Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 72853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
But.
But it’s a brand new morning.
I get out of a king-sized bed that is about as comfortable as the couches downstairs, which is to say, it feels like it’s a sheet of super soft fabric over total concrete. Oddly enough, nothing hurts. Not my shoulders, my back, or my neck. That’s probably because the feather pillows make up for what the bed is obviously trying to perform in good posture miracles. The sheets were so soft that they felt impossible. Like they came straight from clouds or from a spider’s arse. I suppose they aren’t silk, but if they were, then they would come from a worm’s arse, so it’s not as far a stretch as you’d think.
The house is what most people would call minimalist. I call it cold and bare, but hey, it’s not mine. I’m just a guest here, and if Patrick likes the rooms spartan to the extreme, then all the power to him. He said he doesn’t, but who knows? He could be saying anything. I wouldn’t know. I don’t know the first thing about him.
I’m wearing my fluffiest pair of pink pajama bottoms and a black tank top. I brought Hilda One and Hilda Two with me, and now, they flip and snap as I walk to the huge set of windows. Yes, they do happen to be furry slides, and yes, I did name them.
The house is basically a series of cubes and wild slanted rooflines. And from here, I get a good look at the backyard. You can tell it was once glorious, but that was a hot minute ago, and now it’s just bleak. The only things living back there are weeds and a few trees that look like they’re barely hanging on. There are also no flowers. Just a lot of dead brown grass, dead twisted vines, dead brown branches, and dead brown other things.
Looking at the sad, sad backyard reminds me of how I feel inside right now. Bleak. Not good. There’s a decided lack of flowers blooming in my heart.
I fulfilled Jace’s last wishes, but no, as I didn’t do it the right way or in the right spirit, I was tormented by the dishonesty of it all night. I am not going to get more than this, but it is my choice where I go from here. I can wait out the two weeks like it’s the most unbearable time of my life, or I can try to get to know the sour crabapple who is my husband. I can shut myself off, and we can live in a world of silence before we go our separate ways and call it total incompatibility, or I can open myself up and fill these fourteen days with happiness and kindness.
I study Hilda One and Hilda Two. My toes stick out the front, nearly covered by all their fluttery purple furriness. They look like they want me to try.
Sometimes, people act like prickly pears, Aspen, because they’ve had a shit run of things. Sometimes, they’ve been seriously wounded on the inside. Sometimes, it’s a persona, but other times, it’s real because there’s been a decided lack of goodness.
“Umm,” I grunt. I know I’m carrying on a conversation with my slides here, but hey. It’s not like I’m going to confess to my parents or any of my friends that I just went across the country and married a total stranger. They’d lose their ever-loving minds and shit total bricks. Shitting bricks cannot be good for bowel health. Just saying. “He seems incredibly rich. He could buy goodness if he wanted it.”
That won’t make up for what he hasn’t had in the past.
“How do we even know that’s true? That’s just a thing I was thinking.”
Money can’t buy happiness.
“It can buy a heck of a lot of things that spark joy. It can take you to places where it’s easier to cultivate peace or whatever.”
Money can’t change the past.
My throat gets thick. “You’re right. Look at you. Smart slides. It can’t.”
I know what I said yesterday. And I know what we decided. But now I’m deciding that even though this marriage might not be real, I’m going to try. I’m not going to try to love Patrick in that way, but I think he does need some kind of loving, even if it’s just friendly. I need to honor the spirit of Jace’s wishes, and I can start there.
So after getting dressed and heading to the bathroom down the hall to brush my teeth and throw my hair into a braid to keep it from turning into a knotted mess throughout the day, I head down a staircase that looks like it’s made of concrete and engineered by the willpower of some very clever architect. Both those things are probably true, but it appears to be floating on air, which is incredibly unnerving.