Marianne by Elizabeth Hammer (best books to read in life TXT) 📕

I would also want you to choose to love me, even if I disappointed you. Even if I messed up. There’s the feelings kind of love and the choice kind.

“If I only have your feelings, then I’m screwed. I am. Because sooner or later, you’d find someone better than me. And your feelings would change. But if I have your mind, too—if you choose to love me, even when your feelings change for a while—then I have you forever.”

Patrick stopped talking, but she still didn’t respond at all. How could she? How did someone respond to that kind of Jesus-level devotion? Men like him weren’t supposed to exist. And his depiction of love clashed against every natural inclination she had. She wanted to be loved because she was oh-so-rad. So much for that.

But, seeing as she wasn’t oh-so-rad, anyway, maybe this was better. Maybe Marianne, at the unlikely age of eighteen, had stumbled upon the one freak of nature capable of loving her and not stopping. He loved her both ways. And she needed him to love her both ways, no matter how much that sucked.

Patrick spoke softly from the bed. “Does that make sense?”

She nodded and turned slightly so she could see him. He was leaning back against the headboard, arms around his knees, watching her.

Marianne kept her eyes on the ground and walked over to the bed. She crawled onto it and wedged herself in between him and the wall. She pulled the blanket up around her and curled into a little ball facing him. “Can I stay for a while?”

Patrick laid down facing her and rested his hand on her waist. “I thought you didn’t like me tonight.”

“I don’t. But those are just feelings, right?”

“Right.”

“And if I’m not here...”

Patrick took his arm off her waist and put Marianne’s hair behind her ear. “Then you’re screwed.”

“Right.”

18

Bloody Mary

Dad dropped Marianne at school on Wednesday morning. “I’ll pick you up at three.”

“I’ll just get a ride with Sally’s mom.” She grabbed her bag and opened the car door, but paused when Dad didn’t answer. “Okay?”

Dad smiled a little. “Okay.”

It didn’t seem okay with him. Marianne just stared down at the car floor.

“You gonna be home tonight?” asked Dad.

“No.” Marianne felt rebellious just saying that. It made her shoulders hunch. She just couldn’t get comfortable telling Dad things instead of asking him about them. “Danielle needs me to stay at her house until next Sunday.”

Dad nodded and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “I was going to make soy sauce chicken for dinner.”

Marianne’s favorite. He only made it for her. “Well, I can still eat with you guys. I’m only next door.”

“Great.” Dad was beaming. “I’ll go to the grocery store around seven, and we can eat...” He tapped absentmindedly on his watch while he calculated. “Around nine?”

“Great.” Marianne studied his expression for something to explain this bizarre behavior. Danielle’s house was only eight feet away from their own. Why all the careful planning? Patrick had said that Dad missed her. Marianne didn’t like the feeling that gave her; it made her feel unsafe or something. She opened the door all the way and got out.

“Bye, Mary. I love you.”

“I love you, too. Bye.”

Marianne didn’t get a ride with Sally that day. Right after class ended, Sally slipped in the bathroom to glue sterling silver vampire fangs to her incisors. Yeah, no. Marianne decided to walk, even though it was three miles. She needed to exercise, anyway.

After the first block, she decided that the exercise was good, but the scenery sucked. She could watch the cars, or the cheesy strip mall stores, or the lines in the sidewalk—they were all equally boring. She shuffled along in her tennis shoes down the busy street, across the big arch it made over the freeway, and down again into more boringness and litter. She had the idea to make a game out of how many “Office Space for Lease” signs she could find. Gee, that would be so fun.

But she had to do something. Her brain was in one of those unstoppable reminiscing modes. Hey Marianne, remember the time you peed your pants in Sunday School?

They weren’t pants, actually. She’d been wearing a short, out of style denim skirt. The pee ran right down her legs and into the scuffed up patent leather shoes her grandma had bought for her. The shoes that kids would tease her for because they were too dressy for playground time.

And then, there was that sweet phase she went through in the fifth grade where she would wear Mom’s old Grateful Dead shirts on all the field trips with the homeschool group because she thought they made her look cool. It was embarrassing to remember, even though no one had ever made fun of her for it. They were probably too scared of the skeletons. Mom was so overprotective in some areas and yet had let Marianne fall on her face in others.

Marianne stopped at the crosswalk and pulled out her cell phone to call Patrick. No answer. Just her own stupid voice on the greeting. “Hey. Change your voice mail message. This one’s lame.” Click. Yeah, it was rude. She’d still been talking to him all week, and she’d still been nice. Except for right then, of course, but she was still feeling hurt. Well, not hurt. Patrick’s lecture about true love made sense to her. She could still value the words when he said them to her, but they’d lost something. She didn’t feel hurt; she felt deflated.

By the time she made it to her street, Marianne was tired, crankier than usual, and sweating in her jacket. She went straight to Danielle’s house, fed the dog, and hopped in the shower. Hey, Marianne? You wanna go over all those good times with the tetherball?

Sure. Why not? When the kindergarten teacher had taken all the kids out to teach them how to play the game, Mrs. Wade had picked Marianne to go