Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 137433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 550(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 550(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
I now understand that before, when he was always a breath, one text message, one pebble thrown at a window away, his house felt like a person. Like a body. Like a friend.
Staring outside, I lift the hem of my sweater and finger the dove-shaped scar on my hip bone. Our doves are sitting on a branch in front of his window, waiting for him to come out. To feed them.
Doves always know their way back home.
I pull the edge of my sweater down and go in search of food to give them.
I’m home now. Back on shore.
I decide pretty quickly that I don’t want to live with my parents.
The house, which used to harbor my favorite childhood memories, is now soaked with flashbacks of broken glass, hidden drugs, and nasty arguments.
I rent a small studio apartment in La Jolla, about twenty minutes away from my parents’ house. Close enough that they can get here in time if I need them—Marx forbid—but far enough that I don’t feel like I’m strangled by their worried gazes.
My apartment is tiny, simple, and clean. It overlooks the beach, and I wake up to the seals yelling at tourists to leave them the heck alone.
Every day is an opportunity. Each morning—a blessing. And I try to fill those days with things that will build me back up. Not to who I was before—that girl is never coming back.
But to the girl Old Bailey and Addict Bailey made together. She’s a stronger version of both. And yes, she still craves drugs, but when she does, she hops on the phone with her sister.
Goes shopping with her mom. Or reads a really good book.
Mom and Dad paid for my rehab stint, and I’m determined to pay them back every single cent of it.
Which is why, as soon as I take Luna’s offer as her organizational guru and realize she really is in need of a full-time employee, I agree to take payment from her.
I go to her house every day for five or six hours, doing her filing, answering emails, processing book orders, and managing her social media.
“You’re a godsend.” Luna collapses her head on my shoulder every time she walks into the game room, which she converted into my makeshift office.
She is pulling crazy hours trying to write her next motivational book, and Cayden only goes to daycare three times a week.
“Marx-send,” I correct with a wink.
To supplement my income, I also tutor high schoolers in the afternoons.
Finally, the one hundred thousand APs I took in high school come in handy. Precalculus is my love language, and statistics is my game of seduction.
Daria says this place is my Geekdom Come. She also says ever since I got out of rehab, I’m “hotter than a tomato in a grilled cheese sandwich.”
Which—let’s admit it—is a legit compliment.
I attend biweekly support group meetings and actually have a sponsor I text every day.
I no longer feel alienated and defensive during those meetings, like I don’t belong in them. I one hundred percent do.
My sponsor, Will, tells me what I already know—that I have to send Lev the letter of apology. That it has nothing to do with my tangled feelings for him.
It’s about moving on and paying one’s dues. About dismantling action from the human.
I know he is right, but I can’t help but feel like I’d be pestering Lev.
He has obviously moved on and doesn’t need this added complication when he is laser focused on succeeding at school. Not when it seems like things finally settled down for him now that I’m no longer in the picture.
One day, as I make my way from the support group back to my car, I stop by a storefront.
Pointe Made. I’ve been to it a thousand times before. Mom is big on buying from small businesses, so we always got our supplies here and not online.
Behind the shiny glass is a six-layer platter tutu skirt. Neon green, with a thick satin wrap. It catches my eye immediately, and my heart starts thumping in an uneven tempo in my chest.
Just keep swimming, Bails. This life isn’t for you.
But I can’t move from my spot. Can’t stop staring.
You know you want to feel me on your body, the green, hilarious tutu says. You know how good I’d feel wrapped around you.
File under: things both the tutu and Pedro Pascal can say and would still be true.
If there was only a way to reenter the world of ballet without competing…without putting my heart on the line…
Feeling dangerously close to the point of no return, I fish my phone out of my backpack and call Will. He answers before the first ring stops.
“Everything okay?” He sounds alarmed. I love that I have him.
“Yes! Not to worry. I just…I’m having a weird, impulsive reaction to do something I shouldn’t.”