Read Online Back To You by Jessica Mastorakos - Free Book Online Page A

beating a mile a minute.
Not able to stand there a second longer without touching her, I reached out and
pulled her into a tight bear hug, lifting her feet off the ground. She laughed
in my ear and squeezed me tightly in response. I set her down gently, but
didn’t break the hug. I couldn’t get enough of that feeling.
    After a moment
longer, she pulled away. There was a hint of something in her smile that I
couldn’t place.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Your dad’s not
here. He’ll be here tomorrow though, I promise.” Ellie said, a look of concern
crossing her face.
    I shrugged. “It’s
fine, it’s actually a good thing that he’s only coming for one of the days.
That way we don’t have to hang out with him any longer than necessary, right?”
    “Right,” she
agreed. Her frown was replaced with a wide smile. “So, congratulations! I’m so
proud of you!”
    “Thanks,” I
replied, feeling that overwhelming sense of pride again. “I’m pretty badass
now, just so you know. More than I was before, even.”
    Ellie laughed and
rolled her eyes. “Great. Your head has gotten even bigger.”
    The crowd was
starting to thin around us, and I remembered that we were all supposed to get
off the Parade Deck once we found our families. I put my hand on Ellie’s lower
back and started to lead her in the direction that the rest of the groups were
headed.
    “We’re going to
lunch at the restaurant on base, if that’s cool with you. There’s a lake or
something over there and that’s where Mills is gonna propose to his girl,” I explained as we walked.
    “She seems really
nice. I’m happy for her, she said they’ve been together for like five years.”
    I scoffed
good-naturedly. “Yeah, they have, but they’re still only eighteen. I told him
he’s a fucking moron for getting married this young. Or at all.”
    “You’re like a
happiness Nazi. Just because you’re content on being a slut for the rest of
your life doesn’t mean that other people are ‘morons’ for wanting to settle
down.” Ellie’s stare held a challenge in it, as if she was daring me to
disagree.
    “Speaking of, have
you dumped Tim yet?”
    I saw through
Tim’s ‘perfect boyfriend’ act to the douchebag that hid beneath it. I would put
money on the guy being a liar and a cheat, and the fact that he was hours away
in college while Ellie was still here was a recipe for disaster. I had always
known that Ellie was too good for Tim from the perspective of a friend, but now
that I had these new feelings for her, my urge to see him out of her life
seemed even more important. I worried about her on a new level now. Not just
the normal protectiveness that I’d always felt. Something deeper.
    “No, and I’m not
planning to.” Ellie stared straight ahead as she responded, and her stiff
response told me that she was getting annoyed. The last thing I wanted was for
her to be pissed at me after going so long without seeing her, so I figured
that I would just have to come up with a better way to get through to her. Later.
    We arrived at the
restaurant and got in the long line for the buffet. I was really sick and tired
of standing in lines for chow. I reached into my sock to fetch my ID card and
cash.
    Ellie stared at
me, eyebrows lifted. “Did you just pull money out of your sock?”
    “Yeah,” I
confirmed with a shrug. “Apparently it looks better to pull something out of
your sock than to have anything in your pockets when you’re in uniform.”
    “That makes no
sense at all.”
    I laughed. “You’re
telling me! There are so many little rules that are just absurd when you really
think about them.”
    “Like what?”
    “Well, in civilian
clothes, your pants always have to fit at the waist so that you don’t need a
belt.”
    Ellie lifted a
brow. “That sounds pretty straightforward to me.”
    “That part is, but
if your pants have belt loops on them, you have to wear one. Which is dumb
because at that point it’s just for decoration