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He has no idea what he just did "Sure"

"Cool I’ll text everyone; we can all ether"

Graha with a soft click

I spend the afternoon ina novel that leavesa party, and the entire story is the day leading up to the party But all during that day, as she’s getting everything prepared for this party, she’s recalling her past, and the people who’ll be attending: one guy in particular, someone as in love with her years and years before, someone she didn’t choose And it’s not like she’s miserable; it’s worse, like she soot froo out and party or stay in to conte

Me: Everyone going out tonight, prepare for co internet photos toet a break?

Euys, 1 you

"Hey, I’ave me a whole twenty hth the store to check me out, and I didn’t disappoint You kno I dress when I’ a slice of pizza and a lemonade, the buzz of hundreds of conversations and the squeals of children in the background I can alano and to with the aro-on-a-Stick next door It feels likecelebrity

"Okay, I’m back So What are you more hesitant about, how you feel about Reid, or how he feels about you?"

"Not really how he feels, but what it means, you know?"

"Like the ‘What are your intensions, Mr Alexander?’ kind of what it ‘means’?"

"Too nineteenth century?"

"Kinda Plus this isn’t some tool orks at the Gap, this is Reid Alexander"

"I know And I’m 17, not 35 It’s not like I need promises of forever"

"Just because you don’t want so out fro for forever You’ve had enough grief, Em I’ve alondered how I turned out to be the one who pens binders of melancholic poetry, for chrissake"

My father and I never talk about how my mother died

It was cancer, and it was quick What I’ve deduced in the past eleven years: she was too young to have known to start looking; there was no faent about checkups The e, with so few telltale signs that photos of her, takenI know I looked She appeared healthy and beautiful, but appearances lie

The discovery was accidental Her dentist, troubled about the amount of blood loss she sustained froo see her doctor She gave in to shut hi the phone call two or three days later, sitting down hard at the kitchen table, speechless

I was a child, so the truth was kept fro I had with her, froone I have a few strong memories from that time In the hospital, the tubes and needles that seehts out of me Once home, she lay propped in the center of her bed with soon a cloud of the ho better Bits and pieces of the funeral are vivid I cried because randmother did, because everyone did, even the priest, and because my mother wasn’t there to console rando back to work She lived nearby, and she became the one I turned to most often when I iant hole had opened in thewould ever fill it

My father was so coan to forget that he was ever easygoing and cheerful I forgot the e had chased each other around the house, our food fights, and how he’d get me to help him wash his car and I’d splash him with a bucketful of soapy water He’d spray me with the hose, and Mom would put her hands on her hips and say, "Connor, I swear to God, I a and blinking, he would do what she called his puppy dog look, holding my hand while I mimicked his expression, and she’d throw her hands up in surrender, walking away, hiding her sreen-eyed char Chloe, he was like that again--happy He looked at ed to her, and even if he was still there in my life, it was like we’d co in vain for a way back in that I never found

They married thirteen months after my mother died

I know my father loves me, in his oay That’s how they say it: He loves you in his oay Well, what about my way? What if I need for him to love me in my way?

Chapter 25

REID

EveryoneBrooke and Graha quietly I take E us, everyone else taking the two reht--they probably didn’t know I’d coot in so early and I didn’t leave the hotel today

E over her shoulders andthe dress halfway down her back Her shoes look like funky heeled Mary Janes, very schoolgirl, totally hot Continuing that theh ponytail I have a weakness for ponytails--so about the bareness of the nape, the innocent feht," I tell her, and she s up at me When I hold my hand out, palm up, she takes it Her hand is small, delicate, absolutely feminine, and this awarenessPrincess cut diamond--I like it"