Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 122609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 613(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 409(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 613(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 409(@300wpm)
She looked at him as if she were amused and perplexed at the same time by his question.
“Well, I used to spend a lot of time over my aunt’s house because of the difficulties my mother and I had—my mother’s sister, Aunt Juicy we called ’er—and she’d watch the news all the time. That’s where my love affair with the news started. While other kids were watching cartoons or action movies, my little ass wanted some ribs, cornbread, an orange soda, and to eat it all while sitting in front of the television watching Dateline.”
He smiled at that. He found the imagery funny.
“Why is that?”
“It reminded me of my father.”
“Of course it did. Your first love… and the first to break your heart.”
“Wow. That’s something. I never thought about it quite like that.” She adjusted her crossed legs and rocked one back and forth. “He used to always watch the news but, I discovered later, for nefarious reasons. He wanted to make sure he wasn’t on it.” She laughed mirthlessly. “For me though, I got lost in the stories. It was therapy, Archer. I got to see that other people were suffering even worse than I was in the world. As sick as this sounds, that gave me comfort. It made me feel grateful, too. And then one day my mother had one of those old Polaroid cameras and asked me to take a picture of her for her job. I did it, and I looked at it after it developed right before my eyes.
“I asked her to pose in different ways, and it just seemed to come to me naturally. I remember her laughing at how seriously I was taking it. Five photos later and I still wasn’t satisfied. She said I was wasting the film. My mother rarely asked me for help, but of all of her children, she called my name. That made me feel proud. This was important and for once in my life, she’d called on me. She must’ve known something I didn’t about me after all. That I had a good eye. That Christmas, my mother got me my own camera. A Nikon. Aunt Juicy paid for me to take a summer photography class I was interested in. The rest is history.”
They sat there, smiling at one another. It happened naturally.
“I want… I want to tell you one more thing.” She coughed into her hand and cleared her throat. “Only my best friend, Chasity, knows about it.”
“If you tell me, I don’t owe you any additional information about my own life, Honey. At the end of the day, though I know I was wrong about your character, you’re still a reporter, and that’s how your mind works. I want to make that clear,” he stated as calmly as he could.
“I’m not doing it as a tit for tat. You’re still paranoid about me. You shouldn’t be. I think I’ve proven I’m not going to do anything stupid, and that I understand what’s going on quite clearly.”
“I’m not paranoid about you. Just aware of you. People like us know that the more we know about a person, the more leverage we’ll have over them. You are offering all of this information up, suddenly, for free… With your kidnapper. That’s who I am. Something is going on here. You’re up to something. I’m taking it, but I know there’s a plan inside of you. We’re physically attracted to each other and we both know it, but all of the other shit that’s going on in our lives, our minds, all that has happened between us trumps that attraction.”
“I will give you that. The attraction is more than skin-deep, Archer.”
“It is, but it doesn’t matter. A part of you loathes me and always will. I deserve that. You don’t think I know my position in this game? In your life? I can never have anything different with you than what we have right now, even if I wanted to. There’s no way you’d want to build anything with me. This is a reluctant arrangement.”
“You say that like there’s more that you want from me.” She smirked. “Like you’ve missed out on an opportunity.”
He slipped a cigar out of his pocket, lit it, and smoked it.
“Maybe I do…”
This time, there were no smiles. Just soft emotions that made him uncomfortable. He had no room for this and yet, it was forcing its way inside.
“Tell me why it was so hard to break you. It goes beyond havin’ a gang-bangin’ father. It goes past being emotionally neglected from your mother, too. You personally went through something that turned you into Teflon. I want you to tell me what it is. I am asking you as… a friend.”
She looked away, played with her cuticles for a bit, then faced him head on.