Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 117415 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117415 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
As if the storm from that crazy night followed me home.
Yeah. I’m home.
Where I was destined to be anyway.
Not in a car ripping across the Nevada desert with AJ. Not in Las Vegas laughing at the M&M Store or snapping shots with Elvis. Not gasping in a gorgeous, echoing cave full of natural wonders.
Mom was pleasantly stunned to find me back early, as if it was my gift to her. The greeting was short. “Get cleaned up, sweetie, and unpack. I’ll make you some lunch, and then I’m sure your father wants to show you a few new developments. He made you an office in the guesthouse,” she said, a belated birthday present. It was nearly time for dinner, with my taking the long roads home, as if delaying the inevitable. And while upstairs in my room, I was still trying to stall; the slower I unpacked, the further away I was from that spot in the office that already has my name on it. Even as the familiar, clean, buttery aroma of the house already began to sink into my bones. How my room, unoccupied all these months, was still dusted and in order. How when you stand in place for a moment, you hear the town’s whisper all around you in the trees, in the birdsong, in the hum of a distant vehicle coughing on the road. I wonder if I should go suit shopping yet. Buy some tie clips. Get a bobble-head I can boink every time I have an ill thought. Hopefully I don’t break its neck on the first day. My lunch was soon joined in by my dad, who gave me a warm hug and welcomed me home, and I got to enjoy about two and half minutes of sharing fun stuff that went on this past semester before all conversation rerouted completely to tractors, loans, and business.
When my dad excused himself for seconds, I got a text from AJ asking how I was surviving Spruce.
I left him on read.
Not in a petty way. I just didn’t know what to say. How honest to be. He probably knows the answer. He feels bad. He isn’t a bad person. This isn’t his fault, and I don’t blame him.
This is just my life and the way it always plays out.
Now it’s three in the morning. And the rain from the night I nearly puked my life into a trash bin and instead ended up puking words and emotions all over a total stranger who didn’t ask for it is tapping on my window in a greeting. I move to my desk, pull out my notebook and a pencil, and prepare to draw something.
Ten minutes later, I’m still staring at the blank page.
Then I’m back in bed, pillow covering my face, drowning out the sweet tickling fingers of rain on the glass.
Something about the sound of that rain, and I’m back in that filthy side lot outside the Horseshoe next to a dumpster. I’m trying to feel that voice again, how it reached out and took hold of me in such a painful moment and made me smile.
My fingers are on my phone before I know it. I tap through an app, find him (his face is a swirling flame with a cowboy boot—gag), and tap the first song I see. Then I stuff my earbuds in, rest my phone on my lap, and lay my head back on the bed.
Chase Holt’s voice.
Not through a ton of brick walls and plaster and nonsense.
Not while sitting wet and miserable outside by a dumpster.
Chase Holt, right into my ear.
And beyond. To my bones. To something even deeper than my bones, to the very essence that makes me aware of my existence as a human being among billions on this lonely planet.
His voice plays through a melody like a car on a winding road.
Finds my address without any words exchanged.
Shows up right there in front of me.
Joins me in bed, slipping in like a lover.
Arms wrapped around me so tightly, I belong to him, from the second the song starts and forever after.
I feel his breath in my ear every time he takes one.
God, how it crushes me, the way he takes breaths.
My hand slips under the sheets, and at first I’m sure it’s just to touch my heart. It’s racing. I hear even the tender parting of his lips between lyrics, knowing at once that he makes love to every microphone lucky enough to bear his kisses. My hand slips deeper under the sheets and finds something far more reactive than my chest. I enclose myself with my fingers, a big handful of myself. A soft pop of his lips at the end of a word, and I wince as I squeeze.
I’m throbbing.
He knows me. Listen to those lyrics. Don’t you hear them? The way he describes a tree, how it’s the only friend he’s known, how it’s watched him grow from the clueless boy chasing frogs to the man who wonders where it all went. I used to chase frogs, too. He gets me. Chase Holt gets me. And I listen to him sing sweet sadness and joyful longing, every lilt in his voice pulling me further in.