Nowhere Girl by Susan Strecker

Author:Susan Strecker
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781466891494
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

26

I’d called Gabby that morning in a panic. “What if Brady comes tonight?” I’d asked her. I already had all my jeans out on my bed and was trying to figure out what I should wear.

“So?” she asked. “Isn’t that what you want? So you can stop going to therapy and start sleeping with a hunk?”

“Gabby!” I’d stood in my underwear, examining my options even though dinner wasn’t for another nine hours. “I’m totally humiliated. I kissed him.”

“You kiss Chandler hello and good-bye all the time,” she’d told me.

“But he’s gay,” I’d replied, even though we both wished he wasn’t. Especially Gabby.

“Whatever. You’re fine. And the only reason it was weird is because you haven’t kissed anyone for so long, you don’t even know what it’s like to be turned on.”

“That is not true, Gabby. I can’t have a baby, but I am having sex. Sometimes.”

“I have to go,” she said. “I haven’t cleaned my house since the last time you guys came, and I need to get a steam shovel.”

I told myself Brady probably didn’t even notice the kiss was anything out of the ordinary. I’d been thanking him for a fun day at the shore. There was no tongue like Gabby pointed out, no second kiss. I was just Cady, someone he barely remembered from high school, a chubby writer who’d had a crush on him. Who didn’t?

But still, I felt jittery when I got in my car. I’d deliberated every day about whether to text him to tell him the dinner was at Gabby’s. But then I’d tell myself I should wait until he texted to say he was coming. But then what if he showed up at David’s and no one was there? Finally, Brady had texted me five days after the motorcycle ride, saying he’d try to come to David’s, and I had written back that it was at Gabby’s, given him the address, and then stupidly (I wanted to slap myself) said that he could bring Colette. Even though I’d rather lick an electrical outlet than meet his girlfriend.

It was still light as I made my way across town to Gabby’s. It had been an unusually warm spring, and when I passed the shops in town, I saw that most of them had already put out their window boxes, and the daffodils and crocuses were blooming. Moving along the streets were the attorneys, shopkeepers, bankers, and café owners who worked downtown. They were all the same, square and clean and if not wealthy then on the verge of wealth. This was the kind of town that did not want to admit people like my sister, a sixteen-year-old girl, could get murdered in an abandoned mansion.

Now that I’d talked to Patrick and the case was getting reopened, Stanwich looked different. And I liked it. The year Savannah died and the curfew was established, kids would complain about it in fierce whispers as I passed by, as if it was my fault she’d been killed.

And yet in my weird way, I loved Stanwich.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.