Over the Hills and Far Away (NOLA's Own #1) Read Online Free Page B

called NOLA’s Junk became an instant local success.
     
    I loved to relive that day.
    We had bought a few of their demos and T-shirts to show our support that day, and I’d listened to that crappy CD all day, every day, until it died. I lovingly wore the T-shirt to bed, almost religiously, every night. That plain black shirt with NOLA’s Junk written in white letters across my puny tits had become one of my most precious belongings.
    A few days after that festival, Mom had had a bad episode and ended up in the hospital for five days. Swollen and puffy with accumulated fluid, her heart wasn’t strong enough to quickly pump her blood to push the fluid and toxins into her liver and kidneys to clean her out. Given prescription diuretics, the wastes flushed from her body, she had been sent home with a strict diet regime and more pills to take.
    Through that terrifying time, I’d listened to Phil’s voice almost nonstop. It had empowered me, buoyed my spirit when it’d felt like I would drown in my fear and grief. I was strong, strong enough to carry my grandmother, my father, my sort-of stepmom, Gloria and Connor through it, too. Constantly listening to Phil pissed off Jaime to no end, but he’d kept his mouth shut. Once Mom had come home from the hospital, I’d only listened to it when he wasn’t around.
    Even to this day, more than two years later, I wore that now ragged T-shirt to sleep every night.
    Last night bloomed bright in my mind as I cracked open my eyes to the morning sunlight. My chest flooded with warmth and joy, a tingle of excitement, from just thinking about Phil’s kiss. My lips tickled at the memory, and I rubbed my fingertips over them.
    Why did it have to end? Seriously, that was pretty fucked up. I wasn’t even able to leave him my phone number or my damn last name!
    It was with those thoughts and a now heavy heart that I woke up fully.
    As quietly as I could, I got out of bed, careful not to rouse Lili, and spared a glance toward Alys asleep on my futon. Lili usually slept in bed with me during sleepovers because she was so tiny, and my double bed fit us best.
    There were a few mornings when I’d woken up, spooning the evil little imp. A couple of times, she had had to pry my hand off her boob. Honestly, I had no idea why my right hand had seemed to want a handful of titty on some mornings, but Lili never seemed disturbed by it.
    “Sometimes, everyone needs a little bit of titty,” she’d told me once after I had profusely apologized, red in the face. To hit her message home, she’d tweaked my nipple and given me a saucy wink.
    Tiptoeing my way to the bedroom door, I softly shut it behind me and made my way to the bathroom for the usual morning ritual.
    After I had finished up, I went to see if Mom was up.
    I found her this morning as I did every morning—sitting on her bamboo yoga mat on the back porch in a lotus pose. There was that weird little twinge in my heart as I took in her thin frame.
    When I was a kid, my mom had had a gorgeous full figure. Now, wasted away, she had lost at least fifty pounds over the past two years. Taking a cocktail of different medications that hadn’t done jack shit to save her life, she was on The List for a heart transplant. But that was a long fucking list, and healthy people with transplantable hearts didn’t usually drop dead.
    My frustration with the whole situation knew no bounds. Unlike my mother who had come to terms with her illness, I wanted some fucking answers . How had an otherwise healthy woman who exercised, ate all the right things, hardly ever drank alcohol, and only smoked weed end up with a failing heart condition? Why hadn’t at least one of the bazillion pills she had taken daily given her any relief or improved her condition? What were they for, if not for healing her?
    Forcing myself to stop feeling so damn angry, I took a seat next to Mom, pulling my legs into the lotus pose.
    “You’ve got an exceptionally wild aspect to your