Read Online For All You Have Left by Laura Miller - Free Book Online

wondering what his weird thing is. It probably would have been better to find that out before I invited him to sit next to me on my couch in my apartment, but I guess it’s better late than never.
    “What’s your strangest habit?” I blurt out.
    He stops and fixes his eyes on me—long enough for me to start to feel a little uncomfortable.
    “I see dead people,” he whispers low and mysteriously.
    His expression is as straight as it can be. Mine, on the other hand, goes completely blank, and it stays like that until I see his lips start to crack across his face.
    “Jorgen,” I exclaim. “You can’t joke about things like that with me. I’ve met people who really do believe they see dead people.”
    He starts to laugh.
    “Really?” he manages to get out.
    “Yes, and people who believe that people come back as cats and...”
    “As cats?” he interjects.
    The way he sounds so honestly surprised makes me laugh too. “Yes, cats.”
    “Like in an afterlife?” he asks.
    I nod my head in confirmation.
    “Who believes that?”
    He asks it as if he still doesn’t believe me.
    “I had a neighbor in college. All four of her cats were on their second lives.”
    He stops laughing, and it almost looks as if he’s going to be successful at regaining at least some composure, until he cracks, and the laughter just starts pouring from his lips again. His laugh is raspy, deep, kind of sexy and also kind of contagious.
    “One was even a TV meteorologist,” I say, holding up a finger.
    He rubs tears from his eyes. I, on the other hand, manage to gain control of myself and take another bite of pizza.
    “It’s true,” I say.
    He eventually calms down and takes a drink. Then, he slowly sets the glass back down onto the coffee table.
    “M&M’s,” he says.
    I look up. “What?”
    “Every Sunday, I go to the same gas station down the street and buy a pack of M&M’s, and I eat all of them except for the green ones.”
    I feel my eyebrows instinctively furrowing.
    “Why?” I ask.
    “It goes back to when I was a kid,” he says. “When my sister and I were little and my parents would stop at the gas station, they’d always let us get a bag of candy to share. And we’d always get M&M ’s. Then, once we got in the car, we’d divvy them up. She got the green ones. I got the rest.”
    “That doesn’t sound very fair.”
    “That’s all she wanted,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. “They were the best, evidently.”
    “Okay,” I say. “So what do you do with the green ones now? Do you just...throw them away?”
    He stops and shakes his head.
    “No, I mail them to my sister the next day.”
    I start to laugh but then notice his face is completely sober.
    “Wait.” I cover my mouth. “You’re serious?”
    “As a heart attack,” he says.
    “So, your sister gets a bag of green M&M ’s every week?”
    “Yeah,” he says, chuckling. “Pretty much.”
    “That’s kind of cute,” I say. “Strange, but cute.”
    He shrugs his shoulders.
    “Your turn.”
    I feel my chest rise as I take a breath and think about it for a second.
    “I don’t know,” I say.
    His eyes find mine, and one side of his mouth turns into a crooked grin. It’s kind of endearing. “You do everything backwards.”
    I feel my eyes narrowing and my eyebrows slowly making their way toward each other again, but I don’t say anything.
    “You eat your pizza crust-first,” he continues, eyeing my half-eaten piece of pizza.
    I look down at my plate. Sure enough, there’s a little triangle left—with no crust.
    “You read your newspaper backwards,” he goes on.
    I cock my head to the side.
    “When I first met you, you turned to the back page first. Even your name is backwards,” he points out.
    I bite the side of my bottom lip. “Those aren’t so strange, are they?” I ask, timidly.
    He laughs.
    “Nah. Now, when you start walking backwards, I’m taking you straight to live with that cat lady.”
    I laugh, and at the same