Total pages in book: 171
Estimated words: 164705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 824(@200wpm)___ 659(@250wpm)___ 549(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 164705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 824(@200wpm)___ 659(@250wpm)___ 549(@300wpm)
LindseyBorneXO: LOOKING HOT OLLIE.
My heart skipped a beat. I ran the pad of my finger down the screen and found another comment from her on a picture of Oliver, alone, sunbathing by the lake.
LindseyBorneXO: When are you inviting me to the lake house??? DM’d you something naughty …
Swallowing hard, I clicked on her profile and gasped.
He liked her bikini pic.
He liked her bikini pic.
It felt like passing a car crash. Sirens, and scraps of metal, and blood, and I couldn’t look away.
Don’t freak out. It’s Oliver. Maybe it was an accident.
Nope. He liked all her half-naked Cancun Spring Break pictures. All thirty of them in a row. And the comments. The comments. They burned right into my retinas. I could never unsee them.
OlivervonBismarck: JFC you are hottttttttt
OlivervonBismarck: Beer, bikini, and BBQ? Say less.
OlivervonBismarck: So, when are you coming over so I can show you a good time?
I’d never had doubts when it came to Ollie’s faithfulness … until now.
My cheeks flamed. The tips of my ears burned. I called him again. No answer. Then again. And again. I told myself there was a perfectly good explanation for this – the comments, the flirting, the lack of communication – and forced myself to hide my phone and go for a walk.
But when I returned, he still didn’t answer.
So, I lost it.
I wasn’t proud of my next move. I was usually a poised, well-behaved girl. Not right now. I wrote him a chain of scathing text messages.
Briar Rose: You aren’t answering, and I’m not sure why, but honestly, your behavior is uncalled for.
Briar Rose: You are publicly flirting with another girl, while I’m sitting here planning our entire future together. What the hell, Oliver?
Briar Rose: Call me back.
Briar Rose: HELLO?
Briar Rose: You better be dead, because any other excuse is going to fall short.
But Oliver wasn’t dead.
I found out four days later when he posted a picture on his Instagram, of him and Sebastian grinning from ear to ear with the caption: Little bro moving to India. Alavida, motherfucker!
Ollie hadn’t returned any of my calls and texts. Yet, he found time to post this.
I studied every pixel in the picture. He seemed happy. Carefree. Tanned and smiling ear-to-ear. How could he disappear on me and go on with his life?
The rest of the summer deteriorated at an alarming pace. My deadline to pay the Harvard tuition came and went. I tried to secure a private student loan, but I lacked a credit history, and my parents refused to cosign.
Harvard was officially off the table.
I might have been more upset about it if I weren’t so laser focused on the fact that Oliver dumped me without a word. He hadn’t updated his social media since that airport post with Sebastian, but that didn’t stop me from obsessively checking a few times a day.
Jason’s embezzlement trial would begin in Argentina soon, so he and my mother flew there. They sold the summer house in Geneva, and when I’d begged for them to let me tag along, my mother had huffed, slapping her thigh.
“Briar Rose, you are eighteen. Way too old to hide behind your mother’s skirt. We can barely afford our own tickets. We’re flying economy, for goodness’ sake.”
They left me behind, without as much as an offhanded good luck. Left me broken, broke, and terrified. I was all alone in the world.
I spent the first couple days couch surfing at an old tutor’s house before renting out a studio apartment in Zurich. I figured I could work there for a year, save up some money, and go to college in America.
Since real estate in Zurich was outrageously expensive, I managed to get a discount by taking a side-job cleaning the entire four-story building and penthouse basement once a week. On top of that, I got a job as a barista at a small café on Bahnhofstrasse and busted tables at a gentleman’s club over the weekend.
I worked, and I worked, and then I worked some more, trying to push away Ollie’s betrayal. But the more I thought about how we parted ways – without a breakup conversation, without a valid reason, without a proper goodbye – the more I started to resent him.
He knew my situation.
He took my virginity and bailed to America, leaving me without clothing to go home in.
The boy I gave my heart and soul to turned out to be nothing but a hedonistic bastard.
And yet, there was still a tiny, idiotic sliver of hope inside me that there was a good explanation for all of this. That Ollie wasn’t really the bad guy.
When I wasn’t working, I applied to scholarships and grants. Since I had good grades and plenty of recommendation letters, I managed to get a full ride at Baylor.
The first time I read the acceptance letter, I felt nothing but emptiness. I’d read it in my kitchenette, which was also my bedroom, bathroom, and closet. I sipped my weak tea – the filth I made with a reused teabag – and nodded to myself.