Page 59 of Badd Love
"I'm not letting that happen."
“I’m considering getting twenty-six cats and becoming a crazy cat lady with a collection of cute sex toys. I'll get all my food delivered and become a quirky best-selling romance novelist living in a tumbledown Gothic Revival mansion in Upstate New York, where I'll also have a pet hedgehog named Spike Flea. Except when a handsome city boy gets lost and ends up on my property, I'll run him off and go back to being a recluse, because Hallmark can go fuck itself with its false and misleading advertising."
Rune stared at me from the bench. "Are you finished?"
"Yes."
She extended her hands to me. "Good. Help me up—I'm a beached whale."
“You're not even that big yet."
"Goodyear Blimp, coming through."
She waited until we were back at the trailhead before grabbing both of my hands and facing me with a serious expression. "If you don't give Dane, and yourself, a chance, you'll regret it for the rest of your life. No, he can't fix you—because you'renotbroken. You've suffered a lot. You have scars and open wounds. Hecanhelp you heal, Linz, but if you won't give him a chance, he can't. And if you don't let him try, I promise you, you'll look back at this when you're a sad, bitter, lonely old hag with your cats and your hedgehog and you'll regret letting fear win. You'll hate yourself for it. You'll be your mother, Lindsey. I bet if you asked her, assuming you could get the truth out of her, she'd tell you the same thing. At some point along the way, she let an opportunity slip away because she was too afraid to try."
I had no response to this, but she didn't seem to want or expect one.
We went to her parents' house and spent the rest of the day helping them box up their lives. I faked cheerfulness and my usual spastic, inappropriate humor, but down deep, I had a pit in my stomach.
A hot knot of knowing that Rune was right.
I just didn't know where to find the courage to do anything about it.
CHAPTER 8
Dane
"You need one more elective, Mr. Badd," the counselor told me, after looking at my proposed schedule for the upcoming semester.
"I know, that's why I'm here," I said. "I can't find one that works with my schedule."
The counselor—a short, petite, pretty woman with salt-and-pepper hair and cat-eye eyeglasses—frowned as she reviewed my schedule and then the options. "Your options, if you want to leave the rest of your schedule as is, are…let's see…art history, ceramics, or choir."
I frowned. "Choir, huh?"
I looked away, thinking, music runs in the family, generally speaking, but I've never considered myself a musical person; of the three options, however, choir sounded the least lame. I don't really even know how well I can sing. I typically only ever sing out loud alone in the shower or the car, and everyone thinks they're fuckin' Lady Gaga in the shower. What if I join choir and discover I sound like a dying bullfrog or something? Ilikesinging, I just don’t know if I’m any good at it.
But the alternatives—art history or ceramics? Nah, fam. I'll honk like a goose before I sit around listening to someone yakon and on about Degas and Dali and whatever else. I'm not even talking about ceramics. What even is that? Like making shit on those spinning clay dudes? Maybe if a young Demi Moore is gonna give me a hands-on lesson, otherwise, again, nah fam.
"I guess I'll give choir a shot," I tell the counselor.
"Wonderful. I'll just add that in…" a glance at me. "So you've got your math credits, your science credits, language, history…and choir. Excellent." She peered at me speculatively. "Have you given any thought to a major? After this semester, you're pretty much done with your gen-eds and basic pre-reqs."
"Not really." I rubbed the back of my neck.
"Well, this is the semester to really start giving it some thought, Mr. Badd," she said.
"Yeah, I need to start dialing it in. So I'm set with my schedule for now, though?"
The printer on her L-shaped desk spat out a sheet, which she handed to me. "Yes, you are. Here you go. Anything else I can help you with?"
"No ma'am." I stood up and smiled, waving at her. "Thanks, ma’am. Have a great day."
I left her office perusing my schedule, which was the biggest class-load I'd given myself since starting college: 17 credit hours across four days a week, with Wednesday being my biggest day, starting with a 9 am class and ending with choir until 9 pm, which was apparently a once-a-week class from 6 pm to 9 pm.
Long fucking day.
That's on top of working at the landscaping company full-time—it's a privately owned company, and my boss is all for me going to school, so he always works with my schedule. If classes preclude working during the day on a lawn unit, I can always go in after hours and clean the machines, wash the trucks, and do sundry maintenance jobs. It's not a career, but it's a good job with good people, and it pays well. In the winter, consideringwe don't get much snow, Doug shifts the majority of his employees to his other company: junk removal, specializing in garage and basement clean-outs. It's hard, backbreaking work, but it's honestly pretty satisfying to watch a cluttered garage or basement get tidied and usable.
