Total pages in book: 24
Estimated words: 21955 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 110(@200wpm)___ 88(@250wpm)___ 73(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 21955 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 110(@200wpm)___ 88(@250wpm)___ 73(@300wpm)
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After walking on the beach with Nick, I felt almost like a completely different person from the one who went down to the edge of the lake and started swimming. That fast, my whole life had changed. Have you ever had that happen? Everything looked different. Colors were brighter, edges were crisper, and objects seemed to give off a glow. Someone was barbecuing their picnic dinner, and it smelled amazing, and that plus the scent of the pines combined to make me want to pull in lungful after lungful of delicious air. To top everything off, I was holding hands with Nick, and our connection felt electric. Like nothing I’d ever experienced.
We decided to head for home. We couldn’t figure out how to go back to our friends and hang out. When we walked away from the group, we were brother and sister, but we were coming back as so much more. To us, it was the most natural, beautiful thing in the world, almost like it had been fated all along. But we didn’t know how other people were going to react. So we figured we’d better just go—it was getting late in the afternoon anyway. We couldn’t leave without our stuff, though. I personally would have been happy to abandon my towel and bottle of suntan oil, and the paperback novel I was reading, but Nick still needed his car keys.
So, back we went. As if we’d agreed beforehand, we dropped hands when we got close to our friends. No use, though. Of course Suzanne had seen us kissing.
She had had a thing for Nick for a while, which I hated of course, but what could I say? I couldn’t tell her my brother was off limits. But she watched everything he did while we were at the lake, and that included what he did with me. While Nick and I had been off in our own little world, Suzanne had been watching and getting ready to pounce.
“So Juuuuulia!” she said, syrupy-sweet, as we walked up. “You sure do loooove your brother, don’t you? That was some kiss you gave him!”
“I don’t have a brother, Suzanne.”
“Who’s Nick then? You guys’ parents are married—sounds like he’s your brother to me!” Of course she was not saying any of this stuff in a normal tone of voice, and soon our friends were listening, plus some other people nearby.
“Give it a rest, Suzanne,” Nick said quietly.
“Oh, are you embarrassed? Don’t you want me to talk about you kissing your sister right out in public? Do you want me to whisper about you FUCKING your sister?”
“Shut up, Suzanne,” he said.
“Make me, you filthy pervert. When you fuck your sister that’s incest, and it happens to be against the law!” If you saw a picture of Suzanne, you’d say she was a pretty girl. But a lot of the people who knew her didn’t think so. The poisonous expression on her face right then made her look about as pretty as a rattlesnake.
“Julia is no relation to me, not that it’s any of your business.” We had our stuff packed up by now, and turned to go. Our friends looked seriously uncomfortable, but they didn’t know what to do. Maybe some of them had seen us kissing, too.
“Run away, pervert! Go stick your tongue up your sister’s filthy twat, why don’t you?”
I could feel myself blushing at that. As we walked away, we could still hear her calling her venom after us. “Guess I should have asked your dad to adopt me, Nick. If I knew you were into INCEST!”
I walked stiffly beside Nick. I couldn’t even look at him. Was this what it was going to be like to be with him? People calling us perverts for the rest of our lives? We got back to the car and got in. It was hot as an oven inside, of course, so we rolled down the windows and Nick got us moving right away.
“So what do you think, Julia, was Suzanne maybe a little bothered about something back there?”
I laughed and said, “I don’t know, she’s just no fun anymore.” We both started laughing, much harder than our lame jokes deserved. It blew some of the tension away.
Nick said, still laughing, “What a bitch she is! You were right about her.”
Then I remembered what I’d said earlier and stopped laughing. “Yeah, but the bad part is, she’ll spread it all over town.”
“She will. Shit. I guess we do need to tell Dad and Lucy before they hear it from their friends.”
“Wow. This got serious pretty fast, huh?”
Nick held his hand out to me and I took it. We laced our fingers together. Being with him was worth it, no matter what people said about us. I leaned my head back against the seat, still looking at Nick while the wind blew my hair around.