endgame - UW series

chapter 5 - her dirty books

** Spoilers from "Say You Swear" again **

Josie's Pov

It's so exciting finally getting to attend a book club, so my nerves are on high alert as I enter the coffee shop I've grown to love so quickly. Conveniently this is where they meet, so I didn't even need to drive anywhere. There is a group of girls chatting off in the corner, so I assume those are the girls I'm looking for. So I head over there.

"Hi," I say, and they turn to look at me. "Hi, you must be Josephine. It's so nice to meet you. I'm Lauren" a brown-haired curvy girl introduce herself and shake my hand. "It's nice to meet you" I greet her.

"This is Joanna, Nina, Mariah, and Zola," she says. It's clear that she is the leader of the group as she takes it upon herself to introduce me to everyone. I'm sure it keeps things in order if you have a leader of the group, so I don't mind. "I'm happy to be here" I smile and take a seat beside the girl named Nina. She has radiant purple hair and amazing curves. The girl named Zola is slim, dark-skinned with long black curly hair. Joanna is blond with blue eyes and legs so long I'm jealous. Lastly, Mariah is athletic and with long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her hair is so straight she has to have straightened it or is just lucky.

They want to get right to it, so we all pull out our books. I'm happy to see their books look just as used as mine with tabs all over them. Some of them even use full-sized Post-it notes. "We usually go through the book and talk about what we liked and what we didn't like. Don't worry if you can't get into our system the first time, we are patient and so happy to have a new member. It's hard to find new people to grow our group" Lauren tells me and I nod. I have no problems with the process they go through, I'm sure I'll be fine.

Some of the girls have the same opinions as me with the whole love triangle and amnesia part. Everyone expects for Zola didn't like the amnesia part. "It just came out of nowhere. They could have ended the book on that sidewalk and then had the epilogue, no need for one-fourth of the book being amnesia" Joanna says and I agree with her. For me it sort of ruined the book a bit, making me give it four instead of five stars on Goodreads. I might be highly critical when it comes to books, but they are my escape and I like to dive deep into them.

"I liked the fight right before, and how Noah ran to get to her while she was fighting with Chase and finally telling him how she felt. He deserved all the shit he got right then, he had some stuff to apologize for, for sure. But she kind of had to because she knew he didn't feel the same way but slept with him anyway. So I give him a little slack for that. But I agree they should have ended the book with the confession between Arianna and Noah" I add to the discussion.

"I don't think she should have slept with him at all. It would add another element, but I get why Meagan added it. I just can't get over the amnesia part, that ruined everything for me. I gave it a three-star review because of that" Nina says and Mariah agrees with her.

"I disagree, I liked the amnesia part because it made me cry. How desperate he was for her to remember but didn't push her because he just wanted her to be happy and he took the suffering just to spare her feelings. That's real love right there, the selflessness" Zola says and she has a point with that. It's a truly selfless act to let the love of your life believe something that's not true just so she doesn't break from not remembering anything. But I also think it was cruel of her brother and friends not to tell her the truth, she deserved it, and Noah did too.

"I can see where you're coming from, but I think that they did her a disservice and were cruel to Noah by hiding their relationship from her. Reading him suffering... man I could hardly read it at all. I've read it before and this time I had to just jump through it quickly because it makes me so sad" I say honestly. It hurts too much to read that part, once was enough. I just quickly skimmed it this time to remember while also not diving deep into the pain it gave me the first time. My copy has tearstains on those pages because it was that heartbreaking.