Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
“You looked so happy after you came back. She told me that, too, you know. How happy you were when you visited her, and how good it seemed to do you to be back there. I couldn’t even get you in the car to go home for a Saturday, Delaney.”
Fair enough.
Situations changed, though.
“Are you jealous that I like being with my best friend,” Delaney asked, “or worried that I’m going to leave you behind here, Bexley?”
The angry squish of her cousin’s mouth said what Bexley wouldn’t.
Or couldn’t.
Both.
The answer was both.
“Are you considering it?” her cousin asked, then, quiet but still demanding. “Moving back home?”
Like she needed to know.
“What are you going to do next fall?” Delaney asked instead. “When you’re graduated and should be starting your career in nursing—are you staying here or going home? Did you consider me, or what I would do, when you thought about those choices?”
“What does that matter? That has nothing to do with what I just asked you. Also, your name is on the freaking lease. I only moved into this apartment because you wanted to get a bigger bedroom.”
“Yes, it does,” Delaney returned, refusing to take the bait about the lease issue. A non-issue in her mind, really. “It’s the same thing.”
Being adults meant they could both make their own choices. Delaney gave Bexley the respect, but she expected it for herself, too. At the end of the day, the only thing she really owed Bexley regarding their current apartment and the lease was her half of the rent for the rest of the term. Money her cousin could find in the back of the freezer inside a rolled up Ziplock bag under a pack of frozen trout that neither of them would ever eat.
That wasn’t the real issue, though.
Delaney could tell by the way Bexley’s shoulders hunched and she dropped her head before turning back around on the couch to sink beneath the blanket. Meanwhile, her favorite television series played on the flat screen television mounted to the wall. For a brief second, Bexley had looked like a little kid trying to hide away from the rest of the world.
Or just the things scaring her.
Delaney forgot that, other than her, Bexley didn’t have very many people around her. Sure, she’d made friends at school, and her part-time job at the hospital, as well. Her older cousin, however, had been the one person who had been there to hold her hand through these last couple of years. From leaving her family and their religious sect behind to a rough first year in nursing school that damn near had Bexley bowing out.
She would have, too.
If not for those late-night study and quiz sessions with Delaney that got Bexley’s final exam grades over passing so she could continue on.
Bexley needed Delaney.
Or, she thought she did.
“Hey,” Delaney said, trying to coax her cousin back out from beneath the blanket.
It didn’t work.
Delaney left her purses behind to round the back of the couch. Twisted like a burrito into the blanket, only the back of Bexley’s head could be seen against the sham pillow. Delaney folded her arms and used them as her own pillow to rest against the back of the couch as she talked.
“The truth is, a part of me does want to go home,” Delaney said.
“Knew it,” Bexley muttered.
“And I might, because I really haven’t given it the time or thought it deserves, so I can’t say I’ve made a final decision yet.”
Her younger cousin sighed loudly.
Delaney only rolled her eyes.
The silence between them pressed on.
Delaney reached down to hook a finger under the edge of the blanket so she could pull it down enough to see the way her cousin gave her the side-eye glare. “Careful, or your face will stay frozen like that.”
The smartass comment, another familiar one from their childhood, had Bexley barking out a hard laugh.
“Bitch.”
“Tell me about it,” Delaney replied, letting the blanket go and resuming her previous position.
Bexley pulled the blanket down and rolled to her back. “I don’t know if I’ll ever want to go back after everything …”
Delaney nodded. “Then, maybe you shouldn’t.”
“Do you think I can make it here without a roomie?”
“I’m not going to leave you hanging like that. Trust me.”
“If you do go, are you still gonna visit?”
Delaney grinned. “At least every other week—I can’t do rural shopping again after living in the city. What do you mean?”
Bexley laughed again.
True was true.
“Aren’t you going to be late for your lunch with Linda?” Bexley asked.
Delaney shrugged. “Yeah, but you didn’t even go to classes today, so …”
“It’s not a competition. Plus, my period started. Give me a break.”
“Good to know yours is starting.”
Bexley’s brow furrowed, disgust coloring her voice when she asked, “What, why?”
“It means mine is nearly ending.”
Four day periods were common for Delaney once she started taking birth control pills to help with the worst of her cramping and heavy bleeding. What had felt like a punishment from God in her teenage years, before her mother absolutely refused to let their family doctor prescribe something she proclaimed was nothing more than man-made sin, changed to something more tolerable the second those twenty-eight days of pills came into her life. Like clockwork, she could predict the ending of her own cycle with how the beginning of her cousin’s lined up to the timing of her own.