Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 114263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
“Yep.”
Another pause.
“You do know your brothers are grown now, right? Sure, they say and do stupid things sometimes. But who in their twenties doesn’t? They seem to be perfectly capable of holding their own. Wyatt gets shit done. And look at Sawyer. He’s a great dad.”
“A single dad. He’s a good example of why I haven’t started my own family. Don’t have the bandwidth. He needs help.”
“Lucky for him, there’s plenty of people willing to give it. Many hands make light work. Having that many hands also means you can take a break when you need it, because others will be there to pick up the slack.”
She has a point. I’ve left everyone to their own devices this afternoon, and there hasn’t been an issue. Far as I can tell, anyway. No explosions, no panicked requests for help on the walkie-talkie or phone.
Go figure, my brothers are doing just fine without me.
And I’m doing just fine without them.
“It’d be a shame, you know,” Mollie continues, “if you didn’t have a family. Sounds like you got a world-class education in making one. A happy one. A whole one.”
My heart twists at the sadness in her voice. Here I thought this girl had everything. Her parents were divorced, yeah. But they were both alive until recently. She’s got money, an education. Her own company.
She doesn’t have anyone to take care of other than herself.
Family is great, but it’s also a burden.
“I’m jealous of you,” I say. “Your freedom.”
She scoffs again, this one louder, harsher. “I’m jealous of you. Your support system. Your sense of conviction. You know who you are. You’re chasing the right things. You love the right things.”
“You don’t?”
“Honestly?” I hear her let out a breath. “I’m not sure. All I do know…” Her voice trails off.
“What?” I ask softly.
“I wish I had what you do. The chaos is real, sure, but so is the joy.”
I chuckle. “Take some for yourself, then. You’re welcome to it.”
“You mean that?” Her voice is soft now too.
“I mean that, Mollie.”
Scary part is, I really do mean it. She’s welcome to stay. Welcome to take whatever she wants. She’s lonely, and I know how awful loneliness is.
Right now, though, I don’t feel lonely at all.
I like the idea that she doesn’t either.
“Tell me about your mom,” I say, clearing my throat.
“Oh, my mother. I admire her for raising me on her own while building this, like, insanely successful real estate brokerage empire. There’s not a person in Dallas she doesn’t know. She’s got tons of friends, she plays golf, she gambles. True Renaissance woman.”
“She and Wyatt would get along.”
“She’d take Wyatt for a ride. I’m serious. She wins every round of poker she plays.”
“I like her already.”
“I love her. Dearly. But being the only child of divorced parents—I don’t think she meant to do this, but she kinda put me in the middle of her and Dad.”
“How so?”
“She wasn’t shy about sharing her less than stellar opinions of him with me. And it was from a young age too. I clearly remember her calling my dad a dickweed for the first time.”
I chuckle. “Dickweed?”
“She gets an A-plus for curse-word creativity. But I was ten at that point, so—”
“Not cool. Explains why you’d cut off contact with him. You only had your mom’s side of the story. She was the one raising you.”
“Right. I could see how stressed out she was, trying to juggle being a parent with everything else. She did it on her own, and that’s not fucking easy.”
“Sawyer will always say he’s never worked harder in his life than he has as a single parent.”
“So, yeah, I sympathized with Mom. I trusted her judgment, so I knew there had to be a good reason why she felt the way she did about Dad. She thought he was an asshole, so I thought he was an asshole too. And some of the things he did really were shitty. As I’ve gotten older, though—now that I’m here—”
“You’re seeing the other side of the story.”
“Exactly.” Her voice gets thick again. “I’m seeing your story. And it’s making me really rethink things.”
I let my head fall back against the door and look at the ceiling beams that run the length of the hall.
My chest feels full. So full, it aches.
But the feeling is somehow light, too; the elephant on my sternum disappeared somewhere around the time Mollie asked me about my parents.
Why does Mollie have to be so fucking sweet? So open-minded? So quick, so intelligent, so open and honest and real?
Can’t remember the last time someone asked me about my past.
Can’t remember the last time I wanted to ask about someone else’s.
The hardwood floor bites into my sit bones. Don’t care. I could talk to Mollie like this forever.
“See?” I sit up a little straighter. “You’re doing the right thing, deciding for yourself how you feel about Garrett. He’d be proud. It was one of the things I loved most about him—how unafraid he was to do his own thing, even if it didn’t make sense to anyone else.”