Colorblind Read Online Free Page B

he’ll take me soon. I’m a total adrenaline junkie. My parents took me bungee-jumping once when I was ten and it was amazing.”
    “Your parents trusted a springy cord with your life when you were ten ?” I asked, appalled.
    “I think the professional bungee-jumper that helped us might’ve taken some of the responsibility,” she joked. “But yeah, my parents are pretty awesome. They’re super into, like, the whole living your life to the fullest thing. They watch a lot of ‘inspirational’ documentaries, which is totally cheesy, but I can appreciate the sentiment. We’ve lived in six different states and two different countries since I was born. We’ve gone on vacations to Europe every summer up until this one, and my dad’s got this long bucket list with every roller coaster he wants to ride before he dies and—” She paused, cringing. “God, I sound really obnoxious and pretentious right now, don’t I?”
    “I’m just listening,” I told her idly. “It sounds interesting, actually. My life’s pretty boring.”
    “I don’t believe that. You live here .”
    “San Fran’s not that exciting if you don’t let it be,” I told her. “My dad and I have a routine, and we follow it. There’s not that much to share, I guess.”
    “What about your mom; where’s she?” she asked me curiously. I stiffened, and, thankfully, she picked up on it. She immediately looked mortified.
    “Oh, God, I’m sorry, Harper. I wasn’t thinking.”
    “It’s okay,” I said. There was a long silence as we awkwardly finished our ice cream together. I wanted to move past it, but I didn’t know what else to talk about. So I elaborated instead. “She, um… died in a car crash four years ago.”
    Chloe let out a deep sigh and bit at her lip. “That’s awful; I’m so sorry. I need to think before I speak a little more often.”
    I knew that this particular topic of conversation wasn’t exactly first hangout material, but Chloe was easy to talk to. She talked a lot; she was all energy and earnest pseudo-rambling, at least around me, and for a moment I could only attribute to temporary insanity, I guess I thought it’d be a good idea to open up to someone other than Robbie. Or maybe I just wanted to open up to her .
    “We were really close. She went out to have dinner with a friend and just… never came back.” I shook my head, gaining a sudden sense of clarity. This was way too much too soon. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be talking about it.”
    “I wanted to be your friend,” Chloe insisted. “You can talk about anything you want. Especially someone you love.”
    I offered her a weak smile, and then bent down to feed the remnants of my cone to Baxter. “Thanks. It’s okay, though. What’s your favorite movie?”
    She studied me carefully, and I kept my expression neutral. “You sure?” she asked.
    “C’mon.” I reached out to nudge her hand with mine, and her eyes jumped to the contact. I felt embarrassed that I’d opened up to her about my mom. Sure, Chloe was nice, but that didn’t exactly make it natural to start discussing my dead mother the first time we hung out together. Especially given that hanging out with her was almost certainly an awful idea in the first place.
    I could tell she was still stuck on the subject, so I reached out with my index finger and ran it along her pinky before withdrawing my hand. Her eyes flew to mine and, almost microscopically, her eyebrow rose in a silent question. I cleared my throat uncomfortably, already regretting touching her at all, and then repeated, “Favorite movie?”
    She blinked twice, and then, to her credit, recovered quickly. “ Charlie’s Angels .”
    I laughed despite myself, caught off-guard. “No it’s not!”
    “Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu, and Cameron Diaz beating up bad guys? What more could I want?”
    “Fair enough. Okay. Your turn.”
    “My turn to what?”
    “Ask me something,” I insisted.
    “Like what?”
    “Like… my favorite