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We should have just gone to fucking Bahama Breeze.
Taking one last drag, I dropped my cigarette to the sidewalk and smashed it with my busted, old combat boot. Mustering all my strength, I yanked on the handle of the solid oak door separating me from my friends, but this time, it flew open almost effortlessly. I stumbled backward as Ken breezed through, adding a chill to the hot, humid air.
“You okay?” he asked, eyeing me suspiciously as I righted myself.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I straightened my spine. “I was just coming back in.”
“Why are you still out here? People were asking where you went.”
“To keep myself from slapping you.” My eyes went wide once I realized I’d actually said that out loud. I guess all those Sex on the Beaches were catching up with me.
Ken smirked and raised one eyebrow. “I wouldn’t mind.”
“Ugh,” I groaned and rolled my eyes. “Are you just pissing me off on purpose so that I’ll hit you? That’s fucked up, Ken.”
“Pissing you off?” His ghost of a smile disappeared. “What did I do this time?”
“Nothing!” I yelled, throwing my hands in the air. “Nothing! That’s the point! It’s my twenty-first birthday, and you haven’t done shit! No party. No cake. No gifts—”
“I got you a gift.”
I stopped mid-rant and blinked at him. “You what?”
Ken reached into the back pocket of his charcoal-gray slacks and produced a single white envelope. “I got you a gift. I was gonna wait to give it to you until we got home, but…” Ken frowned. “Here.”
I accepted the paper from him with a scowl on my face. Turning it over, I noticed the word Brooke written on the front in Ken’s teensy, tiny, chicken-scratch handwriting.
All I’d wanted was for him to acknowledge my birthday, but now that I had a gift in my hands, I was suddenly afraid to open it. I could practically see my hopes dancing above our heads. They were way too high. What if there was nothing inside but a coupon for a free salad bar at Ruby Tuesday? I’d have to kill Ken, and then I’d be stuck supervising a body burial with Zach and Juliet on my birthday, and nobody likes to work on their birthday.
Ken stood, silent and serious, as I forced myself to open the flap. Giving him a smile that I was sure looked more like a cringe, I reached inside and pulled out some kind of glossy, full-color brochure.
The fuck?
I turned it so I could read the front cover.
EUROPEAN TRAVEL MASTERS
10-DAY BRITISH ISLES TOUR
ENGLAND ~ IRELAND ~ WALES
I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew that I couldn’t fucking breathe.
“You said, the next time I went to Europe, to take you with me. So…”
I lifted my eyes, which were probably bulging out of my head from oxygen deprivation, and frantically scanned Ken’s face for any trace of sarcasm. He couldn’t be serious, but the hard line of his mouth said that he was even more serious than the heart attack I was about to have.
I opened the brochure and felt tears stinging my eyes as I drank in pictures of the places on my vision board—the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Stonehenge, little thatched-roof cottages surrounded by fluffy white sheep, the rolling green hills and rocky beaches of Ireland, pubs lining the streets of Dublin, and the place I wanted to go more than any other, Blarney Castle.
“There is a catch.” Ken’s voice wavered.
I looked up with glistening eyes, begging him not to tell me it was all a sick joke.
Please don’t fuck with me, I pleaded. Not about this.
Ken took a breath. “I know you’re taking summer classes, and I don’t want you to miss school, so…the trip isn’t until next May. After you graduate.”
I blinked.
