Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 114951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 575(@200wpm)___ 460(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 575(@200wpm)___ 460(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
I knocked loud and insistent, and thirty seconds later, the door cracked open. Ariana stood there in a big sweatshirt and shorts, hair piled in a messy knot, finger pressed to her lips. “Shhh! My roommate’s asleep.” But she was smiling, and it hit me like a second victory. “What are you doing here?”
“Did I wake you?” I whispered, trying to catch my breath.
She was still smiling. The sight of it lit my chest on fire. “No. I was waiting up to see—”
She didn’t get to finish before I had my hands in her hair and was kissing her.
The win against Miami, the way I’d thought about Ariana all the way to Worcester and the whole way back, the way she was all I ever thought about anymore…
It all snapped something inside me, and my patience was eviscerated.
She gasped against my mouth, surprised for only a moment.
And then, she melted, her hands finding the front of my hoodie and fisting there like she’d been holding back just as much as I had.
I could have kissed her all night. I could have survived off the little whimper she made, the way her body leaned into mine, how she pressed onto her toes like she wanted more. I framed her face, thumbs at her jaw, fingers curling in her hair as she parted her lips and my tongue swept in.
That had both of us groaning, and suddenly I was hungry for more than just a kiss.
When I finally pulled back, I pressed my forehead to hers, still grinning like a fool. “Be my girlfriend,” I breathed, voice rough with hope. “Please, Ariana. I don’t want this to be just… whatever we’ve been. I don’t want there to be any question in your mind when it comes to how I feel about you.” I swallowed, pulling back so I could look at her. “I want it to be you and me.”
Her eyes flicked over my face, wide and searching, like she was trying to decide if I meant it.
I’d never been surer of anything.
And she must have seen it, because that smile was back, her cheeks flushed, lips swollen. “Yes,” she breathed.
“Yes?”
She nodded.
And then she was in my arms, and I was spinning, feeling like I was on top of the world.
Leave It With Me
Ariana
Present
“Drops of Jupiter” played on the sound system as I slid a box cutter through the tape of another box. This one was marked books, and though I knew my husband would likely want me focused on unpacking the kitchen first, I reached for this box, instead.
I was trying desperately to feel some kind of joy.
I’d put on my favorite throwback playlist, one that reminded me of a time in my life where I felt full of possibility. And as I began plucking book after book from that box and placing them with care on the built-in bookshelves surrounding the television in our living room, I waited for happiness to hit me.
I’m so lucky, I thought as I pulled out my J.R.R. Tolkien collection. So many women would kill for what I have, I swore as I shelved my classics — Hemingway and Emerson and Salinger and Brontë and Austen. I have so much, I reminded myself as I thumbed my copy of A Wrinkle in Time, the book that had served as my favorite escape as a child.
But each time I berated myself, it did nothing to change how I truly felt.
On the outside, I was the beloved wife of a successful man. I was rich in both money and love. I was beautiful and healthy and couldn’t possibly ask for anything else.
On the inside, I was dying a slow, merciless death.
This is because of Shane.
I knew it and refuted it all the same, that being reunited unwillingly to the first man I ever loved — and the first to break me — had ignited all these feelings. Truthfully, I’d felt them well before that man had crashed back into my life. I’d been trapped in my own personal hell for years.
But seeing Shane again, marveling at the way time had changed him, wondering what would have happened if only he’d chosen to stick it out with me instead of run…
It stirred up my insides like a storm over a muddy river, all the thoughts of the past swirling with the realities of the present and the darkness of the future.
My hand hovered over the spine of Angela’s Ashes once I’d placed it, and again I found myself remembering the first time I’d read it, when I was a teenager and felt seen by someone who also understood the reality of living in an unstable home.
I hadn’t meant to end up here again.
But life rarely unfolds the way you intend.
After Shane left, I did everything right.
My mother was gone. My brother was now in my care. And I was preparing to fight an uphill battle against my stepdad. If all of that wasn’t enough to bury me, the heartbreak I felt from Shane walking away when I needed him most would surely do the trick. Except, I didn’t let it.