Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 69018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear nervously. “We don’t have to—”
His fingers fly to the bridge of his nose, and he starts doing the comfort breathing thing. The in through the nose twice and out through the mouth, long and steady.
Despair flickers plainly across his face. Rejection. Pain.
I know what it’s like to feel like that on the inside. So flawed and broken. I also know how hard it is to crawl out of that hole and find a healthy way to live with grief, or at least as healthy as possible. When I met Peach Lips, I felt that hole start to close in. It was like building a sandcastle and digging deep, down into wet sand. It’s packed, so it stays, but all the stuff you dug out is all over the sides. Slowly, with every passing day, that hole dried out, and the sand started collapsing back in.
“Thorn?” His hand is at his side, but I step forward and grasp it. I thread my fingers through his, which are cold and unresponsive, and make it clear that I’m not letting go.
I walked over here. It’s a wonder that he only lives two streets away from me now. His trailer truly is gutted, but at the same time, it’s not empty. There is wood and sawhorses all over his little rental yard site. There are also tools in here. An air compressor, extension cords, battery-operated drills, saws, impacts, nail guns, and a collection of hammers, wrenches, and screwdrivers. I notice he’s made a few wooden benches—identical cones that will sit across from each other with a table in between. He’s assembled some cabinets and started to tack them up to the fresh plywood inside. A brand new RV-sized oven and fridge sit in boxes off to the side.
I step in and close the door behind me. Way at the far end, I can see a platform bed with a new mattress and a black sleeping bag with a pillow. The most vital thing—a new AC unit—is humming away in the back. With the Arizona heat, it would otherwise be unbearable in here.
“Hey.” I squeeze his hand, which forces him to look at me. I can see now that his fines over text were anything but. “Do you want to talk about it?” What a stupid question to ask the strong, silent, introverted type. “You probably don’t, but if you do, I’m here. I want to listen.” I want to give him comfort. I want to hurt with him and try to figure out a way to laugh and smile again. I want him to know it’s okay to be exactly who he is.
My god, I am so falling.
He pinches the bridge of his nose with the hand I’m not holding. “I don’t know what I thought. That I could just come back into their lives, and they’d welcome me back? Make room for me?”
Anger and sadness choke me for half a minute before I lead him over to one of those wooden benches. I make him sit. He doesn’t have his fridge working yet, but I do notice a plug-in cooler a few feet away. I pop it open and get out a bottle of water. There are other things in there. Vegetables, cheese, and meat, with ice surrounding all of it. The bottle of water is so cold that it instantly starts sweating and dripping condensation.
Thorn takes it and downs most of it. I sit down across from him and try not to look at him like I’m prying deep down inside him. I want him to talk to me because he wants to, not because I’m X-ray-visioning the crap out of him.
“My youngest brother is getting married. They’ve been engaged for months, but no one told me.”
Ouch.
I set my hand on his knee. “No excuses. That’s so shitty, and I’m so sorry. Maybe he just didn’t know what to say.”
“Yeah.” He drains the other half of the bottle and sets it aside. “Probably. I’m like a stranger now. I left when they were both so young, and over the years, they’ve only seen me a few times. My mom had no idea what to say. I don’t think it was supposed to come out the way it did. We were having a family brunch in this fancy restaurant I chose, which was awkward as all fuck already because I could tell they didn’t like it. I should have picked some family spots or asked them where they liked to go. Anyway, after the wedding confession, I got even more nervous and offered to pay for everything, which made everyone go all silent and weird. I don’t even know why I said it. It was the wrong thing to say. I just…panicked.”
“It’s probably pretty hard for them to view you as the same person you were before. You’re older now. You were doing this mystery job for years, and now you own this massive company and have all this money. You’re basically untouchable. They won’t be able to realize that you’re still shy and awkward because the truth is, you’re not the person you were when you left. You’ve grown so much.”