Page 24 of Win Some Love Some
It made me cringe. Even after all these years.
I took a deep breath and pulled in all the hurt that was still there. It should be gone. Intellectually, I knew that. There hadbeen a second, one moment, when I’d tried to convince myself what I had felt for Rene was real. That I was grateful to Nick for rejecting me so I could move onto this exciting new life in France with Rene that was the opposite of everything I would have had with Nick.
And that wentgreat.
It was like I couldn’t trust my feelings at all.
“Nor, are you going to help me with my homework or what?” Will asked.
“She better, because I’m not,” Bethany muttered.
“Know-it-all,” Will fired.
“Am not!”
“Hey,” I stepped in and took a seat at the table. “I’ll help.”
Will shoved his homework assignment in my direction. “You do know math, right?”
“I know French,” I offered.
He shrugged. “That’s close enough, I guess.”
The dinghy rockedon waves that were getting higher. Water splashed over the stern and it was freezing out on the water. I didn’t have my foul weather gear. Or shoes, and around my feet were dozens of lobsters. How did I get here?
Why did I fall for Rene’s lies?
Why did I give him all that money?
What was missing from my life that I-
The lobsters all cried, “Nick.”
That wasn’t possible. Lobsters couldn’t talk. I picked one up to throw into the water but he clamped his claws onto my hand. “Ouch,” I cried.
“Listen,” the lobster cried. “This town isn’t big enough for you to ignore him like you did in France.”
“I’m lying low,” I said and tried to shake the lobster off my hand. “I’ll be fine.”
The lobster shook it’s little lobster head and the water splashed up over the side of the boat. Now there was too much water and the boat was going to sink, taking me and the talking lobsters with it.
“How did I mess this up so badly?” I asked my lobster friend and he patted my hand with his claw.
“You can’t run forever.”
With a gaspI sat up in my dark bedroom. I’d kicked the blanket off in the middle of the night and I was freezing. And my hand was asleep.
Stupid dream, I thought, and shook out my hand, trying to get my heart rate back under control. The clock on my bedside table said it was just before five am.
I reached over and turned off the alarm that would go off in a few minutes. There wasn’t going to be any more sleep for me this morning. I was supposed to go out on the boat with my dad. Which explained my dream. It’s not that I didn’t like going out on the boat with Dad, it was that the boat did not like me.
For years I’d been trying to control the seasickness. Dramamine just made me groggy. ginger ale helped, but there was only so much of it I could drink. I’d convinced Dad that I’d outgrown the seasickness, which was a lie, but I needed to work.
Hard work. Physical labor. I needed toearnmoney. An antithesis to the videos I was making which had been so fun. So serendipitous.
I needed to re-shape my life and my future into something real. Solid. Something that couldn’t be taken away by one mistake and the capricious nature of fandom.
I pushed myself out of bed and carefully made my way down the hallway to the bathroom I once again shared with my siblings. At least we’d dropped from six to three. Charlie, RJ and Lilly were in college. It was just Will, Beth and me at home.
