Page 19 of Bring me Back
Time passed, and I started to believe in those words more and more.
For the past year, I tried my hardest to care.
About the girl I dated after Kelly left. Nice, fun, soft and beautiful. And still nothing.
About the furniture and the small projects I took to keep me busy. Nothing.
I tried. I didn’t want to be the man Kelly left behind. A shadow of myself, someone just going through the motions.
It was grasping at straws for a long time. Watching life pass by without an ounce of want to join in. And after all this time, all of the sudden… I got that fire in the pit of my stomach again.
I blinked back to the present as I scribbled furiously, trying to find something we weren’t late to apply for or didn’t require a ridiculous entry fee. I was fuming at Anderson. I feared the Sharon character. I wondered about Hallie’s past. It was so many goddamn emotions, my eyes got blurry.
“We have a couple of options here, Dan…” Abby’s voice came from the computer like she was there at the kitchen table with me.
“Free?”
She chuckled and shook her head. “Cheap enough for you to pay from your own pocket.”
I growled.
“Don’t be silly. I’m sending you three options we can still enter this week. A warning, one involves acamp.”
I was shaking my head before she even finished the dreaded word camp. “A theater camp? We wouldn’t have money to send them, anyway.”
“It’s not expensive. They require teachers to accompany each school and—”
“Jesus, Abby, I’m trying to get things done, not make it worse.”
“I think it would be cute if you went for a theater camp. Shake things up a bit.”
“Sounds horrifying.”
She chuckled at my resistance. “But it is the most prestigious one. Anderson would eat his words if you were selected. And they would select you, Dan. I saw last year’s play. Helen takes it seriously. Everything turns to magic.”
“It’s a school play, Abby. Let’s calm ourselves.”
“Still,” she insisted. “Just keep it in mind. There’s cash for the winner. Anderson might need to accept that maybe Bluehaven High is an art school after all.”
Just the thought made me chuckle. “He would prefer to choke on glitter.”
“Not if the mayor comes to shake his hand.”
I squeezed the bridge of my nose as I laughed. I told Abby about the time when the swim team won the state competition and the mayor came to campus. Anderson almost jizzed in his pants. It was something I never wanted to see again.
My phone pinged with Abby’s email full of links. “Abs,” I sighed, “Thanks for helping with this.”
She shrugged. “That’s all good, little brother. What else you need?”
“Nothing. I’ll talk to Helen and then to the Sharon woman from the PTA.”
Abby wrinkled her nose. “Never trusted a woman in the PTA. Call me whatever you want. There’s something wrong with them.”
My eyebrows rose in surprise. “Thought they were all good mothers baking for their kids?”
Abby shook her head. “There’s loving and caring, and there’s too much time on your hands. Just charm her pants off, but don’t take her pants off, mmkay?”
I laughed hard at that one, tipping my head back. “Thought you want me to get laid.”