Don't Make Me Choose Between You and My Shoes Read Free

the morning light. Ten years back, after a bout with too much booze and too much speed, a late-night collision with a highway road sign had ended his visits. After that, Celina’s grandparents became her family, her world.
    The words of wisdom Granny Dee had tried to pound into her head or whispered into her ear as sleep overtook her on more nights than she could count came back to her again: Don’t waste your life being ordinary . Celina realized now with some measure of despair that she hadn’t heard her grandmother say those words in a while. Had she given up on her only grandchild? Had she settled on the notion that ordinary was what Celina was?
    Five dull and uninterrupted miles later, Celina parked in front of Mansfield’s Grain and Feed. Beneath the feed store’s sign hung a smaller, newer sign that read D IME B OX P UBLIC L IBRARY .
    The library was Celina’s contribution to the town. For four years she had driven the beat-up VW the round trip of sixty-six miles to and from the town of Brenham, getting her degree in library science from Blinn College.
    Sheepskin in hand, she had somehow talked Dime Box’s three-member city council into not only purchasing three hundred books and a used computer for a town library, but into hiring her as the librarian as well. When Dewey Mansfield stepped forward and announced that Celina could use the entire east wall of his feed store at no charge, she was inbusiness. Now, customers buying horse liniment, bird feed or pet supplies could stop and check out a book or two.
    With a great sense of pride, she had brought the most beloved thing in her life, books , to her community family. She dutifully logged the precious books—paperback and hardcover alike—into the computer and organized them on the shelves using the Dewey decimal system. When she told patrons the name of the system and how to find a book by looking at the numbers on the spines, of course they thought she referred to Dewey Mansfield and remarked that they had always known Dewey was smart. She didn’t bother to try and explain.
    Celina had been raised with a book in her hand. Before she could read for herself, she pestered anyone older than she to read the magic words to her. When she was old enough to read on her own, she escaped to her choice of worlds every night.
    As a girl, she had especially loved the Nancy Drew and Robin Kane mysteries, had even dreamed of being a private investigator. But that wasn’t what nice girls in Texas did. Nice girls made their families proud, nice girls followed the rules of etiquette, nice girls died a long, agonizing death by boredom. She was a nice girl and rigor mortis was setting in.
    â€œMornin’ Dew,” she said when she saw Dewey—it was the same greeting she gave him every morning.
    She heard his deep chuckle. The play on words seemed to please him. He, too, thought the Dewey decimal system referred to him.
    She didn’t have the heart to tell him the difference, either.
    â€œMornin’, little miss. Sam was in earlier. He was on his way out of town, said he’d call you later.”
    Mental sigh. And Sam Crenshaw was perfectly safe in assuming that she would be here. Another reminder of the mind-numbing predictability of her life.
    â€œOkay, thanks,” she said to Dewey, her mind now on Sam Crenshaw.
    He was an engineer with a computer hardware manufacturing company in Austin. She had known him forever. They had dated off and on since high school. Well, it couldn’t really be called dating. It was more like just going somewhere together because there was no one else to go with. Because Sam and she were seen together often, most people in town had concluded that someday she and Sam would marry.
    Not once had Celina ever considered that happy ending. Sam was like her life in Dime Box—comfortable and predictable. And boring. He saw everything in black-and-white and had the imagination of a pancake. She