Total pages in book: 24
Estimated words: 23426 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 117(@200wpm)___ 94(@250wpm)___ 78(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 23426 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 117(@200wpm)___ 94(@250wpm)___ 78(@300wpm)
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter One
Abby
The problem with getting a tattoo is that it stays on your body forever.
That’s cool if you have a Koi fish on your arm, a dragon on your back, or a cute little strawberry on your shoulder, but when you get your favorite quote on the inside of your wrist, it can weigh on you. You have to look at it every, single, day.
Be Bold.
And when you’re not living up to the quote, it can be downright depressing.
I got my tattoo the day I graduated high school. I was eighteen and full of adventurous dreams. My head was overflowing with thrilling plans of all the far-off places I’d go and all of the exciting, life-changing experiences waiting for me.
School was over and I was finally free. Free to visit every continent, free to meet amazing people, free to become the brave, intelligent, accomplished woman that I knew I’d one day be.
Well, that didn’t happen. Like, at all.
I’m twenty-three now and for the past five years I’ve been working in the back of my uncle’s dilapidated used car dealership, filing papers, preparing boring contracts, and suffering through the agonizing bookkeeping. I moved out of my parent’s house in Sacramento a few years ago, but I needed about seventeen credit cards just to pay the rent by myself, so I moved into a place with roommates.
Seven of them. Yes, seven freaking roommates.
And it wasn’t cool and fun like in New Girl. The perv of the place wasn’t lovable like Schmidt. He was a fifty-two-year-old divorced guy named Gary who I’m pretty sure was smelling my shoes.
We had two bathrooms and the place was always dirty, smelly, and someone was always fighting with someone else. I hated it.
Five years, I was living like that.
Five years of riding the bus to my cheapskate uncle’s used car dealership and staring at my wrist along the way. Be Bold. What a fucking joke. I should have tattooed Be Pathetic onto my wrist. There had been no adventure, no exciting experiences, no life-changing anything.
At only twenty-three, I had already rolled over and submitted to life. I had surrendered.
It hit me three weeks ago. Hard.
I was standing in the crowded bus heading to work—the weather hotter than the surface of the sun—wedged between a lumpy man’s sweaty body and a teenager holding a skateboard that was digging into my lower back. I was drenched with sweat, tired, hungry, and cranky as fuck.
It was a Monday morning, so I had the whole week to get through, and I knew that my uncle would guilt me into working another Saturday. I was already dreading it.
I felt a drop of sweat sliding down my wrist and when I looked up, I saw Be Bold glistening in the sunlight.
My whole body exploded into shivers. I gritted my teeth and stared at that tattoo, vowing to change the way I was living.
Everything was wrong. Everything had to go.
My job, my apartment, my attitude, my lack of self-esteem, and most importantly, my complete apathy toward my life.
I didn’t even wait for the next stop. I couldn’t. I was too fired up.
I pushed and maneuvered my way up to the front and told the bus driver I needed to get off now. He turned with an annoyed huff, probably about to tell me to get in the back until the next stop, but he must have seen the determination in my eye and thought it wasn’t worth the fight. He stopped the bus and I got off in the middle of nowhere.
The adventure had begun.
Now, three weeks later, I’m on another bus.
And I’m terrified.
“Be bold,” I whisper as I rub the faded black ink on my wrist and look out the window. The scenery is spectacular. I’ve never seen mountains like these. They’re so stunning, they’re giving me goosebumps.
“I’m sorry, did you say something, dear?” the elderly lady sitting in front of me asks as she turns around.
“No, I was just… admiring the scenery,” I say with a smile.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” she says as she looks up at the huge mountain we’re driving past. “I love the Greene Mountains. I come here every summer for the eye candy.”
“Yeah, the mountains are beautiful,” I say as I duck down to see the towering peak.
“I wasn’t talking about the mountains,” she says with a chuckle. “Have you been to the Greene Mountains before?”
“No,” I say with a nervous breath. “I haven’t even been in the forest since I was in grade nine.”
“You’re in for a treat,” she says with another smile. “Enjoy your vacation.”
“I’m actually moving here,” I say, bursting with nervous energy.
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah, I just needed a change,” I say with my voice racing. “Things weren’t working out for me back home so I looked for something new and I found a bakery that was hiring. I’ve never even worked in a bakery before, but I had the interview over Zoom and I got hired, so here I am. It’s crazy, right? Is this a mistake?”