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She goes to Berkshire Academy?
Fuck…
Destiny has always been unfair to me. Harsh and unforgiving. I’ve long stopped counting my misfortunes. But this—
This is kismet.
It has to be. To see her here. To meet her here.
The girl in my sketchbook.
Daisy Buchanan…Goldilocks.
She’s…here. I found her.
“You don’t want to associate yourself with her.” Oaklynn’s high-pitched voice is not enough to pull my attention away. But her words have questions popping into my head.
“What?” I ask gruffly.
“The girl you’re looking at? That’s Riley Johnson and Berkshire has ostracized her. Associating yourself with her is a dangerous move. Don’t do it.” Oaklynn flips her hair, giving Goldilocks a rather stingy look. “And anyway, she’s nobody important.”
I’m barely listening to the rest of her words.
Riley Johnson.
My heart thuds in my chest. Riley…
I finally have a name. Her real name.
She’s not Daisy Buchanan, the lonely girl on the bench.
She’s Riley, the girl in a Berkshire uniform. The girl with a pretty smile on her lips.
And she is real, not just my imagination or my fantasy or my night dreams.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Riley — 18 years old (Senior year)
I don’t believe my eyes when he walks into my Advanced Calculus class.
In fact, I blink and then blink again. Maybe I’m seeing things. Yeah, that’s definitely what’s happening. I’ve lost my mind and now I’m imagining things that are not here. He is not here.
He can’t be real, right?
But oh, oh…
When his eyes land on me and our gazes meet — time slows to a stop.
A silent moment.
A breathless second.
My mystery man. He is here; he is real.
My heart thuds in my chest when he pauses in front of the class, his eyes drinking me in. As if he’s seeing things too. As if he can’t believe it either and he’s questioning his own sanity, just like I am. But then his expression softens. As the students start piling in, he walks toward the back of the classroom. Toward me.
A breath is still stuck in my throat when he pauses by the desk beside me. The empty desk— because if Lila is not in one of my classes, no one else sits beside me. But I rather like it that way. I always sit in the last row and no one bothers me.
