First Love: A Superbundle Boxed Set of Seven New Adult Romances by Julia Kent Read Free Book Online Page A

don’t forget the sight, or smell, of that.
    When I graduated college in May, Mom was prepared—she basically tomato staked him and made sure he couldn’t cause a scene. I appreciated that, but again, that meant that Evan got Mom. Evan always got Mom. Evan could suck the energy out of a nuclear reactor.
    Right now, though, he was in detox—due to get out any day. And that was when Mom’s delusion would start all over again.
    “Oh, this time Evan’s gonna make it,” she would say. “This time I know he’s gonna kick it, honey. Oh, sorry, I’m not sure we can afford to pay for—( whatever new thing I’d requested)— because we have to handle Evan’s bills.”
    Private drug rehab is what she meant.
    I may sound bitter and I’ll own that—I am bitter—but when you’ve been going through this for six years and you’ve watched people you love being manipulated and lied to and, worse, watch them want to be manipulated and lied to because they can’t accept the truth...what are you supposed to do, other than become bitter? How can anyone with a modicum of reason and logic watch it all play out, month in and month out, year in and year out, and not get so twisted and angry inside that all you want to do one morning is avoid your own phone and go out for a cup of coffee?
    Here I was.
    Except, the other problem with living in the city is that everything is so damn expensive. So, as much as I wanted to get that double soy latte at my favorite coffee shop, I had to walk past it carrying a bullet thermos, one given to me last Christmas with a perplexed look on my mother’s face telling me she’d gotten it for me and it had been on my list. This made me happy—a full thermos of coffee that I’d made at home, a beautiful, sun-filled day in Boston, and an entire series of hours of freedom.
    In some ways I lived this dual life right now, getting ready for grad school to start. I had scored an awesome apartment on the Fenway for dirt cheap. It might be the size of a postage stamp, but it worked and I didn’t have to have a roommate. The building had this strange series of little apartments at the corner of two wings of the building. If you can imagine, there was this column rising up eight floors that’s basically a triangle, and somehow legally the landlord managed to carve out a 180-something square foot apartment for me. For me, and seven other people who lived in the other apartments similar to mine in the building.
    My bathroom was such that you couldn’t sit on the toilet without your knees going into the shower. The kitchen was a mini fridge, a microwave, a sink, and a two burner stove. My mattress, well...I ended up having to get a futon because you couldn’t open the front door all the way and have the mattress on the floor. I have to roll it up in order to get in and out of my apartment. But you know what? It’s mine, it’s cheap, and did I mention it’s mine ? No roommates. I can walk anywhere I want in Boston. I don’t need a car; I don’t even need a bike. It’s perfect.
    Mine.
    Walking through the Longwood Medical Center, past hospitals and Starbucks, and Wheelock College, I looked at the old buildings juxtaposed with the shiny Cancer Center. I watch people walk past me, some of them in medical attire, some of them in scrubs, plenty of them homeless, and of course, the ubiquitous college students.
    I’m one of them, right? I look at the crowd and realize that nobody’s the same. I can compartmentalize and categorize in my head: medical, medical, college, college, patient, college, college, medical. And that’s the easy way to go through life, right?
    What does someone think when they look at me? I’m curvy. I walk with purpose. I have long, brown hair that sways behind me, slapping up against my back. I have wide, friendly eyes, but I hide them behind sunglasses most of the time, because men tend to make eye contact with me and then leer. I carry a book, a tablet— something all the time so