Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
At checkout, the total looms. I peel off bills, aware of the way my hand shakes, aware of the way the cashier looks without looking, how her smile is the same one she gives to everyone — which is oddly comforting. When she hands me the receipt, it’s a small ceremony: you bought things and now they belong to you. No one else gets to say yes or no.
I sit in the SUV with the engine on, but in park, and the AC blowing through vents like an indulgence. I open the notebook and put Next Things at the top of the first page in block letters. Under it, begin.
Phone numbers (Trina, a reminder to ask for hers; anyone else? question mark).
Bank (figure out access, what do I have if anything left).
PO Box (find a damn address that isn’t his).
Job? (??).
Clothes (done).
Shoes(done).
My handwriting isn’t neat. I don’t care. The list looks like something with edges.
The new phone buzzes in my cup holder. A text balloon blooms from Kellum — Cell:You good?
I type: Yes. Target conquered. Got shoes. They don’t hurt. Might cry. I stare at it, then backspace the last two words and replace them with *:) *
He’s not a smiley face guy. I hit send anyway.
Three dots. Then he replies. Good. Eat something.
I stare at the screen. He doesn’t ask me to send a photo so he can approve what I bought. He doesn’t demand proof of location. He says eat like it’s a command my body has been waiting to obey.
I drive to a grocery store with fewer cars in the lot, go inside and buy a premade sandwich, bottled water, and an apple. The total is less than ten dollars. I carry the bag to the SUV and eat in the driver’s seat with the AC humming and a view of pine trees pressing together at the edge of the lot. The sandwich is turkey and white bread. It’s nothing and everything. I taste mustard and a calm washes over me. I’m doing the things.
After, I take the long way back, not because I’m stalling, but because the day is doing that shimmering late-afternoon thing where the light turns the world soft at the edges. The sky is a Carolina blue I used to ignore. Today, I notice. I crack the window. The smell of cut grass is a miracle.
My phone pings again. Trina this time: It’s Trina, Pretty Boy called gave me this number. Checking on you. You okay? she writes.
I think so, I type. He fed me. He gave me a phone. He told me to buy shoes. I’m figuring it out.
Her reply makes me laugh lightly. Sensational advice. If you didn’t know, he’s bossy. It helps.
It does, I admit.
She drops a heart, not the curling romantic kind, the solid one.
I send one back.
I think of calling… someone. But the Rolodex in my head flips and flips and finds blank cards. Friends I let drift because my orbit narrowed around Brian’s sun. Family buried in another state. A distant cousin who’d pick up the phone and offer sympathy without real meaning behind it.
The empty is honest. I write Make friends at the bottom of my list and feel ridiculous. Then I write Brian (wait for karma to do her best) next to it, and it’s less ridiculous. Underneath, almost as a joke, I write Kellum? and immediately scribble a question mark so big it nearly covers the bottom of the page.
On the way back to Kellum’s, I stop at a thrift store with a hand-painted sign out front. The inside smells like old books and dryer sheets. I find a denim jacket with the elbows worn soft and a small chip in the collar where someone’s dog probably loved it too hard. I slide it on and the mirror throws a different version of me back—less expensive, more real. The woman at the register wraps the jacket in tissue paper like it’s treasure and I could love her for that alone.
By the time I pull into Kellum’s drive, the day has slipped away and my belly is growling for dinner. I park where I think I should because it’s where he had the SUV before and bleep the locks because some habits survive are good to have, like locking a car.
Inside, the place smells faintly like garlic. He’s at the stove again, stirring something in a pot with the intensity of a master chef on some competitive cooking show.
“You cook all the time?” I ask, surprised that he is cooking again and didn’t just pick something up.
“I feed,” he shares without looking up. “Big difference.”
I set the bags on the chair, the new tote on the table. He turns, takes me in as if tallying. His eyes catch on the sneakers. He nods once. “Good choice.”