A Breath of Eyre by Eve Marie Mont Read Free Book Online Page A

if she could trust him. “If you go to Braeburn,” she said, “why do you work here?”
    “Braeburn doesn’t have an equestrian center, so I work here and Overbrook lets me ride for free.”
    “You ride?” Michelle said. Owen nodded. “Hey, you said your name was Mabry. Is that the same Mabry who invented the Blue Flame?” Blue Flame was the electronic reader everyone was buying that year.
    “Well, not me personally. My dad did.”
    “So your family’s, like, loaded.”
    “Don’t hold it against me.”
    “It’s hard not to when a millionaire takes one of the few jobs on our campus when some of us actual Lockwood students could use the money,” Michelle said.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think Lockwood girls needed the money any more than I did. If it makes you feel any better, I’m trying to save up to go to Europe. Just because my dad’s loaded doesn’t mean he’ll buy me whatever I want. He only pays for the things he thinks are worthwhile. Piano lessons, math tutors ... entrepreneurial camp.” He said the last two words like they tasted sour in his mouth.
    “Entrepreneurial camp?” Michelle said.
    “I know, right? My dad thinks I’m going to end up like my older brother. MBA from Harvard, 3.9 GPA, blah blah blah. He hopes I take over the business some day. He hasn’t quite accepted the fact that I don’t want to go into business.”
    “What do you want to do?” I asked.
    He glanced at me thoughtfully. “I don’t know—join the Peace Corps maybe. Or roam the country singing songs like Woody Guthrie.” We both gave him blank stares. “Don’t tell me you don’t know who Woody Guthrie is.”
    Michelle shrugged her shoulders.
    “He’s only my personal hero and the greatest folk singer who ever lived. ‘This Land is Your Land’ ring a bell?”
    “Oh, yeah,” we both said.
    “He used to travel around with farmers during the Depression, singing folk songs to give them hope. And he had this really tragic life. He lost a sister and a daughter in a fire, his father drowned, and his mother was put in an insane asylum.”
    “And this guy’s your hero?” Michelle said.
    “Well, him and Bob Dylan. If I could write songs like Dylan, I’d die a happy man.”
    “Oh, so you’re a hippie?” Michelle said.
    “I draw the line at Joan Baez,” Owen said, laughing. “But yeah, I wish I’d gone to Woodstock. I’m not ashamed to say it.”
    We hung out for another half hour or so, talking about our music tastes. Michelle said she liked classic rock—the Beatles, the Who, the Stones. This was true, but more often than not when I came back from class, Michelle was listening to Rihanna, Lady Gaga, or Timbaland, sometimes even dancing in her bathrobe. I could tell she was trying to impress him.
    I told them I’d been listening to a lot of British bands lately—Coldplay, Snow Patrol, A Silent Film. “Ahh,” he said. “Emma’s crushing on the Brit boys.”
    “Guilty as charged. I have a pretty big soft spot for Chris Martin.”
    “Why do girls always fall for the sensitive, brooding guys?” he said.
    “Because they think they can fix them,” Michelle said. “Not me. Give me an insensitive asshole any day of the week. I enjoy beating them into submission.”
    Owen chuckled. “How about a perpetually nice American boy?” he said. “I don’t stand a chance, do I?”
    “I don’t know,” Michelle said. “I’ve never tried one before.” A charged look passed between them, and I wondered how long it would be before Michelle and Owen hooked up.
    We decided to leave the stables when it got dark, but the afternoon spent with Owen seemed to have broken some chinks in the wall that stood between Michelle and me. All through dinner, we continued chatting about music and movies and other normal roommate topics.
    Later that night, we sat on our beds reading excerpts from James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson, which Mr. Gallagher insisted on calling Boswell’s Johnson, making