Total pages in book: 112
Estimated words: 107944 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107944 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Her eyes all but popped out of their sockets. “Wait, what? Oh, my goodness. Are you okay? What did it say?”
“I have no clue. I haven’t opened it yet.”
“Why not? I know how long you’ve wanted to know more about her.”
“Exactly. So once I open that letter, it’s as if everything becomes real, and I’m not exactly sure if that’s a good or bad thing.”
“Does it scare you? Knowing that she’s reached out?”
“Um, it doesn’t scare me, but it makes me question the timing. It’s no secret that I’ve been successful. So for her to come around now as opposed to when my career hadn’t taken off just rubs me the wrong way. Then again, who knows? I won’t really know what she has to say until I read the damn letter. And I’m not ready to read said letter yet.”
“If you ever need someone in your corner when you open that up, I can be there for you.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Because we’re friends again?”
She snickered. “Is it important for me to say that?”
“No, but I think it’s important for me to hear that.”
She placed her glass of champagne down and looked up at the star-drunk sky. “You never stopped being my best friend, Aiden. I like to think we just had a bad cellular connection over the past five years.”
“I told you years ago to switch to Sprint,” I joked.
“You know me.” She wrapped her arms around her knees. “I’m a terrible listener. What about you and your dad? Have you two talked since you found out what happened all those years ago?”
My jaw tightened at the mention of it. “No.”
“Aiden, I know you probably want to stay mad at him for what he did, but I do know that he did it from a place of love.”
“Or a place of selfishness and greed. Guess it depends on how you look at it.” She went to say something else, but I stopped her. “Conversation shift?”
She took note. I wasn’t ready to talk about Dad and what he’d done. “Okay, shift it.”
“How have the past five years been for you?” I asked her. “How are you?”
“Okay. I’m okay.” She looked up with a soft smile. “I’m good, actually.”
“Tell me. Tell me what I missed.”
She laughed a little. “Five years’ worth of stuff? That’s a lot of information.”
“I want to know it all. Tell me your story.”
She went to college to become a therapist. She was taking a year off before going for her master’s degree. A part of me was sad I didn’t get to experience the college lifestyle with her. It was another missed opportunity due to my career, but I was glad she seemed to do well in school.
“What’s your main focus?” I asked.
“I want to be a child psychologist. High school, as you know, was tough for me toward the end. I never want kids to feel as if they don’t belong. I want to help them understand their emotions and help aid them through the dark days. When my parents put me into therapy, it changed my life. Now, I want to pay it forward so kids know they can still have some of the best days of their lives. It’s odd to think that, in a way, what happened to me all those years ago put me on my right path.”
“Life has a way of putting you right where you’re supposed to be.”
“Yeah, I think so. Outside of school, though, I’m still the boring girl who reads too much, lift weights for fun, and works at the inn. My life is pretty simple.”
“I would kill for a simpler life. And you’re happy?”
Her full lips smiled. “I am. I have waves of ups and downs, like everyone, but I am over all happy.”
“Good. You deserve it.”
“Thank you. Still, even though I’m happy, sometimes I get lonely,” she confessed. “A lot of times, I’m fine. I go day by day without feeling that way. But then some nights or early mornings, I feel lonelier than ever. I don’t have many friends. That’s not a complaint. It’s just a fact. No one talks loneliness or how lonely people are forced to lie to themselves sometimes and say they are fine being alone. I think we are met to be around others. Maybe not all the time, but sometimes. And when I’m not, it gets hard. I just do the same things over and over. Wake up alone, go to work alone, come home alone, go to bed alone. I sometimes wish I had someone to do nothing with.”
“Why don’t you date?”
“Because no one else could ever be you.”
I wanted to hug her, but I didn’t know where we were on that front. I wanted to soak up her loneliness and place it inside me. A transfer of hard emotions of sorts.