What a Girl Needs by Kristin Billerbeck Read Free Book Online Page A

Wars’ light saber sounds while Jonathan emits choo-choo whistles while pushing his train across his legs.
    Brea’s got a hair clip clamped in her mouth as she steers the minivan with her knees. She shakes her curly mop of hair and clips it in a high ponytail. She’s the poster child for distracted-driving.
    So I’m shut down, just like that. Brea always was the one who could handle everyone’s drama and keep the remote coolness of Martha Stewart with a dash of Rachael Ray’s enthusiasm. I’ve always been too much for some people to take, and I can’t help but wonder if my absence has made my best friend one of those people. Maybe the boundaries people create are necessary walls to keep me away. Maybe I’ve gotten worse being in Philadelphia and spending most days talking to the dog and random strangers in Starbucks.
    Before we hit Highway 101, the boys have dozed off in their carseats, with their toys clutched to their hearts. We drive up the Peninsula toward San Francisco to the town of Palo Alto and the home I used to share with Kay. I use the term share loosely because Kay had a certain way of doing everything. Ways, which I will never understand in this lifetime, but that involve a lot of order that makes no sense to my brain. Everything has a place and everything is in its place. Unless I was there. I tried , I really did, but things just didn’t come naturally to me the way they did for Kay. She taught me a lot though, about entertaining, about cleaning up as you went along, and that life was just always going to be harder for a mind like mine. In essence, it was Kay’s world. I just lived in it.
    After a few short minutes of casual church updates that keep real issues at bay, Brea pulls alongside the curb outside Kay’s house on Channing Street and waits for me to exit.
    “Aren’t you coming in?” I ask her.
    “The boys are napping. I don’t want to wake them before their appointments.” She shrugs and unsnaps her clip, unleashing her wild curls. “Kay never was much into kids. I doubt she’d appreciate them tearing through her house.”
    “Kids are messy.” I laugh. “It’s the same reason Kay never had much use for me.”
    She gives me a half-grin. “So text me and let me know your plans or if you need a ride over to your mom’s.”
    “You’re the one with the life here, Brea. When can we get together? I’d like to have more than the trip home from the airport.”
    She looks at her watch. “I’ll text you.”
    “Where have I heard that before?” I grin. “I have a gift for you too, not just the boys.”
    “I’ll get it later.” Brea presses a button and the hatchback yawns open and I hear my suitcase tumble to the street below. “Sorry about that. It must have shifted.”
    I get out of the car, take a glance at the angelic boys with their grips tightly on their gifts, and smile toward Brea. “Well, thanks for the ride.”
    I walk to the back of the van and pick my case off the asphalt. By the time, I stand up again, Brea has pressed a button, closed up her car and driven off—as if she’s just abandoned an unwanted puppy. I watch her taillights glow as she turns off the street. Looking at Kay’s bungalow, I wonder if it’s true what Thomas Wolfe wrote, you can’t go home again.
    I guess that you can go home again—after all, I am here. The question is, will anyone want you once you get there?

Chapter 4
    ‡
    K ay’s bungalow is a quaint little house on a tree-lined street in one of Palo Alto’s most sought-after neighborhoods near Stanford University. Everything about its simplicity and familiarity makes me feel as if I’ve stepped back in time and as if Philly never happened. I’m suddenly a single girl dreading the latest Friday “open mic night” at a local coffee shop with the rest of the church singles’ group. The thought makes me shudder and I have to remind myself it’s all a flashback.
    I’m married. I’m married. Seth and rejection are in my past.
    If