Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 111165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 556(@200wpm)___ 445(@250wpm)___ 371(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 556(@200wpm)___ 445(@250wpm)___ 371(@300wpm)
She’s shut me down every time.
Well, the one time she answered the phone, she shut me down. She said, “please stop calling me, I don’t ever want to speak to you,” and then hung up. Everything else before and after went unanswered.
But I’m emboldened by what Scooby said.
To grovel like a son of a bitch.
To fight for her.
To fight to be a part of her life in the very way she deserves.
The way we both deserve.
So I’m just heading over to her house unwanted, uninvited, and I’m not backing down, not until she knows how I feel, until she hears what I have to say.
But the gate is locked.
I frown, my fingers trying to fiddle with the latch which is usually so easy to lift.
“Can I help you?” a raspy low voice that definitely belongs to a heavy smoker comes out from the house.
I jump and look over at the open window where Miss Havisham is leaning out of, the curtains pushed behind her.
Bloody hell. I’ve never had a good look at her before, only as she was back in the day as a movie star and it’s apparent she still thinks she’s said movie star with all the thick, cakey makeup and red, overlined, Joan Crawford lips.
“Uh, hiya.” I remove my hand from the gate lock. “I’m here to see Marina.”
“She’s not home,” she says.
I glance at Marina’s VW bug on the street. “Are you sure?”
“She’s gone out with her friend. The grumpy one. What do you want?”
I stare down at the papers. “I wanted to give her something.”
“You can give it to me, I’ll give it to her.”
“Well actually it’s best I give them to her in person. I really need to talk to her.”
“So you can break her heart again?”
Ah. So she knows.
“No,” I say quietly. “I’m not going to break her heart again. I don’t even have her heart anymore.”
She rolls her eyes. “You young people don’t know a thing about love, do you?” She sighs and cocks her head. “Do you smoke?”
“I used to,” I admit. “Only on occasion now.”
“Come on in here. Have a cigarette with me and I’ll tell you the secrets of the universe.”
I should probably leave. I know that if I try and go to Marina’s—whether she’s home or not—I’ll get in trouble for it. It is Barbara’s property after all and she’s yelled about calling the cops on me before.
But curiosity has me by the neck.
I walk around to her front door and knock.
Wait a moment.
And then the door slowly opens, extra dramatic, with wafts of cigarette smoke billowing out toward me.
There stands Miss Havisham, though I suppose I should start calling her Barbara now. And unlike the Miss Havisham from Great Expectations, she’s not wearing a wedding dress but a long, red, satin gown with a lacy, white shawl over top.
A cigarette dangles from her sticky lips. Her hand holds out another one for me.
“Here. Welcome,” she says, walking over to the fireplace with her gown billowing behind her and grabbing a giant, vintage lighter from the mantle.
She lights her cigarette first and then lights mine, peering intently into my eyes as she does so.
“You remind me of Montgomery Clift,” she says, blowing smoke.
I raise my brows. “Wasn’t he gay?”
She shrugs. “Everyone was at some point. But you both have that brooding intensity, that need to embrace the dark. He always played the moody, sensitive and self-destructive characters because he was the same in real life. I bet you are too.”
I try and shrug it off. “It’s a bit self-indulgent to refer to yourself as brooding. I’m often thinking and lost in my head.”
“And your brows do this,” she says, sliding a finger down over my forehead, pushing my brows over my eyes. I’m hit with a wave of rose perfume. “You do that and you think and you overthink and that’s what makes you broody.” She makes a flamboyant gesture to the couch. “Here, sit down.”
I do so. I have to admit, the nicotine feels good, even if this whole situation is a little weird.
“So what do we have here?” she asks nodding at the papers as she takes a seat in an armchair across from me.
I absently flip through the pages. “They’re for Marina.”
“But what are they?”
I take a long drag of the cigarette, finding courage. “Poems,” I tell her, the smoke falling from my mouth. “They’re poems I wrote about her over the years. I wanted to give them to her.”
“Why?” she asks hoarsely, coughs.
“Because. She…I want her to know how I feel.”
“How do you feel?”
“About her?”
“It’s a simple question, Lazarus.” She draws out my name. “How do you feel about her? Do you love her?” She blows smoke rings out into the air and watches them float to the ceiling.
“Yes.”
“Are you in love with her?”
I swallow. “Yes.”