Total pages in book: 24
Estimated words: 22169 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 111(@200wpm)___ 89(@250wpm)___ 74(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 22169 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 111(@200wpm)___ 89(@250wpm)___ 74(@300wpm)
“We’d climb over, and grab the branches between these two trees. They’re not very aligned with one another, so it’s actually a bit of a pain in the ass to hang from the two of them,” I explain as I do what my words say. “Then we dangle between them, and see how many pull ups we can do.”
She looks up at me as I’m dangling. “You’re about a dozen feet off the ground.”
“Ayup.”
“And you’re saying you did a strenuous exercise where you could lose your grip and fall down that distance? And there’s no mats like there would be in a school gymnasium where you usually do pull ups.”
“Uhuh.”
“That seems terribly dangerous.”
“Yep. Because it is.” I say this as I’m just freely dangling between the branches, and did about five pull-ups for the hell of it.
“I’m surprised the four of you didn’t break every bone in your bodies.”
“Not for lack of trying. But hey, we were kids. Or pre-teens. That’s what boys did for us. It’s stupid as sin but you couldn’t convince us it wasn’t the manliest thing imaginable.”
“As boring as I thought some of the cliche girl stuff was, at least none of it ever maimed me.”
I drop down from the trees, a perfect landing, just like back in the day. “I was regularly the pull-up champion between us four, by the way.”
She smirks. “I’m sure you’re very proud of yourself. The king of the twelve-year-olds.”
“I was very proud of myself. Until I realized probably what happened was I hit puberty first.”
Tabitha giggles.
“You don’t need steroids to get stronger when you have the good ol’ testosterone of youth fueling you.”
“And it’s not like you don’t have excess amounts of it right now, big boy.” She gives me a playful little spank.
I raise my brow. “I figure you’d want to hold out before we got to that. I don’t think this is the ideal location for it.”
“Oh, I’ll hold back.” The tips of her grin curl. “For now.”
We keep our stroll through the forest going. The places I’m showing her aren’t as majestic, but I feel like they still have value. The littlest of things can mean so much to people, even if most look at it and see nothing of worth. Even those wonderful places Tabitha showed me, I think most people would just see as a bunch of trees, or another piddling little pond.
Hand in hand, we continue through the forest. Everything’s so serene with her. Everything’s so lovely. I yearn to spend the rest of my days alongside her, relishing everyday the same as the next. It’s a feeling I’ve never had before.
I just don’t know if it can happen. Nothing lasts forever, especially nothing good.
Our worlds collided through happenstance, and soon they’d break apart, and continue into the deep night sky.
I hated to think about when that time would come.
SIX
fox
“You need to hurry up and finalize the details of the Wagner project,” Dad says, pointing over the map of Evergreen Valley. “It should be easy enough. He was pretty clear in what he wanted.”
Dad isn’t lying. The terms are clear. Five acres, a massive mansion, and nine holes of golf on the field.
I guess I should be thankful he didn’t think he needed the full eighteen.
“I’m working on it. You know we need to make deals with the locals and how to clear cut the forests for the project. Then getting the builders in.”
“This isn’t that big of a project, Fox. You should be able to handle it. If you dawdle too much longer, I'm going to have to step in, and that’ll look terrible for you in the eyes of the family.”
The family. It’s always about appealing to the family with him.
I didn’t want to hate my father. I don’t think I did.
But our philosophies of life have greatly drifted apart. I guess for him, it’s all a matter of being dirt poor until he was in his mid-forties, and now that a chance at true financial success has shown up, no matter how unscrupulous it might be, he doesn’t want to botch it, and doesn’t want to botch it for me either.
If only it all had come purely from hard work and gumption like he pretends it does.
“Chin up. You got this. You’re going to be a big player in the future, Fox. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I say, not knowing what else to respond with.
He leaves me finally, and I look at the proposed plan. I had been deliberately approaching it glacially. I could have gotten this done three weeks ago, after an afternoon of hard work.
My time with Tabitha had brought what I had always known, but was too scared to admit.
This career of mine was going to destroy Evergreen Valley as both of us know and love it.