Total pages in book: 188
Estimated words: 179812 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 899(@200wpm)___ 719(@250wpm)___ 599(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 179812 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 899(@200wpm)___ 719(@250wpm)___ 599(@300wpm)
Like I loved so many things about him. Like I loved him.
I did, didn’t I? I do. I mean, me realizing it at this point, after years and years of watching him from afar, is a little ridiculous. It’s obvious that I love him. It’s obvious that I loved him from the first moment I saw him but it’s also so complicated, like everything else about him. Because watching him from afar is so different than actually getting to know him. Imagining everything he endured growing up and how he came out of those hardships is so different than meeting the man shaped by those tragedies.
I guess I never took that into account, the effects of those tragedies. I always admired him so much for his strength, his tenacity that I never really stopped to think what it cost him to be that strong. Strength always has a price, doesn’t it? I should know that better than anyone. Being strong chips away at you and it turns you into something different. In my case, it turned me into someone with no identity outside of my sister, no dreams of my own, no ambitions, just a driving need to protect her. In his case, he became emotionally handicapped, a toxic viper who bites at the slightest provocation and would do anything for his family.
So no, it’s not obvious that I loved him since the moment I saw him. Maybe I loved the idea of him, the fairytale of him. But now I love the man behind it. I love his qualities. I love his flaws. I love his jagged edges that scrape like teeth and cut like knife. I love his soft parts too, the parts that took care of me, made me realize I could be worthy of someone’s care too. The parts that made me feel so safe, safer than I’ve ever felt before.
But that’s not the point. The point is, he came prepared, or rather he came prepared too. In the sense that I had an overnight bag and he had leather shoes with pointed toes. And now every time I see shoes like that, black and leather, I freeze for a second.
I freeze thinking it may be the same shoes. The ones that…
“Hey, you okay?”
I turn away from the coffee machine and toward the voice—Joe’s—and make sure to plaster a smile on my face. I also make sure to carefully set down the coffee I just made on the counter before plucking a lid from the stack and putting it on. I slide it over to the take-out counter and call out the name on the label before answering Joe’s question. “Hey, yeah. Yes, just thinking about stuff.”
I’m at my shift at the coffee shop, but am about to get off in a few minutes. So I start wiping down the counters and putting things back in their places before the next person comes on. I also do it so I don’t have to talk to Joe and lie to him about how fine I am.
He runs his eyes over my features, and once again I make sure to school them and look really busy so he doesn’t detect I’m lying. “Okay. Care to share?”
I throw him a casual shrug. “I’m still trying to convince Snow to look at colleges and she’s still hellbent on not.”
At least it’s the truth. She still hasn’t budged on the whole college thing. In fact, to argue with me, she printed out brochures for all the dance programs she thought would be perfect for me. And every time I bring up the topic of her going, she thrusts them toward me with raised eyebrows. I love my sister but she’s a pain in the ass. Because every time she shows me these things, she makes me want. She makes me wish for things that could never be mine. College, options, adventures.
“She doesn’t want to leave her sister,” he says, smiling and thankfully breaking my thoughts. “Can’t fault her for that.”
My response is to give him another smile. Mostly because a, I know he’s trying to flirt with me and b, these days I can’t help but notice that all he ever does is flirt with me, and instead of looking at my face, his eyes have a tendency of wandering lower, to my chest area. I don’t know why I never noticed that about him, and now that I do, I can’t stop.
But more than that, it makes me ache in the center of my chest. Because I know why I’ve started to notice these things. Things like men sometimes look at me longer than necessary, or why sometimes they’re either too nice to me to get me to smile at them, or too rude so they can get a reaction out of me. I’ve always been so preoccupied with other things—my home life, my sister, trying to make ends meet, and so on—that it never really registered until now.