Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 114211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
I told my mom I didn’t feel right leaving then. She would be all alone. My brother was still in high school. Everything felt broken and uncertain. I feared Dad might come back.
But she told me: “I’m stronger than I look. And so are you.”
Those words have stuck inside me all these years. And every time I see my mom, how far she’s come, how confident she is now, I hear the words again, and I wonder if I’ve come as far as she has.
Or if I’m just another bug navigating its way around a patio light, confused every time my skull bumps into the bulb.
It’s by complete coincidence that I find myself in the kitchen just when Anthony is bent over fishing out another Dos Equis from the fridge. He slaps shut the door just as I appear, startling him.
I lift my eyebrows. “Another drink?”
His expression sours. “What? You keepin’ tally?”
“No. Just an innocent question.”
“There ain’t nothin’ innocent about you.” He cracks open the can and kicks it back.
I watch his Adam’s apple dance.
Then: “I respected what you said. At dinner.”
My words seem to bowl right over the guy, knocking every last one of his pins down as he pulls the can from his face.
“Don’t know what’s going on with them,” I go on, now that I got his full attention. “Pete and Cody. What kind of buried truths from six years ago the two of them might be avoiding digging up, but … your interjection, what you said … I thought that was nice.”
He squints back at me, looking either disgusted or confused.
I wonder for a second if he even remembers what he said. Or if all of this is going right over his head, and all he cares about in this moment is downing the rest of that Dos Equis.
Maybe everything he says and does is forgotten the second he says or does it. He’s a goldfish, bobbing through his life, unaware.
“I didn’t say it for you,” he finally grunts back at me.
“Doesn’t matter who you said it for. I still respected it.”
“Didn’t do it for your damned respect, either.”
Why does he have to be so fucking difficult all the time? “Is it really so hard to just take what I’m saying nicely? You don’t even have to thank me. I’m telling you I respected what you said.”
“And I’m tellin’ you …” He takes a step toward me and points at me using his can. I hear it slosh around inside. “I didn’t say any of that for your sake. I said it for theirs.”
“I’m sorry for spraying you with gasoline. Is that what you’ve been waiting to hear? It was an accident, but it was caused by my carelessness with the pump. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Don’t care.” He takes another swig, right in my face, then focuses his half-lidded, drunken eyes on me. “Not even a little bit.”
My eyes narrow. His chest is inches from pressing into mine. His face so close, I can see his eyes twitching with agitation.
But I’m not yet convinced about the source of that agitation.
Nor why he added that last part in there—not even a little bit.
He’s staying right in my face for a reason.
And I wonder if that reason has anything to do with why he kissed me on that church floor.
He’s proven since day one that he loves provoking me. Daring me. But what is he daring me to do?
Then the words fly out: “Why’d you call my face pretty?”
I was wrong. He had more pins up. And those words are the ones that send every last one of them to the back, complete with the satisfying clatter of them being swallowed up into the pit.
Something kinda horrifying happens on his face. He looks like he either wants to cry, scream, or take a shit.
He sputters a ton of unintelligible nonsense before finally getting out the words, “There’s … s-s-somethin’ wrong with you. Whatever it is, I … I don’t want no part of it.”
“With me? Hey. It was just a simple question.” I drop my eyes to his beer, sneering. “Or you gonna need a few more of those in you before you can finally admit the answer? Is that it?”
Anthony nods, but it seems unrelated to what I just said, like he’s decided something. “Alright, that’s how it’s gonna be. Okay.” He empties the rest of the can down his throat, crushes it in his grip, then marches away from me, abruptly out of my face. “I’m outta here,” he announces to no one, or everyone.
Trey turns in his armchair. “Already?”
Anthony stops at the front foyer. “Whatever this was tonight, whatever it was you were tryin’ to do,” he grumbles back at him, his politeness gone, “it didn’t work, Trey, sorry, it just ain’t gonna happen. Hey, you and your pal,” he calls out at Cody and Pete on the couch, “you just forget all that shit I said earlier, my advice is worthless, I don’t know nothin’, I’m all talk, no walk, always been. Thanks for dinner.”