Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 121296 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121296 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
We’ve had others come and go. Curious women, bored women, idealistic women. None of them ever looked past the surface. Past the novelty.
Grace sees.
God help me; she sees us.
I drag my thumb over my bottom lip and read again.
“McCartney is the dreamer. He sketches, carves, paints, and builds, seeing the angles the rest of us miss. He moves like he’s got music playing in his heart that no one else can hear, and somehow, you want to find a way to hear it, too.”
I blow out a slow breath, moved beyond words. My fingers itch for my pencil, for my guitar, for anything that can capture this feeling. Instead, I do something reckless and stupid. I open the blank line under her last sentence and type.
The words flow faster than I expected without any kind of planning.
“You walked into a place not built for you,
Wove yourself into the dust and the dew.
Wild hair, sharp tongue, softest soul in disguise,
You see us through patient, forgiving eyes.
Stay, city girl, trade concrete for sky.
We’re looking for forever, so just don’t say goodbye.”
My throat tightens as I type the last line. I sit there, staring at it like an idiot, heart hammering harder than it should.
It isn’t a poem. It isn’t quite a song, either, but I already hear the melody.
I pull back and hover my fingers over the delete key. I could erase it. I should.
But I don’t.
I scroll her article back to the top, leave my scrawled confessional quietly nestled where she’ll find it later, and close the lid so it won’t be obvious.
The sound of her footsteps overhead jolts me back to reality.
Her footsteps grow louder. Grace is moving fast, laughing into her phone as she descends the stairs. I snap to attention, panic fluttering in my chest.
I stand, knocking the chair back with a soft scrape, and step away from the table, swiping my water glass to deposit it on the counter and cross to the door, every movement smooth and casual.
The screen door groans as I slip outside as she rounds the corner into the kitchen.
“I’ll call you back,” she says into the phone, distracted. “Yeah. Yeah, I promise. I’m fine.”
I lean against the porch post outside, listening through the window as she settles back into her chair. The soft click-click of keys resumes a moment later, slower now, thoughtful.
My stomach knots.
I want to know if she finds it. I want to watch her face when she reads it.
But I won’t.
McCartney Delaney doesn’t get caught up. I sketch, I carve, I let things pass through me like wind through the trees. I don’t hold on.
Except with Grace, I want to. Maybe, I already have.
26
GRACE
I have a balloon in my chest. It’s the only explanation for the way I feel. I left the kitchen for a phone call and came back to a poem about me, left by McCartney, who disappeared before I could read it.
There’s a lump in my throat, too, the size and texture of a sea urchin, his words touching me deeply. I rise from the table to grab a glass of water and gulp it down, swallowing my feelings with it.
Just don’t say goodbye.
I will, though. I have to. I have a life: work, deadlines, friends, and family waiting for me. I’ve clawed my way to the top and fought harder to outrun the chaos of my childhood. I was supposed to find peace, quiet, and control. I haven’t found love yet, but I keep telling myself it’s out there. It has to be.
Even as I think it, my stomach knots. I don’t believe it.
How many more dates with crypto-bros, podcasters, and guys who call themselves “serial entrepreneurs” do I have to survive before I find something real? I’ve kissed enough frogs to sink an entire damn fleet and all it’s earned me is emptiness and the sinking suspicion that I was never worthy of the fairy tale, anyway.
I shake it off and sink back into the chair, dragging my laptop closer. The glow of the screen steadies me, a tether to the part of me that still knows how to compartmentalize.
Time to be a professional again. Time to finish what I came here to do.
I find the start of the article that poured out of me and read it in a rush of rediscovery.
When I’m done, I stare at the final sentence. My finger hovers over the trackpad, ready to go back and smooth out the flaws, but I don’t. With only a single click to attach it to an email, it’ll be out there, permanent and unchangeable.
But I can’t do it. I’ve always been like this. The last-minute girl. Give me a deadline, and I’ll dance right on the razor’s edge, chasing the thrill of deciding under pressure. It’s safer that way. If I wait long enough, the choice of how the story is presented makes itself. Time will force me to decide what the right message is. This story feels like it’s still being written. It isn’t ready for a period, or a blunt The End.