Read All She Wanted (2) for Free Online Page B

B.”
    I hung up the phone, shaking my head and
chuckling to myself. I loved that kid more than my life, and I missed seeing
him like I used to.
    I closed the hood of my truck, wiping
my hands on an old towel scrap I’d shoved into my back pocket.  
    Up until a year ago, Angie and Cody had
lived five minutes from me. I saw them several times a week, but when Angie was
offered a job as a floral shop manager, she convinced me that moving was the
right decision for them. My anxiety over the distance between us had not
lessened with time. An hour drive was likely insignificant to most people, but Angie
was not most people to me. With the horror I’d watched her live through, an
hour felt like a continent away some days.
    I had warned her not to marry
Dirk—begged her even, but she was blinded by desperation. Marriage wasn’t the
rescue plan she had hoped for—instead, it became the thing she needed to be
rescued from the most. Her lies, excuses, and avoidance could only last for so
long before the truth finally surfaced, just like her bruises had.
    Angie’s pregnancy was the reason we
left Colorado, to leave the demons of our past behind us. But when Cody was
nearly three, Angie’s ex-husband found her again. If I hadn’t gone back to the
house that night to grab my wallet, she wouldn’t have survived.
    I
probably wouldn’t have either.
    My phone buzzed in my pocket.
    Kai : What time tonight?
    Me : 6?
    Kai : Sure. Tori’s off today. Pizza?
    Me : Sure, thx. I’ll buy drinks.
    Kai : K
    I smiled then, thinking about what Kai
would say if I texted back my new vocab word of the week—the one I’d learned
from Charlie: Perf . I was pretty sure in order for me to
pull that off though I would have to look and smell like a sorority girl. Not
gonna happen.
    Why was
I even thinking about her?
    After taking a shower, I left to go
grab a few more things from my old apartment before hitting up the store. I thought
about telling Charlie I was leaving, but I hadn’t seen her all day. She
probably wouldn’t even notice I was gone.

 
    Charlie
    As I cleaned the kitchen, I heard him
leave. Where was he going?
    Wait—why
do I care? I don’t.
    I scrubbed the sink and pretended not
to feel his absence. Though we hadn’t talked since yesterday in the office, I
had seen him this afternoon working on his truck in the driveway. I had also
seen him talking on the phone.
    Did he
have a girlfriend?
    If he did, she had better be pretty
secure in herself—he was a flirt, yet even as I thought it, there was a dramatic
difference between his kind of charm and the charm that Alex possessed. Manny— Briggs, was light-hearted,
fun-loving and a pain in my side, while Alex breathed seduction.
    I glanced at the clock after vacuuming.
It was 5:15. Briggs had failed to communicate a time to me for when this game extravaganza would commence, but I
figured since he was still gone, that it would be a bit.
    Time had never passed as slowly as it
had since I’d been a shut-in. I had a whole new appreciation for those with
agoraphobia. I grabbed my zip-up and walked out to the back deck. I made a
mental note to tell Manny that I wanted to go to the bookstore soon since this
was to be my life for the next few weeks. I hadn’t read a good fiction
masterpiece for a while—music theory hadn’t really allowed for much pleasure
reading.
    I leaned back and let the cool April
breeze float across my face. I closed my eyes, letting the smell of pine needles
take me away.

 
    **********

 
    I had
seen Jenny’s dad carrying a small pokey tree with funny branches into their
apartment once. She had lived next door to us. The smell of it was strong, and
I wondered what he was going to do with it once he brought it inside. Jenny
said it was for Christmas.
    I didn’t
know what they meant.
    Mama was
awake on the bed when I went back into our apartment. She glanced at me briefly
before rolling back over onto her side. I approached her quietly—curiosity at
the