Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 106001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
She hums happily, and I wonder if she’s imagining the same thing—doing that together someday. “I’m a city girl at heart,” she says, shifting to her side, propping her head in her hand. “My mom said that about me.”
I scoot up in the bed. She doesn’t talk about her mother much. When she does, I want to listen. Intently. “When did she say that?”
Harlow takes a moment to answer, like she’s weighing what to say. Then she moves away, leans toward her nightstand, and grabs something from the lower shelf. A wooden box with an unlocked latch. She flips open the top. A stack of small envelopes sits inside. “She wrote me letters when I was a kid.”
“Did she send them to you?”
She shakes her head. “No. She’d leave them on my pillow actually. They were just little observations. Not even lessons. But thoughts about our day,” she says, running her fingers along the stack, curling at the corners from age. “Want to hear some?”
“I’d love to.”
She takes out a handful, flips through them carefully, then reads one about oranges, another about being a city girl, and one more about a day they spent at the library. My heart glows a little hearing these bits of unexpected advice, observations, or anecdotes.
Then, she puts the stack neatly in place, closes the box, and returns it to the nightstand. When she lies back down, there’s a contented look on her face.
“They make you feel connected to her,” I say.
“They do.”
“Thanks for sharing. I’m glad you have those,” I say.
“Me too,” she says, then she traces the artwork on my arm. “When did you have this done?”
I glance down at the vines that curl around a small stack of books. “After college. When I figured out what I wanted to do for a living.”
Her fingers journey down the curves of a black vine, then along the cover of one of the drawn books. “Because you love books?”
Makes sense why she’d assume that. I let others assume that. The full answer isn’t one I’ve ever given. It’s too revealing. “I’ve never told anyone before.”
She edges back a bit, like she’s giving me space to say something hard. Saying this is only hard because it makes me feel vulnerable, and I don’t like to feel that way. Vulnerability makes it hard to do my job.
“When I was younger, I played sports, as you know. But they didn’t quite do the trick in turning off all these thoughts I kept having. Worries, you know?”
“About your mom?” she asks gently.
“Yes,” I say, and I’m this close to saying I don’t have the fond memories that you do. But all she has are memories. So I don’t need to make a comparison. “I never knew if she’d show up at a game. If she’d come home drunk. If she’d stay out later than she’d promised. Sometimes, if she came home drunk, she’d ground me for no reason. Then, the next day she’d say she was sorry and didn’t mean it. She’d unground me.”
Harlow winces in sympathy. “That must have felt like being on a ship out in a storm.”
“Exactly. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I kept looking for something to…hold onto. Something that felt reliable,” I say, then drag a hand across the back of my neck. God, I hope she doesn’t think this is ridiculous. But fuck it. I push past the nerves. “I found it at the library. I found it in books. And I started spending my time there instead.”
Something dawns for her. She tilts her head, staring at me anew. “You said the day I broke my ankle that you’d stopped playing sports. Was that why?”
“I think I was always trying to escape,” I say, admitting something out loud for the first time. “First on the field. Then in stories.”
“You really love what you do,” she says, a little sad perhaps as she states the obvious. But sometimes the obvious needs to be said.
“I do,” I say, and I’m pretty sure we both know the subtext of her observation. We both know too that soon we’ll probably need to talk about what’s next for us. How long we can keep seeing each other after dark. It’s been a wonderful two weeks, but is it sustainable? Soon, we’ll need to discuss the things we weren’t ready to talk about the night I found her in the rain. Maybe this is the start of that conversation.
“I don’t want you to give it up,” she says earnestly but with a hint of a frown. She presses a kiss to one of the vines on my arm.
When she lifts her face, I run my thumb over the corner of her mouth. “I know you don’t want me to lose anything,” I say, and even though the what’s next is borderline terrifying, even though the plans I probably need to make will require a new kind of armor, I still feel a sense of calm when I’m with her.