Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 84200 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 421(@200wpm)___ 337(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84200 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 421(@200wpm)___ 337(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
Lie. Absolute lie.
“Busy day?” he asks, stepping across the threshold. He’s dressed casual in jeans and a Titans sweatshirt. He’s got on a pair of battered black Converse high-tops.
“Not overly. I got some stuff done last night so I could scoot out early to meet you here. I really appreciate you offering to help.”
And yes, despite me getting girl stupid over how handsome Camden is, he’s actually pushing me to do something I’ve put off for a long time.
Cleaning out my garage, which means cleaning out some of Mitch’s stuff. Camden doesn’t know that. I mean, he doesn’t know that all those boxes stacked in dangerous towers that could topple at any minute are Mitch’s clothes, shoes, books, memorabilia, awards and almost a decade of collected memories. I bet if he did know, he’d never have offered to help.
It’s not that I want to get rid of any of it. Quite the opposite, I want to keep most of it, but it does need organizing and I wasn’t able to put some of the boxes up on floating shelves above the garage door rails. My goal is to separate the clothing that can be donated, less a few things to keep for Travis, and then clean and organize the garage. Camden’s offer to help, along with an unseasonably warm January day—upper forties—and I knew this was the perfect chance to get it done.
“Want to start on the garage or do the batteries first?” I ask.
“How about we do the garage first?” he suggests. He holds up a small plastic bag. “I bought all the batteries but if we run out of time before you have to pick up Travis, I can hang back here and get those done.”
“It’s a plan,” I reply, ignoring the slight thudding in my chest because I realize that Camden smells really good. I take an involuntary step backward.
“All right,” he says with a bright smile. “Let’s go take a look at the project.”
We head out the back door and through the yard to the freestanding garage. It has a standard door to enter from the side and the rolling portion where my car enters faces the alley. I left my car parked on the street so that when we walk inside, Camden will have a good idea of what we’re working with.
He glances up and says, “We need to identify what you don’t need easy access to and then put those boxes up there.”
“Mitch’s stuff,” I say, and I have to swallow the uprising of sadness from deep in my chest.
Camden faces me, his eyes soft with understanding. “We don’t have to do this.”
“Yeah… I need to. I would have done it when we first moved in, but things were crazy and I didn’t have the help you’re offering. I need to sort boxes of his clothes that will go to donation. The stuff I keep will be for Travis one day.”
He nods in understanding, glancing around. “Okay… three piles. One to keep that will go up high, one to keep that you need easy access to and that can go on the wall shelves, and one pile to donate. I’ll do all the heavy lifting.”
It’s his crisp words and easy organizational ideas that put me at ease, making this no more than a project that involves some rearranging and has nothing to do with erasing something from my life. There’s nothing wrong with getting rid of things like clothes and only keeping those pieces that are drenched in important memories.
For the next hour, we open boxes and separate. Sometimes Camden calls out the contents to me if he’s not sure what to do with it.
“There’s a bunch of paperbacks by some author named Johanna Lindsey,” he says.
I nod my head toward the donate pile. “Those are old romance books of mine. I read digitally now.”
“Romance, huh?” Camden says, picking one with Fabio on the cover, his hair blowing in the wind as he stares down at a busty temptress in his arms. “Any good?”
“Oh yeah,” I say as I flip through some old tax returns, deeming them too old to keep. I put them aside as they’ll need to be shredded.
“I’ve got Christmas decorations in these boxes.” I look up from my task to see Camden has five boxes before him. “I’m going to put them on one of the lower shelves so you can easily get them down.”
“That works.” I lift another box onto the counter so I don’t have to bend over. I lift the lid carefully, afraid of spiders but luckily it’s too cold. Inside I see a bunch of photos I’d printed over the years using an online service. Many I put in picture frames, but I always went overboard and would store the others, promising myself I’d make scrap albums one day.