Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 61867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 309(@200wpm)___ 247(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 309(@200wpm)___ 247(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
That’s when Jameson Gray, the older boy who lived next door and used to look out for her and vanished without a trace when she needed him most, shows up again. But he’s no longer the boy he used to be. He’s a man now, and he’s offered to provide for Iris.
But years of taking care of herself and not trusting anyone, especially men, has Iris suspicious of this ghost from her past. But Jameson is assertive, strong, and stubborn in his intent, and the way he’s blossomed into a ruggedly handsome man doesn’t hurt either. And Iris quickly finds herself wondering if there is a reason this man showed up at this critical time in her life.
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Chapter 1
Iris
PROLOGUE
Sometimes I drive around in the evening when the sun is setting. Right before people have started closing their blinds and curtains for the night but still have their lights turned on. You can see right into their houses and watch exactly what they’re doing. Whether they’re sitting around their kitchen tables having dinner together, or if they’re just on the couch watching TV. Or maybe they’re playing board games together; it doesn’t really matter to me.
I know I’m probably kidding myself when I watch them and tell myself how happy they all must be. Look at all those perfect families inside their perfect little houses, I tell myself. But I guess that’s just the way my brain works now after everything that’s happened.
I swear I’m not a creep. But when you’ve lost your family like I have, it’s hard not to look at what others have and feel jealous.
Well, jealous maybe isn’t the right word. It’s more like I have this aching pain in my chest—a feeling of loss in my heart that I can thank my fantastic, non-role-model of a dad for.
He walked out on my mom and me three years ago, and we both know he’s never coming back. He picked another woman over her, and I guess I wasn’t important enough to him either, so I was left behind too.
His only daughter, left behind…
It’s been three years, and I haven’t heard a single word from him, and at this point, I don’t want to. I don’t want to know where he is or what he’s doing. He’s dead to me now, and if someone came to me and told me he was actually dead in real life, I don’t think I’d even care. I cut that emotional cord with him a long time ago.
After all, he’s the reason my mom started drinking. He’s the reason she’s an alcoholic now. He’s the reason I no longer have college tuition money I was relying on to get me out of this tiny little podunk town and down to Boston, where I could study to be a doctor. Now without a miracle, I’m going to end up being just another Boxhurst, Vermont kid who will end up bouncing around from one minimum wage job to the next, struggling to survive, never having enough money to even buy myself a car that isn’t more than fifteen years old, wearing second-hand or discount store clothes until the day I die and they bury me down by the marsh.
And that’s if I’m lucky.
Boxhurst isn’t exactly Beverly Hills, and it isn’t some quaint, Hollywood-esque, rural postcard town either. It’s a small town in the middle of nowhere that used to rely on logging and its granite mines to provide for its citizens. But those industries died out here long before I was born, and all that’s left now is the specter of a once-thriving town.
The few people here who have any kind of money are the ones involved in local government and the medical industry, but the rest of us…well, let’s just say there’s a lot of lottery tickets being sold down at the gas station.
The ride back to my house is always the worst. I don’t know why I do this to myself. Maybe it’s to get a bit of a break from my mom—she’s always at her worst when she’s been drinking. Or maybe it’s a form of escapism from my own terrible thoughts. Some kind of short, fantastical journey where I can imagine another possible way my life could have turned out. One where I have a loving, stable family, a mother who doesn’t drink herself dumb every day, and a father who actually cares about his one and only daughter and didn’t cheat on the wife he vowed to spend the rest of his life with.
But as I drive back from the nice part of town, where I know I’ll never live, and cross the tracks leading into mine, and begin to face all the empty, dilapidated homes that stand like withered skeletons on the side of the road as the moon begins to rise over the trees, that ache within my chest begins to spread, and I feel myself beginning to tear up.
Why, Iris? Why do you do this to yourself? Don’t you have a better way of coping, you dumb, dumb girl?
There must be a better way.
Maybe I could try meditation. Or pickup art or something.
Maybe I could try painting? Bob Ross always made it look so easy. I have to admit, I’ve fallen asleep to his videos more than a handful of times in my life. I always liked watercolor back in kindergarten, but then again, that was kindergarten. Back then, all you’re really doing is dragging a brush across a piece of paper while your teacher tells you how great you’re doing, right?