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

that I can read and immerse myself in a world that has nothing to do with anyone else.
    In fact, for the longest time I judged myself by what I didn’t have. I didn’t have popularity. I didn’t have a size zero waist. I didn’t have the latest clothes. I didn’t have parents who sent me to Vail for winter break, and to St. Martin’s for spring break. I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t .  
    Part of this whole integration thing is figuring out that if you spend your life judging yourself by what you don’t have, then pretty quickly you start to feel empty. It’s so much better to think of yourself in terms of what you do have. Today, I have some good books on my tablet, I have money in my pocket, I have a good coffee shop nearby, I have time, free time to explore, to read, to revel, and to ruminate.
    That feels rich to me.
    Boston Common was my target today. I loved to watch the swan boats. I hadn’t ridden them in years; tickets were only a couple dollars, but it was more fun to watch other people enjoy them for the first time. I found a park bench right across from the loading area and I just watched people, mostly families with small kids in strollers coming in, but occasionally a group of tourists speaking animatedly in another language. They would get on the boats, which looked like something out of the 1950’s—old and quiet and staid in a way that was calming. It was soothing, in fact, to imagine being out there in this machine that was built at a time when a weekend meant spending it floating on a lake.
    The coffee was great. The weather was perfect and I felt my shoulders relax, my mind let go of the dreaded anticipation of that phone call from my mother and, just as I was able to stop looping this thought about Sam, about Mom, about Evan, and about my own inability to stop obsessing about things, I heard two distinct, familiar voices behind me.
    Sam
    Walking through Boston Common was awesome, especially on mornings after we’d had a gig. It made the music life feel more real. Raw. Like I had this secret life that the other people walking past me through the gardens, down the asphalt paths that bisected the grass at angles, didn’t have.
    I could be up until four in the morning, strung out and blissed out, weak-armed and high on the beats themselves, and then wake up, at eleven or noon, with a pounding headache, in need of caffeine. A quick cup and then a walk, the blinding sun adding to my energy, always did it for me. Joe, for some reason, wanted to come with me this morning.  
    The guy certainly had changed since our geeky high school years. He’d been this sort of rude, rough edged debate geek who had morphed in college into something uptight but alright. Joe was that guy in a group who would moralize and tell everybody why they shouldn’t do something, and then, behind your back, do something even worse. The guy was slippery—he never got caught. But damn if he didn’t worry so much about his mom and dad, and what they thought.  
    I had the luxury of not giving a shit about my parents anymore. Dad had made sure that had happened. In fact, I didn’t really have any contact with them. Mom would try—she still had my phone number. I’d give her five or ten minutes but as long as she was still with Dad she was part of the enmeshed world. If you are married to an alcoholic, and you have kids with that alcoholic, and you let that alcoholic warp the kids, then you’re complicit too.
    She wouldn’t see it. She couldn’t . And I had spent four years on campus going to the Al-Anon meetings, slowly unraveling the shit Dad had put us all through and finally figuring out why I was so angry at Mom. It’s easy—it’s always easy to be angry at the most rational person, right? They’re the one who is supposed to save you from the mess. Except, Mom expected everyone to rally around the least reasonable guy in the household and to tap dance around the fact that she was enabling him. So, this whole