The Life You've Imagined by Kristina Riggle Read Free Book Online Page B

rest.”
    “Thanks.”
    As the bells chime at the door, Anna pops up, and the effect is prairie-dog-like. She dusts her hands off, touches her hair, and smiles the first real smile I’ve seen all day, maybe since she’s been back.
    “Beck!” she says. “What a nice surprise.”
    Will Becker beams a smile right back at her. As he walks past the counter, he suddenly notices there’s someone else in the store. “Oh, hi,” he says to me. “Cami Drayton, right? I saw you at the party.”
    “Hi. Your dad was kind enough to invite me, too, when he stopped in to see Anna.”
    “We always know we can find her at the Nee Nance,” Will says, turning again to Anna. Her smile dies away at this, and Will rushes to finish his thought. “When she graces Haven with her presence. When she’s not in her fancy high-rise office building in the Windy City.”
    He’s walked past me now and joined her in the aisle.
    She’s shifting her weight from foot to foot and has retrieved the pen from behind her ear. She twirls it in her hand, spinning it over and over around her thumb. Used to make our English teacher nuts when she did that, because sometimes she’d lose the pen and it would spin crazily out onto the carpet in the middle of his lecture.
    Beck is so tall he looms over her, and the fidgeting and height difference make her look twelve years old.
    “Want to come to lunch? Not today, I have a meeting. Tomorrow?”
    “Well, let me check my busy calendar . . . um, yeah, I think I’m free between the mopping of the floor and emptying the garbage.”
    “Great. Portobello at noon?”
    He reaches out with one hand, gives her upper shoulder a squeeze. When he walks past me on his way out, he’s got this tight little grin, like he’s trying to hold in a huge silly smile.
    Anna is back to the cans, straightening just like she was, but now she’s humming a little tune.
    “The cash register drawer is stuck,” I tell her.
    “Oh, that. I can fix that.”
    Anna disappears into the back room and comes out with a screwdriver, and damned if she doesn’t fix it, lawyer clothes and all.
    O n the way walking back to my dad’s house, I stop in Jack’s Hardware and buy some paint with my last good credit card. I’ve tried to rationalize this purchase twelve different ways since I made up my mind, but there’s no legitimate reason to spend money I don’t have, money that I should be giving back to Steve, and in fact I shouldn’t be working at the Nee Nance but someplace a little more profitable, like temping or even waitressing, which I’ve done in a pinch. It’s not like Maeve can pay me much.
    I just need to paint my room, and that seems to be as good a reason as any to do something. Also it keeps me busy, and busy is good because it keeps me from thinking about the closest casino and whether I can take a bus to get there.
    I’m rehearsing a conversation with my dad on the way back, as the houses get shabbier and the streets get more rutted, but his truck is gone so there’s no need tell him, You should be happy I want to paint, make this house worth more someday . . .
    Almost makes me wish he were there, since I’ve gone to the trouble of thinking all that up.
    He’s forgotten to lock the door behind him. I’d be pissed about that if I owned anything more valuable than a few paperback books.
    The door swings into the wall behind it, the doorknob neatly sticking into a hole punched by an earlier, harder bang. It isn’t until I yank the door free and close it behind me that I see a body on the couch and shout, “Jesus!”
    And the body moves, so at least I know it’s not dead.
    She’s got chlorinated hair with black roots and black around her eyes from makeup applied too heavily, too long ago. She carries the same eau de booze that clings to my father.
    “Get out of my house,” I tell her.
    “Fuck, he’s married?” she groans, throwing an arm over her eyes.
    “Oh, God, no. Not at all and definitely not to me. I’m