Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 64527 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 323(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64527 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 323(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
“Rick sounds like a really, really good man,” she said, her eyes soft and wide.
“He was.” I swallowed hard, and I looked up at her, unable to help my defensiveness. “But my mom was a good person too. She really loved me.”
“I never thought she didn’t,” she said, inching forward to sit next to me and slip her hand under my hands. “It sounds like she had a very loving heart, and a lot of pain.”
That had been one of the best descriptions of my mother I’d ever heard, and it made the fissure along my heart fragment. “I’ve never stopped missing her. Even after she left me all alone like that.”
She shook her head. “Nobody sets out to become addicted to drugs, and she didn’t choose to abandon you. And moreover, no one chooses to love their parents. You come into the world that way. I’d have way more concerns if you didn’t love her.”
I looked at her, my eyes wide in amazement. I didn’t know why I was so surprised, but it felt like an incredible twist that I was able to talk to her about this part of myself that I’d only told to two other people. It made me think that I might actually be able to tell her more.
I pulled her into my lap, twisting my hands into her hair and kissing her deeply, more thankful than ever that she’d come to my door.
22
MACY
Things had been gentler between us since the picnic when he’d told me about his parents, and I was striving to show him that I appreciated how much he’d revealed to me. Things were settling into a more settled, almost couple-like dynamic between us, and I couldn’t deny that I was enjoying it.
We’d seemed to fall into our roles without a word. We didn’t seem to need a conversation about it, but as comfortable as it felt between us, the fact that we hadn’t talked at all about what things would look like down the line made me extremely nervous. Ever since my childhood, I hadn’t liked assuming anything, and that had become doubly true since Alex. I’d need to talk things through with him, and soon. Alex wouldn’t be here for much longer, and I wanted to know where I would stand with him when that happened. I was rapidly approaching the point when leaving would feel painful, and call me crazy, but I wanted to avoid any more pain than I needed to take on.
Regardless, things between us settled into more and more of a routine, which was how we found ourselves on the couch a few nights later, flipping through the different streaming services. I was shocked that he had Netflix and Amazon Prime subscriptions, but he’d laughingly told me that even though he might not have an Instagram account, he was still human, and he’d wanted to watch Good Omens when it came out like everyone else.
We learned we had a lot in common when it came to TV, but it took us forever to settle on what to watch. Finally, we decided on The Empire Strikes Back, of all things, since both of us agreed, wholeheartedly, that it was the best Star Wars movie.
As we sat on the couch together, I brought my legs up and swung them onto his lap, enjoying the way his fingers played over my legs.
The nostalgia of the movie had me entertained, particularly since I’d seen it so many times I could quote it by heart. But there was something about the combination of the old film, Dillon’s fingers that I could feel through the thin fabric of my pants, and the vulnerability he’d shown me in the last couple of days that was outright alchemical… not to mention the fact that he knew it as well as I did. I loved finding out that he was as big a nerd as I was.
And then there was the fact that we hadn’t had sex lately since I hadn’t been feeling well. But in that moment, everything was feeling right.
I wanted to be subtle about this—sneaky. He almost always took charge, and this time, I wanted to be the one to take control.
Just as Han came up behind Leia on the broken Falcon, I turned into his body, pressing my face into his neck and breathing in deeply. He pulled my hair away from the back of my neck so that it was open to the air and pulled me up so I was lying perfectly along him, all of our angles lining up perfectly.
My legs parted on top of him so that I was straddling him, our bodies lining up so perfectly that, if we’d been naked, he would’ve already been inside of me. I writhed around a little bit on top of him, hiding my smile as I felt him start to harden.