Snow Falling on Bluegrass by Molly Harper Read Free Book Online Page B

splashing some warm water on my face and brushing my teeth, my bedtime grooming routine was seriously cut short.
    I slid under the blankets, hissing as the cool sheets made contact with my skin. I covered my face with the comforter, casting aside every germaphobic thought I’d ever had about public bedding, and burrowed in for the night. This was not how I planned to spend my weekend. This was not how I wanted to recover from the Darrell bullshit—cold and cranky and baconless.
    He broke up with me . That was what was really humiliating. I’d been dumped by a guy who referred to himself as a “theoretical entrepreneur” and sat on my freaking couch all day playing video games while he was supposedly gathering ideas for a Web site that would allow people to set up online stores to auction off their old junk. But if you pointed out that eBay had already sort of cornered that market, he stopped talking to you.
    But this time, he left me. That had never happened before. I’d thrown him out a few times. I’d declared that I needed a break from him. Of course, he’d cry, ask how he was supposed to find another apartment with his bad credit, slide pictures of us in happier times under the door with notes attached telling me that “This boy still loves this girl.” If that didn’t work, he’d change tactics, asking who was going to want me if he left me, and how I thought I was going to find someone better. He’d give me the silent treatment for about a week and would somehow know exactly when I was weakest and show up at my door to apologize just one last time.
    I didn’t know why I kept taking him back. It wasn’t that I loved him so much that I couldn’t let him go. That possibility died off early on in our relationship, after too many forgotten milestones, too many plans brushed aside in favor of hanging out with his friends, too many nights spent trying to sleep with earplugs in because his buddies came over for a marathon gaming session on a weeknight. I knew it was ridiculous for me to support a grown man, to watch him raid my purse for gas money. But it was a relationship, and it was familiar, like old sweatpants. You knew what to expect from them (not much), but they kept you from wanting to leave the house or be seen by other people. And it kept my mother off my back. My mother didn’t care who I was with as long as I was with someone.
    Elizabeth Wade was a beauty queen who never quite got over the fact that she wasn’t more. She was sure that if she had just won the right crown, met the right agent, made the right connection, she could have been the next big thing. Reminding her that she’d never actually acted or sung publicly beyond the painful concerts she forced guests to sit through at parties did no good.
    I made it my mission in life to keep Mother from vicariously living her ridiculous dreams through me. I dated a string of unacceptable men because—I knew deep down—I didn’t want to meet my mother’s demands that I marry. Of course, I didn’t realize how my mother’s standards would drop as she became more desperate for me to settle down. Darrell was the least acceptable of them all, but she pushed for me to keep him happy because who else would take me on?
    I maintained contact with her because she and my enabling dad were the only family I had. And somewhere in the back of my head, I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of person just walked away from their only family. There were a lot of people who had it much worse than I did. People whose parents hurt them or stole from them. All my mother did was annoy me.
    I just kept hoping that this time with Darrell would be different. This time, he had finally learned his lesson and grown up. This time, maybe we could finally make a go of being happy, or at least not hurt each other anymore.
    And then, I came home from work a few weeks before to find that he was