Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 117820 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 589(@200wpm)___ 471(@250wpm)___ 393(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117820 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 589(@200wpm)___ 471(@250wpm)___ 393(@300wpm)
Mee-maw isn’t here so I sneaked him in and I’m glad of it. He’s so handsome and with each passing week he just gets even more handsome. His beard is growing just enough to make him look way more man than teenage boy. His voice is deeper now too, gruffer than it ever was. People say you can’t tell changes like that in a person you’re around every day but I’m so hyperaware of Kane Jessop that I notice everything.
Sensing my sadness, he shuffles up my bed after slamming my journal closed, and opens his arm for me to lay beside him and rest my head on his chest. He kisses my hair and tickles my arm making me relax deeper into him.
“Love you enough to fill the gap he’s leavin’,” he whispers against my hair and my heart breaks and mends in totally different ways. “He’ll snap out of it and get his life together.”
“Will he?”
“Promise you he will, you’ll see.”
I kiss his throat and place my forehead against the shiny mark my Chapstick made. “Love you too, Kane.”
“Then let’s get the fuck outta here.”
“And go where?”
He starts to sit up, forcing me to move with him. “Fuck it, who cares? Let’s go for a ride until we run out of gas.”
Giggling gently, I stand and hop on his back when he offers me another kind of ride. I cling to him like a monkey, laughing and squealing when he carries me down the stairs like I weigh nothing. The asshole sways a bit too, making me panic but he rights us and carries me out of the house and all the way to his Challenger.
“I forgot my shoes,” I whisper when he drops me by the sexy vehicle and the dry road feels rough under my feet. He races back to get them which makes me laugh harder and we make out for a while before driving into the night with the music playing full blast.
Wouldn’t it be magical if this was the end of our story, like in so many books, and maybe we’d fast forward to thirty years from now, watching our kids get married or some mushy loved up tale like that. But in real life there are no epilogues, only pain. So much pain.
I grip the basin and heave. I can’t breathe through it; I can’t do anything but choke on the violent wave of vomit that is tearing its way out of my body.
I’ve been feeling sick a lot lately but not like this. This is hell and it hasn’t stopped for three days. I keep telling everyone and myself that it’s a bug but it’s not. I just know it.
“You’re pregnant,” my brother says while leaning against the door jamb. He’s looking a lot better today which is a relief. Since he threw that shoe at me a week ago we haven’t hardly looked at each other. “Don’t take a genius to work it out. You been sick until after noon every day.”
All I can do is vomit harder. I don’t want to be pregnant. Kane and I are making plans to move in together in Austin while I go to college. We’re figuring everything out and a baby just doesn’t fit into that plan. I don’t know how to look after a baby. I don’t think I’ve ever even held a baby.
“Don’t tell anyone,” I beg, taking the wet face cloth he hands to me.
“Duh.” He frowns at me, looking every bit the concerned brother I remember him to be. “You okay?”
“No.” I lean back against the bath.
“You gotta try and rein it in, if I figured it out, Mee-maw will and then you’ll be up shit creek without a paddle. She’ll probably dose your food with an abortion pill or somethin’, ain’t no way another of her kids is getting knocked up to a lowlife.”
“Kane is not a lowlife.”
“I know that, but she don’t, she hates him.” He has a point, a strong one. “You gonna tell him?”
I shake my head, panicking deep down that he might leave me, or hate me, or take my choice away completely. “Not until I know what to do.”
“Shit thing that, keeping a baby from its daddy.”
I glower at him. “Fuck off Matthew, we don’t even know that’s what it is yet. I need to do a test first.”
“Good luck gettin’ one of those from the pharmacy without tongues wagging.”
He makes another great point. I chew on my lip and climb shakily to my feet. He watches as I brush my teeth and spray the small bathroom to get rid of the vomit smell.
“Are we friends again now?” I ask him, not making eye contact because I don’t think I can handle what I see there.
He walks away, letting me know he hasn’t forgiven me for the shit I didn’t even do. I let him go because there’s no use fighting with him right now. His mind is made and that’s his problem, not mine. The front door to the house slams less than a minute later and I finish getting ready for church.