Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 73663 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73663 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
“They’re pretty,” he says. “If you want more, you can have as many as you want.”
“Careful. I can be kind of a pack rat.”
“You apartment was empty.”
“On account of my ex, remember?”
“That’s right. I keep forgetting to hunt him down.”
I roll my eyes. “You don’t need to prove your masculinity by beating up Mark.”
“I don’t need to prove anything, you’re right, but it’ll feel good.”
“Stop it.” I nudge him, smiling. He grins back. “I don’t really think they heal or anything like that, you know.”
“It’s okay if you do.” Though his head tilts and he looks skeptical.
“I’m not going to definitively say they don’t have some properties, but it’s probably just placebo. And either way, that’s not why I keep them.”
“Your sister,” he prompts.
“We were close.” I take a deep breath and blow it out. “Really close. You might not believe it, but I was kind of a wild child back then. Sort of a tomboy too. We lived in a rural area and we’d ride our bikes everywhere, play in the woods, hike the trails around the quarry. Basically, spend hours out in nature when the weather was decent from after breakfast until dinnertime. Ruby loved that stuff, and I liked getting into trouble, so we were one hell of a pair.”
“I can imagine,” he says, moving closer. “You miss her. When did you lose her?”
“I was young. Only twelve. She was ten.”
“I’m sorry. That’s terrible.”
“We were out playing like usual.” I don’t know why I start telling him the story. I couldn’t bring myself to go into this much detail with his mother, but it’s like now that I mentioned it once, I suddenly want to say the whole thing out loud. It’d been so long, and I haven’t told anyone, not even Nicole, and definitely not Mark. I never wanted to open up to him the way I do with Renzo.
This feels right. I don’t know why, but it’s the way he sits so close, the way he’s listening so intently. I feel safe, telling him all this. I feel safe whenever he’s around.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.” His voice is kind and gentle.
I shake my head. “I want to.” I clear my throat and sit up. “We went to the quarry. We did that a lot back then. It was stupid, but we didn’t know any better, and my parents were too busy working to notice what sort of trouble we got into during the summer. Normally, we stuck to the trails, but that day I decided it would be fun to go through the underbrush, and Ruby never turned down a challenge. She always kept up, even when it was hard, and I took her down to the edge of a rock cliff face. We were probably fifty feet high, maybe more, I don’t really know, but the stones were pretty jagged and almost made like a set of steps down to the water at the bottom.”
I close my eyes. I can still see that little lake. It had rained a lot the past few days, and this deep blue puddle rested at the very bottom. It couldn’t have been more than a few feet deep at most, but to me, it was like a vast ocean.
“Ruby didn’t want to do it. I remember the way she sat with her feet dangling over as I started to climb. But I told her I wasn’t going to wait, and she could hike down alone if she wanted. Honestly, I was kind of mean. I wanted her to climb with me, even though she was obviously afraid. It was stupid. It was petty. It was the kind of risk I’d never, ever take now, but I used to take them all the time back then.”
His hand squeezes my leg. “You were a kid.”
“I should’ve known better. Ruby climbed down after me. She was a really good climber, Renzo. I mean, really good. She could get up a tree twice as fast as I could and I never understood how. The girl was incredible. But for some reason, she had trouble on the rocks. Her foot kept slipping, and she kicked dirt down into my face. I complained, which only made her climb out to the left where the rocks weren’t as good, but that way she wouldn’t keep getting dust in my eyes. I wish I hadn’t said anything.”
I stop and pull my knees to my chest. I feel the hole in my guts. I feel the tears in my throat. I swallow against them.
He waits patiently for me to start talking again. “She slipped,” I say, staring down at the sheets. “I don’t know how it happened, but she slipped and she screamed. For this one second she dangled there, holding on tight. Her fingers were white. I tried to reach out, but I couldn’t get to her, and then she dropped. It happened so fast. One second, she was with me, and the next she was falling into that water. She splashed and sent this huge ripple across the lake, and I remember screaming and climbing down after her as fast as I could, but it wasn’t fast enough. She was under the water when I got down there. She wasn’t moving.”