Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 100713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
“Your turn, Weaver.” Cole looked at me. “Let’s see what you got.”
From a plastic grocery sack, I pulled out a copy of my acceptance letter from Harvard, my treasured Mickey Cochrane baseball card, and two photographs. The first was of the four of us taken in our caps and gowns right after the graduation ceremony, and the second was a shot of Maddie and me taken a minute later. I had an arm around her shoulders, and she had an arm around my waist, her cheek nearly resting on my chest.
I’d hardly been able to breathe.
“What’s that second picture?” Cole asked, because I’d tried to hide the photo of Maddie and me behind the first one.
“It’s nothing.” I picked up the box top and tried to put it on, but Moretti—whose reflexes were quick—reached into the box and grabbed the photos, shuffling them so the pic of Maddie and me was on top.
He grinned. “Aha. Now I get it.”
“Fuck off.” I grabbed the pictures from his hands and put them face down in the box.
“Whose picture was it?” Cole asked.
“The girl of his dreams,” Moretti said. “But Weaver, you do realize that actually telling her you like her would be a better idea than putting her picture in a tackle box you’re going to bury in the dirt?”
My jaw clenched. “I can’t do that, okay?”
“You could,” he insisted. “You just won’t.”
It was easy for Moretti to say. He was never tongue-tied around girls and could charm anyone he met. Even teachers and moms adored him. They liked me too, for different reasons—I was polite, quiet, and responsible. But I had to think before I spoke to a girl, and sometimes I thought so long, I missed the chance to say what I wanted to.
Especially to Maddie.
Cole closed the box and secured the latch. “Should we bury it?”
“Yeah. Let’s do it,” Griffin said. “I gotta be home for dinner at six.”
We went out the kitchen’s wooden screen door, which squeaked open and slapped shut like it always did, a familiar sound I never thought I’d miss later in life, or even think about once I was gone.
I was wrong about that.
I was wrong about a lot of things.
We trooped into the yard and looked around at the big red barn, the paddocks, the chicken coop, the vegetable garden, the pastures beyond. It was my favorite time of day on the ranch—the sun was just starting to set, dusting everything with gold. Somewhere out in the fields my dad was still working, and I felt a little guilty that I’d knocked off early today.
“What’s a good spot?” asked Moretti.
“What about over there near the tree?” I suggested, gesturing toward an old maple between the horse paddock and barn. From its thick, sturdy branches hung a swing my sisters and I had played on as kids, but that wasn’t my favorite memory of it. Not anymore.
“Sure,” Cole said. “It just has to be somewhere that won’t get too dug up.”
“The tree roots might be an issue.” Griffin lifted his cap off and replaced it.
“We’ll go halfway between the tree and the barn. Let me go get a shovel.” Leaving them there, I went into the shed and grabbed the shovel.
A few minutes later, I’d dug a big enough hole and Griffin knelt down to place the tackle box inside it. We all shoved dirt back into the hole and I patted it down with the shovel.
“Think we should mark the spot?” Cole asked.
“Nah, we’ll remember where it is,” said Moretti.
“When are we gonna dig it up?” Griffin wondered. “Like, twenty years from now?”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
We all stared at the fresh dirt, trying to imagine life twenty years in the future. It wasn’t easy.
“What do you think we’ll be like then?” Cole asked.
Moretti laughed. “You’ll be a cop. Married with two kids, a picket fence, and a dog. Maybe a receding hairline.”
Cole laughed and gave him a shove. “Fuck off.”
“I’ll probably look exactly like my dad.” Moretti didn’t sound too happy about it. “Complete with all the gray hair my wife and eight kids are gonna give me.”
“You’re going to have eight kids?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “I’m a Moretti. We don’t do anything small.”
“I wonder if I’ll still be in the Marines,” Griffin said, looking into the distance, “or back here working with my dad at the garage.”
“I bet you come back,” Moretti said. “I’ll still be here, hopefully running Moretti & Sons. If I’m not the boss by the time I’m thirty-eight, someone punch me in the face.”
Cole looked at me. “What about you, Beckett? Think you’ll come back here after college?”
“Nah, Beck’s not coming back here,” Moretti scoffed. “He’ll be too busy making his millions on Wall Street.”
Laughing, I shrugged. “I don’t know yet.”
We were all silent for a moment, the weight of separation and an unknown future suddenly pressing heavily on us. We’d been best friends—brothers, really—for so many years, it had never truly hit us that the day would come when things would change, and we’d go our separate ways . . . maybe forever.