Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75323 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75323 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
By the time I slipped on a pair of shorts and made it to the patio, Raff already had the food and drinks spread out.
I paused as a breeze passed by, the air perfumed with the intoxicating mix of cedar and sagebrush.
“They could bottle and sell that scent,” I told Raff when he looked over.
“Lizard aside, you seem to be enjoying the accommodations.”
“It’s beautiful. I’ve never stayed somewhere like this.”
“No short-term rentals?”
“They creep me out,” I admitted. “I’ve heard so many horror stories about the owners watching you on the cameras or people showing up. And I’ve only ever traveled alone. So, no thanks. I’ll take a hotel any day over that.”
“That makes sense. I usually stick to hotels and motels just for the convenience. I’m a big fan of being able to get food from my room. Or from a nearby vending machine. This is the kind of place you don’t want to be in alone. Would be too boring.”
“You don’t want to bathe naked under the stars, looking out at the desert alone?”
“That I could maybe handle. But who wants to swing alone?” he asked, gesturing with his fork.
Turning, I saw a set of wooden slat swings with the endless desert behind them.
“What are we, eight?”
“Well, now that settles it. We have to swing. Come on. There’s no getting out of this.” He grabbed my hand as he passed, tugging me toward the swings. “You gotta let that inner child out here and there,” he told me as he dropped onto his swing.
“I’d barely been a child when I was a child,” I admitted as I sat, rocking a little but not swinging.
“Why’s that?”
“My mom was… too young to be a mom. She was more like a big sister. And that meant that, well, someone had to be more of a mom.”
“So that’s what you did.”
“Yeah. I was the one who cleaned up and did laundry and got myself and my brother up for school in the morning. Made our lunches. Helped him with homework. Took on a lot of my mom’s emotional burden. She wasn’t a bad mom. Just an immature one who didn’t know what she was doing.”
“That’s too much for a kid.”
I shrugged at that.
It probably was.
But it was all I knew.
“I got breaks when we were with my grandparents in the summer.”
“Where?”
“In Shady Valley. I grew up in San Bernardino.”
“Different world from Shady Valley.”
“Yeah, definitely.”
“What’d your mom do?”
“She worked for an accountant.”
“No shit. That how you got the idea?”
“Yeah. Her boss was this badass woman who had all the finest things in life. Sometimes, when school was closed, my mom would bring us to work with her. And her boss would talk to me about accounting, colleges, and career trajectories. I was good with numbers. When I was old enough, she let me intern. Then helped me apply to colleges.”
“So, instead of going to basement parties, getting wasted, and playing spin-the-bottle with kids your own age, you spent your teens interning and planning your future.”
“To be fair, basement parties sounded as appealing to me then as they do now.”
“So, when was the last time you swung on a swing?”
“I don’t remember,” I admitted. I had some vague memories of it, but they were blurry around the edges.
“Well, tomorrow you can say ‘yesterday,’ then,” he said, pushing off the ground and pumping his legs.
Right.
That was how you did it.
Taking my cue from him, I pushed off, pumped, and then leaned back.
I wasn’t prepared for the free-fall sensation in my stomach—an intoxicating thing that made me pump my legs harder, then lean further back to feel it more intensely.
I couldn’t tell you how long we did that—swinging like little kids—but I can say that it was the most free and light I’d felt in a really long time.
Eventually, though, my growling stomach had me slowing down, then moving to stand.
“Weird being on your feet again, huh?”
“Kind of like stepping off a treadmill after a long time,” I agreed, following him on awkward legs back to the table. There we ate and talked mostly about Raff’s other adventures on the road. Which included being tattooed by a seventeen-year-old son of a tattoo shop owner, accidentally stumbling into a women’s-only wellness retreat, and joining a spicy book club when he’d been stranded in a town for a few weeks because the car needed some serious work.
After that, we cleaned up and made our way back to our rooms, where I finally decided to climb into the cold tub water, washing away the sweat and sand from all day in the high-desert.
I was still in said tub when I heard Raff in my room.
“Knock knock.”
“Out here,” I called back.
His mouth opened like he was about to say something when he stepped into the doorway, but a sigh escaped him instead as he looked at me.