Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 97882 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97882 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
Bending, I heaved the box I’d been sifting through into my arms and carried it up the stairs, too — to my own bedroom. The house Mary and I were renting together was ancient, the wood floors creaking with every step and the plumbing a delicate situation I was sure would give us trouble more than once. I was pretty sure we’d be haunted at night by a ghost from the Revolution era. But I loved the natural light that streamed through the large bay window in my room, loved the idea of filling my space with plants and all my favorite yard sale finds.
I finally had a space of my own.
I couldn’t blame my father for worrying about me. I had given him every right to after the way I’d completely lost control of my life when Abby died. Between the partying, the alcohol, the drugs, and the numbness with which I gave myself to any boy who wanted me… I had turned into someone no one recognized, most of all me.
I would have done anything to feel something, even though it never worked.
My mother gave up on me. I didn’t hate her for it, mostly because I was too busy hating myself. But it surprised me, the ease with which she seemed to dismiss me after the third or fourth time I showed up at their house in the middle of the night and puked on the lawn. I was lucky that my actions didn’t end my parents’ marriage. But somehow, they managed to hold on to each other even when I tested every last nerve they had.
But while Dad and I had moved here for his new job, she’d stayed back home in Alabama.
She claimed it was because she loved our house too much to leave it, that the church wouldn’t be able to go on without her, that the yoga studios wouldn’t be the same in New England.
I knew it was because she was happy for the chance to get away from me.
Dad, on the other hand, had never lost hope. He’d never lost faith in me. And somehow, that was worse.
I’d never forget the night my father broke down in tears at my feet, begging me to get straight, to go to college, to find a will to live again.
“I can’t lose you, too.”
Those words would haunt me for the rest of my life.
And so here I was, a sports medicine major who only drank a glass or two of wine a week, trying to do whatever it was that would make him happy. Because there wasn’t a shot in hell that I’d ever find that state of being again.
The least I could do with my miserable life was make his a little less hard to bear.
Rock music started blasting from Mary’s room as I got to unpacking, pulling out a hollow golden Buddha statue I’d picked up at an estate sale a few years ago and setting it on the floor next to my bedside table. Piece by piece, I filled my new bedroom with the vases and paintings and stained mirrors and tchotchkes and whatever else I’d thrifted over the years. The space became more and more eclectic as I did so, and each new addition made me feel a little less dead inside.
I liked surrounding myself with other peoples’ stories, liked the thought of having a piece of them in my own life — as if strangers could feel a little less lonely with just a simple connection like an old, chipped teacup.
Eventually, I came back to the picture of me and Abby, and I carefully sat it on my desk before my eyes caught on someone in the yard of the house across the street.
The house itself looked as decrepit as the one we were living in, the paint peeling and roof in desperate need of new shingles. The porch was littered with beer cans and bottles, and there was a massive kid passed out on the porch swing with one leg hanging off it holding him steady.
But that wasn’t what held my attention.
From downstairs, I could only see the front of the house, as well as the old half-rotted fence that surrounded the side yard and wrapped around the back. But up here in my room, I could see over the fence completely.
And it was the boy in the back yard I couldn’t look away from.
I’ll admit, boy seemed like the wrong term to describe him. He was shirtless, his thick, ebbing muscles gleaming in the sunlight as he ripped weeds from a bed of flowers. Sweat ran along his chiseled back as he did, and when he sat back on his heels to wipe his forehead with the back of his forearm, I frowned.
Holden Moore.
I recognized him instantly. It was impossible for anyone not to know who the NBU quarterback was. And given that I’d studied under our athletic trainers over summer training and watched them work on his shoulder, wrap his ankle before every practice, and torture him with a combination of ice baths and deep tissue work each week — I’d have known his body anywhere.