Forcing Gravity Read Online Free PDF

after a few seconds but didn’t move to pick up the cup. Oh well, I’d met him halfway. He’d have to do the rest.
    “How was Cla i re?” I asked.
    He shrugged. “ We hooked up, but I’m tired of the same old girls. I need to get to college so I can meet some new ones.”
    “Maybe you’re just tired of the scene,” I suggested. “I mean, wouldn’t you like to have a girlfriend? Someone you can get serious with? Fall in love, maybe?”
    Ethan’s eyebrows rose as he looked at me skeptically. “No, I don’t want a girlfriend. Definitely not. My buddy Chris started dating this girl last year, and he’s completely whipped, a shell of who he use d to be. N o thanks.”
    I rolled my eyes at his dramatics and poured myself a glass of orange juice. “Getting a girlfriend doesn’t mean you lose your identity, you idiot. It means sharing your life with someone special.”
    He finally took a sip of coffee and winced as he swallowed. “Lo, I’m just about to start college, where there will be thousands of girls at my disposal. Why would I want a girlfriend?”
    I shrugged. “I don’t know. Whatever. Forget I asked.”
    I was not a girly-girl in so many ways, and I think Ethan sometimes forgot that I actually was a girl, but deep down I was a romantic at heart. I wanted a boyfriend and all the gooey crap that went with it. I wanted my life to be like a Taylor Swift song – a happy one, not the ones about break-ups , since those didn’t sound enjoyable . Of course I’d never tell Ethan that . He’d just razz me about it for the rest of our lives.
    “ I don’t need a girlfriend ,” he said, grinning his trademark Ethan Lewis smile . “I have you. You’re that special person I can share my life with.”
    He said it mockingly, but I knew there was some truth to it. He was just as important to me as I was to him.
    “Screw you,” I said, just as Carol emerged with a plate of pancakes.
    “Oh Ethan, what did you do now?” she a sked, and I made a face at her son . He’d gotten in trouble our whole lives, no matter if he’d been at fault or not. And it looked like things hadn’t changed.
    “He wants to be a playboy for the rest of his life,” I said, taking a few pancakes from the plate Carol had set in the middle of the table.
    “That’s my baby boy,” she said resignedly, as she reached over and pinched Ethan’s cheek. “The girls love him, because he’s so cute.”
    I almost spit orange juice out of my nose, as Ethan pulled out of his mother’s reach. “You’re both ridiculous,” he grumbled.
    “But we love you, cute little Ethan,” I said in a baby voice, completely mocking him.
    “Yeah, and you’re lucky I love you too.”
    ***
    “Do you ever feel like you’re invisible?” Et han asked me later that afternoon.
    After breakfast I’ d gone home to shower, only to find that my mom was gone ye t again, and my sister was face- timing with some friend of hers who needed lessons on how to appropriately wear eye shadow so she didn’t look like a ghoul. Faced with n ot much else to do, I’d changed and gone back to the Lewis’ s to hang out with Ethan.
    I nod ded . “When I’m around my mother , I feel invisible all the time.”
    He was sitting backwards in his desk chair while I perched on his bed , fl ipping through the latest issue of Celebrity Weekly and mouthing the w ord of a new song by The Killers that was playing on his iPod, nodding my head in time with the music.
    “Not so much when I’m at home , though,” I clarified. “My dad is the best.”
    “ Yeah, he is pretty cool,” Ethan agreed. “ Doesn’t it bother you?”
    “What?”
    “That your mom ignores you.”
    “Nope,” I said, not bo thering to look up.
    I knew the look he was shooting me. It wasn’t the first time he’d l ooked at me with pity after I’d gotten a text from my mother letting me know that I was on m y own for dinner because she had a date or dinner with friends or some other social event she just