Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 76592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Fuck this. I’ve done enough studying this weekend. Blake be damned.
I shove the iPad away, stand, and grab the wine bottle I left on the kitchen counter. The cork resists and then gives with a soft pop. I pour half a glass and carry it to the window. Outside, campus lights glimmer across the hills. Life goes on. People laugh, eat, fall in and out of love. The world doesn’t stop for my miniscule problems.
I sip slowly. It’s not very good.
The phone stays silent.
You know what? The sun hasn’t quite set yet, so I’ll just go to the bar early. Pregame my drink with Lance. Maybe a little extra booze in my system will loosen me up, make me a little more fun. Lance saved my freaking life. He doesn’t deserve to have me completely bum him out tonight.
But just one early drink at the bar, and then one drink once Lance gets there. I don’t want him to think he can take advantage of me.
Not that he would. He’s a nice guy.
I grab a light jacket and am about to head out the door…
Ugh. Maybe I’ll flake out on Lance again. It’s not like he isn’t used to it by now.
I stretch out on the couch, still wearing my jacket. The pizza box sits open on the coffee table like evidence. I pull a blanket over my legs, turn on the ceiling fan, and stare at the faint cracks in the plaster above me.
I trace one with my eyes until it blurs.
My mind drifts back to Henry’s hand sliding against my jaw, the way he said my name like a secret. I feel the ache of it in my chest, sharp and dull all at once.
My body remembers the warmth of his, the quiet after the fire, the sound of his heartbeat against my back.
I tell myself I’ll forget. I tell myself this is what moving on looks like.
And then I dream of him anyway.
Until I awake with a jerk.
My phone.
It’s buzzing again.
And this time it’s him.
Forty
Henry
“Hello,” Tabitha says into the phone.
“Hi, Tabs.”
“Hi, Henry.”
“I’m sorry it took me so long to call. I meant to call sooner, but—”
“You were talking to Francine,” she finishes for me.
I pause. I can almost hear her thinking, going through all the different options of who Francine might be.
“Yeah,” I say finally. “I was. For a while anyway. Then I had some thinking to do.”
She laughs once, sharp and too bright. “At least you’re honest.”
“Tabitha, it’s not what you think.”
“It never is, Henry.” She pauses a moment. “So tell me. No, let me guess. Francine’s what… Your accountant? A nun?”
I clear my throat. “Francine is my mother. My birth mother.”
Something clatters in my ear. She must have dropped her phone.
A few seconds later—
“I’m sorry. What?”
“My birth mother,” I say. “Didn’t Angie tell you that I’m only her half brother?”
Did she? It may not be anything Angie or my other siblings think about. I don’t think about it. Most of the time, anyway.
“Are you going to say anything?” I ask.
“Yeah. Sure. I thought…”
“I know what you thought, amber. You thought I had some other woman on the side.” I chuckle. “I can’t even handle you. How could I possibly handle two women?”
“I didn’t know what to think, Henry. I still don’t. You want a future, but you let me go. You let me go, let me believe…”
“I know. I’m a mess. But you already know all of that. I felt I had to answer her call. She’s never called me before. I thought something might be wrong.”
“All right, I guess I can—”
My phone interrupts with another call.
Francine?
She’s got to be kidding me.
“I’m sorry, I have another call,” I say.
“Okay.”
“I’ll call you back.”
“Don’t bother. Call back tomorrow. It’s late. I need to get to bed. Seminar starts early.”
The call ends with a click.
Have I screwed this up again?
God…
“Yeah?” I say to Francine, a little harsher than I mean to.
“Hey, sugar. I just wanted to apologize for the way I was earlier.”
“No worries. It’s not like I expected you to keep my first baby shoes or anything.”
“Actually, I did.”
Surprise whirls through me. “Say what?”
“I did keep your first shoe. Even had it bronzed.”
“Bronzed? I didn’t think anyone did that anymore.”
A pause, and then a light laugh. “It was your father’s idea. But I kept it. When I signed away my parental rights, I sent almost everything I had of yours to your father. But I kept that shoe. As a little memento. A reminder of the life I could have had, the one I threw away. Maybe I wanted something so I’d remember to never fuck myself over like that again.”
“Where is it now? The shoe, I mean.”
“In a box somewhere.”
“Oh.”
I try not to be disappointed that she didn’t say something like “displayed proudly on my mantel.”
“I was thinking,” she says, “that maybe I would like to meet you. But I can’t afford to make the trip to Colorado. But if you’re ever in Palm Springs…”