Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 72822 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72822 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Lily read. A lot. This book, though, sounded like dog shit.
“That book sounds like it sucks,” I told her.
She rolled her eyes. “I thought it was beautiful, but it made me sad for him. Why was he the one that had to make all the sacrifices? Would she have been mad had he moved on? She was actually happy, when she got back and read his ‘history,’ that he hadn’t had a wife or kids. Happy. I, on the other hand, thought that was kind of selfish.”
I pulled my wife into my side and closed my eyes.
Lily always started conversations when we were in bed. Always, right before I was seconds away from falling asleep for the night.
But for her, I’d stay awake. I loved her.
I loved her with all of my heart, and always would.
“I think every situation is different,” I told her honestly, my eyes heavy with sleep. “Say, for instance, you decided to up and croak on me. I would move on only in the sense that I’d put one foot in front of the other. I’d do just about anything for the kids. But moving on to another woman wouldn’t be one of them.”
“I would want you to move on,” she whispered.
“You can want in one hand, and shit in the other, and see which one fills up faster.”
She squealed in outrage and shoved a tiny fist straight into my ribs.
“Ouch,” I laughed, rolling over until she was pinned underneath me. “Wench.”
She giggled, then sobered. “Dante.”
“Yeah, baby?”
“Don’t live a life you think will honor my memory. If you ever found somebody, I’d want you to be happy. Just like I know you’d want me to be happy if that ever happened.”
“It’ll never happen. So this is a moot point, anyway.”
***
I woke struggling to breathe as I recalled the memory that played through my dreams.
“It’ll never happen. So this is a moot point, anyway.”
Except it had happened.
It’d happened, and I was so pissed at Lily for it happening.
So fucking pissed that she wasn’t here anymore.
But one thing she said held true. I would’ve wanted her to be happy.
And she had wanted me to be, also.
Could I take that step in Cobie’s direction?
I wasn’t really sure.
I wasn’t sure about damn near everything nowadays.
One thing I was sure about, though, and that was that I missed Cobie.
Didn’t I owe it to myself—and Lily—to find out why I missed her?
Chapter 17
How soon into a friendship can you start calling them a motherfucker?
-Asking for a friend
Cobie
One week later
I’d never, not ever, wanted to do anything more than I wanted to call Dante.
I wanted to hear his voice. I wanted to see his little girl hug her arms around his neck. I wanted to freakin’ have a conversation with him that was about stupid shit like what the weatherman was wearing.
What I didn’t want to do was admit that I’d gone and fallen in love with the man. Why? Because the man wasn’t ever going to fall in love with me back. His heart was already promised to another, and that would just be plain dumb for me to go and do.
So, I suppressed the twitch to reach for the phone and went about my day.
It’d been a total of four weeks since I’d had my surgery, and I was starting to feel like myself again—at least myself minus boobs.
It was still weird to put on a T-shirt and not have that added feeling of wearing a bra underneath. Things rubbed weird, and I even contemplated wearing a sports bra just because the feeling was so odd.
Yet, I ignored the new and untried feelings, or at least tried to, anyway.
Hell, even the chest part of my seatbelt fit wrong.
Before, it used to go between my breasts.
Now, it went somewhere to the right, rubbing all sorts of different places.
Then there was the way I used to sleep—which was on my side. Now it felt uncomfortable because I couldn’t find that used-to-be favorite position anymore. With my boobs missing, I tended to lay more toward my belly rather than on my side.
It was week four, day twenty-six, and I had nothing to do.
Tomorrow was my week four appointment with the doctor, and tomorrow they might tell me I could go back to work.
Likely, though, he’d tell me to take the full six weeks that he’d told me was normal, and I’d have to tell him that if I stayed one more extra day at home, I might very well die.
My job was the only thing keeping me sane at this point, the thought of being there, instead of in this house all alone, sounded so appealing it wasn’t even funny.
Dante freakin’ haunted me.
His laughter echoed inside my brain. Though, he didn’t laugh all that much. Once that I knew of for sure, and it’d been because of something Mary had done to me.