Dear Emily Read Online Free PDF Page A

asked.
    “It's Wal-Mart, we'll need a shopping
cart.”
    They stood in front of the orange juice
section knowing they were going to get the same orange juice they
always got, however contemplating the options all the same. “Do you
think I'll be a real adult the day I choose orange juice with
pulp?” Amy asked.
    Jack shook his head in disgust. “Pulp
is asking too much of me so early in the morning. If I wanted to
eat my juice, I'd have an orange.”
    “Look at this,” Amy muttered, “Extra
pulp.”
    “That's just pretentious.”
    She put the usual, pulp-free orange
juice in the cart and headed for the checkout lines.
    “Wait, I want to see one thing,” Jack
said, making a sharp turn for another aisle.
    “And we've lost another soul to the
magnetic pull of Wal-Mart.” She followed Jack but stopped when she
saw the toy section and a display of hula-hoops. “A hula hoop!” she
exclaimed, admiring the rainbow of hula-hoops on display. “I used
to love the hula hoop. I was superb at it. Do you want to
see?”
    “Yes,” he said, without hesitation, and
leaned against the cart, waiting for her to begin.
    She pulled the lime-green hula over her
head and held the plastic ring around her hips. “Prepare to be
amazed,” she said, meeting his eyes.
    “You're stalling.” His eyes narrowed in
skepticism, but he simpered ever so slightly as her hips began
rotations.
    By her count, she'd successfully hula
hooped for nineteen seconds. Not too shabby if you asked
her.
    “You do not disappoint,” he conceded.
Amy blushed.
    They continued shopping and Jack led
her to the furniture section and after walking down three aisles of
boxes and more boxes and couches and mirrors and kitchen tables, he
seemed to find what he was looking for.
    He picked up a box for a
build-it-yourself- three-drawer dresser. It was simple and easy to
build. He checked the back of the box to make sure it came with
everything one would need to build the dresser. Jack purchased his
dresser and she insisted on paying for the orange juice. She
offered to help him carry the box up the stairs to the apartment,
but he managed on his own.
     
     
    After a quick shower to wash the stench
of the pub off her, she went to the kitchen under the pretense of
wanting something to drink. Truthfully, she wanted to be with Jack.
Not disappointed, he was in the living room opening the box to the
furniture he'd purchased. “Are you putting your dresser together
now?”
    “Yes.”
    “Do you ever sleep?”
    He shrugged. “Not well.”
    “It seems like you always go to sleep
after me and yet you're up before me every morning.”
    She sat down beside him on the living
room floor. “Can I help you build it?”
    “Yes.”
    She peered into the box. “I actually
like building things. Oh, look, Aliens is on TV.”
    She put the movie on the television in
the living room and pushed the ottoman over to one side so they
would have space to work. Jack removed the pieces from the box and
spread them out on the floor. Together, they sorted the pieces into
groups and then Amy held the instructions up as they counted each
piece to make sure they were not missing anything.
    She read the instructions and told him
which pieces needed to go together. They took their time but did
good work. “Emily and I used to like building things,” Amy said,
meeting his eyes and silently asking if it was okay to talk about
her sister with him.
    “What did you two used to build?” He
asked, without missing a beat.
    “We thought we could build birdhouses
and sell them to people.”
    “I didn't peg you for an
entrepreneur.”
    “We need the other bracket,” Amy said.
“The smaller one.”
    He nodded and joined the correct
pieces.
    “We started with one birdhouse, of
course. And it was crooked and I worried we'd used too much glue
and the birds would die from glue exposure and we saw a few birds
the first afternoon. But the second day, we went to refill the bird
seed and there was a huge