. About twelve-by-twelve feet.
It’s always full of leaves and dirt, and it’s the only instance when Bailey doesn’t mind looking less than completely perfect. When we’re out here in nature.
We climb on top of the canvas.
Bailey’s tongue twists around her neon-green spoon. “What’s new with you?”
I have a steady ride and every time I’m inside her I think about you, which is probably the shittiest thing I’ve ever done in my life.
Dad and Knight are pushing me to play ball in college.
And every time I think you might not be okay, I want to stab the faceless, nameless asshole who sold you those drugs.
“Same old shit.” I crunch a frozen cherry between my teeth. “How’s Juilliard?”
“Amazing.” Her eyes are two shiny snow globes. “There’s so much talent and inspiration there. The city is full of culture. I go to a different exhibition every weekend and tutor a low-income junior in Harlem twice a week. And the food, Lev!” She gasps. “New York is heaven for foodies.”