She, Myself & I by Whitney Gaskell Read Free Book Online

each other,” I said.
    “What should I say when Mom calls me tomorrow?”
    “How do you know she will?”
    “She calls me every day.”
    “She does? Since when?”
    “Since forever.”
    I closed my eyes and shook my head. Typical. Mickey, my parents’ surprise baby—they’d gone on a second honeymoon to Hawaii, and nine months later Mickey had arrived—had always been Mom’s favorite. I fought off the jealousy by reminding myself just how insane it would make me if Mom were calling me every day.
    My door buzzer sounded. “Crap. He’s here, and I’m not ready. Mick, honey, I’ve got to run. I’ll call you later.”
    Chapter Six

    Zack held out his hand to help me jump down out of his bright red 1955 Chevrolet pickup truck (I knew the year only because Zack had told me, his face beaming with unmistakable pride). The truck was pretty cool in a retro kind of a way, which was a very popular aesthetic in Austin, along with vintage clothing, VW vans, and record stores that still sold vinyl LPs.
    We’d taken Route 2222, a lovely drive that winds through the limestone cliffs and densely wooded areas west of Austin, toward Lake Travis, and had pulled into the parking lot for the Travis County Marina. I wasn’t familiar with the area, but it didn’t look like there was a restaurant anywhere in the vicinity.
    “What are we doing here?” I asked.
    “Having dinner, like I promised,” Zack said, and when he smiled at me, I briefly considered ripping off my bra and throwing it at him.
    Somehow, over the course of the scenic drive, I’d fallen seriously in lust with this guy. Maybe it was because I’d already halfway made the decision to sleep with him, or maybe it was because Sophie was right—Zack was a “hottie.” He was just so solidly masculine. Zack had a thick chest, sexy hips, and long, muscular legs. And he had the nicest hands—they were large and square, and when he held out his hand to help me out of the truck, I noticed they felt soft, which struck me as odd for a carpenter. I’d have expected them to be rough and calloused.
    “But where?”
    “That’s the surprise. I brought dinner with us,” Zack said, and pulled a blue cooler from the bed of the pickup.
    I looked around. “Are there tables out here? Overlooking the lake?”
    I had to give him points for originality. And it was a gorgeous October evening, the perfect weather for a picnic. It was warm enough that I was comfortable in elbow-length sleeves, and yet the heavy damp humidity that marked the long, uncomfortable summer had mercifully chosen not to linger.
    “I thought we could eat out on the lake. On my boat,” Zack suggested.
    “You have a boat?”
    “Come on, I’ll show you.”
    I followed him as the pavement of the parking lot gave way to a dirt and gravel path. We wound around the main building, a rustic, two-story structure with a screened-in porch that faced the glassy blue lake, down a steep incline, and then finally onto the long, sun-bleached dock where boats were lined up smartly in their individual slips. The majority were motorboats, some tall and opulent, others squat and utilitarian. I figured Zack’s would probably be one of the latter, but he surprised me by stopping at a white sailboat, small in size and impeccably maintained. The mast was up, although the sails were down, piling up on either side like a deflated parachute.
    Zack hopped nimbly onto the boat and reached for my hand. The water gently lapped against the hull as the boat shifted under his weight. I hesitated, my feet firmly planted to the creaking dock.
    “I have to tell you—I’m not really a boat person. I went on a cruise once, and I spent the entire time being sick to my stomach. All of the rocking and the swaying and the rocking and the swaying,” I said.
    Zack laughed. “It looks pretty calm out there today. Why don’t you give it a try, and if you start to feel seasick, we’ll come right back?”
    I noticed that there was a small gap in