Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
There’s even beauty in knowing that my mother wished she never would’ve had me. Knowing a part of her thought she should’ve stopped after Iron. There’s beauty in knowing she was the beginning of Trace, Liv, and me, and we, in return, were her end.
The world is full of beautiful things, but almost no one sees it.
No one except Krisjen Conroy.
She’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever encountered. Beauty in motion. In everything she does.
She’s slow, considerate in her movements. Artful.
I love the flyaways of her ponytails and buns. Her sneakers with no socks. How kind her eyes are, and how she looks at you like you alone are precisely the person she was just waiting to see. I love how she skips the last couple of steps to a counter or the fridge, how she dances in the kitchen when she thinks she’s alone, and the way she takes more than one bite to eat a grape. She’s always appreciating the view, and I imagine she’d be as happy at a gas station as she would be a castle.
She’s in love with being alive.
And that’s also why I despise her. She can be what I can only see. She’s the breath others breathe. I’ll never be beautiful like that.
I jostle the girl in my bed. “Hey,” I bark, pulling on my jeans and ripping off the towel around my waist.
She stirs, the other one on Iron’s bed to my left moaning in her sleep.
“Get up,” I tell them.
I fasten the belt around my waist and grab the towel, rubbing it over my head to dry my hair.
“Tizz.” I shake her again.
That’s not her real name, but that’s all anyone has ever called her since we were kids.
“What?” she mumbles, turning over.
“Get out of my bed.” I toss the towel down. “Both of you, get out.”
It’s fucking eleven o’clock.
The brunette on Iron’s bed rises, her eyes still half-closed as she holds the pillow to her naked body and searches around for her clothes. Tizz throws off my covers and swipes her shit off my floor. “Asshole.”
Yeah, yeah. Until next time when you’re drunk and horny.
She dresses and whips open my door so the handle crashes into the wall. Both of them stumble out into the hallway, hair in their eyes and each other’s hickeys on their necks, looking beautiful but not exactly profound yet. That will come in about a half an hour as they cry in their showers and own up to their responsibility and self-loathing over what no one but themselves made them do with me in my room last night.
I’ll be drunk again before my own self-loathing hits. Fuck, I hate sex.
Opening my drawer, I see it’s empty, and dig into one of Iron’s, finding a clean black sleeveless T-shirt with the sides cut out. Slipping it on, I leave the room, but as soon as I step foot into the hallway, I hear the commotion downstairs and catch Krisjen rushing past me with a picnic basket. It takes a second, but I recognize it as ours. I wasn’t aware we still had it. She must’ve found it in the attic.
“What’s going on?”
She turns her head, her face lighting up, but she doesn’t stop. “Can you help?”
“With what?”
I watch her scurry down the stairs, but then Trace coasts past me, holding an old Yeti cooler I didn’t realize we still owned, either. “Forty-First Annual Bug Jam!” he answers for her.
“What?”
“You know what he’s talking about,” Krisjen calls back. “I need you all. It’ll be fun. Come on!”
I follow them down, the heat in my chest expanding, but the rising anger warms my stomach, too. I don’t even want to stop myself. “I don’t give a shit about St. Carmen’s reindeer games,” I growl, rounding the wrought iron banister.
Army stuffs a backpack with Dex’s shit, tossing in some sunscreen and diapers. His son sits on the couch, digging his hand in a cup and then stuffing little crackers into his mouth.
“Why is she in our house?” I snap.
No one answers me. Trace sifts through keys, deciding which truck to take. His baseball cap sits backward on his head, his greasy hair slicked back underneath.
Krisjen folds a picnic blanket.
Army turns, arching an eyebrow at me. “Just give us a break, will you? For once? It sounds fun. A nice break from the same shit we do every day.”
“Like Krisjen Conroy?” I throw back, turning my eyes on the girl who thinks she lives here. “You fuckin’ me next, honey?”
“If you want,” she chirps, unfazed. “I’d be excited to see if I have to fake my orgasm. Or if you can tell.”
Trace loses it, a chuckle erupting from deep in his stomach. He doesn’t dare look at me.
“There are children here,” Army tells us, but I head over to the kitchen and squat down, opening a low cabinet. I can’t be sober for this.