Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 97287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 486(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 486(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
“Hey,” I say, leaning in. “Are you okay? Do you want to leave?” I’m so close that my lips brush against her hair as I talk.
“I’m okay,” she says in a tiny voice. “Today was just rough.”
“Can you talk to me about it?”
She gives a slight shake of her head. “You wouldn’t understand.”
I don’t know why, but that bothers me. “Why wouldn’t I understand? Just because I never knew my grandmother? Or my parents?”
She takes her hands away and turns her head, her mouth just inches from mine. Her eyes are wet, and they drop to my lips before going up to meet my gaze. “I just mean…”
“I know what you meant,” I tell her, moving back to give her space.
There’s a lot that Laila doesn’t know about me, but then there are some things that she does. She knows that my birth mum was a drug addict who overdosed when I was two years old and I was raised by my deadbeat father until I was six, when he decided he couldn’t do it anymore. I spent my whole life either being in a home for boys, or being bounced around from house to house. Some of the foster parents were indifferent, some were in it for the government help, others were abusive. Others had family members who were abusive. I barely survived the whole ordeal intact. In fact, I still think that I lost some part of myself then, some part I never got back. But when you’re raised among loss, it doesn’t matter if something else is taken from you. It leaves you empty all the same.
But while Laila knows the gist of all that, I’ve never gone into details. I haven’t told her about my time in the army, and I barely touched on my divorce. She knows I was married, that is all. She has no idea what that marriage did to me.
Or maybe she does.
Maybe she realizes it’s why I acted the way I did with her.
The waiter brings by our wine, and I raise my glass to hers. “Here’s to your grandmother,” I tell her, leaning back enough.
She does the same, carefully clinking the wineglass against mine.
I swirl the wine around the glass and breathe it in before having a sip. The wine is quite good, but I want to hear Laila talk.
“Listen, love,” I say to her, noting how she stiffens when I call her love, a pet name I had for her. “I know you think I wouldn’t understand about your grandmother, but I can at least try. I know what loss feels like. My father didn’t die, but it felt like he did.”
Actually, it felt like I was the one who died the day he dropped me off at the orphanage.
“That’s the thing,” she says softly. “My grandmother hasn’t died, but…it feels like she did. I walked in there today, and I saw her very much alive, and yet I was a stranger to her. And I’m so afraid that means she’ll become a stranger to me.” She sniffs and has a sip of her wine, swallowing hard. “She’s eighty-eight. She’s not young. I know the loss is coming. The biggest loss. I’ve known that since I was young, that she was so much older and that she wouldn’t be with me my whole life. I knew that I would lose her just as I lost my parents. I just don’t know how to…”
“I know,” I tell her, placing my hand on her thigh. I meant it out of comfort, but she’s giving me the side-eye.
“James, what are you doing?”
“Am I making you uncomfortable?” I ask, hesitating, lifting up my hand. That’s the last thing I want, especially after the day she’s had.
She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “No,” she whispers. “You’re not making me feel uncomfortable.”
I give her thigh a light squeeze, loving that I can touch her, even if it’s just like this, even if she’s about to tell me to take my hand away.
“I don’t want this to happen.” She says it so softly that I have to lean in close.
“Your grandmother?”
“You,” she says, turning her face toward mine. “I don’t want us to go down that same path we went down before.”
I know what she’s saying. I know why she’s saying it. I know I was an asshole to her, and while I had my reasons and excuses, I never even got the chance to tell them to her. Not that it matters now.
But despite knowing why she’s saying it, I can’t help myself.
I’m nothing but impulse.
I reach over and grab her chin lightly with my fingertips, holding her face in place. “What path?” I ask, my voice dropping a register.
She’s staring at my lips again. “You know the path.” Her nostrils flare as she breathes. “I’m still mad at you.”