Total pages in book: 163
Estimated words: 150878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 754(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 503(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 150878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 754(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 503(@300wpm)
“A few months before you moved to LA.” She looked up at the branches above, one finger twisting in her hair. “I had this stupid fantasy that if we went to the prom together, we’d have this moment on the dance floor where you’d wrap your arms around me and look into my eyes and… I don’t know. Somehow it would set the whole world back in place and we’d return to those magical, golden days.”
I hadn’t expected that. I hadn’t even realized she’d been thinking much about me at all during that time. She’d seemed so focused on her music and all her friends, living the life any beautiful seventeen-year-old girl should live. I’d distanced myself because I had no role in that sort of carefree existence. My life was falling apart as I watched each piece of my legacy dismantled and sold.
She turned her head, her gaze moving over my face. “You were in the barn working and I gathered all my courage and asked if you were going to the prom. You told me you didn’t have time for stupid dances and then you turned away.”
My chest deflated. “Shit. I’m sorry, Em.” I did remember that now. It had hurt me because I’d misunderstood it. “I didn’t know you were asking me to go with you. I thought your question was an indication you didn’t see what I was going through.”
“Maybe it was, partially anyway. Like I said, I thought you were angry and so I didn’t know how to approach you. I was confused and hurt too. And I was also seventeen. But see, Tuck, it was just a moment, a moment where either of us could have reacted differently—better maybe—but we didn’t, and so life moved forward the way it did. That’s what life does in the wake of our choices, good, bad, or in-between.”
My heart warmed. I appreciated the grace she was extending to me. I realized she was relating that moment, and perhaps several others between us, to that dreadful night Abel died. “Life moved forward with no dance-floor moment,” I said. “The one that would have righted everything.”
She turned her body and rested an elbow on the floor, supporting her head in her palm. “Do you think it’s too late to try it now?”
“To dance?”
“To dance the dance.”
“Here?”
Her lips were so close, and there was a tiny smear of yellow cheese on the corner of her mouth. The need to lean in and lick it off and taste her was so strong, I almost moaned, swelling to life, my body so needy. “Well, maybe not here,” she said. “I mean, we’re horizontal right now and there’s no music. But…in general. Do you think there’s such a thing as creating a moment that rights everything that’s gone so horribly wrong? If one moment can ruin everything, maybe one moment can fix it too.”
The way she was looking at me, as if life itself hinged on my answer, made my breath hitch. And for some reason, whereas I would have immediately dismissed the whimsical idea before right now, something inside was tempted to say, maybe. Maybe there is such a moment, a few seconds that undo every wrong. Maybe. Only Emily could do that—help me see possibility and hope where before I’d seen none. Only her.
And right then, it felt like a form of magic. It felt like—together—we could find that moment if it existed at all.
The sudden boom of gunfire made us both startle, and I got on my knees, peering over the wall of the tree fort, my heart hammering. The noise had come from a short distance away, probably someone hunting in this small section of woods. “We should go.”
“Darn. I was hoping this was a good place to camp.”
“We’re essentially in someone’s backyard,” I said. “There’s a neighborhood right over there. And if folks are hunting nearby, it isn’t safe. Also, if there’s danger, we’d be cornered up here.” I turned and started down the ladder. “We’ll camp somewhere safer that’s close by and start off again in the morning.”
We put our backpacks on once we were on the ground and turned back the way we’d come. The sky dimmed another few shades, turning from gold to amber to twilight blue. It was a chilly night and our breath gusted from our mouths as we moved through the damp forest. We walked for thirty minutes or so, winding back through the park, toward the road where I was pretty sure we’d taken a wrong turn. A glow appeared between the break in some trees, and we slowed. “A fire,” Emily whispered, her teeth chattering slightly. The sound of a harmonica met our ears. “Music,” she said, the longing in her voice was deeper than it’d been when she’d mentioned the campfire.