Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 92930 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92930 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
She took a sip of tea and smiled. “Thank you, though.”
“You’re welcome.”
We were quiet for a few minutes until she said, “Christmas is coming soon. I don’t look forward to it anymore because our house is so different now without him. It feels like half our family is gone, you know? It’s a lot easier dealing with everything being away from home. I wish I could just stay here.”
It would be the first time since she moved in that we would be apart for longer than a couple of days. An uneasy feeling came over me.
“You’ll get through it, and if you can’t, you can always call me anytime, day or night.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that.” She stared down into her mug. “I know that he wouldn’t want me to be so sad.”
“Remember what I was telling you when you first told me about Jimmy? That you need to focus on the happy memories?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, just so you know, that’s way easier said than done. There are gonna be times when you just find it impossible to do that. And that’s okay.”
“I know you can relate.”
“You were putting yourself through a guilt trip again today, weren’t you? Thinking about how you stopped going to see him in the end?”
“Yeah, I was.”
“I figured.” I slid a little closer to her side of the couch. “Do you know how many times I’ve sat there and thought about how everything would be different if I had just asked my dad to tell me a bedtime story before he left that final night? Even five minutes might have changed his fate. So, while we should be thinking about happy things, sometimes we torture ourselves by focusing on the hurtful stuff. It’s just what we do as humans, I guess.”
“I’ve asked you this before, and you ignored the question. Will you tell me about your childhood?”
After placing the mug on the coffee table, I nestled my back into the couch and looked up at the ceiling. “It was a really good childhood at first, Nina. My parents were crazy in love. My dad had saved my mother after a really rough patch in her life. She’d gotten into drugs and into a lot of trouble before she met him. Anyway, my father just took her under his wing, and she got her shit together. For the first five years of my life, from what little I can remember, it was perfect. We didn’t have much money, but there was a lot of love in my house. When my father was killed, my world just imploded. My mother had to work all of the time to keep a roof over our heads. I was alone a lot. Nothing was ever the same again. It pretty much stayed that way. She was really strong, though, and did the best she could. Then, when I was sixteen, I found my sister. My mother had given her up for adoption before I was born. She’s actually my half-sister. That’s a story for another day, but it was one of the brightest points of my life because all of a sudden, I had this family. She and my nieces, they’re everything to me now.”
“You’re just surrounded by women, huh?”
She didn’t know the half of it.
I laughed. “Yeah.”
“You’d better have a son someday, then.”
The comment made me almost ill, a reminder that kids were likely not in the cards for me.
I quickly changed the subject. “So, what did you and Jimmy like to do growing up?”
“We fought a lot as siblings often do, but we loved each other. It was just the two of us. We led a simple life. You know my dad owned a farm, so we rode around on the tractor a lot. Every Sunday morning, we’d go to the local farmer’s market and sell produce. It seemed kind of boring to me then, but of course, I’d give anything to get those days back now.”
“Wow, you really are a country bumpkin.”
“Tried and true. Everything was always homemade and organic, too. You can see why I like to bake you stuff and why I always use fresh ingredients.”
“Organic…don’t you mean orgasmic? Seriously, no one’s ever done stuff like that for me.”
“Given you an orgasm?”
Fuck. Don’t say stuff like that when I’m trying not to want you.
“Nina Kennedy, get your mind out of the gutter. Nobody’s ever baked for me. My mother never had the time, and even when she did, God love her, she couldn’t cook for shit.”
“You know, Jimmy actually never cared for my desserts. He always preferred packaged Hostess cupcakes from the grocery store and used to hoard them in his room. He insisted they were better.”
“That’s funny.”
“Of course, I baked all the time anyway. Baking is to me what drawing is to you. It’s therapeutic.”
“Yeah. My therapy is much less fattening, though.”