Page 131 of If It's You

He questioned the starry sky until he made it back to the farmhouse. Jayce was already asleep, so he kept the light off while taking off his suit.

He searched blindly along the wall beneath his bed for his phone cord, but his hand hit something else. His dad’s book. It must have fallen down here.

He pulled it out and carried it to the living room.

The soft lamps lit up the cover ofThe Great Gatsby.Maybe the large crying eyes were the reason he hadn’t been able to open it. They reminded him of his mother’s, but if he looked long enough, he saw his own vulnerability inside the watery yellow circles.

It was time to face his fear and read it. For his dad.

He flipped the first page and started reading. And for the first time, he could remember, he didn’t stop.

* * *

The farmhouse was unusually brightthe next morning. Christian squinted against the sun coming at him from an odd angle. Where was he?

He blinked, looking around at the living room and remembered. He’d stayed up late finishing his dad’s book, then after he had laid here looking out at the stars and pondering.

He closed his eyes to the sun and dropped an arm over his face. At first, he couldn’t understand why his dad had liked a book about a tortured man who had never been able to move on from that past. His lack of action found him dead in his own pool with no one left to care.

Christian’s dad had always said that “now was the only moment that mattered,” and when that saying became nothing but a memory, Christian had stopped believing it. But his dad was right. Right now was the only moment he was guaranteed in this life, and he’d regret wasting it.

He wouldn’t be like the protagonist of the novel, who had let the love of his life get away.

But he couldn’t just drop everything to follow Maizie. That wasn’t fair to him. His mom and sister needed him. No matter what his mom said, he wasn’t going to abandon his family.

Ugh. What would dad do?

“He looks like roadkill.”

Christian jumped at Grandpa’s voice and nearly fell off the couch.

“I’ve seen worse,” Grandma said.

“Thanks.” Christian grunted and pulled his aching body up to a sitting position.

“Well, I’ve got to get going, sweetheart,” Grandpa said to Grandma and kissed her on the cheek before heading out the door.

Christian moved to stand up, but Grandma sat down beside him. “Want to tell me why you slept on that couch?”

“I stayed up reading,” he said, holding up the book.

“Do you do that often?”

He shook his head. “It was my dad’s book.”

“Ah.” Grandma made an affirming sound. “And what did you learn from it?”

He rolled his neck. “Nothing. It’s justa book.”

“No book is ever just a book.” Grandma scowled at him. “If you didn’t learn something from a book, then you just wasted your time.”

He’d forgotten he was talking to a writer.

“Let me guess, this has something to do with my stubborn granddaughter?” She asked.

He shook his head with a smile. Could she read the stories in people’s heads too? “Maybe.”

“What did she do now?” Grandma said with a little tsk at the end of her question.