Total pages in book: 198
Estimated words: 186242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 931(@200wpm)___ 745(@250wpm)___ 621(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 931(@200wpm)___ 745(@250wpm)___ 621(@300wpm)
I was overwhelmed.
Because in Rhodes’s living room, in his house, were my aunt and uncle. All of my cousins, their wives, and a couple of their kids. There was Yuki and her bodyguard and her sister, Nori, and their mom. There was Walter and his wife, and Clara and Mr. Nez and Jackie. And just beside Johnny was Amos.
Moving toward me from that same direction was Rhodes, and I don’t know if he pulled me into a hug or if I threw myself like I seemed to always be doing, but there we were a second later. With me tearing up in a bittersweet sense of joy, straight into him.
After a lot more tears and more hugs than I had ever remembered getting at once, I got to celebrate my mom’s life with the people I loved the most in the world.
I really was one of the lucky ones, and I wouldn’t let myself forget it. Not even on bad days. I promised myself that then.
And it was all because of my mom.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Good luck, Am! You can do it! You can do anything!” I yelled out of the car at the retreating figure we had just dropped off at the side of the auditorium of his school.
He waved but didn’t glance over his shoulder, and behind the driver’s seat, Rhodes chuckled almost distractedly. “He’s nervous.”
“I know he is, and I don’t blame him,” I said before rolling up the window the second he went through the double doors. “I’m nervous for him.” I almost felt like I was performing too. I might have been more nauseous than Am.
But I welcomed the butterflies I got for Amos because they weren’t bad.
The last month and a half hadn’t been easy, but I was surviving. More than surviving actually. I was doing pretty well for the most part. I’d been having good days, and I’d have days where this new sense of grief over my mom made it hard to breathe, but I had people to talk to about it, and that same hope I’d had in my heart for the future had resumed blooming, slowly but surely.
It had been Mr. Nez who had said something to me the day of her life celebration that had really stuck around in my thoughts. He’d said the greatest way I could honor her life was by living mine, by being as happy as I possibly could.
My heart hadn’t been ready to accept it in that moment, but my brain had. Slowly but surely the truth in it had seeped into the rest of me. It was a small, waterproof Band-Aid for a large wound, but it had helped.
“Me too,” Rhodes agreed before turning the wheel and heading back to the lot where we were supposed to park. Not for the first time, I noticed he glanced in the rearview mirror with a scowl on his features.
I loved all of his facial expressions, even if that one specifically I didn’t understand.
We were an hour early for the start of the talent show, but neither one of us had seen a point in driving all the way back home only to turn around fifteen minutes later. His phone beeped, and he pulled it out of his pocket and handed it over to me as he kept on driving.
“It’s your dad. He says he’s on his way and will be here in fifteen,” I told him as I sent the older man a reply.
Rhodes was going to wring my neck for promising to save his dad a seat for the talent show, but Randall was trying and I’d give him credit. Rhodes still wasn’t totally on board with putting in effort in return. But I had a feeling he’d wear himself down eventually, for Am’s sake. For him to have another grandparent. You couldn’t erase years of a rocky relationship with just a few examples of effort.
Part of me hoped he didn’t find out that I’d been the one to tell Randall about the talent show when we’d run into each other at Home Depot in Durango, but it was worth the risk. It wasn’t like he would really actually get mad at me. Not for that, at least.
Rhodes grunted as he parked and then took his time looking at me, a tiny dent forming between his eyebrows. Those gray eyes roamed my face like they did pretty often, like he was trying to read me. He was real subtle about it, but if he could tell I was feeling down, he tried to cheer me up in his own ways. Some of those ways had included showing me how to chop wood when he’d had two full cords delivered. Another time had been taking me to snowshoe up to ice caves. But my favorite way was when he used that incredible body at night to get my endorphins going. It was comfort and bonding all rolled into one.