Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 84322 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 422(@200wpm)___ 337(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84322 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 422(@200wpm)___ 337(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
I also knew that it was working.
And I hated that fact most.
An hour later, I was showered and dressed and crushed in a hug from my Aunt Laura in the middle of Bridgechester’s most popular diner.
“Oh, you beautiful brat,” she cooed as she held me, her hand still on my arms when she pulled back. “It’s been too long.”
“I saw you six months ago when you came to Oakland for Christmas, Al.”
She smiled genuinely at the nickname, just as she always did. It was a shortening of Aunt Laura that I’d given her when I was younger, before I’d even moved in with her.
It seemed like a lifetime ago, now.
“Six months is too long. Especially when you’re growing into a woman the way you are.”
I smiled, shaking my head at her as we took a seat in the booth she’d gotten for us. She already had coffee steaming from her cup and an orange juice waiting for me. “You’ll have to come see me again soon,” I offered.
“Or, you could come here more often,” she rebutted, opening her menu. “If I’d have known it would take a wedding to get you back in Bridgechester, I would have set Morgan up with some poor sap a long time ago.”
We placed our order when the waitress came over — Aunt Laura getting pancakes as usual, while I opted for an egg white omelet. My phone buzzed with a text from Jacob just as our menus were taken away.
Jacob: Well, now that I’m three hours behind you, I feel like even more of a lazy bum. You’ve probably been up for hours and already ran a marathon.
I smiled, typing out a text back before I slipped my phone in my purse.
“Jacob?” Aunt Laura asked, one eyebrow raised as she sipped on her coffee. My blush answered for me, and she smiled. “Seems like it’s getting pretty serious. How long has it been now?”
“Seven months,” I said, and my stomach flittered on the wings of a million butterflies.
I loved Jacob.
It had taken me a while to realize it, but I did. He was my best friend in California, and I was with him at least three times a week. We had our hobbies we did together, like browsing farmers’ markets and filling our weekends with live music and long days in the sun, while still having our separate lives apart, like running for me and CrossFit for him.
Plus, the sex was amazing.
And that was exactly the kind of relationship I needed.
He was easy. Effortless.
It was unlike anything I’d experienced before.
“I like him,” Aunt Laura said definitively. “He was such a gentleman when I was there for Christmas.”
“He’s always like that,” I mused with a distant smile. “I’ve never met anyone like him.”
“Hmm… maybe it’ll be your wedding that brings you back to New Hampshire next time.”
I snorted a laugh. “Alright, Al. Don’t get ahead of yourself. How’s the shop?”
My aunt was fourteen when my mom had me, so she had always felt more like an older sister than an aunt. Of course, she’d had to be my guardian for a time, too, but she’d never really had to punish me or put me in line. For the most part, I was a good kid — save for the weekend party every now and then that would get me in trouble.
But Al owned the one and only beauty salon in town, one of just a few in the entire county, and it was she who I thanked for showing me how to shape my eyebrows and highlight my hair and paint my nails. Those things had seemed like rocket science to me before I moved in with her. I could watch my mom do her makeup and hair all day long, but I never knew where to start.
Sometimes, I even felt like I favored Aunt Laura more than my own mother. We both had blonde hair, whereas my mom was brunette, and our eyes were a bright blue, while Mom’s was more a shade of gray. Mom had curves, whereas Aunt Laura and I were more lean and toned.
But maybe I just wanted to have more in common with Al, to put even more space between my mother and me. Not that I had to try hard to do that — she hadn’t even attempted to reach out to me since the day she left for Phoenix, other than once a few years later when she called Aunt Laura and asked how I was. Of course, Aunt Laura told her she should go see me and find out herself, but my mom was too much of a coward to face the outcome after abandoning me.
And I was too hardened by resentment to ever reach out to her.
It had to be hard for my aunt, too, to lose her sister the way she did. The day my mom left us in Bridgechester had severed the two of them, driving the final nail into the coffin of their relationship. Aunt Laura didn’t approve of my mother’s actions, and my mother didn’t want to salvage their relationship if it meant giving up what she wanted in Phoenix with her boyfriend.