Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 66997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
I groan and roll onto my side. Stupid oyster analogy. Stupid TikTok.
It’s a merry-go-round I can’t get off, between my own ADHD brain and the sheer amount of work I know acting normal is going to take today, I’m ready to bang my head against the table.
One day, my past will find me. Let’s just hope that day isn’t today.
God, I sound like a bad movie. Or a Dateline episode waiting to happen. I already know I wouldn’t be painted in a pretty picture. They’d say I deserved everything I had coming—they’d probably be right, though at the time, I did the right thing, that doesn’t necessarily mean I did the right thing. It’s confusing even to me. Sometimes right is wrong and wrong is right, and I did, in fact, deserve to burn in hell. I wouldn’t escape it, no number of wrongs done to me justified it and when I found out, it was too late. He was gone. Dead. Buried. And I hadn’t even known until it was too late.
Different name. Different hair style. Lots of baggage. I’m literally seven years from my past and hours away from Seattle in Portland.
My lies are so good, even I started believing them when I got to college a few years ago. Now I don’t even remember what my childhood home looked like; then again I think that was mainly me trying to force the memory away so that I wouldn’t think about him as much. It was his mansion that was the real stain on my past. I forced all recollection of that place straight into a file folder in my brain labeled Hell. Having ties to anything from my past was just another trigger like the text messages, just one more thing that caused present me to stumble and future me to eventually crash out. I had to take it a day at a time and constantly looking back only made it harder to move forward.
Another life. Another person. And too many broken pieces to count. That’s the thing about starting over though, when you’re all by yourself you can only pick up the shards of what happened and attempt to make yourself whole again and in that panicked moment you miss pieces which make it even more difficult of a process.
All that matters is I left enough of the pieces that I don’t know that girl anymore. She was weak, easily manipulated, she was a completely different person back then.
And honestly? That girl was never going to college. She would have followed him anywhere. She would have given up every last dream she had for more of him.
And he would have broken her. I have to believe that because the other option is too heartbreaking to even process. He would have turned out just like his dad, he would have gone into the family business, he would have been bad news. At least according to my mom, who’s drunk half the time. Yeah, because our family is full of so many winners. I shudder when I think of what my dad’s doing. I’ve been able to avoid him despite him being the reason I was able to even get into this university without crippling debt. Two more classes, don’t think about it. Focus! I stretch my arms over my head and sit up just as my alarm blares.
“IT’S TIME!” a voice shouts.
My door flies open, and Charlie bursts in like she’s been shot out of a cannon. I brace for impact but she doesn’t throw anything or jump on me, I don’t know what’s more terrifying her large smile or her lack of movement. Shit, did she seize?
“Okay listen—” She claps four or five times.
I jump a foot and nearly fall out of bed.
“I know you need your peace in the morning, but I’ve been standing in front of the Nespresso machine for at least ten minutes waiting to make you coffee and bring you carbs slathered with your weird soy cheese that doesn’t even spread—all in an effort to celebrate the first day of the rest of your life, you bitch!”
She says it so fast that if I wasn’t used to her speaking like she’s permanently caffeinated, I’d miss half of it. She’s a good distraction—a much needed distraction since freshman year.
“Anywaysssss…” She holds out a plate with a sad bagel, even sadder soy cream cheese, and my green mug that says YO.
“Happy first day of the last semester! Now all you have to do is finish these last two amazing classes and the world is your oyster.” She really, really just had to say Oyster didn’t she? “Just don’t end up on the Dean’s List. Also—have you seen the dean of the art department? I’d do him, wouldn’t touch the Dean of Business, gross he’s like sixty and stares way too hard. I’m not into fake teeth even if they’re made of gold. Your dean? Yeah, and his son Professor hot pants? Yeah I’d call him daddy. Silver fox energy dad and son, honestly.”