Series: Like Us Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 241
Estimated words: 236417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1182(@200wpm)___ 946(@250wpm)___ 788(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 236417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1182(@200wpm)___ 946(@250wpm)___ 788(@300wpm)
“Jager bomb?”
I think on it.
“Blowjob?” he asks.
“Never had one.”
He grins.
I blush, my smile pulling so hard at my face. “You like blowjobs?”
“Love giving head.” He says it so casually, and his grin expands even wider. “Or did you wanna know if I like the shot?”
“Both,” I say, more unabashed.
“It’s not my favorite shot.” He pauses. “I heard the green ones are the best.”
“We must investigate then. For science. Only green shots.”
Donnelly’s overwhelmed expression appears like a high-speeding train, whizzing on by so quickly that I wonder if my eyes were playing tricks on me. “You heard the alien?” he asks the bartender, who’s already sliding the vodka Fizzes to us. “Two green shots. Whatever you can make.”
Bartender says, “Cool. Keep the tab open?”
Before I can unzip my backpack, Donnelly has already slid his card across the damp, sticky surface. This is a date. It’s not even a question now.
Warmth bathes my body, and my cheek muscles start to sting from smiling so much. If the bartender recognizes Donnelly’s name on the credit card or his face from the news, he doesn’t let on. “Sit wherever you like. I’ll bring the shots to you.”
That’s how we find ourselves in the back corner booth, sitting side by side. Someone sloppily carved Jordyn + Cole with a heart in the wood. Most of the etchings are just names and dates.
I plop my backpack beside me and then pick up the drink, carbonation bubbling the surface. “It all started with Fizzle.” I watch Donnelly clutch the glass, but he waits to sip too. “My family’s legacy, the wealth. Without it, my mom’s sex addiction wouldn’t have even mattered to the public.” The Calloways went from being faceless heiresses behind the soda conglomerate to internationally recognized, all because of one juicy scandal. “This was my grandfather’s brainchild.”
Donnelly raises his glass. “To Greg?”
“To Fizzle,” I say. “It’s the foundation of this reality. Without its existence, we’d be living in an alternate universe more shocking than Bizarro World. And…” I cling to his gaze that never shies from me. “I like my here and now.”
Donnelly clinks my glass with his. “Me too.” He grins into his swig of vodka soda.
I take a hearty sip, the liquor sharp down my throat. He could so easily be wishing and longing and pleading for OG Luna, for the past that was pulverized with her, but he’s been nothing but happy to experience this new beginning with me.
My heart swells ten-times too big, and this pressure inside my ribcage is new. It’s not anxiety or the weight of a burden. It’s a rush of going from empty to being filled to the brim. I could gorge myself on love and be satiated for all-time just being in his presence.
Donnelly looks to me. “So you’re fully enrolled in college now? Miss Ivy League.” His bicep is lounging across the booth behind me, his muscle naturally cut without even flexing. His closeness pricks the hairs on my neck in a sensitive, yearning manner, and I somewhat control my breathing pattern.
“Uh-huh. I start after the holidays.” He likely already knows these details, being security. It’ll be different for me, since I don’t even remember taking college courses like OG Luna. “You know I wouldn’t have gotten into Penn if it wasn’t for my last name.”
“Use what you’re given. Nothing wrong with that.”
I gulp more alcohol and cup my hands around the cold glass. “Have you ever thought about going?”
“To college?” When I nod, he shakes his head. “I feel like I already went. Experienced everything at Yale that I’d want to, except I didn’t earn the fancy degree.”
I eye the beautiful ink along his other arm, a lion with a lush mane, a skeleton doing a jig, a tiny raven in the palm of a hand. “Would you ever tattoo full-time?”
He’s quick to shake his head again. “I like security work.” It’s all he says before asking, “You know what you wanna do? After college?”
“Not really.”
“What about your writing?”
I’m not good enough, I want to say, but the words sit like thick dried crackers in my mouth. “I don’t know if it’s worth it.”
Donnelly puts a cigarette between his lips. “Worth what?” he asks, lighting the cig and blowing smoke away from me.
“The public condemnation,” I mention. “It’ll be a thing. Everyone will have something to say about what I write, how well I write. I apparently already went through it once, and it’d be on an even larger scale if I tried to put an actual book out there. Plus, everything I’ve written doesn’t really have an end. It’s the hardest part, to close something that I just want to live forever.”
Donnelly skims my features, then nods. “I get it. I’d be sad if the Thebulan saga ever stopped.”
I smile. “Like cry in your sleep sad?”