Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 117601 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 588(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117601 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 588(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
Basking in the compliment, I use my alone time to run my fingers through my tangled hair and wipe the runny mascara from my eyes. It’s going to be hard to seduce him when I probably look like a swamp creature. When he comes back, he is holding my dress and my purse, where I keep my cash and phone. He disposes both of them next to his backpack.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Are you feeling better?” He plops beside me.
“Eons better.” I shove my arms through my sleeves, dressing quickly. My body is pale and slender, peppered with freckles everywhere the sun touches.
“Good. I met Mainstream by the fire and told her you were with me and that you were fine.”
“What did she say?”
“That I’m fine too,” he deadpans.
I laugh.
We catch up on these last couple of weeks. I tell him about Barcelona. He tells me about Sevilla and Madrid. He’s here with three friends. All four of them are from Boston. The rest of his party is going back to their respective colleges at the end of the week. Joe is staying in Spain a little longer, then will go backpacking through Europe alone in hopes of finishing his book. “Romania, Poland, Hungary, Italy, and France.” He uses his fingers to count the countries. “I mapped it all out, including the hostels and bed-and-breakfasts I’ll be staying in. Shouldn’t take me more than four months to write the entire thing.”
Four months? He can’t be on a different continent for four months. He can’t be single and ridiculously attractive for four months. He can’t just continue existing like we never happened.
Only he can, and there is nothing I can do about it.
Tucking my crazy in, I decide not to broach the subject of us. The conversation flows, despite my crushing disappointment. I tell him about growing up in San Francisco. About Renn and his surfing, and about Mom’s gallery in the Castro. He tells me about his upbringing. Two Catholic parents, one sibling, and an ocean of unsolved issues.
I tell him about my art.
This is the part where I expect him to freak out. It’s not every day you meet an eighteen-year-old who designs headstones as a hobby.
“It’s less sinister than it sounds.” I lick my lips, already on the defense.
“You design headstones, not kill babies for a living.” His eyes sparkle with amusement. “But I’m sure there’s a story behind it.”
“When I was, like, eight, my cousin Shauna died in a boating accident. She was only fifteen. My mom wanted me to attend the funeral, but Dad thought I was too young. There was a lot of back-and-forth between them. In the end, they left it for me to decide. I wanted to go. Shauna and I had been close. It was the first time I’d visited a cemetery. I remember looking around and thinking, All these headstones look the same. How is that possible? We’re so different from each other when we’re alive. Why are our personalities reduced to nothing when we’re dead?
“A few months later, Mom and I went back to freshen up the flowers on her grave. Shauna had the most beautiful gravestone. It was so her it took my breath away. Her mom splurged on a real piece of art. A granite angel embracing a heart. It made me think. Personalized gravestones are a great way to pay your last respects to someone, you know? We live in a world where everything is customized to us: our clothes, our mattresses, our cars. Why not design something that’s unique? Something that represents the person who was laid to rest?”
“What do you do with your designs?” Joe isn’t showing any signs of distress. I’m fairly sure his creep-o-meter is broken. But, more than likely, this is just another way we are alike.
“I mostly keep them to myself. You have to consider people’s personalities to make gravestones for them, and thinking about the people you love passing away is . . . well, next-level psychotic. So I design them for late celebrities and stuff like that. A few people have heard about what I do through the grapevine and asked about pricing. I gave them the designs for free. I don’t know if there’s a market for what I do . . . I just know that it feels right to do it.”
Joe tugs at the hem of my dress, just for the physical connection. “People are always in the market for fucking awesome.”
“What if I’m not fucking awesome?”
“You are,” he says, sure as the morning sun. “If you were mediocre, you wouldn’t be running circles in my head.”
I think about the words from his novel.
He should’ve run after her faster.
He should have told her she was perfect.
The dull beat of the music coming from the party makes the earth quake beneath us. My body feels in tune with his, and I can anticipate the next time he’ll move. I feel his breaths in my own lungs.