Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Me.
Not us.
Me.
I wasn’t sure if he’d just said that because he was speaking to me, or if that was what Nino had said. I found it mattered way more than it should have, too. That it was personal. About me. About, maybe, his feelings for me.
“Are you okay, my lovely?” my mother asked when I moved into the kitchen toward the end of the day for us, and plopped down on a chair, watching her put batter into muffin tins. She wouldn’t bake them until morning, but she seemed to be trying to get more prep work done in the lulls of the afternoons these days. Likely because she couldn’t count on as much of my help as usual.
A stab of guilt—useless, but undeniable—seared through me, knowing I was barely going at a third of my full capacity, but also knowing it would do neither of us any good if I overdid it, hurt myself worse, and would guarantee a longer recovery time.
“Yeah. I guess I’m just not used to it being so busy,” I told her, fiddling with a failed puff pastry my mother had attempted. Temperamental things, puff pastries as she would say. “It’s good, but tiring.”
“And you’re sure this has nothing to do with the fact that this is the first day in several days that you have not seen a certain someone?” she asked, shooting a look over her shoulder at me.
Moms.
They knew everything, it seemed.
“Okay, my sweet girl,” she said, wiping her hands on a rag, then going toward her kettle, and pouring us some tea.
She brought them over with a plate of soft double chocolate chunk cookies that weren’t on our menu, so I figured it was a treat she’d prepared for me. They were the ‘pick-me-up’ treat she always made for me when I was feeling low.
There are a few fundamental truths to the universe, my girl. The sun will always rise, even over a bad mood. Exercise always makes you feel more sane. And chocolate soothes the soul.
“I made the batter when I saw that handsome man come in here to discuss the security system instead of Nino himself,” she told me.
“Mom…” I said, shaking my head, but I was already reaching for one of the cookies. Still warm. Like she’d timed it perfectly.
“Oh, Savannah,” she sighed, shaking her head at me. “Do you really think I didn’t feel the air sizzle around you two? Something is going on there, whether you want to admit that to your dear old mom or not.”
“You’re not old,” I objected. And it was true. I mean, she’d gotten pregnant with me when she was barely twenty. We’d practically grown up together.
“Do you remember when you were seventeen, and you went with that sweet boy to a fall festival?” she asked. “And you came home and I knew?” she asked.
Oh, my losing my v-card story.
My mom, who fully believed that virginity as it was known in today’s society was a social construct, had somehow seen or felt or whatever the change in me that night. Despite it not being the first time I was out late with a boy.
“We didn’t have sex,” I told her. Waving down at my body, I added, “It wouldn’t really be fun when I’m like this.”
“There are many kinds of sex,” she said, picking up her own cookie, bending a piece off of it, and popping it into her mouth, eyes knowing.
“Fine. Things have… been a little steamy. But…”
“But?” she prompted. “Come on, baby, who do you know who has more knowledge into the ways of men?” she asked.
“Good point,” I agreed, shoving half a cookie in my mouth and chewing, trying to find a way to phrase it that would make sense to anyone but me. “But then he acts like nothing at all has happened,” I told her.
“In a ‘men don’t always feel emotionally attached with sex’ kind of way?” she asked.
“No. It’s different. I don’t know. I don’t understand it. I guess that’s why it is driving me so crazy. The thing that is so strange is that he has taken such good care of me. It feels off that he would do that, then act like something more just… didn’t happen.”
“Hmm,” she said, picking up her tea, cradling it, but not taking a sip as she thought back. “Perhaps he is just biding his time until you heal? Sensing, like you do, that sex wouldn’t be all that it could be right now?” she suggested, then, dead serious, she added, “Or maybe he is insecure about a micro-penis.”
“Mom!” I said, half choking on my tea as I tried to sip some.
“What? They exist!”
“I know they exist. I mean, in theory, not practice. Wait,” I said, knowing that look in her eye. “Do you know? In practice?”
“Let’s just say that if a man is skilled and generous in other areas, that any sort of penis situation can be handled.”