A 90's Friday Night Lights meets Fifty Shades, only the town is the sadomasochist and the two young lovers their pawns.
July Elizabeth Edwards is stuck in the existence her pretentious, rural East Texas town has allotted her. A shift in social statu...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I hadn't really slept or eaten in a week.
Summer was coming to a close. Somehow, the summer that promised to be one of the greatest of our lives had fallen short of expectations and mirrored the worst parts of our junior year. I hadn't seen anybody or talked to them since I left Lynn's that day. I just went to my last scheduled shifts at the pool and came home.
I didn't care what was going on with Reagan or Lynn.
I no longer worried about Robyn and whether Spencer could make good on anything as planned. She was someone who had people who wanted to help her but didn't want to take it. I couldn't seem to help myself or people who wanted my help, much less her. I gave up.
I didn't care why Devin was suddenly at the guard party. It didn't matter if what Spencer had said or done to her to show off in front of Lynn would make it worse for me at some other point. I just. Didn't. Care.
I even saw my best childhood friend, Anna George, playing out back with her entire family that day. It was after their family reunion picnic that happened every summer, and I had a standing invitation. The year before, I was working and bummed that I missed it. This year, I saw all the cars parked outside Anna's house. I just peeked through the window at all the people playing out back, missing that time when things weren't so complicated. Then I closed the curtain and went back to my bed room.
I didn't care anymore, and I hoped that meant a better focus on grades or whatever the hell this place wanted from me so I could run, not walk away from it.
I never had a cool bone in my body. If someone had asked me if I thought I tried too hard, or not hard enough... I don't think I would have known the difference.
As to the name I was done saying, the thought I was done thinking... It was as expected. I had not in fact heard a word from him since he walked out that day. Mom had been home for a good three week stretch with no travel interruptions, and I had adjusted to that change of scenery and pace. I got used to staying in my bedroom consecutively, and having breakfast for dinner, a favorite thing of mom's when it was just the two of us.
At one point I remember mom going through the caller ID on our kitchen phone, checking her missed calls from all the time she had been away. I was grabbing a Diet Dr. Pepper from the fridge when I heard her call out a few random last names she wasn't familiar with. For a split second between the beeps of her deleting miscellaneous numbers, I caught myself looking over my shoulder toward the phone.
