Love and Peaches Read Online Free

thank-yous. “It would set evolution too far forward. Your baby would be better looking than that Brad Pitt kid, Moses or Shiloh or whatever. Hard on the rest of us tadpoles.”
    Leeda rolled her eyes. “Yeah, and your babies would be total slouches.” When the two were out together, it was Murphy who had the freakish ability to make random guys approach her out of nowhere. Once she had been hit on by a Hare Krishna while they were eating ice cream in the East Village. She could bend spoons with the sheer force of her curves. “Do you ever want a boyfriend again?” Leeda mused.
    â€œI have boyfriends.”
    â€œYou have boys. Not boyfriends. Heartbreaker.”
    Murphy shrugged, lifting her hands and staring at her nails jokingly. “One seems boring.”
    Leeda nodded, taking it in. She was quiet for a moment. She looked like she wanted to ask something but didn’t want to look like it was a big deal. “Does Rex know when you’re coming home?”
    Murphy let out a breath and shook her head.
    Of all the guys Murphy had kissed—and there were a lot—Rex was her only ex. Murphy had always liked to play with boys, as if they didn’t go any deeper than their tattoos or the music they liked or their haircuts. Rex had been different. He had loved her, was the thing. She had loved him.
    Murphy whipped out her MP3 player and plugged in her earphones, giving Leeda one of the buds even though Leeda hated her music. They watched New York disappear as the Lincoln Tunnel engulfed them.
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    Murphy only liked to sleep when there was nothing going on that couldn’t be missed. She stored up sleep time for rainy days. So when she slept, she slept hard.
    As soon as they hit New Jersey, she drifted off, and she didn’t wake up again until a bathroom break in Maryland. The next time she woke, it was getting dark and they were in North Carolina, on a featureless stretch of flat, tree-lined road, unidentifiable except for the signs announcing upcoming towns. She and Leeda played hearts for a couple of hours, stared out the window for a while, and then went back to sleep. When Murphy woke for good, they were just passing the sign for the town of Dobney, National Home of Cheese Grits.
    â€œBirdie loves those cheese grits,” Leeda said wistfully. “It’ll be so weird being home without her.”
    Murphy’s stomach began a slow jelly roll into a tight knot. She hadn’t thought about what would happen once they got off the bus—as if the bus were a tiny country and they were going to live in it forever. Now that they’d reached the home of cheese grits, the town of Bridgewater felt imminent, robbing her of that feeling of insulation.
    Murphy sat forward, agitated. “What time is it?” she asked, staring into the dark night.
    â€œIt’s about one-thirty,” Leeda said.
    Murphy’s feet began to tingle restlessly. She chewed at her thumbnail. Her stomach lurched with a strange excitement as the bus slowed down and turned off the exit toward town. The driver opened the door to let in some air now that the bus had slowed. The springy night air came rushing in, full of the smell of trees, white dirt, and warm tar. The soft wind blew back the passengers’ hair.
    Everything went from featureless to familiar. Places Murphy had seen countless times—what seemed like a million yearsago—drifted by. Bob’s Big Boy, the windows dark. A Dollar Star she had stolen underwear from. The KFC she used to wing water balloons at from the woods when one of the guys she was dating worked there.
    The annoying thing was, Murphy had lived in Bridgewater for eighteen years. She had only known Rex for one of them, and still, layered on top of all the other memories were thoughts of Rex and her riding bikes, Rex and her eating lunch in this parking lot or sitting on that bench in front of Wendy’s. It caught her by surprise.
    She thought of the