Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 106797 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106797 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
For me, that someone was William Rhodes.
And I was forever changed by his love, regardless of the fact that I wouldn’t get to keep it.
I couldn’t sit still the night before Rhodes was supposed to leave town.
I had woken up that morning with a sickening weight in my stomach. Looking back, it’s like I could feel what was coming — almost as if I knew that day, July twenty-third, was going to be the last day I would ever be the person I was. Something was brewing, but I didn’t know what.
In my desperate attempt to keep myself busy and not thinking about Rhodes and the fact that he was leaving in less than twenty-four hours, I had decided to watch the last three episodes of Lost. But when the final episode ended, I simply clicked off the television and stared at the dark screen, thinking back to the beginning of the summer.
Dale was right. I shouldn’t have watched it.
Feeling even more lost than before, I strapped on my running sneakers and watch. Mom popped her head into my room just as I was piling my hair into a messy bun on top of my head.
“Going for a run?”
I nodded, pulling my hair tight and checking my watch battery.
“I’m not feeling very well, so I think I’m just going to go to bed.” She waited for me to acknowledge her words. Maybe she wanted me to wish her better. Maybe she just wanted me to understand her “wise” view of the world. I didn’t do either.
She sighed.
“I love you, baby girl. I know you hate me right now, and I wish I could tell you how much that breaks my heart.” Her eyes welled with tears and I felt that familiar sting and tingle in my nose. Mom and I had always been close, and we’d never fought like this before. Still, I couldn’t find it in myself to forgive her without an apology, first. “Just know I’m always here for you. No matter what. And I really do care about your best interest.”
At that last line, I rolled my eyes. “Okay. Well I’m just going to run a couple of miles. I’ll be back soon.”
One single tear dropped straight from her high cheek bone to my floor and she hastily wiped at the trail it left behind. “Goodnight, sweetie.”
I ducked out of my room right behind her. She went left toward the master bedroom and I went right, jogging quickly down the stairs and out into the warm evening air. The sun was beginning to set, streaking the sky with bright, fiery oranges and pinks. Thumbing through my phone for the right playlist, I strapped it to my arm and tapped a few settings on my watch. Then, I ran.
Each step struck every nerve in my body. I felt myself tearing at the seams and being reborn all at once. I was in such an unfamiliar place mentally, the only way I knew how to get out of my head was to get into my body.
So, I focused on each foot hitting the pavement. I tried counting the steps as my watch counted the calories, but when I clicked over to voice mode, every word that left my lips was about Rhodes. Some of what I spoke into my watch made sense, some of it was just a string of broken sentences about memories and feelings I would never understand nor forget. I ran and ran until my chest ached and sweat leaked into my eyes to replace the salt lost in the tears I’d shed. It wasn’t that I was sad, but it wasn’t that I was okay, either. I was stuck in a confusing limbo, a sort of healing purgatory.
When I couldn’t run anymore, I walked. When I could barely walk, I hobbled. Blisters were forming on my heels and my legs burned fiercely, but I kept going. I spilled my thoughts to the watch and my sweat to the road. Finally, at just past eleven, I limped up the drive, into the house, and up the stairs to my room. Sprawling out on the floor, I stared up at the ceiling, but my eyes quickly lost focus.
I don’t know how much time passed. Maybe it was an hour, maybe it was only a minute, but sometime in the future my daze was broken by the soft buzzing of my cell phone on the carpet. I blindly felt for it, answering it without looking at the screen and holding it to my ear.
“I’m fine, Willow.”
“Bug?”
The sound of his voice jerked me upright. “Rhodes?”
Silence.
“I can’t not see you tonight,” he finally said. I could hear the pain in his words. It was like he’d been fighting them for so long that finally letting them slip into the atmosphere killed him a little. “I’m still leaving in the morning, and I can’t promise you anything more than tonight. I know I treated you like shit because I somehow always manage to fuck up the best things in my life.” He exhaled, slowly breathing life back into me. “I don’t deserve for you to come over. But I’m asking you anyway.”