Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 97882 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97882 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 489(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
“What got you into pole?” I asked.
“My future dreams of being a stripper, of course.”
I honestly thought she was serious, and I nodded appreciatively. “That’s cool. Seems like a really difficult career. I feel like you need to have thick skin to do it, put up with the asshole clients and the club owners stealing your wages.”
Julep blinked at me. “You idiot, I was joking.”
“How am I supposed to know?! You have the same expression for everything.”
That earned me the tiniest smile, and she hooked a hand on her hip. “I’m actually kind of impressed with how you reacted to that. Most people don’t have any respect for dancers.”
“Oh, I have all the respect for dancers.”
Julep gave me a look. “Don’t ruin it.” When I zipped my lips closed, she shrugged, glancing back at her house across the street like she could see her pole from there. “It’s a long, stupid story. Let’s just say I was drowning, and pole was the life raft that kept my head above the waves.”
“Is it still like that now?”
Her eyes were dark when she faced me again, but in lieu of answering, she shook her head and nodded toward the flowers we’d just planted. “What got you into this? I don’t know a single grown man who gardens, let alone one in college.”
Without hesitation, I answered, “My sister.”
I didn’t know why it came out so easily, especially when her asking about my CDs just two days prior had made me clam up. Maybe there was something about that morning, about her helping me that set me at ease.
“Well, not just my sister,” I amended, grabbing the back of my neck. “It was a family thing. My mom was the one who was good at it. She had the greenest thumb,” I said, smiling at the memory of Mom always being covered in dirt, stains on the knees of her overall jeans and grime under her nails. She used to wear this red bandana in her hair to hold it out of her face, and on Hannah’s eighth birthday, Mom got her one just like it. “But she taught me and Hannah what she could. Even Dad helped out, taking on the weeds and such.”
There was something hollow in Julep’s gaze when she said, “Sounds like you’re the All-American family.”
“We were.”
Julep arched a brow, and my mouth suddenly felt dry. I wondered if there was a possibility she actually didn’t know my story, given that it was one every sports channel loved to cover — especially as I approached the draft. If anything, she had to have heard it from the training staff, from her father.
But the longer she stared at me, confused, the more I doubted that she knew a single thing. And suddenly, it felt like I’d been stripped bare in front of her, like I was standing completely naked under her scrutinizing gaze while she waited for me to tell her about my biggest scar.
I swallowed. “Sorry, I… I just assumed you knew.”
“Knew what?” She frowned, folding her arms over her chest.
There was never an easy way to tell this story. In fact, I felt as if I’d almost become… cold with it. Detached. “My dad and sister disappeared when I was thirteen,” I explained. “And my mom took her life a year later.”
For a moment, shock colored Julep’s face, her eyes widening as her mouth parted just the slightest bit. But it happened quickly, almost so quick I wondered if I’d seen it at all before something else washed over her.
It wasn’t pity, which I was used to, or sorrow or anger, or that look I saw in some girls’ eyes when they thought, “Ah, this is it. He’s let me in. This is my way to his heart.”
No, it was… soft, subdued, and a distinct kind of sad.
Understanding.
It was the look of someone who truly understood.
“Disappeared?”
I nodded. “We had a little sailboat, and my sister… she loved to sail with Dad. They took it out one day when the forecast was clear, but…”
I shrugged, not having to finish the sentence. Julep was smart enough to figure it out.
“Your uncles,” she said, skipping over the traditional I’m sorry I was so used to hearing after revealing the truth about my past. “They took you in, didn’t they?”
I nodded. “The summer before I started high school. They moved me from Florida up here with them.”
“I thought he was your dad before you told me,” she said.
I smiled. “They look a lot alike.”
Julep bit her bottom lip, looking down at where she held my gardening gloves in her hands. Those haunted eyes that mirrored mine flashed with a ghost of her own.
“What?” I asked.
She shook her head, swallowing, and still she clamped her teeth down on that bottom lip like if she let go of it, she’d tell me what was wrong.