Trinkets Read Online Free PDF

she was still half seeing her college boyfriend, but she figured this was just work and what could one drink hurt? So he took her to the top of the Space Needle for gin gimlets, which she’d never had before. Two of those turned into four, and as the story goes, they stayed for a five-hour dinner, talking and laughing and requesting bad seventies songs like “The Piña Colada Song” from the piano player, who thought they were charming. At the end of the night, my dad drove her home and shookher hand like a gentleman. She thought that must mean he didn’t like her as much as she liked him or he was dating someone else. But he kept finding excuses to show up at her job, even though his work on the building was basically done. He claimed it was his responsibility to “oversee” everything down to the very last detail, and she didn’t argue, but she kept her distance. On the night before the building opened, everyone was toasting with champagne, and he introduced her to his boss as “the woman I’m going to marry.” She thought he was joking and said, “We’ve only gone out once. How could you say that?” And apparently he responded, “Once was all it took,” or something cheesy. But I guess she didn’t think it was cheesy, because she got married to him three months later. They were so in love, they had a baby eight months after they got married, causing anyone with half a brain to realize there was some sort of miscalculation in terms of either birth control or logical thinking.
    Now a couple of decades have passed, and my dad’s off working in the living room, and my mom is on the phone with my older brother, Jake, who’s in his freshman year playing hockey at the University of Michigan. I’m sitting on the couch watching a lame movie on TNT and listening to my mom laugh at all of Jake’s stupid jokes. The way she used to laugh at my dad’s, which makes sense, since Jake’s a clone of my dad.
    “Lemme talk to Jake,” my dad calls out, and my mother crosses to the dining room to hand over the phone reluctantly. She says, “I love you so much, Jake,” and for a secondI get confused because my dad’s name is Jacob too, and when I was little I sometimes remember her calling my dad “Jake” and my brother “Jakey.” So for a second I think she’s saying “I love you” to my dad, but it’s obvious I’m mistaken.
    “Hey, bud,” my dad says, and launches into bro code as my mom disappears upstairs. Men sometimes talk to each other in these fake voices, like they’re weird androids without feelings or emotions, their conversations peppered with words like
buddy
and
dude
.
    Just then I get a text from Taryn: WHAT HAPPENED TO U LAST NITE?
    I type back: I WAS ANNOYED.
    That seems like as good an answer as any, and I go back to what I was watching on TNT. It’s an old Sandra Bullock movie, one where she meets her dream guy on the Internet and falls in love with him, but it turns out he’s a total asshole and then he ruins her life. I wonder if my mom’s ever seen this one.

MARCH 8, 9:32 A.M.
    I’m really glad Aunt B didn’t walk into my room this morning to wake me up like she normally does. She would have been pretty shocked to see Noah Simos in my bed. I was a little shocked to open my eyes this morning and see him staring right back at me. He kissed me good-bye, which was nice but I wish I had had a chance to brush my teeth first. It sucks to be ignored by him sometimes, but when we’re together he’s so sweet that I almost forget about everything else.
    Fortunately, he climbed out the window when he heard Aunt B, and she didn’t notice anything was up at breakfast. I arranged my eggs and bacon into a smiley face that looked like Noah, but Marc walked by and messed it up with his fork, so I had to punch him. Aunt B yelled at me,which was okay because I was in such a good mood that I apologized immediately and told her she was a very smart lady, so she went off to work in high spirits,