Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 72196 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72196 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
-Travis’ secret thoughts
Travis
370 days ago
It was the first time I’d seen her with her kid.
It was the first time she’d seen me with mine.
“You look a little lost,” she said to me.
I gave her a dry look.
“What gave that away?” I teased.
She looked at me, surrounded by all the other moms at their Mommy & Me Tea Party at the school, and grinned.
“I think it was the fact that you’re the only man in a roomful of moms,” she countered back.
I winked at her and turned back to my tea.
I didn’t like tea. Well, let me rephrase that. I liked tea. What I did not like was tea that was not sweet. This green tea, or Earl Grey, or whatever the fuck it was, tasted like mold.
What I wouldn’t do for a huge glass of McDonald’s sweet tea right now to wash this disgusting taste out of my mouth. Or a beer, but I highly doubted that the school would approve of me bringing a cooler full of ice cold beer to their stupid Mommy & Me Tea bullshit.
However, there was not a single thing in the world that I wouldn’t do for my little girl, and if I had to sit at a Mommy & Me Tea brunch date with her at her school to make her smile, then I’d fucking do it. Twice, if I had to.
It had never occurred to me that she would be there, though.
She didn’t look like she’d had a kid, let alone did she look old enough to have one that was the same age as mine!
But it was what it was, and now I had something pretty to stare at beside my kid who was clearly not too happy being where she was at, and with who she was with.
She wanted her mother here.
I’d wanted her mother here.
Allegra, however, had something pressing to do, and decided to do that instead of this.
Knowing what this meant to my kid, I’d decided to bite the bullet and come. Unfortunately, I was straight off of a job, and I was covered in grease. It was ground into my pants, covered my shirt, and I was fairly sure that I had it in my hair.
Alex, being the phobic girl that she was, refused to even give me a hug.
A trait that came from her fucking mother. Her fucking mother who refused to do the exact same thing when I was dirty like I was, too.
Was it too hard to ask for a fuckin’ hug after a long day at work? Was it too much to ask for a woman to not care if her clothes got dirty?
Because that’s what I wanted. A woman that was going to love me unconditionally—dirt and all.
But Allegra had shown her true colors over and over again, and I fucking hated…
“You want some of mine?”
I looked over to find her pulling a chair out, sitting at the tiny mini-human desk right beside me.
She looked funny with her knees up by her chest, and I was sure that I looked just as silly—if not sillier.
“Yours what?” I questioned, looking at her.
“My tea.” She shook the glass.
I stared at the McDonald’s cup in reverence.
“What do you have?” I questioned.
She rolled her eyes and held out the glass. “Sweet tea.”
“You read my mind,” I told her but didn’t reach to take the glass. “But no, I’m not going to take your glass.”
She shook the cup, and the ice and tea inside of the cup swished. “Come on. I’m not going to drink any more. I’ve already had three of them when I had lunch with Wednesday.”
“Who is Wednesday?” Alex asked, a slight sneer in her voice. “What kind of name is Wednesday, anyway?”
Hannah’s eyes turned from me to my kid’s, and she grinned, smiling so beautifully that my heart actually squeezed.
“Have you ever seen the Addams Family?” she questioned. “There’s a girl that’s around your age in it. Her name was Wednesday.”
Alex didn’t crack a smile or even act like she was interested in anything that Hannah had to say.
In fact, the moment that Hannah started to talk, she turned her head away and looked at the women across the room from us.
I didn’t need to look at those women. They were friends of Allegra’s and had already expressed their distaste with having me here instead of Allegra—luckily not in front of my child, at least.
“Are you going to drink that, Mister?”
I looked over to see Hannah’s child staring at me expectantly.
I grinned and pushed my cup and saucer in her direction. “Have at it, pretty girl.”
That term of endearment had Alex’s head whipping around like I’d said something naughty, and I guess that in Alex terms, I might have.
Sweet Girl had been her nickname, along with many others that I’d termed her over the years since she’d been alive.