Page 10 of Lessons in Falling
Plus, I had other things to focus on this summer.Things that didn’t have piercing blue eyes, a bleach-blond buzzcut and incredibly skilled fingers.
My summer bucket list rested peacefully in the pages of an otherwise empty journal, at the bottom of my tote bag.
I hadn’t told my friends about my plan yet—mostly because the majority of items on there didn’t seem like their kind of thing, and I didn’t need to push my plans onto them when we’d been perfectly content with theirs for years—but I did have one.
Eight items on a list that had been angrily scribbled into the book.After I’d come home from college, handed Mom my degree, and gotten adisinterested nodin response.Awell done, before she’d asked me to cook or clean or fix something broken in the house.After I’d busted my ass for four years studying physics, sacrificing a college life that could’ve been much more fun and much less studying, only to not get what I’d wanted out of it: my family to be proud of me.At least happy or excited about something I’d done.
Nobody had given a shit.
And after twenty-two years of exactly that, something had snapped.Not in the way that would get me on national news, but in its more introspective, self-aware counterpart.Where I hadn’t put a knife in my hands, but a pen.Where I hadn’tviolently lashed out but instead asked myselfWhat the fuck am I doing all this for?And the answer hadn’t been me.
I’d never really done anything for myself.For Mom, yes, because life had seemed so hard on her after Dad left, she’d barely noticed how hard it had been for me,the child.For my little sister, yes, because she shouldn’t have had to suffer the consequences of constantly fighting parents, an absent father and an emotionally unavailable mother.
I had tried to keep that household from collapsing for so long—distract the people inside of it from the fact it was—I’d just been chasingsomekind of appreciation.
At that point, it hadn’t mattered for what.Keeping my Mom alive or being a mom for my sister or good grades in school.Anything would’ve done.And that realization was so sad, so depressing, it had been like a slap in the face.Something needed to change.
Do something for yourself, Valentina.It hadn’t been my voice that said it, but ithadbeen in my head.So, I’d written that stupid, trivial bucket list.And that alone had made me feel… better.Like I was finally doing something right.
Having this tiny little thing to myself.Living out what should’ve been part of my teenage years, but never finding enough space between running a household and going to school, raising my sister, and working enough part-time jobs to keep us afloat.
My priorities had been elsewhere, and at the time, it had been fine.But I was almost a graduate student—and I had a whole two months on Oakport Island in which I didn’t have to worry about my family (as much).
Why not make use of that?
sleep outside
go for a run
full-moon walk
skinny dipping
break a law
watch the sunrise
sex on the beach (not the drink)
play pool
By the end of August, I’d be a changed woman.Or, at least, a woman who’d been skinny dipping and had sex on the beach.
Technically, I’d broken a law already.Yesterday, when I was rushing to get here and went ten miles over the speed limit.I was still debating whether I’d let it count.
So, between finding a way to break the law and the courage to go into the ocean completely—never mind the fact that I wanted to do it naked—I was busy enough this summer.Focusing on myself, I think?
I didn’t need to think about a problem named Caden Callahan as well.
My eyes slid back to him, his animated conversation with my friends, and I couldn’t help but sigh.In annoyance, perhaps, that he’d showed up here.Then that I hadn’t told my friends about… Us (if that’s what he wanted it to be—anus), because Iris would’ve never let him join if she’d known we had history.Even less if she’d known it was good.Good enough that, for just a second, I wondered if he could be the rule I’d break.
I dismissed the thought—didn’t even let myself entertain it—when the familiar clocktower of Oakport’s biggest town (which was still quite small), announced our almost-arrival.Everyone still suffering from last night’s antics groaned in sweet relief.
East Isleton had a single road running in and out of it.Winding through white, modern storefronts and paint-chipped restaurants, past the well-cared-for hydrangeas blooming in various colors, and the American flags flying high beside most buildings.The red-bricked sidewalk was appreciated after walking two miles on the side of the road, in constant fear of being run over.
The sight was as familiar as the view from the roof of my house had been growing up, and that distinct feeling ofComing Homesettled in my stomach again.Quiet.Peaceful.Completely and utterly content.
Remind me again why we think this whole walking-into-town thing is a good idea?Iris muttered, slinging her arm across my shoulder (and leaning very heavily on me for support).She and Alfie had abandoned Caden to walk with me— which, yes, gave mesomesatisfaction.Sure.Every year, we make the same mistake.
