Dashing Through the No (Summersweet Island #3) - Tara Sivec Page 0,5

to do,” Millie says with a shrug like it’s the easiest thing in the world as she shakes the ice cubes around in her cup.

Looking beyond my father a few feet away who stopped to chat with someone on his way to me, I see the wide-open sliding doors the lead from the formal living room out to the backyard. And beyond that, even though it’s pitch-black and I can’t really see anything, I know the ocean is out there, filled with nothing but endless possibilities.

So why in the hell am I still standing in here? Millie’s right. I’m an adult, and I can do whatever the fuck I want to do.

Tugging my tie the rest of the way off, I lean over and drape it around Millie’s neck.

“Thank you,” I tell her with a smile, still feeling like I might throw up, but at least I’m not panting anymore.

“For what?” she asks.

“For… just being Millie.”

Giving her a kiss on the cheek, I step around her, pulling my tuxedo jacket off and tossing it over a pink loveseat as I go. And then I unhook my cummerbund and chuck it into a marble fountain in the middle of the room with pink water running through it. With each step I take through this pink nightmare of a house, I unbutton another button on my dress shirt until they’re all undone and I’m tugging it out of my black tuxedo pants.

“Bodhi! What the hell are you doing?” my father whispers angrily as I walk right on by him without even glancing in his direction while I yank my shirt off my shoulders and down my arms.

I continue through the house, smiling and nodding at all the shocked faces as I toss my dress shirt into a flower arrangement in the middle of a table, and then I pause by the sliding doors to the backyard to kick off my shoes and pull off my socks. Walking a few feet out into the grassy backyard until I can hear the sounds of the waves crashing into the shore, I hear a cough to my right and turn my head to find a guy in a pink onesie leaning against a palm tree and smoking.

“Are you the valet?”

The man takes another drag and nods.

“Yep.” The smoke puffs out of his mouth with that one word.

“Is that the good weed?”

“Yep.” He nods again, holding the joint out to me. “You want a hit?”

My hand reaches out just as my father makes his way outside to me.

“Have you lost your goddamn mind? Put your fucking clothes back on. You are embarrassing me!” my father whisper-growls from right behind me.

“I don’t want to go to law school. It doesn’t make me happy. In fact, it makes me pretty damn miserable,” I quickly blurt out with my eyes squeezed closed.

As soon as the words are out of my mouth, as soon as I say them out loud for the first time, that feeling like I’m going to throw up instantly disappears and I finally feel like I can breathe. I turn around to face him just as a loud bark of laughter comes out of him, but it’s not a sound filled with comfort and joy.

“I don’t give a shit about what you want. Get your clothes back on and stop acting like a child.”

His predictability just makes me smile brighter as I reach out and take the joint from the valet’s outstretched hand without dropping my father’s angry stare. Bringing it up to my mouth, I take a long, deep drag and hold it in my lungs for as long as I can before letting it out. Followed by a good solid two minutes of bending over at the waist, coughing so hard I’m fairly confident one or both of my lungs will fly up out of my mouth and land with a splat on the grass in front of me.

“Daaamn, that really is the good weed.” I cough and laugh as I finally stand back up, hand the joint back to the valet, and find my father looking at me like I just pulled a knife out of my pocket and stabbed everyone in attendance. Who now all have their faces pressed up against the windows just inside the house, watching our every move.

“Bodhi Preston Armbruster, what in the hell has gotten into you? Do you have any idea what kind of damage control I’m going to have to do after this stunt?”

“I don’t really