{WATTYS 2021/2022 SHORTLIST}{Editor's Pick} {Featured Story}
One girl. Two boys. An impossible choice.
Stella LaFever, a theatre student from California, can't wait to spend a summer in Newport, Rhode Island, with her best friend. She is in despera...
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Hi everyone! Welcome to this very special bonus chapter of Sailing West, told by the queen herself, Leona.
I've loved writing bonus content for Spencer, and now Leona, because it shows these two were closer friends than Stella realized. Leona was betting on Spencer from the beginning and believed he was the perfect match for her best friend.
***
I'd made a new best friend here in Middletown, and her name was June. Even though she was fifty years older than me, June was my girl.
We cooked. We played Uno. We tossed popcorn kernels at Leigh when he fell asleep in his recliner. Okay, so June wasn't doing the throwing, but she constantly goaded me on and laughed when I got one in his shirt pocket.
"When was Stella supposed to be home?" June asked as she pulled a casserole out of the oven and closed it with her hip. "I thought she said three, but it's almost five."
I checked my phone, which had received exactly zero messages from Stella. I tried to hide my sus face and not make Stella's grandma nervous by turning towards the big picture window at the front of the house. The one that faced towards the RV park, where my truck should be.
June was right. Stella was supposed to be home hours ago, and my best-friend-spidey-sense was tingling. Your girl was more than a little nervous. Not because I thought my bestie had gotten into an accident in my truck or had fallen off that shear cliff behind Salve Regina University, but because of West Tenney.
The Pearl Snatcher.
Stella thought she was slick by not talking to me about West, but I knew her well enough to get what was going on. Even though she and Spencer were a good thing—like, the best thing I'd ever seen—she was still under West Tenney's mind control.
I usually called this reaction pussy drunk. You know, when you get with a guy who is really good in bed, your vagina starts making all kinds of bad decisions to keep him around. Like we all do when we've had too much to drink, let's be honest. No shame.
But the crazy thing was, I knew Stella's attraction to West wasn't a hundred percent physical. It was like she was addicted to the idea that she could save him from his father and turn him into the person he was meant to be. But, as I told her several times, West Tenney was not a baby bird who'd fallen out of the nest and needed saving. He was a whole grown-ass man.
A rich boy who had his future on lockdown. Whether he wanted to be an officer or not, he had options that we didn't.
Stella would always wave me off and tell me that wasn't what was happening. "I'm not trying to save him, Leona. I'm just being a good friend and encouraging him. I mean, we're friends. That's what friends do."
