Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 102834 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 514(@200wpm)___ 411(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102834 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 514(@200wpm)___ 411(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Her gaze lowered. “It’s complicated.”
I lifted a hand and tucked some of her hair behind her ear, needing to touch her in whatever small way she might allow. “Try me.”
She sucked in a sharp breath then let it out, lifting her eyes to mine again. “I like you, Derek. I mean, I really like you. But I just …” She faltered, as though searching for the right words. “I have too much going on in my life. School starts back up in a couple weeks, and I’m literally not going to have time for anything other than studying if I want to get enough points for medicine. Plus, you’ll be heading off to college soon.”
“I’m going to DCU. It’s a twenty-minute commute. It’s not like I’ll be moving across the country.”
“Right, but you’ll be busy, too. We won’t have time for each other.”
“Why don’t we cross that hurdle when we come to it?” I suggested, but she was already shaking her head.
“I’m sorry. I can’t. I’ve worked too hard, and I can’t let anything jeopardise my goal.”
There was something odd in her expression, something that made me feel like there was more to this, more to her reasoning she wasn’t willing to say. But then she levelled me with a pleading look, and I couldn’t bring myself to push the matter. The idea of being my girlfriend was obviously stressing her out in a big way, and I didn’t want to upset her. I mean, I didn’t agree that us being together would distract her from her goal of getting enough points for medicine. If anything, I’d go out of my way to ensure she got into the college course she was aiming for. I’d drive her places, buy her books, help her research and study, give her orgasms to relieve her stress. But I could tell by her expression that I wasn’t going to convince her of how right we were for each other, how amazing we could be. Not tonight, at least.
That didn’t mean I didn’t have every intention of changing her mind.
“Friends, then?” I asked, and the relief in her eyes told me it was the right thing to say.
“Friends,” Milly agreed.
I threw my arm around her shoulders. “Come on. I’ll drive you home.”
6.
Milly
The excuse I gave Derek as to why I couldn’t be his girlfriend was eating me up inside. It only half the reason I’d refused him. The other half was, sadly, because of my aunt. I’d looked up to her my entire life. She was the one who always came to help when my parents had dug themselves into a financial hole and needed money to bail them out. If it weren’t for Aunt Nell, I’d spend all my time worrying about my family and zero time focusing on my own life.
She’d seemed so disturbed by the idea of Derek being my boyfriend, her expression almost haunted, and that was why I just couldn’t do it, no matter how much I wanted him. I couldn’t date the son of the man who’d put her through hell. I already felt guilty enough about being friends with him and his sister. Some days I thought that it might even be worse developing friendships with them, especially because of how close I’d gotten to Nuala. She was just such a bright, bubbly person, and I found it impossible not to want to spend time with her.
It turned out that she’d been dealing with a toxic friend group at school and had been on her own for months before her cousin, Charli, came to visit and kept her company for the summer. By the time school started back up, Nuala and I were inseparable. She ate lunch with me, Tara and Celine almost every day, leaving her old friend group behind and fully becoming the newest member of our little trio. It also turned out that Nuala and Tara were second cousins, so they knew one another from childhood.
That was the thing about living in a relatively small Irish town, a lot of people were distantly related in some way.
My friendship with Derek was much more of a struggle. Over the weeks, my feelings for him grew ever more intense. My attraction, too. He went out of his way to spend time with me, behaving like a perfect gentleman all the while. Well, aside from the times when he decided to flirt with me by telling me how pretty I was or how sexy he found me. He’d look at me all intense like he wanted to kiss me, and it took everything I had to resist.
We had a standing arrangement to swim laps together at his dad’s hotel every Sunday evening. Afterward, he’d drive us to get fish and chips, and we’d park by the beach, sitting in his car and watching the waves crash against the shore. Then on Monday, he’d have college, and I’d have school, so we wouldn’t see much of each other until the weekend.