Total pages in book: 191
Estimated words: 182070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 182070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
And you couldn’t fake those eyes.
I swallowed and went up to the balls of my feet again like it would really make me taller. The words felt thick in my throat. I am here for a reason. “I’m not trying to bother you. Boogie asked me to come. He’s been calling you too and—”
This beautiful man who had been featured naked on the cover of a magazine a couple years back got to his booted feet in about half a second. His mouth suddenly dropped open as those blue, blue eyes moved all over my face fast, fast, fast, and I could barely hear him as he gasped, literally gasped, “Wait. Bianca?”
Oh.
Chapter Three
I couldn’t actually remember meeting Zac. I couldn’t remember meeting Mamá Lupe or Boogie for the first time either. My most blurry, distorted memories all included them though, like they had been around forever. Like life before them hadn’t been memorable enough.
In my head and in my heart, they had always been around. From the beginning. Like my arms and my eyes, they were just… there.
I knew that I’d met them when I was three, when my parents moved to Liberty Hill with fifteen-year-old Connie and me, their oopsie, their surprise baby late in life. Somewhere along the way, for all I knew the same day we’d gotten to Mamá Lupe’s house, Boogie and Zac had been there, along with a couple aunts and uncles I’d never met that had lived down the street too.
It had been a whole new world, I guess, going from living with only my parents and Connie to being surrounded by all these strangers who were family. According to Mamá Lupe, I’d fallen right into it. They claimed I hadn’t been shy, but I knew now how nice almost everyone on my mom’s side of the family was, so it must have been easy to get used to my new environment because of them.
It became home. The house. The people.
My parents didn’t stay there for long either. By the time I was four, they were gone—like they would be on and off for the rest of my life—off saving the world, and they’d left Connie and me behind with Mamá Lupe and the rest of the family.
What I did remember was the bossy, dark-haired boy who used to tell our other cousins to shut up when they’d call me “la güera”—the white girl, even though I was only half, stupid asses—and the almost-blond, skinny boy who was always over at my abuela’s house. Both of them were always nice to me. I kind of remembered them sitting in her living room, helping me build shit with big blocks, but that’s about as far back as I could go when I thought of them being present and there.
What I didn’t remember was the day that I supposedly pushed Zac out of the way of a copperhead in the yard and apparently saved his life. Everyone else just told me about it. What I knew for sure was that the blond, skinny boy was always, always nice to me after that.
Both of them were—my Boogie and Zac.
And with time, I could pluck out a whole lot more memories with them after that. How they taught me to ride a bike. How they’d let me ride on their bikes with them, at least until we got caught and Mamá Lupe hollered from the front porch to put me down before they killed me, even though I wasn’t scared.
If they didn’t invite me and I asked, they always let me tag along. I remembered that—never feeling excluded, always being welcomed by them.
Those two, along with Connie and my grandma, made me feel loved and wanted.
Despite the gap in our ages, we grew up together. Me and them. They got older and older and hung around less, but they never forgot about me. Not then. Not even the one who had gone from a pale blond and skinny to a dirty blond and still skinny.
They got licenses, and I got to go for rides. When there was a football game when they were in high school, I was the little kid who got to hang out with her cool older cousin. I was the girl who got waved at by the guy that every student and parent in the stands cheered for.
And when they left for college, I cried. But they still came back to visit, and I got to see them some weekends and every holiday.
And then I turned sixteen and fell in love with the blond-haired man-boy who was still skinny, but not as skinny, and treated me like a little sister.
And… life was never the same after that.
* * *
It took me a second, but I answered Zac, even as my throat ached and my stomach churned a little. “Yup. It’s me. Bianca.” I lifted my fingers again and gave them another wiggle that was pretty half-assed.