Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 59713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
“Morning,” I said as she yawned and padded over, a grin on her face.
“Morning,” she replied. “You mean I get breakfast too?”
I shrugged and smiled. “Sort of. I’m not much of a cook. Derek and Kane can cook, but not so much me. I can make a mean toast though.”
“I’ll be quite happy with toast and tea,” she said. “Especially peanut butter toast with honey.”
“Heard,” I said, mimicking my brother’s chef ways. She giggled behind me as I popped two slices of bread in the toaster and turned to look at her, sitting at the island on a barstool.
“So, no coffee?” I asked, hopeful that she would look at me like I was an idiot and point to someplace my eyes had just passed over. Instead, she shrugged and looked down at the table.
It wasn’t the first time I’d asked about something and she shut down. I didn’t want to push too hard, but it was curious how she would close off when something seemed to remind her of a bad memory. Apparently, coffee was one of them.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know it’s weird. I don’t have a coffee maker because of my ex.”
That took me by surprise. Not only was it a strange thing to say, leading to more questions, but she hadn’t talked about her ex yet. I figured something had happened just based on how she acted sometimes, with someone in her past. But she hadn’t been exactly forthcoming about them either.
“Your ex?” I asked. I was tempted to make a joke about how they made off with it in the dead of night, but I thought better of it. The way she was looking down at the table seemed to indicate that she would much rather not talk about him at all, much less make light of their relationship.
The toast popped out, and I grabbed them, slathering on peanut butter and squeezing on honey. As I sat hers in front of her, she shifted in her seat a little.
“I guess you deserve to know. It’s kind of a big part of who I am,” she said. She looked anxious, and I put up a hand to stop her.
“Not if you don’t want to. If you feel uncomfortable, we can drop it.”
She nodded. “I think once I get a sip of tea in me, I’ll be good.”
“Alright, then,” I said. “Tea it is.”
Soon enough, the tea was ready, and I poured us both a cup, sitting down at the island with her and eating my own toast.
“When I was in college,” she began, “I had this boyfriend. Doug.” She seemed to look for some kind of reaction on my face, but when there was none, she continued. “Doug was a good boyfriend at first. I thought we were in love. Then I graduated.”
“What happened then?” I asked, keeping my voice low and calm. I didn’t want to seem like I was jealous or upset. I wanted her to get all this off her chest so I could find a way to help her, or at least not trigger her. Whatever it was, it was clearly painful.
“Once I graduated, things started going downhill quickly. He got angry and defensive all the time. He liked to talk about how much my student loans cost and how it was going to take years before he could pay that off. Not like he was paying them. I was. But still, he brought it up to lord it over me.
“Then, one day, I had enough of his shit, and I yelled at him. I told him that I was the only one working and that he just laid around all day playing video games. That he had no right to tell me what to do with the money I was making if he wasn’t going to make it too, and that he needed to lay off my education as some kind of burden he put up with.”
She paused for a moment and took a sip of the tea. I patted her leg and then rubbed it gently. A small crack of a smile rose on one side of her lips, but it met with a single teardrop coming from the eye above it, almost as if the act of smiling itself brought the tear out.
“Go on,” I said. “Whenever you’re ready.”
“He got abusive. Like, worse than before. The first thing he did was grab the coffee pot and throw it at me. It exploded on the wall, and the glass went everywhere. I got hit with hot coffee, and one of the shards of glass cut my ankle. I still have a scar from it,” she said, pulling her leg up to show me. Sure enough, a small, pink scar ran an inch or so up her ankle.
“Did you call the police?”