The Co-op by Tarah DeWitt EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Tarah DeWitt
- Language: English
- Genre: Romantic Comedy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Two Months Prior
LaRynn
BENT and broken stalks of pampas lay in scattered piles across the hillside,
like the Pacific’s discarded toothpicks.
The occasional glimpse of the ocean on the horizon is welcome after the
winding, swooping, relentless turns through the Redwoods prior.
I was forced to submit to my car sickness awhile back and had to make
Elyse, my dearest (and only) friend, pull off to the side of the road.
I’ve spent nearly half of my life’s summers here, so I suppose I
should’ve expected the nostalgia. As soon as I’d finished my puking, I
looked up and was swept under a fresh wave of it, remembering the very
same spot and circumstances from the last time I was sick there, nearly a
decade ago.
“Merde, LaRynn. You are almost an adult. You should have outgrown
this—this car sickness,” my father had yelled out the open door, the slight
French accent only deepening the disgust in his tone. As if I was still
wetting the bed or sucking my thumb. As if I could even help it. A
dramamine and all the pressure points in the world couldn’t make up for the
stifling, stilted tension in the car that day. The way my mother stared
longingly out the window and leaned into it with her entire body, like she’d
rather have been anywhere else. The way my father would make small
attempts at conversation before he’d shake his head in dismay when those
attempts weren’t met with any level of enthusiasm.
My parents, who categorically did not enjoy one another, who spent
more time wrapped up in their resentment—to the point that it took center
stage in our lives—traveled every summer from the time that I was eight
until eighteen, leaving me with my grandma. And until that final one, those
summers were always restorative for them, too. They’d drop me off at the
beginning of summer—usually some weekend in May when school would
conclude—and pick me up around Labor Day, just before it would begin
again. And things would almost seem better for them, typically until
Halloween. A few years we even made it through Christmas.
Until that final summer, when my naiveté about love was cured once
and for all.
Until that year, this was the place that’d been more home to me than
any, with the person who felt more like home to me than anyone had, too.
My grandmother with her deep French accent and her cutting sarcasm and
her laissez-faire freedom.
I’d never understood how my father came from her, opposite in every
way.
I also still don’t understand how one summer nullified so many. I can
only guess that it was my age the last time I was here that made it feel so
vital. Eighteen had felt so much bigger than it was, so much more exposed.
I’d burned bright for those months. The temporariness of it all had made me
so unapologetically myself. Like I knew I was on the precipice of the rest of
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