Every Breath You Take

25

            Ever since I learned how to hold a book right—which apparently had been a challenge for me during my younger years—I had always resorted to reading in the oddest positions, positions that should've honestly been extremely painful.

In general, I was a restless person and I think that showed with all the sighing and grunting and shuffling I did when I read.

So here I was, sitting in front of my little wooden desk, my knees pulled to my chest and my feet pressed against the edge of the desk so I could rock a little in the chair. With the number of times I had fallen back in this chair, anyone would've thought I'd have learned some common sense...nope.

Blowing a large pink bubble of gum, my arms were stretched out above me, the book hovering high above my face for me to read. Again, this position should've been painful, but not surprisingly, I'd managed to pretzel my body.

God. This book was horrible.

Rocking back so the chair was sitting all on fours again, I tossed the book behind me.

After I had dropped Aiden off, I had made a run to this cute little book store in town. It was one of those shops that sat smack between two stores on a main street, barely noticeable like the café my friends and I always hung out at. Anyways, the older lady that ran the place was super sweet. Even though it was a bookstore, she let me check the books out and return them without purchase, but of course, I always bought a few books as a way to show my appreciation. Most of the books were used copies anyways and I was pretty good about keeping her books in tip-top shape...

I peeked back at the book I had tossed somewhere behind me. Ah! It landed on the bed, good!

There was even a cute little coffee shop in the store too, so I made sure to always grab a cup before leaving. And their pastries... Oh jeez! Those were just amazing!

Anyways, now I had a giant stack of books on the side of my desk that I could barely peek over while sitting at my desk. I wasn't complaining though, I needed new reading material anyways.

Standing up from my desk, I placed my hands on my hips, eyeing the book on my bed.

I had this weird thing where if I bought a book or checked it out, I had to finish the whole thing or I'd feel some sort of way that I did not like at all. It was an odd pet-peeve, but that book was just not doing it for me.

I guess it was fine that I took a break now anyway. Dad was downstairs watching the game and Aiden was still napping and it was... what?... three something? Jeez, that guy has been sleeping for almost four hours now.

Humming under my breath, I drummed my hands against my legs, walking over to the old boombox sitting on one of the many shelves of my bookshelf. It was this old thing, one of those boomboxes with two circular speakers on each side, a bunch of crunchy buttons on the top, and a radio dial along the center.

It was moms'. She used to have this old habit of collecting a bunch of old vintage stuff. Most of her stuff from her days of being a teenager was vintage anyways, but that never stopped her from going into the older parts of town and shopping through antique stores. Oh! And she loved vinyls. I had a few of her vinyls in my room just because I loved the songs on all of them, enough that I had to keep them, but I barely listened to them anymore. They just sat on one of my shelves, collecting dust because the recorder player lay inside the room down the hall.

When I was younger, she'd play the recorder player on Saturdays or any day that the family cleaned the house together. And trust me, vacuuming the house with music going is much better than brooding in silence.