“Anything else you feel the need to warn me about?” I sit up beside her. “Any other hair styling solutions my man might find pleasing and navigationally friendly?”
Brylee pushes her shoulder into mine. “You just called him your man.”
I take a breath at the thought. “I did, didn’t I?” I can feel my cheeks filling in with heat. “Hey, Bry—what do you think my dad would say if he knew Ace and I were dating?”
“I don’t know. He’s sort of gunning for Warren, I think we both know that.”
“True story.” And it breaks my heart.
“You know who else is gunning for Warren?” She slips a blonde curl behind her ear.
“Who?” My cheek rises on one side disapprovingly. “If you say it’s you, I’ll hurl all over your feet. I have higher standards for you.”
“Warren.” She taps my foot with hers. “He talked on and on this morning about how he felt like an ass and wanted to make it up to you.”
“Did he tell you what he did?” God, if he’s blabbing about our mattress mishap to anyone who’ll listen, I’ll die. It’s bad enough I confessed to Ace what happened.
“He mentioned something about coming on too strong. And, before you freak out it was just Neva and me.”
“Lovely.” I don’t like the thought of Warren letting Neva and Brylee in on what happened last night. “Did you guys have a pillow fight afterward? I mean, that’s what besties do, right?”
Brylee shakes her head at me. “Just go shape your hairy sweet spot into a heart, would you?” She hops off the bed. “I’ll be back in the morning for the dirty deets.” She heads out the door and pauses. “Oh, and happy endings!”
After what felt like hours of plucking, and shaving, and shaping—my entire body is hygienically clean enough to eat a meal off. Of course, I’m hoping to be the meal. My insides throb at the idea of what Ace and I might be doing later. I have a feeling it won’t take long to achieve that happy ending. I’m just hoping I can hold out long enough to make it worth his while.
I change into a sheer lace dress that stretches over each of my curves in the event Ace forgets where to land his special kisses, but before I bolt out the door, I hop on my bed a moment and do the unthinkable. I reach under my mattress and pull out the letters from my mother. I suppose there’s more than a brain malfunction going on when I’m about to get as close to having sex as possible, and here I am looking to steal a moment of quality time with my poor, sweet mother.
The envelopes slip through my fingers like butter. It warms me to think she touched these very things just days before her passing. She lost so much weight those last few months, and, in the end, she was nothing but skin over bones. I try not to remember her like that, her toothy grimace, her smooth, bald head. My mother was a beauty queen in the most literal sense—Miss Lake Loveless once upon a time, the knockout who stole my father’s heart. She had long, dark hair she could wrap around her neck like a scarf, and a body that men would routinely drool over. The cancer stole her looks before it took her life, but it couldn’t steal her beauty where it really counted, on the inside. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer just a few weeks before my twelfth birthday. I’ll never forget the long faces. The fear in her eyes that she would never see me blow out another candle.
I shake the bitter memory of those dark days out of my head if only for a moment.
Instead, I focus in on the loopy handwriting stamped across each one of these envelopes. It’s as familiar as seeing her face. I pluck the most recent letter out and open it—run my fingers over her precious penmanship before reading.
Dear Reese,
Happy Birthday!
Congratulations, you’re in your twenties! It’s going to be a magical decade—one laced with just about every new experience under the sun. This is the time in your life where you really discover who you are and what makes you tick, what you believe in, and the things you think are worth fighting for, dying for. But, like most girls your age, you’ll spend an abundance of your time thinking about love. There are so many different types of love, and I think we both know that I’m not talking about the kind of love Daddy and I have for you. What you’re probably looking for has a far more sensual meaning behind it. I want you to know, you have my blessing. And I hope you find exactly what you’re looking for with the exact person you desire it from most. But if it doesn’t come, don’t let it steal your joy. There’s so much happiness all around, so much unexpected wonder in the little things. That’s really what I want you to appreciate—the joy and the ecstasy in the little things. Find the ecstasy in life where you can. It’s in those moments you really live. All those other gaps in time are just filler until the next bout of delirium. You could find it just as easily in the silence as you could anywhere—it could be in the face of a perfect flower, in the scent of a fragrant spring morning. It could be in a kiss from a beautiful boy. All of those sweet moments make one hell of an adventure.And if life doesn’t offer you an adventure—make one happen.
Enjoy every moment.
Every precious breath is a thing of beauty. Cradle those you love in your heart, bury them there, and never let them go. Life is too short to forget about them even for a moment.
Love you forever,
Mommy
Tears run down my cheeks in long, hot streaks as I carefully replace the letters under my mattress. It was that last line, the one about burying the ones you love in your heart and never forgetting them that set the tone for my entire last year at Yeats. After grieving my mother once again, the next person I thought about was Ace. It was him I knew I never wanted out of my life, and I spent the entire livelong year pining after him like the lovesick schoolgirl I was. By Valentine’s Day I had mapped out exactly how this summer would go down. I would have begged on my knees if I had to, but I was determined to have him.
And, tonight, I will.
Mostly.
I skip downstairs to find the house empty. A lone vase sits on the table with two-dozen long stem roses spilling out from it like a bloodied waterfall.
A pink note sits on the table next to them, and I snap it up.
These came while you were gone.
