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Something tells this quirky girl might be good at seeing things others miss. That could be a problem. I blank my expression. “Let’s backtrack.” I hold out my hand. “Hi, I’m Gabe.”
Shocking me, she moves closer. Close enough I can smell her skin and her shampoo. The combination makes me a little high. “Gabriel.” She shakes my hand and shivers.
I can’t hold back a grin. She’s not entirely immune to me. “Gabe,” I say. Why I care what she calls me, I don’t know. Maybe because her skin’s soft and her fingers feel tiny in mine. “Maybe we could do breakfast tomorrow?” My voice wraps around the invitation huskier than I planned.
Something conflicted wars in her eyes, then she drops a hesitant palm in the center of my chest on my bare skin, confusing the crap out of my heartbeat.
She walks me backward into my room, grabs the edge of the door, and closes it in my face. “I don’t think so.”
chapter 9
Jess
T’s not like his jock friends with their dumb pranks and airhead girlfriends. He’s quiet, thinks things through, knows what he wants. Maybe that’s why I like him, because he’s what I wish I could be. On a different note that makes me look totally immature (so I won’t even say it to Allie), I’ve been running the track before school to get out of my house (mornings are just as bad as evenings), and T showed up. He took his shirt off, and I sort of forgot how to speak.
~ from the diary of Elizabeth Sara Thorne (age16)
Could Gabriel Wade be any more comfortable with his body? Could I be any less?
I press my palm on top of my restless thigh—thesamepalm that touched hisnakedchest—and hit my head against the door like I can shake off today before it saves to long-term memory.
Too late. Our kiss repeats like Dad’s favorite vintage vinyl. Until a terrible thought scratches the needle across the record. What if I was so bad at kissing that Gabriel figured out he was my first? Or worse, that I didn’t know how. “Stop it, Jess. He’s kissed so many girls, he probably didn’t even notice.”
Right. He’s kissed so many girls, he totally noticed.
Tugging the tight elastic band from my hair, I scrape my fingernails over my tingling scalp and grab my laptop off the bed. Sitting on the floor, back against the bed, I open the blank document I saved asJess’s Sucky Second Book.
Bad idea.
The 85,000 missing words add another layer to that execution countdown in the form of an iron corset that binds my ribs. I’m running out of days and ways to salvage the story I promised my editor nine months ago. How am I supposed to come up with the plot for a second book when I didn’t plot the first?
Anxiety baits my conscience. When I’d normally close the document to search Mom’s social media—the only window I have into her life—I fish out her diary from where I stashed it in my suitcase instead. Time has faded the blue suede cover since her high school years, and the lock flops on a broken hinge. But the wear on the inside isn’t from age, it’s from me constantly flipping pages.
The day Dad shipped out Mom’s stuff, I found the journal sealed in a Ziploc baggie with a collection of airplane-sized alcohol bottles stashed inside her toilet tank. Her grossest hiding spot.
I threw away the alcohol and kept the diary. After I read and reread the story of how my parents met,Hauntedpractically wrote itself. The book was my escape. My happy place. The world I wanted to live in. Where the diary dropped off, I invented the happily-ever-after I wanted for my parents—one that didn’t leave the door open for divorce. Only if I think about that too long, I’m trampled under the what-if’s of wishing them back together.
In case Vi comes back early, I take the diary into the bathroom. The lock has been broken since we checked in. The tub will have to do. Tossing Vi’s lime green lingerie off the edge and onto the counter by her seventeen bottles of lotion, I climb in and pretend the white plastic curtain doubles as an impenetrable shield.
As I flip through the quotes I highlighted, reworded, and sprinkled throughHaunted,I can’t escape the sinking sensation that grabs me like gravity. As soon as Mom opens the first page, she’ll know I put her life out there for everyone to see. I might’ve used my parents’ middle names and changed some details on how things happened, but there’s no way she won’t recognize her own love story.
Dad, I’m not worried about. He’ll never read it. Why would he? Just like the kiss pics pasted all over the internet and everything else in my life, my book is too far outside his tunnel vision.
“Jess?” Vi’s quick knock on the door startles me, and I clip the back of my head on the faucet.
I shove the diary under my butt as the shower curtain flies back.
Vi stands over me, hand on her hip, silver nails accenting her burgundy suit like jewelry. The woman owns more polish than a nail salon. “Where’s Gabriel?” She looks around like I’ve stashed him in the corner.
“Gone.”
She glances at the red heels swimming in the toilet. “What happened to your shoes?”
“Death penalty.”
“A bit extreme.” She turns toward the mirror to drag her fingers over her forehead, the corners of her eyes, and her neck, smoothing imaginary wrinkles. “Now what are you going to wear for the literacy book signing tomorrow?”
My heart trips. “I’m not signing until my book release Saturday.”
