Embrace Me Read Online Free Page B

do.”
    He lays a hand on the doorknob. “Okay. Rick’ll just pull your trailer without you.”
    â€œGive Rick a thousand thanks.”
    A little over an hour later, the meal cleaned up and put away, Lella, having thanked me a hundred times for feeding her, sits on her donut, strapped in the passenger seat of the truck. We pull onto I-80 south of Omaha. Another season over. Another year closer to a little house near the water. I always picture yellow siding with sherbet colors for the trim.
    â€œSo, Lella, where do you want to live someday?”
    â€œWell, I do know you’d like to live on the water.”
    â€œI like the sound of the surf.”
    â€œI do as well. It’s going to be expensive if we settle right on the beach. But surely there’s still a patch of undeveloped shoreline we can find on the cheap.”
    â€œI’m hoping. I’m going to make more jewelry this winter than ever before, Lella. We’ll get there. You and me. Five years . . . seven years, tops.”
    How many times we’ve had this conversation? I have no idea.
    We drive for another hour without speaking much. The road tumbles beneath the wheels of my dark green truck, and I put in Lella’s favorite CDs. George Winston, John Tesh, and some other haunting solo pianists.
    â€œValentine, I need to ask you a serious question, if you don’t mind.”
    â€œGo ahead, Lell.”
    â€œWhy do you want to live your dream with me in tow? I’m so much work. Feeding me, taking me to the bathroom all the time. I’ll just tie you down.”
    â€œYou’re my friend, Lella. And who wants to live alone? My face already isolates me. We need each other.”
    I glance to the side and I’m not surprised a tear falls down Lella’s cheek. She waits until it makes it to her jaw, leans her head over, and wipes it off with her shoulder. “I’d like five minutes with the woman who burned you, Valentine. Surely, I would.”
    I fail to remind her she has no arms or legs. But I guess with a heart the size of Lella’s you can get along without them.

    I lean out my bedroom window despite the chilly morning.
    We winter in the town of Mount Oak because that’s where Roland grew up. His sister Blaze owns this huge, crumbling white house here in town, on those fabled “other side of the tracks.” It’s not literally on the other side of the tracks—the Chessie lines run a couple of blocks south of here. This used to be a nice area a century ago, but now, well, this house looks like a boarding-house for the bedraggled and the slightly stunned, a place where people end up after they’ve reached their pinnacle and come back down. The shutters are painted a dark green, and the shrubbery hugs the stone foundations and the lattice under the square front porch.
    I live in the back room on the third floor. Used to be a sun porch. I’m flooded with light early in the morning, which is okay. I’ve always been an early riser. A night owl too.
    The nights feel cold with all the drafty windows on three sides. The one brick wall somebody painted black. That wasn’t nice.
    Unfortunately winter gives me more time to smoke, and I’m up to two packs a day.
    Blaze calls up the steps. “Valentine! Are you smoking out that window again?”
    â€œSorry!” I grind out my smoke in the ashtray on the window-sill and shut the window.
    Rick the contortionist enters my bedroom, sits down on the desk chair, and holds out a magazine. He’s about 120 pounds, long-legged, short-waisted, narrow-hipped, and his ice blue eyes tell you he’s the kind of guy who can keep a secret.
    It’s a body modification magazine. Piercings, tattoos, and whatnots. “Look, Val.” He points to a picture of some weirdo with a forked tongue.
    And I’m the freak?
    I sit on my bed and he hands me the magazine. “What do you think? It would make the Lizard Woman