Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 68309 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 342(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68309 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 342(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
“I will say it’s strange how much he wants to seal the deal. I had no idea he was talking four months from now.” Carly nibbles on the acrylic earpiece of her sunnies before setting them down and pacing the terra cotta tiles under the cabana roof. Her gaze is locked on the ground, the wheels in her head likely turning faster than she can keep up.
“See? It’s a red flag.”
“Absolutely it is.”
“He did say he’d wait though,” I add. “He said he’d wait as long as he had to. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m not in love with him.”
“Agree.”
“And you can’t force love.”
She stops pacing. “There’s got to be something in it for him. Something more than … you.”
“Like what?”
“He’s been spending a lot of time with Dad, right?” she asks.
“They golf and get drinks …”
“Maybe he’s trying to cook up some kind of business deal?” She’s pacing again.
“Dad deals in real estate. Grant knows nothing about any of that. In fact, I’m pretty sure I know more about it than he does.”
“Maybe he wants to learn from the best? Maybe he wants Dad to take him under his wing?”
I wave my hand. “Okay, let’s stop. I don’t like all this speculating. It’s not fair to him, especially when we have no proof of anything.”
Carly takes a seat in the lounger again, gathering the fabric of her sarong in her hands and kneading it between her spray-tanned fingers as she stares into the lush distance of her pristinely-landscaped backyard.
“Fine,” she says. “Let me do some digging. In the meantime … what are you going to do?”
“I leave for New York tomorrow and I’ll be gone a week. When I get back, we’ll have a week together, and then we’re supposed to fly back to New York that following weekend for his friend’s party …” I sigh. “Really want to meet this friend of his, too. It’s the man from the accident.”
She claps her thighs, defeated. “Maybe a week apart will give you some clarity, some real time to think this through so you’re not deciding your future from such an anxious place. When you get back, see if you still feel the same. And, hell, go to the party. Meet the guy. Who knows if you’ll ever get a chance to meet him again? It’s pretty amazing what you did, staying with him on the scene and everything. I don’t think most people would do that.”
“Okay, so I go to New York with Grant, meet his friend, and then, what … break up with him after?”
“If that’s how you still feel, then yes,” she says. “But I will say … many a long and successful marriage has been built on a loveless foundation. Sometimes knowing someone’s going to be an amazing father and dependable provider is enough. Besides, look at Rob and I. We were insane for each other in the beginning. Now we rarely sleep in the same bed unless he’s had too much whiskey and thinks he’s going to get his dick sucked. Sometimes I wish we had more of an understanding. Instead we’re just two frustrated jerks mourning the chemistry we used to have.”
On that note, remind me never to get married and definitely scratch having kids off my to-do list …
I rise. “I should probably get going. Have to leave for the airport at five AM, and I haven’t started packing.”
Carly pouts. “All right. My teenage terrorists are going to be home in about thirty minutes. I should probably start thinking about what I’m making for dinner or something …”
I love my sister and all of her quirks and imperfections, but she has got to be the most miserable stay-at-home wife and mother I’ve ever met in my life. Growing up, our mom made it look easy. She breezed through her sunshine-infused days and greeted us with a smile on her face and freshly-squeezed lemonade at three o’clock sharp every afternoon, her citrus-colored Pucci sarong trailing behind her.
Carly was definitely not cut from the same cloth as my mother.
But to be fair, the man she married is nothing like my father.
Not even close.
And they only got married because he got her pregnant their senior year of high school and his old-school parents freaked out and guilt tripped them into becoming insta-adults.
I wonder if she ever resents the path her life took. She always says her kids are her earth, moon, and stars—and I believe her. But I also know she doesn’t have anything else. The day the youngest one leaves the nest is going to be a day of reckoning for her, a day she’ll be forced to look in the mirror and see herself in a new light. She won’t be a PTA Mom or Cheer Club parent volunteer. She won’t be spending her days doing heaps of never-ending laundry or grocery shopping for a family of five. She’ll have no need for the extra-long suburbitank that hardly fits in their oversized garage.