Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
If he wanted to sleep in his underwear, who was I to complain when I kept to my tank tops most nights too?
That specific morning, I had laid in bed for half an hour trying to hype myself up into this next stage of my life, telling myself everything would work out. That everything would be fine. I listened to my grandparents’ voice mails like I had every morning since I’d gotten my replacement cell phone and thanked God I still had them. Only then did I trudge downstairs for a bowl of cereal. I’d noticed that the house felt colder and that the floors too were cooler, but it hadn’t been until I’d pulled out a bowl and fished my box of cereal out from a cabinet that I had finally peeked outside and seen it.
What had to be a few inches of snow had fallen overnight. Literally just a couple, but it was something. It was everything I’d ever imagined and hoped for when I finally got the chance to see snow. I couldn’t believe something could be so beautiful sprinkled over tree branches and the ground.
It wasn’t until he stood nearly directly behind me that I realized he had moved.
He wanted to look out the window too, I guess.
A few flurries were still coming down, and we both stood there, sucked into the sight of snow covering the plants and trees that made up his incredible forest-like backyard. He had taken me out yesterday and shown me where he wanted to build a greenhouse in the spring. He had also given me a tour of the solar panels that powered the property, and even shown me his composting situation and water recycling system.
A slight puff of warmth hit that spot between my shoulder and neck, and I clung to my composure.
For about the hundredth time, I fought not to think about what Alex’s grandmother had shown me at the party. Of all the things I’d learned, that had been what hit me the hardest. Even in my dreams, I hadn’t been able to ignore it.
The problem was keeping it so that he couldn’t tell something was on my mind.
Despite everything that had happened between us, the level of comfort we both felt around each other now, I wasn’t positive I wanted to have that conversation with him. I didn’t know if I wanted him to know.
Correction: I was sure I didn’t want to tell him. My pride might not survive it. Then I’d have to try and suffocate him to preserve what I had left, and nothing was in my favor for that going well so…
I either needed to ask someone else about it, or I needed to move on and pretend it hadn’t happened.
Right. Super easy.
“I’m sure you’ve seen more than this, but I’ve only seen a sprinkle before,” I told him quietly, like if I spoke too loud I’d break the effect it had. “I want to go out there.”
I could feel his breath on my neck, all soft and slow. “Go out there then,” Alex said, for some reason reminding me of how I’d fallen asleep on the couch the night before and how he’d woken me up by crouching beside me, just starting to slip his arm under my back like he’d been about to pick me up.
I’d walked up the stairs myself, but it would have been an experience.
A real nice experience.
Dammit, I needed to stop or find some other way to get past this weird shit going on in my chest now every time I thought about him. He’d been in and out of the house a lot; when he was around, he’d be in the room he’d called his office with the door closed for long periods of time. When the door was open, he was on his big, two-screen computer with a pen in his mouth, jotting down notes in a notebook. He’d come out in the evenings and make something for dinner. So far he’d made burgers and spaghetti, and one night he’d made the best carbonara I’d ever had in my life, even though I’d only eaten my own. I had only teased him a little about how he knew how to cook and had kept it a secret. And every night, we’d sat there and watched a movie together while we ate. Not awkwardly, just quietly. Then sometimes, afterward, we talked about it.
We’d watched one of the Electro-Man movies, and he hadn’t had much to say about that one, but the rest we discussed, mostly talking about all the shit we didn’t like about it.
I was pretty sure we both had a hell of a lot on our minds that neither one of us wanted to talk about.
Fine by me.
With so much time to kill, I had started rebuilding my website under another business name from the very comfortable location of the living room downstairs. Even though I was fairly confident the cartel hadn’t found out anything about my banking information thanks to my paranoia which led me to use the browser window that didn’t save any of my history, and never staying logged into anything, I had decided to play it on the safe side and buy a new URL for my business. The one and only breadcrumb I would have left them were the workbooks and notebooks I used with my students. Would they be able to figure out what I did? Where I got students from? I hadn’t thought about that issue until recently. Would they eventually be able to figure me out? IP addresses could be tracked down, and I just wasn’t sure if it was worth launching the site, so even though I was working on it, I was going to sit on it until I thought it through.