Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 75833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
And still, on that couch, when my head found his chest and my eyes started to fall shut, his arm tightened instead of lifting me off. He’d taken me home after giving me, giving us a little time together. Because that’s how he did it. Because rules were how he kept himself from being someone he didn’t want to be.
I somehow respected this even though I didn’t like being away from him. All of this was new to me of course I wanted to be around him more.
And then there was his daughter. Elaina. Twenty-three. A few years older than me. That fact sat in me like a little stone: not jagged, not smooth, just weighty. I tried it on from different angles. If I met Elaina, would she see a kid? Would she see a threat? Would she see a girl who could have been in the desk beside her in biology, passing notes about a teacher’s coffee breath while learning about frogs? I didn’t even know what I saw when I looked in the mirror half the time. A woman. A girl. A body with new knowledge and old fear. A person somewhere between what I ran from and what I ran toward.
I could list a hundred reasons this would never work. The age gap, the club was his focus how did I fit in, the way my past had teeth, the way his present had brothers and business I didn’t need to get tangled up in. And still, when I closed my eyes, what I saw wasn’t red flags so much as a night road curving through trees, the world going quiet under the bike, the kind of quiet that made room for breath. Maybe it wouldn’t work and I’d end up with one more lesson written on my skin. Maybe it would be the best thing in my whole, small life. I didn’t have to decide at three in the morning, wrapped in a thin hotel blanket with the hallway ice machine coughing every hour. I only had to keep listening to myself.
I didn’t text him the next day. I told myself it was because I wanted proof that I wasn’t already bending my shape to fit his life. Because I needed to know I could want something without sprinting toward it until I skinned my knees.
So I did what any stubborn woman should do: put my hair in a knot, clocked in, and let the laundry room fill up my hands. Whites first, sheets, then towels. It was all so I could chase the small satisfaction of stacks that matched. The washers clunked and spun like tired drums. Steam slicked the back of my neck. When I fed a sheet through the press and it came out crisp and obedient, I thought of other kinds of heat, the warm press of his mouth, the way he’d asked, “Okay?” even once he already knew my answer.
Lyric passed by in the hall with a half case of bottled water under one arm and shot me a look that was half question, half grin. I lifted one shoulder in reply. She didn’t stop; we both had jobs and we both understood not every conversation fits into a ten-minute break by the ice machine.
Later, she’d corner me and I’d tell her something true without telling her everything. For now, I smoothed another pillowcase and tried not to jump when a bike revved somewhere out front.
Not every tailpipe belonged to him. Not every sound was for me.
By midafternoon, I’d recentered myself a dozen times. It was like learning a new posture: shoulders back, chin level, heart where it belonged in my chest. I caught the new girls whispering near the linen cart—something about “the one with the braid” and “Tiny’s girl’s cousin.” I didn’t turn to show them my face. Let them guess. Let them make up a story. I already had enough real ones. I thought one of them was the girl from the party. The one I called a bitch. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but it was a hunch.
At six I clocked out and took a long shower. Even with the uneven water pressure I stood there until the spray went from warm to scald to a sudden yelp of cold, and I made a rule for myself: if he wanted me, he could find me.
If he didn’t…well, then I’d still have the memories. I didn’t need to be consumed by him. I could read. I could sleep. I could be my own company.
My phone stayed quiet until I plugged it into the charger and turned out the light. Then it lit up once with a spam email and went dead-eyed again. I lay on my back and stared at the hairline crack in the ceiling above the smoke detector. In the quiet, my mind tried to make me small, the way it always did when I gave it too much space. I counted backwards from a hundred by sevens because a teacher once said it helped, and by the time I got to fifty-one I was too annoyed to spiral.