Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 44725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 224(@200wpm)___ 179(@250wpm)___ 149(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 224(@200wpm)___ 179(@250wpm)___ 149(@300wpm)
This is getting into dangerous territory—not because he means anything romantic by these words, but because he’s teasing places I need to shut down. I grit my teeth when I realize I’m about to bite my lip for the second time in my life. He’s turning me into a proper goofball, but I can’t help it.
You don’t know anything about my talent.
Then send me your work. Let me see if your writing is as sassy as you are.
I’ve never been called sassy before. Maybe I’m just wondering how you can be so sure.
It was earlier when you got—brace yourself—sassy about your writing.
Just because I got passionate—not sassy—doesn’t mean I’ve got talent. Maybe I’m just a very deluded, angry person.
You’ve just made me almost do something I’ve never done before.
Oh, what’s that?
Type LOL.
My smile doesn’t care about the need to restrain these feelings. It doesn’t give a damn that texting Jaxson is the last thing I should do.
Across the hall, I hear Mom’s bedroom door open. Her footsteps creak across the floorboards, pausing outside my room. I imagine her kicking the door open, rushing in here.
“What do you think you’re doing? He was my man. I only let him go because it would be a betrayal to your dad, but I always loved him.”
Something new occurs to me. How have I never thought of this before? It’s painful, but I can’t deny the thought. What if Mom and Jaxson flirted, kissed, or slept together before Dad died overseas? What if Mom gets cagey because of the guilt she feels?
Before I can text Jaxson back, a knock comes at my door.
“Zoey,” Mom whispers. “Are you asleep?”
She knocks gently again. I know what’s happened. It’s the same thing that’s happened several times over the years. Mom had a nightmare about Dad and wants me to comfort her. Shamefully, I think about pretending to be asleep. If I don’t respond, she’ll leave, but I can’t ignore the agony in her voice.
I lock my phone, place it facedown, then click the side button, which turns it completely silent.
“I’m awake, Mom.”
She pushes the door open. She’s thinner than me and looks even more so in her baggy nightgown. Her cheeks seem gaunt as she crosses the room into a patch of moonlight. Her eyes are full of agony. Her short brown bob is damp with sweat.
I stand and pull her into my arms.
“It’s okay, Mom.”
My words are a trigger, causing her to deflate into sobs. She claws onto my back as she cries herself out, then sits on the edge of my bed. I sit next to her.
“It’s not fair, me leaning on you,” she murmurs. “I’m supposed to be the strong one.”
“We both miss him.”
I wipe a tear from my cheek. I always cry when Mom does, both of us sinking into memories of Dad, but these tears have an extra edge. They come from more than grief.
“You haven’t had a nightmare about it in a while,” I murmur, wondering if it has anything to do with Jaxson. I don’t have to wonder for long.
“I think it was seeing him.”
She puts disgust into the word him, and I glance at my phone, wanting to check it, knowing I shouldn’t.
I say nothing. Mom never talks about Jaxson. I can’t risk breaking the spell.
“It brought it all back. The weeks and months and years after your dad passed.”
“When Jaxson used to come by,” I say softly after a long pause.
Mom nods.
“I’m sorry for calling him. I was worried about Axel.”
“Axel is an idiot,” Mom says, “but he’s not dangerous.”
“Still, it worries me having him show up at the house and at your work.”
“I won’t forget my cell phone again. You shouldn’t worry so much.”
“That’s what Dad used to say.”
Mom softens, pulling me into a hug now. We embrace for a long time as I wait for more morsels about Jaxson, but Mom offers nothing, and I don’t want to press too hard.
Once she’s gone—get some sleep, Zoey—I pick up my phone again. I probably shouldn’t do it this eagerly, this desperately, but I miss Jaxson. I miss him after only talking to him for a little while via text.
I’m too old for LOLs, his text reads, but there’s something funny about “very deluded, angry person.”
You’re not old. You’re forty.
When I was twenty, forty seemed ancient, he replies.
Of course, he wasn’t waiting up just to receive my reply. As I comforted Mom, Jaxson wasn’t hungrily staring at his phone, thinking of me, needing more conversation, more contact between us—words that will one day become physical touching. Nope, no way.
It doesn’t seem ancient to me, I text quickly. Anyway, you’re not an old forty.
I didn’t realize there were degrees of forty, he replies.
There are…
I stare at my unsent message. Is he going to find this weird, me insisting so stubbornly that he’s not old? He can’t think of himself in that way, not if anything’s ever going to happen between us.