Making the Cut by SD Hildreth Read Free Book Online Page B

don’t bang dudes in the parking lot. I wish you’d quit freaking saying that,” she said as she twisted her hips in front of the mirror.
    “Well, whatever . Come on, get dressed. Let’s go out and do something,” I sighed.
    “What do you want to do?” she asked as she lowered her arms and released her boobs.
    Sloan and I, although best friends, differed in our desires for leisure activities. When we were out of school or off work, she liked to do nothing. I, on the other hand, preferred to stay busy doing anything . Anything but nothing . Winfield wasn’t much of a town, but there was always something we could do.
    “Well, it’s not that late, let’s go to Hot Shotz,” I shrugged.
    “That bar is stupid. You know I hate going there. It’s Wednesday, we should just hang out, we’ve got school tomorrow,” she complained.
    The thought of staying home wasn’t very appealing. It was five o’clock and early spring. The weather was a gorgeous 75 degrees, and I didn’t want to be confined in my 600 square foot apartment any more than I had to be. When I stayed home, I felt as if I was invisible. Other than Sloan, there was really no form of human contact for me. In the last year, since I expressed my intent of staying in Kansas and moving to Wichita, my parents had all but stopped talking to me.
    My mother was nothing short of impossible at times. It was as if she felt a useful means of punishment was telling me she was disappointed in me. As a young girl, her disappointments caused me to strive to improve. After a lifetime of her expressed disappointments, I learned she would always be disappointed in me. Or at least she indicated she was, whether it was true or not I would never know. No differently than the boy who cried wolf , her complaints began to have less and less validity each time I heard them. I learned to roll my eyes each time she sent me a text message stating she was disappointed.
    I often wondered if her continued expression of disappointment was what provoked me to be as competitive as I was. If possibly it caused me to be the way I was about men. In recent years, I had begun to believe my mother’s hatred toward every decision I made which didn’t include coming back to Ohio and being an active participant in her Baptist church formed me into the challenge seeking woman I had become.
    My major in Criminal Justice was another thing she seemed to always take exception to. When I chose the career path, she said maybe I would grow up and change my mind. For my first year in college, she often asked what credits were transferrable to other majors. The same eye roll and I don’t know mother followed each time. Now almost complete with my major, she took time to tell me each time we spoke that she was disappointed in my choice, and asked what I expected to do for a career.
    I really had no idea what I wanted to do for a career, but my original belief of being a law enforcement officer soon vanished. After a few years of studies, I realized I wasn’t as interested in the law enforcement side of things as I was the criminal or the criminal activity. Criminals fascinated me. Attempting to figure out the intricacies of their thoughts and how or why they did the things they did was beyond any other form of entertainment I could find.
    I walked behind Sloan and looked into the mirror, “Let’s go to the park and just relax before it gets dark. We can get some sun.”
    “ Bum park? Yeah, you don’t want sun. You’ll want to talk to the bums hanging out there. I think that’s gross the way you’re always asking them questions. They’re gross. No, not interested,” she hissed.
    “They’re fun to talk to, I feel sorry for them,” I responded.
    She turned to face me and wrinkled her nose, “They’re gross. One day one of them is going to knock you down and rob you or something. I swear, the way you talk to those people, it’s nasty.”
    “She twisted sideways and stared into the mirror as she