Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 69534 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69534 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
“I like her,” Scottie said as we watched Searcy walk inside the diner, unhurried and uncaring that she was getting soaked.
Did the woman rush anywhere?
“I do, too,” I admitted.
Instead of going inside and airing out all my dirty laundry, I waited in the parking lot on my bike, watching her through the front window of the diner.
Searcy was once again serving food, but this time to the dinner rush.
The elderly lady that’d left with the kids earlier still wasn’t back, and now what I guessed to be all of Searcy’s siblings, even the youngest girl, were working. They looked like a well-oiled machine, as if they’d done this so many times before that they didn’t need to say a word to each other to communicate.
It was very interesting to watch, and kind of sad.
I didn’t know how to feel about kids working.
Then again, I guessed I’d been doing the same when I was young.
I couldn’t remember a time that I wasn’t up working, even if I had school that day.
Hell, during calving season, I specifically remembered going out to the barn after school, helping deliver calves all night, then turning right around and going straight to school with barely any sleep.
There were times that I’d gone to school in the same clothes that I’d been in the day before.
Yeah…needless to say, I could see how a kid would be working.
Was it called child labor when it was your own family making you do the work?
The soft whine of an electric vehicle pulled up beside where I was straddling my bike, but I didn’t look over.
I knew who it was.
My lips twitched when a woman tried to stop Searcy to likely ask for something, but Searcy whizzed right on by, holding her hand up.
Unapologetically rude.
I really liked that.
The woman at my side would never…
“Are you even going to look at me, or are we doing this without eye contact?”
I rolled my eyes and pushed up off my lean against the seat.
Swinging my leg over the bike, I made sure to leave the motorcycle between us to make sure to let her know I didn’t want her too close.
“Let’s do this,” I grumbled.
Elisha crossed her arms over her chest, her anger at my lack of caring palpable.
She always had this perfect way of displaying her displeasure.
Pinch at the corner of her eyes, and a thin-lipped smile.
At one point, I’d thought her beautiful. Now, every time I looked at her face, I only saw signs of disappointment.
Once beautiful blue eyes now seemed too sharp. Too uncaring.
I’d spent a year of my life with her, and where I’d once seen beauty, I now questioned what I ever saw in her.
Maybe it was time for me to get checked for cataracts.
Could you get cataracts at thirty-six?
“Why do you have to act like this is such a chore?” She rolled her eyes, and the muscles around her eyes didn’t move.
Botox.
Sigh.
She had so much of it that sometimes I didn’t even think that she could show any emotion at all.
“Because it is,” I stated. “I had to take time out of my day to come up here and talk to you when you could’ve just accepted the first talk. Or the seventh text. Or the fourth phone call.”
She sighed, long and loud, as if she was incredibly over my attitude.
Probably, she was.
But there were only so many ways I could say “I’m really not getting back together with you” before I lost patience.
“Posy, listen,” she pleaded. “We’re good together. I’m sorry for asking you to go to that function with me, but who else was I supposed to go with?”
I prayed for patience.
“That’s not the only reason we broke up,” I returned. “And you know it.”
“Your parents love you,” she started.
“My mom loves me, sure,” I agreed. “My stepdad couldn’t care less about me. He’d rather that I disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“Posy…” she ground out. “He’s a good man.”
He was an asshole.
But I didn’t bother to say anything.
What would be the point?
I’d been saying my piece for what felt like forever, yet it felt like every time I explained, she turned it around on me.
“This has nothing to do with him. Or with the stupid fucking ball you wanted me to go with you to. Or the desire to give you the life you’ve come to want. What it’s about is I don’t want to be with you anymore. I don’t love you. I don’t even like you. You exhaust me. You make me cringe every time I hear your name. You make me want to rewind the last year just so I could walk the other way when you walked into the room I was in. I don’t want this.” I gestured between the two of us.
She sighed. “We don’t have to like each other to have a successful marriage.”