I Do Not Apologize For My Position On Men – Rae Wilde

He might be right. The further you get from here, the better. Susan buckles her seatbelt. “So glad you decided to join us after all, Jimmy.” “Didn’t have much of a choice.” Mark is wearing that sly smile that makes you want to squeeze his throat. “His girl dumped him.” “She didn’t–” “I’m so sorry to hear that.” Your mother flashes a sympathetic smile via the rearview mirror as the van pulls out of the long drive. Let her believe what she wants. It’s no use getting into who dumped who.

“Left turn on Maple Leaf St. 200 feet ahead.” “Well, I knew that,” your dad says. “It’s like I always say,” your mother continues, “What’s meant to be, will be!” “Right.” You gaze out the window, knowing you’ll be fine once you get on the highway and leave all these back roads behind. “Stay on the current road for two miles.” “I swear, that voice is so familiar.” Mark looks to the van’s upholstered ceiling as if he might find the answer there. Your abs clench.

You hope he doesn’t. Susan busies herself surfing radio stations until she finds 109.6: Best of the Oldies. At the next rest stop, you’ll get your headphones from your bag. You should’ve thought of that before you got going. Now it’s going to be soft rock for the next hour. “This is so wonderful,” Susan says, watching pine trees whip by the window.

“Must be twenty years since we’ve been on a family trip. She grins wide enough for you to see her sparkling metal fillings from the backseat. Then she catches herself. “So sorry to hear about Sadie though. She sounded like a lovely girl. I’m sure it’s for the best.” She smoothes her floral blouse.

“Her loss,” you say. “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that.” Susan’s hand hovers over the navigation screen, where once again a red circle spins. “Left turn ahead.” Your father yanks the steering wheel, barely catching the turn in time. “You’d think it’d give us a little more heads-up than that!”

“Just keep an eye on the screen.” You remember that two-hour trip to Dollywood that ended up taking four. And your mother wonders why it’s been twenty years since you agreed to a road trip. Mark tucks his Kindle beneath your mom’s seat and starts flipping through his phone. You rest your head against the window. It’s chilled from the blowing AC, and the cold burrows into your temple like a termite, like a maggot laying eggs, stabilizing the rising motion sickness.

You close your eyes, thinking you might be able to nap, sleep away the twistiest part of the trip and wake once you’re on the highway. “It is her!” Mark’s eyes gape with petty delight. He yanks his headphones off and thrusts the phone to where your mother can see.

“Check this out.”

Manuscript Copyright 2024 Rae Wilde Logo Copyright 2020 Off Limits Press Cover design by Sofia Ajram Interior Design by W. Dale Jordan Edited by W. Dale Jordan and Others This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this work are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

OceanofPDF.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Part I: John List Would Like to Cancel His Subscription to Omaha Steaks Rusalnaya I Am Not The Ghost You Wanted Giltiné Between Her Teeth A Fine Wife, Indeed I Gave My Heart to a Hurricane Eyes Open, Knees Apart for the End of the World A Curse in the Midnight Zone Backseat Driver Write My Eulogy On The Gloryhole Bathroom Stall Part II: Mulberry Silk Common Oleander Of Ash and Soot Gemma Prepared to Dive Part III: Survive the Essex Lance The Whale Get in the Whale Boat Stay on the Island Let it Go Head to the Marquesas Head to the Easter Island Epigraph Content Warnings OceanofPDF.com For the women who cut bangs or bleached their hair or let it go gray or got the promotion or stayed at home or took a while to leave him or her or them or played sports or went tanning or vacationed at Disney or have never been or call their mother every day or wish they had that kind of mom or did not recognize themselves at 2am in that bar bathroom mirror or asked their teachers about extra credit or the horse girls or DIY queens who cried quietly when what they really wanted to do was scream.

I am just like you. OceanofPDF.com Introduction By the time you finish this marvelous collection you will see the grand absurdity in the fact that a man is writing its foreword.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 5f5197d5533086e5
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 3,487,426 bytes (3.326 MB)
• Title: –
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• Pages: 151
• Language: English (en)

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• Total Words: 47,779
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