Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 112917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
—Bear Facts for Insomniacs, Episode 37
I’d lied to Bear in the shower. The song hadn’t first come to me on the snowy trail. It had been percolating in my head for a while—ever since Barlo. But when I was in his arms in the shower, suddenly, the words had started coming, too, like popcorn kernels over a hot flame.
Pop pop pop.
They filled my head until all I could do was repeat them to myself over and over so I wouldn’t forget them.
As soon as I was dressed in comfy clothes, I made my way to the sunroom and closed the door behind me.
My notebook and pen were still next to the guitar stand, so I grabbed them before sitting down on the sofa. I scribbled and plucked chords, playing around with the music until I began to feel it come together. The cheerful melody I’d been humming for days rolled like warm honey over me, melding with the lyrics, easy as breathing. And by the time the song was finished, I was giddy with the secret knowledge I’d written it about my bodyguard.
No one would ever know who the song was about, but suddenly, I wanted to sing it in front of a crowd of tens of thousands of people. I wanted to belt it out and feel the power of the music match the power of my feelings for him, especially after this week.
Part of me wanted the world to know that something inside me had been reborn because of Bear—that tiny shoots of happiness were sprouting up on once-barren stretches of my heart, unfurling like fern fronds in the sunshine, filling the places that had been parched and cracked from years of drought.
At the same time, though, part of me never wanted to share this gift, these feelings, with anyone but him. That part remembered my mother telling me that fairy tales were lies.
I’d worked on a song about that this week, too, as a way to exorcise my thoughts and make sense of my feelings—a song I was loosely calling “Broken Fairytale”—but ironically enough, the happy ending I’d envisioned just wasn’t coming together.
“Fairy tales promise something that doesn’t exist in the real world, Zanie,” she used to say. “They make you think good things like that are possible, and so you keep looking for them until… well, let’s just say I would have been smarter if I hadn’t been looking for the fairy tale.”
I’d known at the time she’d meant my father. He’d been handsome and exciting, always showing up with a wad of cash from payday and the offer to go out and “paint the town red.” But by Monday… sometimes Tuesday at the latest, the cash would be gone, and so would he.
And she’d be back to working whatever jobs she could find. Nights at Waffle House. Afternoons at McDonald’s. One time, she had a job as a server at our local pizza place. They served beer and had a bar with sports on TVs hung over it. Enough guys from town would hold down the bar to make for decent tips. That year had been my favorite. She’d let me sneak into bed with her in the morning, and we’d sing songs I’d heard on the radio at Gran’s house.
She’d told me I had the voice of an angel and a heart two sizes too big. “That heart’s going to break into pieces one day, Zanie,” she’d say.
And that deep-down scared part of me now worried she’d been right.
This time with Bear was maybe the happiest of my life. But in my experience, happy things didn’t last.
In this case, the expiration date was coming in a matter of days.
By the time my stomach started demanding dinner, I’d grown melancholy. The excitement and joy I’d had at figuring out my cheerful song about Bear had drained away like fizzy pop in a broken bottle.
I made my way to the kitchen and began poking around in the fridge, not realizing Bear was sitting right there at the table. When he spoke, I jumped.
“Shit, sorry, what?” I said, clutching my chest.
“I said I was kind of in the mood for a big salad to go with that bread Lou brought over from the local bakery. That sound good to you? I can’t cook, but I can chop ingredients for a salad, and there’s grilled chicken in there.”
“Yeah, good. I can help.”
I felt Bear’s eyes on me as he joined me in the kitchen and began pulling out ingredients. I washed my hands and busied myself cutting vegetables.
He didn’t push me to talk even though it was clear he was concerned, and I appreciated that. But then I wondered if he wasn’t asking because he didn’t much care—not that he didn’t care about me. I knew he did. But because he might not have wanted to get involved in whatever emotional crap I had going on.