Read Online Vulnerable by Bonita Thompson - Free Book Online Page A

jet money. So,” she said, and took a small sip of her vanilla mint tea. “What should I be looking like?”
    â€œThere are no women to compare you to.”
    She glanced over at the order counter. “Not the barista?”
    Rawn checked out the barista reading The Stranger, her elbows resting on the counter. “She’s got that Capitol Hill look about her—tatts and piercings.”
    â€œWhy are you here?”
    â€œYou mean on Crescent Island? Teaching brought me here.”
    â€œAh, there’s the connection: Easing thirteen-year-olds into poetry.”
    â€œWhen I visited Gumble-Wesley Academy–it’s where I teach…I liked it and decided to get a place on the island instead of in Seattle.” Rawn leaned his forearms on the edge of the table. “What about you?”
    â€œThat’s a long story. It’s complicated. It’s crowded. It’s sad. But I’m trying to learn not to be so hard on myself.”
    â€œYou make it sound like your life is like a Jane Austen novel. Everyone has a story that has a range of things we didn’t expect.”
    â€œTrue.” She looked into his magnetic eyes and could not bear to hold them for long. “Sages and mystics—they claim but for the complicated and the sad, one cannot have a life worth talking about. It makes sense, but in theory. In the real world…”
    â€œWhat exactly has happened in your life? What, are you like a walking wounded?”
    â€œNo, I’m not a walking wounded, but each of us has some …regret?”
    â€œRegret? Sure,” said Rawn, his eyes resting on his cup on the table. “But I suppose I haven’t lived long enough to know what it’s like to hold on to it.”
    â€œWell, perhaps not. It’s coming. What are you, twenty-nine?”
    â€œThirty-three,” he corrected her. “And with a birthday on the way. You don’t look like you’ve lived long enough to have that much regret.”
    â€œHow old do you think I am?” she asked.
    â€œOh no, I miscalculated once. Never again.”
    D’Becca was the type who never felt the need to lie about her age. Over the years, she met a number of women whom she believed were self-conscious about aging, which meant they struggled with the woman they had become. She never got that, and she always hoped that as she aged she would feel even better about herself. Although desperate to live this beautiful life she had long imagined as a child, even back when she was naïve and insanely insecure, D’Becca not once fibbed about her age. “Thirty-seven, and with a birthday on the way.”
    â€œThirty-seven?”
    â€œThirty-seven and some change, yes.”
    â€œAnd when’s your birthday?”
    â€œDecember.”
    â€œOkay, I know my mother would think this is rude…”
    â€œNo, no Botox or facelifts or Restylane. But…yes, my lips. Collagen. And I confess it’s because so many other women in my line of work, and actresses, do it. It’s the one thing I felt I had to give in to.” She was forthright.
    His eyes fell onto her hands, wrapped around the small teacup. “You look…nice,” he felt obliged to tell her.
    Solemn, she thanked him. D’Becca lowered her eyes since his rested on hers longer than she felt at ease with. “This is really good tea, by the way.”
    â€œI think you said that already.”
    â€œOh, I did, didn’t I.” D’Becca was on the verge of feeling—this guy was a little too…He was starting to make her feel much too self-conscious, something D’Becca had not felt in a long while.
    â€œAre you through here?”
    â€œYou mean in the bookstore?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œWell, yeah, I guess. Why?”
    They walked through city centre where a variety of shops dominated the quaint streets near the pier and landed a stone’s throw from, what the locals