Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 117177 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 586(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117177 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 586(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Every time I thought about it, my heart did this cliché little pitter-patter.
Of course, I’d have to tell him. The voice in my head that sounded like my boss argued vehemently against it, but it was too big of a secret. I had all this guilt, and I couldn’t deal with it. The fact of the matter was I had rewatched his videos multiple times. The obsession reminded me of my teen years when I’d watch music videos of Kings of Leon repeatedly. My favorite Followill had been Caleb, but my crush fluctuated between them all, to be fair.
That I was acting like fourteen-year-old me over a guy was embarrassing, but at least only I knew about it.
Anyway, long story short, I’d almost memorized Christopher’s videos; they weren’t intended for me, I’d invaded his privacy, my remorse was all-consuming, and the only way to feel better about it was to confess to him what I’d done (without mentioning the rewatching or crush part). Hopefully, he wouldn’t hate me for it.
Nervous flutters rioted in my belly as I strolled up my mom’s front walk. Just the mere idea of being within touching distance of Christopher excited me. Ugh, this infatuation was mortifying.
The front door opened before I could even touch the handle.
“Why do you look flushed?” Mom peered at me suspiciously.
“Because I power walked for exercise,” I lied impressively quickly as I slid past her and into my childhood house.
“Well, I suppose you can do that in those things.”
At her tone, I turned to see her glaring at my Converse.
Rolling my eyes, I dumped my purse on the coffee table and slumped down onto the couch. “Mom, I spend almost twenty-four-seven in high heels. My feet hurt all the time. I just want one day when I can wear comfortable shoes.”
“You’re too short for comfortable shoes. Iced tea?”
“Please.” I ignored her “too short” comment. Mom had been lecturing me on how to overcome my “disadvantages” since before we even knew for sure I was going to be a shortie. And since when was five feet four all that short for a woman? What was with our society’s obsession with height, anyway?
“I see your hair is still pink!” Mom called from the kitchen.
Knowing she hated to talk through a wall, I reluctantly followed her into the kitchen and slid onto a stool at the island. “It is.”
“Doesn’t your boss have an issue with it?” she asked for the one millionth time.
“My hair is stylish, Mom,” I replied calmly. Lia didn’t even blink at my hair color when I walked into the office with it four months ago.
“It’s not very professional.”
Neither is sticking your tongue down a man half your age’s throat and then uploading it to social media when you manage a local real estate company. “I thought you were going through a rebellious phase,” I teased. “Shouldn’t that mean you approve of pink hair?”
Mom frowned, her green eyes hardening. “What does that mean?”
I huffed inwardly. “Nothing.”
Mom harrumphed and set about making our lunch. I studied her as she moved around the kitchen, wondering not for the first time how it was possible for a mother and daughter to be so unalike. My mom was a good few inches taller than me, curvier, had amazing auburn hair and even more amazing tip-tilted green eyes. She was a quintessential Irish American beauty. I took after the women on the Goodman side of the family. Short, blond, blue-eyed, and cute.
When I was younger, I bemoaned the fact that I didn’t look like Mom.
But being beautiful hadn’t made her any happier.
In fact, I think it kind of screwed with her perspective.
Last year, Mom turned forty-nine and treated the entire process like a loss. She went through the five stages of grieving. Well, truly, she’d circled through the first four in a hurricane of recklessness that had destroyed her life and then she’d skipped acceptance and returned to a mix of stage one and stage two: denial and anger. Though the grieving was no longer about her age. She’d celebrated her fiftieth birthday four months ago without wallowing in depression. No, her grief was about my dad.
I’d failed to help her, to stop her from tearing her life apart.
Now I was stuck in the middle of an emotional war.
As if on cue, Mom slid a sandwich across the counter and said, “It sounds like you’re getting cozy with your father’s whore.”
I blanched.
Something in me snapped.
I couldn’t listen to my mom call Miranda a whore anymore. “Mom, you can’t call her that. For a start, she’s not. For another thing, let’s not push the feminist movement back twenty years by perpetuating a toxic narrative that only encourages sexual inequality and has far-reaching ramifications on how women are treated by men across the board.”
Mom sighed heavily as she sat on a stool next to me. “Why do you turn everything political?”