Total pages in book: 260
Estimated words: 245483 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1227(@200wpm)___ 982(@250wpm)___ 818(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 245483 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1227(@200wpm)___ 982(@250wpm)___ 818(@300wpm)
I pull my legs into my chest, feeling my back stretch as I close my eyes. “In a castle in Ireland,” I say jokingly with a smile. Deep down my heart hurts because I know what I really think. Back home with my family. But I’m not allowed to talk about that. Jay doesn’t like it when I bring them up.
“Ireland?” he asks with curiosity. I shrug my shoulders and let out a small sigh.
“There’s a picture from one of my books at home. It’s a room in a castle.” I feel my cheeks heat with embarrassment as I remember it’s from a fairytale. I won’t tell him that. I’m already younger than Jay. I don’t want him to think of me like I’m a little kid although that’s exactly how he sees me.
“I thought you’d say Disneyland,” he says and laughs at me, rolling onto his back and passing the ball back and forth between his hands. It’s odd to see anything at all in the room. The ball moves from palm to palm rhythmically and I see a smile grow on the boy’s face. He looks so young, smiling as he lies on the ground, fiddling with a baseball.
It was a present, he told me, a present for being good.
I sit up on the floor, my palm brushing against the concrete that’s all too familiar. “Do you think he’ll let us go outside and play with it?” I ask him.
He stops his wrist in mid-motion, gripping the ball tightly in his right hand and almost dropping it.
“There is no outside, little bird,” he says and then looks up at me, a small smile trying to curl his lips up, but it’s so sad. I swallow the lump in my throat as he adds, “But we can pretend to be anywhere.”
Although my heart breaks and tears fill my eyes, Jay sits up and hands me the ball, forcing it into my hand and sitting cross-legged across from me.
“Tell me about your room, Robin. I want to know all about it.”
* * *
***
* * *
My eyes glide across the room, taking in every inch of it. Again, the ceilings are so high up. Higher than I realized at first, and the cream ceiling is fitted with dark wood beams that make my eyes travel up. A thin white chandelier with small crystals and lights that look like candles brightens the room. There are two smaller ones on either side of the bed which sits on the far end of the room along the wall. The headboard is the same dark wood as the beams, and it travels up the height of the wall.
It’s hard edges and darkness are at complete odds with the bed itself, which is plush and littered with small cream pillows decorated with crystals and embroidery that my fingers long to touch.
“I made it for you,” Jay says softly and I turn to him, not knowing what to say.
“Everything you need is here. I brought what you needed from your old place, too.”
Your old place. The words make a chill travel down my spine, but I ignore it, letting my body move through the room, opening the drawers to the armoire and seeing my own things alongside others Jay’s bought for me.
“I had to take your phone though and your computer, for obvious reasons.”
“People will start to question-” I start to tell him, but he cuts me off.
“I’ve taken care of it.” He sets down the object he’s been playing with in his hands and its only then that I see what it is. It’s a wooden owl, a trinket I got from my mom back in college. I watch him place it back on the dresser, exactly where it sat on my dresser at home. “If they text you, they’ll get a message about you being on vacation and in an area with little reception. An email will get them the same thing.”
“Take a look around, Robin. This is your new home, at least for a little while.” My blood chills as he adds, “Your sabbatical is for eight weeks.” I start to think about everyone who might call. My parents, maybe. My mom calls once a month. Other than her, possibly Karen. But this wouldn’t be the first time I ghosted. They won’t stop trying though. They’ll come for me. The thought makes me tear my eyes away from Jay. I grip the bedpost as I try to calm myself.
I’m staying. I’ve already decided, and this changes nothing. I swallow the fears and take in the rest of the room, very aware of how Jay’s eyes follow me.
My feet sink into the woven cream carpet as I walk toward the far wall.
There are curved shutters on the wall painted in a pale blue. Two sets of them that are shut and line up perfectly to form the shape of a leaf, the tips meeting in the very center.