Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 114951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 575(@200wpm)___ 460(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 575(@200wpm)___ 460(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
“A little of both. I’ll admit I tend to reach for the past, though. I find myself gravitating to Snow Patrol still, and The Fray, Kings of Leon… I don’t know. I’m not sure music hits the same anymore.”
“You took the words right from my mouth,” he said. “Who are the newer ones you like?”
“Hozier, Vance Joy, JP Saxe, Lauv… I’ve really enjoyed Gracie Abrams lately, too.”
“How about Maggie Rogers?”
I grabbed his wrist where it was resting on the console, my jaw hinged open. “I love her.”
“She’s incredible. I knew you’d like her, too,” Shane said with a grin. “I saw her play live here last year.”
“No! Really? Was she as magical in person as she seems online?”
“More so. Like a little hippie fairy spreading music glitter everywhere.”
“I have to see her one day. Phoebe Bridgers, too.”
“You know, I have an in with Mia Love,” he said, arching a brow in my direction. “She and Phoebe are pretty close. I bet I could get us the hookup the next time she’s in Tampa.”
My jaw was on the floorboard now. “Who the hell are you?” I asked with a laugh.
Shane chuckled, too, and then turned us into the tiny parking lot of a small building, its stucco walls the color of warm sand. There was a deep red awning fluttering in the breeze that read La Segunda.
Shane cut the engine and hopped out of the Jeep, rushing around to my door before I had the chance to reach for the handle. “Ready to have the best breakfast sandwich of your life?”
It unnerved me a little, how easy it was to stand next to Shane in line while we waited to order, how natural it felt to point into the case of delicious pastries and laugh when we sat outside on the curb and watched chickens peck away at our crumbs by our feet. We talked like no time had passed. We laughed like we’d parted on perfectly pleasant terms, like we hadn’t had our hearts put through a woodchipper.
It was like the day was too beautiful to sour it with any truths that might steal joy, like we both just wanted to ignore reality for one day and pretend this was normal — that we were just two friends back together after so many years apart.
But we hadn’t been just friends, had we? From the first day we met, we knew there was something more between us.
And I felt that stark reminder as our day around Tampa continued.
When we piled onto the TECO streetcar to head downtown and found it packed to the brim, it left us no choice but to sit squashed next to one another.
I slid in next to the window, and then Shane took the seat next to me. We were an appropriate distance from each other until more and more people piled on.
“I’ve never seen it so busy,” Shane remarked, and then he slid toward me, allowing a woman who appeared to be in her sixties to sit next to him.
It happened so quickly, without fanfare, just him scooting closer to me and smiling at the woman before offering her a seat. He continued chatting with her a moment, but I couldn’t chime in, because I was all too aware of everywhere we touched.
We were connected from our knees to our hips, his leg warm against mine. When he finished his chat with the woman sitting next to him, he angled his body more toward me, and for no reason other than he had nowhere else to put it — his arm snaked behind me over the wooden bench seat.
Shane seemed to notice it then, too — how close we were, the heat that radiated between us. His eyes connected briefly with mine before we both shifted, but there was nowhere to go, no space to be found.
His scent surrounded me, that iron and ice and mint. Out of nowhere, a flash from our past hit me, and I remembered clinging to him in a fierce hug, his hoodie bunched in my hands, my nose buried in his neck and committing that scent to memory as I whispered, “I don’t know what to do.”
He’d held me just as tight and told me we’d figure it out together.
He’d lied.
I turned away from him, casting my gaze out the window as the trolley carried us to Channelside. I tried to focus on the palm trees, the people on bikes and scooters, the brief glimpses of water I got between buildings.
But Shane watched me in the window’s reflection, and my skin burned beneath that gaze.
When we finally shuffled off the trolley at Sparkman Wharf, I guzzled the clean air into my lungs, hoping it would help clear the dizziness of being so close to him. Shane didn’t seem fazed at all. He pointed toward the lively grouping of restaurants and bars, guiding the way through the crowd as I took in the lights hanging overhead and the sound of live music filtering through the air.