Page 91 of Bookworm and the Beast
My morose thoughts were interrupted by my brother’s ringtone.
“Hi ho, hi ho…” the annoyingly perky song began, finishing with a whistle.
I answered. “Hey Hunter. What’s up?”
“What’s up withyou? You haven’t been returning my texts. Everything okay?”
“I’ve been writing. The book’s almost finished.”
“That’s fantastic,” he said. “Why don’t you sound happy—or at least relieved?”
“Bonnie’s gone. She went back to New York.”
There was a pause. “Fuck. What happened?”
“I was an idiot.”
“What’s new?” Hunter quipped, then got serious. “No, sorry man. I really am. I can tell you’re bummed. What happened? I thought things were going well with you two. The way you were talking, I thought she was the one.”
“She was… before I accused her of pirating my book.”
“Whoa. Did she?”
My tone was indignant. “Of course not.”
Another long pause. I assumed my annoying optimistic sibling was thinking of how to turn lemons into something other than rotting lemons.
“Okay, so… you said some things you regret. You can come back from this. Have you tried calling her?”
“Of course I’ve tried, but she doesn’t answer. It’s over. I blew it. She doesn’t want to talk to me.”
“You could try her work number tomorrow.”
“What, so her secretary can blow me off, too?”
“Okay, well get in your fancy sports car and drive down there then,” Hunter said. “You could be there in three-and-a half hours.”
“It’s eleven o’clock. She’ll call the police if I go banging on her door at three a.m. I don’t even know where she lives.”
“Mrs. Potts can give you the address. Didn’t she visit Bonnie’s dad there on a daily basis?”
The thought of facing Bonnie’s father after breaking her heart the way I had was more intimidating than the eighty-foot fire-breathing dragons I’d written into my storylines.
The man was old and blind, but he was still a dad, and I’d hurt his daughter. I would deserve every scathing word Mr. Hamelin would no doubt hurl in my direction.
That was the crux of the problem. I didn’t deserveher.
Not after what I’d done. She was better off without me, and I was better off alone where I couldn’t hurt anyone else. I was broken, damaged. Did I really want to subject the woman I loved to a lifetime with a beast?
“Nah. I think it’s best to just…” I could barely get the rest of the thought out. “… let it go.”
“Really? Really?” Hunter said, sounding incredulous and a bit perturbed. “You’re going to just give up and let the woman of your fucking dreams go without a fight. Do you know what I’d give to have a chance like that?”
Though it wasn’t widely known, Hunter had been pining for his own dream girl since high school.
She was beautiful, and smart, and sweet—all the good stuff. But she’d grown up in a different world from us, born and raised in one of Eastport Bay’s famous Oceanview Avenue mansions.
And as far as I could tell, she didn’t return my brother’s slavish devotion.
