Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 109945 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 550(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109945 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 550(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Spencer lifted the small stack of CDs and turned them over, staring at them for a long time before putting them aside. He sat down on the porch step and reached into the box again and withdrew a pair of binoculars. He looked at them curiously for a moment before turning to face her. Her eyes were shining with tears, but she forced a little smile.
“Peter Weyland, three years ago, also two months. He was an out-of-towner, a keen bird-watcher, and I took him to all the best bird-spotting sites in the Garden Route. I knew them all, you see, because I absolutely adored bird-watching.”
“I see,” he said, dropping the binoculars, uncaring where they landed. His eyes remained riveted to hers, and one of the tears that had been threatening slid down her cheek and hung from her trembling chin for a long moment before dropping to her fidgeting fingers. She seemed unaware of it and just kept watching him steadily.
“There’s more,” she prompted him, and he nodded without looking at the box again.
“I know.”
“It’s important,” she said, her voice quiet.
“It’s not.”
“I also have a guitar. I’m quite proficient at it. I learned to play when I was dating Aaron Marks. He was an aspiring musician.”
“I remember him,” Spencer said, keeping his voice carefully neutral even though his heart was breaking for this beautiful, intelligent woman who had felt the need to pretend—for fucking years—to be someone she was not. When she was amazing just the way she was.
“A-and I have a surfboard, cookbooks, all these really shitty black-and-white movies, a—”
“Daff,” he said, inserting just enough volume in his voice to halt the stumbling tide of—what she clearly considered—guilty admission. “Stop. I just want to know which one of those fuckers loved eggs.”
She made a wet, snorting giggling sound and covered her mouth and nose in horror. He dug into his sweatpants and dragged out a clean hankie and handed it to her. She accepted it gratefully and blew her nose before shaking her head ruefully.
“Nobody carries hankies anymore.”
“I do.” She nodded and twisted the handkerchief between her fingers.
“The eggs? That was Byron Blake, back in the sixth grade. He offered me an egg-mayo sandwich and I liked him, so I accepted it.”
“That far back, huh?”
“Told you I was messed up. To be fair, none of them really expected me to lie about my interests. That was all me, in my sad attempts to be interesting to them. This past year was the first time I found myself without a boyfriend of some kind, and I found it kind of liberating to just do what I wanted to do.”
He nodded, unable to take his eyes off her. The tip of her nose was pink, her cheeks were blotchy, and her eyes were red. She wasn’t a pretty crier, but he couldn’t remember her ever looking more beautiful.
She sniffed messily and reached for another box, a shoebox that had been tucked away out of sight beside her hip.
“Daff, I told you I don’t need to see—”
“This,” she interrupted firmly, “is who I always longed to be.”
He scrutinized the box for a couple of heartbeats before reaching for it. She seemed reluctant to relinquish it, and that raised his curiosity.
He opened the box and stared at the neatly folded slips of notepaper for a moment. They looked familiar. He lifted one and opened it and felt his face go bright red as he instantly recognized what it was.
“You kept them?” he asked hoarsely. Frankly, he was amazed his voice actually worked.
“Every single one of them.”
He cringed and opened the note again.
“God, this is awful,” he muttered.
“I love it. I loved all of them. I was such a bitch, Spencer. But I couldn’t bring myself to part with a single one of them. They were so sweet.”
“I was a horny, troubled teen.”
“Don’t you dare denigrate my love poems. I never understood why you kept giving them to me. I didn’t deserve them, not the way I behaved, reading them out loud and making fun of you in front of the other girls. I was horrible. Even now I can’t really explain why I did those things, except that I was really scared the other girls would think I liked you back and I’d never hear the end of it. Fitting in meant so much to me; I was so shallow. And every time I read one of your poems, I felt worse about myself, because I could never be the girl you seemed to see.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“I wanted to be this girl, Spencer. I really did.”
“I put a lot on you, Daff. My home life was shitty. You were this perfect and beautiful girl and I built this fake romance up in my head. You would make my life different and wonderful and worthwhile. It was unfair. I did to you what all those other assholes did—I placed my expectations on you. I’m so fucking sorry.”