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)
We loop the block and head back. The house looks like itself—plain, square, exactly the size of the life we’re making, concise. Inside, he kicks off his boots and I do the same. He clicks off the porch light so the moths can regroup and make worse decisions somewhere else.
In the bedroom, I sit on the edge of the bed while he brushes his teeth. I stare at the notebook on the nightstand. A LIFE THAT CAN’T GET TOWED stares back in my own handwriting, and I am both the girl who wrote it and the woman who is going to live it.
He comes out, shirt off, jaw clean, eyes tired in a way that doesn’t scare me. I stand, intercept him, and press a kiss to his chest, right over the place that keeps me steady at night. He lays his palm between my shoulder blades for a second, there and gone, and something like gratitude arcs between us without needing a name.
We trade places and I scrub mint into my mouth and spit it out and think about all the words I wanted to say today and didn’t, all the words I said and wish I’d said better. When I come back he’s turned the bed down and left the lamp low. The room is easy the way it only gets when a day was hard and you didn’t lose it.
We slide in. He doesn’t reach for me, and I love him for it. I don’t make him wait long, though. I turn, tuck my face into the curve where his shoulder meets his chest, and let his arm come around me like it’s been doing since the first night.
“Thank you,” I say into his skin.
“For what.”
“For not making me smaller so I’d fit. For not wanting me to be a puppet. For helping me figure out the next thing and encouraging me to keep going.”
“Wouldn’t know how to make you anything but you,” he remarks. “Wouldn’t want to.”
He clicks the lamp off settling back into place. The room breathes dark. His hand finds my hair and starts that slow, absent rhythm my nervous system recognizes now. The restless part of him that rolled in the door tonight is quiet. The frantic part of me that thought I was unlovable is, for this minute, convinced otherwise.
“You’re wanted,” he whispers. “By me. Don’t forget that, Kristen.”
I hold it like a warm coin in a cold palm. It buys me sleep.
I don’t dream of Brian. I don’t dream of doors that won’t open or codes that change. I dream of a road that runs along water and the feeling of my body leaning into a curve with a partner who guides me but doesn’t demand from me.
Morning edges in the blinds at some point. The AC sighs. A bird tries a song and gives up. I wake before Kellum which is unusual and stay still because it feels like stealing something good to be awake and quiet while he sleeps. He looks different when he’s not holding the world up with his shoulders. Younger and older at once. Softer without being soft.
He cracks an eye and catches me staring. “What,” he rasps.
“Nothing,” I whisper, and decide on being up front. “Something true.”
He grunts a laugh. “Go.”
“I’m still jealous,” I admit, embarrassed and brave at once. “I don’t want to be. I don’t want to make you carry that. But I am. I’m working on it.”
He considers. “I can take it,” he states. “Just don’t feed it other people’s stories. I’ll always give you the truth even when it’s hard.”
I nod against him. “Okay.”
He tightens his arm and the day begins the way it ought to: with honesty and coffee and a plan, not certainty. We don’t have certainty. We have the next thing. The list says DMV in ugly letters because I’m still putting it off. The lines are simply out of control and I hate waiting when I could be working or spending time with Kellum.
At the shop door, he kisses my forehead and then my mouth, quick, and it still turns the whole day three shades brighter because I was not expecting that at all. “You’re wanted,” he reminds me on a whisper, “By me.” Then he leaves me to work.
At the spa, Trina raises an eyebrow. I mouth later and she nods, because women in rooms like this understand that later sometimes arrives exactly when it’s supposed to. Lana doesn’t come in today. If she does next week, I’ll look her in the eye and do my job. Her story with Kellum is hers and mine is something altogether my own.
The phone rings. “Good morning,” I say into the receiver, voice steady. “Ocean Blue Spa. This is Kristen. How can I help you today?”
A woman asks for a facial. I schedule it. The AC cuts on. The day unfolds, a series of small tasks that add up to a life, and when it’s time, the low hum of a motorcycle threads the spa music and my bones know it. I am learning to lean into everything life gives me.