Free Full Share (Shore House Book 1) by Eliza Freed

the window sill by my pillow. I stared at the ceiling. It amazed me it wasn’t leaking. Not one drop entered the porch.
    “Tell me something,” he said.
    “What?”
    “Anything.”
    I believed he meant anything. The first thing that popped in my mind was Jack, so I skipped to the second thing. “I hate my job.” Until that moment, I hadn’t let myself grasp the depth of my disdain for it. It was as if Ricky and I’d been arrested for underage drinking and our claim rep jobs were the community service we were sentenced to complete. Not once had I considered it, or Sharon, a real part of my life. It just was. Like me.
    “You should quit.” His words were definitive. It was obvious to him.
    The rain drove harder, and I looked to Jack’s empty bed. I hadn’t seen him since he’d left for work. Wherever he was, I hoped he wasn’t on his bike.
    “Where’s Jack?” I asked. My throat was dry and my voice sounded rough.
    “Don’t know. What do you want to do?”
    “Right now?” I couldn’t imagine doing a single thing besides lying in my bed.
    “No. Instead of your job.”
    “Oh.” I was too busy enduring my job to consider a new one. I was void of passion. I’d spent the years in college hiding from myself rather than finding myself.
    “There must be something. Kids, animals, books, the outdoors . . . what do you love?”
    His certainty made me nervous. My complete failure as a human being was bubbling to the surface. Rufus understood. Being alone was less terrifying than being with some of the people who you were supposed to love.
    Lightning blinked through the room, and I braced myself for the thunder. I jumped from the initial clap and slowly exhaled as the rumble continued. The storm must have been directly above us. “Can we talk about something else?”
    “Close your eyes. I’ll tell you something.” Tank turned in the bed, making it easier to hear him over the storm raging around us. He lifted his arm over my head, and I rested on his shoulder. Us lying together was the most natural thing in the world. “There are, like, seven billion people on Earth. Three hundred million of them just in the United States. And out of all them, in an old cottage in a beach town just one mile long, you and I met two weeks ago.”
    I opened my eyes as Tank’s free arm waved across the air in front of our faces.
    “Just two tiny humans, spinning on a sphere, circling the sun, aligned with eight other planets, and holding down our own as a galaxy in the universe. You weren’t living in Brazil. I wasn’t backpacking in Colorado. You hadn’t been sold into the child sex trade.” I shook that from my head. “I hadn’t been born to a crack head who never let me go outside.” The rain drummed, not caring if Tank was speaking. “We’re mere specks, and yet it all means so much.”
    The idea that our interactions, regardless of how small, were a purposeful part of our existence, lodged in my mind. If Tank and I meeting meant something, the depth of my other connections was inexplicable. It left me with one thought—my mother was my mother for a reason. I was overwhelmed by it.
    “That’s deep,” I said.
    He leaned his head down to mine. “That’s life.”

YOU CAN’T FLY UNLESS YOU BELIEVE YOU CAN
    “S ir, I understand your frustration.”
    “Bullshit. You don’t understand anything.”
    Hang up , Ricky mouthed from over my cubicle wall. Just hang up .
    I can’t hang up , I mouthed back and rolled my eyes.
    “For the tenth time. And I mean tenth, maybe even the eleventh time, I’m going to tell you how stupid you guys are,” Mr. Watkins said.
    I paused for a second. “Thank you.”
    “My agent just informed me that you’re going to pay the claim of the imbecile who hit me, and now my rates are going to go up.”
    I maneuvered through the computer screens, trying to catch up on the investigation. The claim had been paid and closed. “Mr. Watkins, it appears from the notes in your file that the