Read As I Breathe (One Breath at a Time: Book 2) for Free Online Page B

tell me what happened?”
    “ Okay, but don’t tell your mother I told you.”
    “ Oh gosh, I would never tell her,” I said confidently. “She’s a little old-fashioned when it comes to things like this. But, I’m not. Can you believe that a girl in my school has already done it? She’s like fourteen.” I grimaced, rolling my eyes back.
    My Grandmother peered at me over the rim of her silver glasses. “Done it? You mean...she’s had relations with a boy, already?”
    “Heck yeah...Grandma, kids start pretty young these days.”
    “ Oh, dear, that’s not good,” she gasped, furrowing her brows, marring the two lines between her eyes, and so did I. Respectfully, I loved to imitate her facial expressions, and especially her signature one brow raise. Then, she looked at me suspiciously.
    “ I haven’t done anything yet, no way!” I proclaimed, shaking my head.
    “ Well, that’s good news,” she said, exhaling long, obviously relieved. “Be a good girl and keep your knees together.”
    “ Grandma!” I squealed, feeling somewhat embarrassed. “Don’t worry, I will.” There was a beat of awkward silence. “So, what did that boy do to you?”
    “ Well, the theater was very dark and, the movie was playing on, and then suddenly I felt his sweaty palm crawl over my shoulder ever so slowly. I just about jumped out of my skin when he touched me, and before he knew what happened, I socked him square in the eye.” Grandmother grinned mischievously and punched her fist into the air. “Boom...he had a shiner for weeks,” she sneered, trying to hold down her laughter.
    “ That’s hilarious! I guess you told him. Did he get super mad at you?” I asked between rasps of laugher.
    “ Ooh no, he didn’t say a word. He just got up and left me there. I think I shocked the pants off of him but more than anything he was surprised I could hit so hard. I ended up watching the movie by myself. ” She shrugged. “It was such a good movie. A love story that I wasn’t about to miss.”
    “ Grandma, you crack me up,” I snorted.
    “ I warned him there’d be no hanky-panky until after we were married,” she paused, “After all, I didn’t love him—I liked him okay, but neither one of us were in love.” Grandmother wrinkled up her tiny freckled nose. “In those days marrying a college boy was a smart thing for a poor girl to do.”
    I piped in, “If you weren’t in love...then...why were you going to marry the wealthy man?” I pried, carefully enunciating my words. My braces caused me to slur sometimes. “That would’ve been a mistake, right?”
    Grandmother pulled in her lips and arched both brows. “My-my, you ask some tough questions, maybe you should study to be an attorney.”
    “ No Grandma, I’m going to be a mystery writer.”
    She narrowed her eyes a fraction. “Well, it was no mystery why I was going to marry him—it was to help my family. My papa said, “Katie , it’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich man, as it is a poor man. That was bad advice, coming from a man with no money—I learned on my own that money comes and goes, and it’s the love that holds you together. But you’re right though, my little smarty-pants; marrying Collin Davis would’ve been a huge mistake. At the time, I only agreed to marry him because it was just after the Great Depression. Things were really difficult in those days, and of course, my papa thought it was for the best. But, there were no wedding bells after I walloped my groom,” she snickered. “Thank goodness,” she whispered, gazing through me.
    “ So, then you married Grandpa Stephen, right?”
    “ That’s right. I met him in Paris when I was volunteering at one of the hospitals. It was the spring of 1946. We got married three months later. I suppose I was still a child bride at twenty, especially since he was twenty-one years my senior.”
    “ What does that mean?” I asked quizzically, wrinkling my nose.
    “ Senior?” she