Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
I enter the house, rolling my shoulders backward, then switching it up and giving them a good rotation in the other direction. I gyrate my head like there’s a club beat playing in my living room, but only until it cracks, and then I go the other direction. I need to get my ass back to the gym. And probably to a chiropractor.
Err, not for my ass. My neck.
And perhaps a few other uncooperative body parts.
Anyway…
I turn the corner and come face to face with a wall in my living room.
No, it’s not a wall. It’s a…a…holy gander goose legs, what on earth is a cardboard castle doing taking up almost the entire room? The couch has been shoved back against the wall, and since my house is eighty percent literal emptiness, it has freed up a fuck of a lot of space.
I was gearing up for a conversation that I still have no idea how to have. I wasn’t prepared for a box castle on a scale of… adult fun.
“Well, this is unexpected,” I mumble to myself.
“Surprise!” The front door, or drawbridge moat thing—how can you tell I never had a castle as a kid and know shit nothing about them—lowers down, and Amalphia crawls out. She stays on her knees and throws her arms wide open at either side. She’s beaming, her eyes glowing, looking so pretty that my body doesn’t even know which organ to pump blood to first.
Kidding. Of course it’s my cock.
Yes, I’m that guy who pops a boner for my son’s ex-girlfriend when she tumbles out of a giant homemade castle.
I might need more help than I thought.
Also, she’s on her knees, and that very sight is doing unexpected things to me. I didn’t even know I had a kink like that, but apparently, all things Amalphia are kinks for me, including things like hugs, foot baths, and cardboard.
I guess I’m standing here for a few more seconds than is duly appropriate to be in favor of being surprised because Amalphia’s face falls, and my stomach echoes her reaction.
“You don’t like it,” she states flatly. She jumps up in a valiant effort to be cool about her crushing disappointment and even tries to smile. “That’s okay. It wasn’t supposed to be a serious surprise. I’ll get it cleaned up and get dinner made and—”
“No.”
“Okay, your face is saying no, as in you’re seriously pissed, and your voice is pretty much going in the same direction, but your left eye is twitching, which means you’re either annoyed or amused. And now your lip is doing this knee-jerk thing, or err, lip-jerk thing and spasm-ish reaction, which means you’re getting more annoyed by the second, or you’re making peace with this, and… I’ll just stop now and let you tell me because you’re a grown man and you’re fully capable of doing just that.” She cups her hands and mimes the action of putting on headphones. “Listening ears on now. And…go.”
She’s so sweet and earnest, and all I can do is stand here, not breathing, not doing anything at all. And certainly not talking.
Her face falls even further. If it had fallen before, it’s crumpled now. And I did that. I made her think this whole thing that hasn’t happened yet has already gone south.
“I…” Great. One word. Excellent start. “I…I…like it.”
I like her bright yellow peplum dress with the swingy skirt and all the flowers smattered all over it. I also like her flashy pink sequin leggings and her bright green flip-flops. The floral scarf in her hair with the huge green and purple flowers really brings it all together. It’s bright. It’s wild. It’s unique. It’s so definitely her.
I try to tell her just how beautiful she is and how much I appreciate her being unafraid to do her, but I can’t make my tongue work.
In my defense, maybe being one hundred percent awkward is one hundred percent on the BINGO card for how to go about having a conversation on how to thrust your already bruised, weary heart into the high-risk, shark-infested waters of letting another person have complete control over being able to utterly crush you.
I know Amalphia would never do that. I know it. But muscle memory is a hard thing to just delete, and twenty-one years of history and lessons in keeping yourself locked down, walled up, and safe is hard to hit the backspace key on.
This is the full card blackout, and the free space is probably the person you’ve unexpectedly fallen for while trying not to fall at all, and it is so wildly inappropriate that it doesn’t even measure on the charts.
That said, I need to pull my head out of my ass. None of this is Amalphia’s fault.
For the love of cardboard awesomeness, she made me a box fort.