Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 100713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
I worked alone all morning, which was fine. Ranching was solitary work most of the time, at least for a guy like me with a small operation. I was quiet by nature, so I never minded the long stretches of time to myself, but it did give me a lot of time to think.
Usually I thought about my dad—worrying about his mental decline, wondering how long it would be before his physical health began to deteriorate as well, berating myself for being hard on him when maybe my sister and the doctors were right and there was nothing I could do to slow the progress of his dementia.
But today it wasn’t my father that occupied my thoughts. It was a beautiful brown-haired girl from my past.
A girl with bottle green eyes and a wide, full mouth she always covered up when she laughed, because she thought it was too big for her face.
A girl who was faster and better at math than I was and loved to tease me about it—when she wasn’t helping me understand a problem I couldn’t figure out.
A girl I’d kissed once under the maple tree, but dreamed of kissing a thousand times.
I wondered if Maddie remembered that day. We were seniors, and it was springtime. The prom was only a few weeks away, and we were at my house studying for our AP calculus exam on a Sunday afternoon. She’d seemed unusually quiet and withdrawn—normally she chirped like a sparrow, filling up all the silence I left. But today she wasn’t talking, and every time I looked at her she was chewing her full bottom lip, concentrating hard on the tip of her pencil on the paper. Eventually, I heard her sniffling, and I looked over, shocked to see tears dripping from her cheeks.
I’d known Maddie since we were in first grade, and I’d never seen her cry.
“Come on,” I said, putting my pencil down. “Let’s take a break.”
She nodded and stood up, following me out the back door and into the late afternoon sun. I knew she liked our horses, so I’d headed for the barn, thinking it might cheer her up to be around them. But before we reached the barn doors, she broke away from me and ran over to a thick old maple tree, propped her forearms against its rough brown bark and sobbed.
Stunned, I watched her for a moment, feeling useless and awkward. Once I reached out to pat her back, then changed my mind and shoved my hand in my pocket again.
“I’m sorry,” she wept. “You must think I’m crazy.”
There were words on the tip of my eighteen-year-old tongue—words like actually, I think I’m in love with you—but they were stuck. I wasn’t even sure what love was, but every time she was near, I felt dizzy and out of breath, kinda sick to my stomach but also like I could lift a tractor off someone or maybe scale a twenty-foot wall. I mean, was that love? Or was it a chemical imbalance?
I stuck to safer topics.
“Are you worried about the calc test?”
“No. I mean, yes—I am, but that’s not why I’m upset right now. It’s my m-mother,” she said, her breath hitching.
“Oh.”
“She’s j-just so h-hard on me.”
It was true. High standards were one thing, but Mrs. Blake’s expectations for Maddie were insane. Anything less than an A was garbage. There was no such thing as second best. Mistakes weren’t allowed. Maddie had gotten a C on the first calculus quiz of the year and hadn’t been allowed out of the house for a week. I’d gotten a D, and when my dad had seen how upset with myself I was, he’d shrugged and told me not to worry about it—learning from mistakes was part of life.
“She doesn’t love me.” Maddie turned to face me, her green eyes shining with tears.
“I’m sure she does.” I rubbed the back of my neck to keep myself from touching her. “She’s your mother.”
Maddie shook her head violently. “Mothers don’t always love their children.”
I wanted to argue, but how could I? My own mother had abandoned her husband and three children and never looked back. Did you do that if you loved them? No one had ever explained it to me—my mother was not a subject we discussed in our house, nor did we talk about our feelings. But at least I had my sisters around. Maddie was an only child, and had never known her dad.
She was calmer now, speaking quietly. “I know it’s just the way she is, and most days, I can take it. I’m used to it. But sometimes I just feel so alone.”
“What about Jason?” I asked, unable to disguise the bitterness in my voice. Her dickhead boyfriend was known for three things—his family’s money, his drinking, and the way he constantly cheated on the girls he dated.