Free Coast (Kick Push Book 2) (The Road 3) by Jay McLean

angry, and then desperate. I lay in bed, tears soaking my pillow, and I wished my mind to be as empty as the rest of me. I’m not exactly sure why I became so upset, why I took it so badly. It’s not as if I’d planned to spend the rest of eternity with him. Maybe it wasn’t so much the fact that he broke up with me as it was the reasons why. I tried to justify my actions over the course of our “relationship.” Tried to convince myself that I wasn’t a horrible person. I wasn’t using him. Not really. But he’d said it himself. We were using each other. And that would make him just as horrible as me… only he wasn’t. Not at all. And that made me feel worse.
    So I became sadder.
    Angrier.
    More desperate.
    I spent days in bed wallowing in my self-pity, ignoring Dad’s constant concern. I didn’t open up to him. I couldn’t. I skipped classes, didn’t show up to therapy, and on the fourth day of crying silent tears, I left my room, sat on the couch with Dad, and told him I was fine. Only I wasn’t. Not at all. I was so UNfine that all I could think about were the horrible things I’d done. Not just to Aaron, but to everyone around me. My dad relocated, took a lower paying job in a city he’d never been to just so he could take care of his daughter—a virtual stranger. My mother died. DIED. Because of me. I thought about everything I’d done, all the people I’d lost, and I became so lost in the depths of my loss that I could no longer think straight. I guess that’s why I found myself walking to a mailbox at three in the morning in a night gown and mailing a letter that, up until that point, I had no intention of sending. I regretted it as soon as the envelope slipped through the crack, and I cursed myself the moment I heard it land amongst all the other ones. For a while, I just stood there, staring at the mailbox and wondering how many of those letters held pain and regret and hopes. Unjustified hopes. Then I started kicking it. Over and over. Until I felt my toes become numb and a wetness seeping through my socks. I knew it’d be blood, but at the time, it was better than my tears. The walk home felt like an eternity, and once behind the closed door of my bedroom, I continued my spiral into depression. Dad came in a few hours later, saw my emotional state, witnessed what I’d been failing to hide from him, and after holding me and assuring me that everything was going to be okay, found The List on my desk, hidden beneath a pile of used and discarded tissues. His eyes scanned the items, one after the other, and then he looked up, a smile pulling on his lips, and said, “How hard would it be to sell things online?”
    My eyes widened, and I sat back against the headboard, my knees raised. “Now?” I mouthed.
    He smiled. “Right now. Unless, you know, you want to get your ass to class.”
    I shook my head.
    “But tomorrow, you will, right?”
    Another head shake.
    He sighed as he folded The List and placed it carefully back on my desk. Then he sat on the edge of the bed, his hand gentle as it settled on my arm. He gave me that look. The one that showed he had no idea what to do or what to say because he was in way over his head.
    “Okay,” I mouthed, and he smiled.
    “Okay.” Dad rubbed his hands together and said, “Lemonade, sweetheart.”
    My dad loves phrases, but would always say them wrong. He’d say things like, “I’m not here to give you the fifth degree,” or “You’re climbing up the wrong branch.” So, “Lemonade, sweetheart,” was his way of saying, “When life gives you lemons…” you know the rest.
    So I turned the stupid lemons into lemonade.
    I huff out a frustrated breath and pick at a worn spot on the kitchen table, the fear of what we’re doing suddenly hitting me.
    “You okay, kid?” Dad asks.
    I nod—a lie.
    Selling my work is the only item on The List that had nothing to do with my mother (or Josh). In fact, it has everything to do with me. I had planned