Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
“Gross.”
“And she hated when Greta and I became real friends.”
“So I guess you won’t be grabbing that coffee anytime soon?”
“As the kids say, el oh el,” Ash said with totally flat affect.
“Yeah, she clearly hated me for facilitating Greta’s departure.”
“I’m sure.” Ash smiled and went back to flipping through Truman’s bullet journal.
“I am too,” Truman blurted out.
“Are too what?” Ash murmured absently.
“Gay?”
Truman hadn’t meant it to come out as a question.
Ash looked up from the notebook, eyes mesmeric. “I know,” he said softly.
Truman tried to think of some joke to break the tension, but he couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t sound like a bad stereotype.
“Greta told me about why you wanted to get out of New Orleans. I hope you don’t mind. She didn’t know we’d ever meet.”
“Oh. No, it’s fine.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“Seriously, I don’t care. Not like I’m in the closet.”
“I meant about your boyfriend. What was his name? It was something really douchey.”
Truman snorted. “Guy.”
“Guy, right. Anyway, it really sucks that he did that to you. And to his partner.”
“Yeah.”
“Can I ask you something?” Ash said after an awkward pause.
Truman nodded.
“Do you wish you’d never been with him? Do you wish you’d made a different choice from the beginning?”
Truman considered the good times they’d had together. The things he’d learned from conversations with Guy. The places they’d been. There had been beautiful, fascinating, joyful moments.
Hell, he’d thought he loved Guy. But now, looking back, the beautiful, fascinating, and joyful times were only a handful of marbles dropped into an empty jar. If the relationship was a spreadsheet, there were only a few scattered entries in the positive columns and box after box of red. Where, precisely, had he come up with the sum of love?
But then he thought of the men he’d dated before Guy. They were looking better just at the moment, by virtue of not possessing entire secret families (at least as far as Truman was aware), but not by much. And all of them had ended leaving Truman wondering what he’d seen in them to begin with.
“I feel like I’m supposed to be like, no, I don’t regret it because I learned x, y, and z important lessons that will change the way I relate to people in the future or whatever. But honestly? Yeah. I regret it. I wish I hadn’t wasted the last year of my life on someone who turned out to be a shitty person.”
Ash nodded.
“But, that said, there’s no point in regretting it really, right? Because it’s over and I made the choices I made and I can’t change it.”
“Right. Yeah. You can’t change it.”
The bitterness in Ash’s voice gave Truman pause.
“Is there a choice you wish you’d made differently?”
Ash ran a rough fingertip over the velvet edge of a white rose. “No, I guess not. Sometimes stuff just doesn’t…turn out how you imagine.”
Before Truman could respond with a hearty “Ain’t it the truth,” Ash said, “Well, it’s getting near closing time, so…”
It was a polite dismissal, and Truman was shocked to realize that, one, he’d spent the whole day at Thorn with Ash, and, two, he was disappointed to leave.
“Oh, right, sure. I’ll just get these pictures uploaded and then we can talk pricing and delivery and everything.”
He gathered his laptop and journal and bundled it and his camera into his bag. He was all ready to head home. Alone. He dawdled with the zipper of his coat for a moment, trying to figure out if it was pushy to ask if Ash wanted to hang out again.
“Maybe…maybe tomorrow. If you’re free, I mean. You could come back.”
Relief slid through Truman’s veins like a drug. He let the smile that threatened peek through, and Ash blinked like he was surprised at himself.
“Yeah. Yeah, I could probably do that.”
The warmth of Ash’s parting smile stayed banked in Truman’s chest even as he walked home in the cold.
A Message from Ramona
RAMONA to TRUMAN CUTIE
You make the life you want one choice at a time!
TRUMAN to RAMONA WILDE (who works at Pen Man Ship)
You’re v cryptic lately.
RAMONA to TRUMAN CUTIE
Things are only cryptic until you know what they mean :D
TRUMAN to RAMONA WILDE (who works at Pen Man Ship)
I know what cryptic means lol what are you talking about?
Ramona?
Ramona.
-__-
RAMONA to TRUMAN CUTIE
*GIF of an octopus*
Chapter 11
Truman
The truth of Truman’s work was that, thanks to some spreadsheet hacks he’d created, he could do his nine-to-five workload in about four hours a day, except during tax season, so he rose early, made coffee, and banged out the day’s work well before noon.
Not wanting to seem overeager, he headed to the Queen Bee before going to Thorn. He spent a pleasant half hour or so browsing the shelves, reading bits of this and that, before Maisey bustled in, arms full of packages. Truman rushed to grab a box that was teetering dangerously and slid it onto the counter.