Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 77018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Blake snort-laughed from the other side of the hedge. “Nothing suspicious about the flashing lights in the bushes at all.”
I was about to tell her to stop talking again when a rat the size of a chihuahua exploded out of the nest of leaves in front of me. Before I could pull up my pants, Ratatouille scurried across my foot. More rustling came from in front of me as more rats emerged. I tried to shuffle away but lost my balance and toppled backward through the bushes, landing on my back like an upturned beetle, pants around my ankles, and my erect, lotion-slathered dick pointed due north.
Blake screamed, shooting to her feet as I frantically hip-thrust toward the sky in an attempt to yank my jeans over my deflating dick while an army of Parisian rats fled from the bushes.
She wielded the wine bottle above her like a weapon, then chucked the bottle at the rodents, barely missing me—definitely missing the rats. I zipped my jeans and stumbled to my feet just as Blake screeched again.
“Oh, God!” She hopscotched over the rodents scurrying from the bushes. “Their tails feel like leather.” And behind hopscotching, screaming Blake, stood clusters of people. All staring in our direction with their phones held up.
This wasn’t just bad; this was fucking terrible.
Blake glanced around with wide eyes, the tower behind her still sparkling and twinkling. “Oh, no, no, no.” She clapped a hand to her mouth, then immediately dropped it. “People are filming! Why are they filming?”
I dragged a hand down my face. “Maybe because you screamed like a demon-possessed banshee being cornered with a crucifix.”
“You told me to scream.”
“Scream if people were coming into the bushes. Not if rats were fleeing from them.”
“A legion of rats, all the size of cats, came lunging out of the dark depths of the bushes.” She made an exaggerated hand motion behind her. “And you expect me not to scream?”
I didn’t have the strength to argue with her. All I could think about was the not-so-far-fetched possibility—thanks to the wonder of the internet—that this may get back to Wanderlust. “I’m going to get fired…”
Blake’s teeth worked her bottom lip. “No, you’re not. We just have to…” Before I could tell her to shelf whatever hair-brained idea had just flitted through her mind, she’d spun around. “Nothing to see here, people,” she sliced a hand through the air like an umpire calling safe. “Just a bunch of blood-thirsty rats trying to attack a urinating man. In the bushes. A urinating man who feared for his life—”
It was worse than I could have imagined. “Blake…”
“And that very fear is what gave him an adrenaline boner—”
“Stop!”
But she wasn’t listening. “That’s right. Adrenaline boner. It’s a thing!”
A few people chuckled, and I slapped a hand over my eyes. She was carnage. The dictionary definition of living, breathing carnage. At that point, I figured it was best to give up. She kept preaching about adrenaline boners while I ducked into the bushes to retrieve my equipment. Thankfully, halfway through disassembling the camera, she fell silent.
Once I’d packed everything away, I shouldered my backpack and stepped out into the dimly lit park.
The crowds had dispersed, and Blake stood there, holding a new bottle of wine.
“Bucket Wine Man gave it to me. Free of charge,” she said. “I think it’s sympathy wine.”
“How considerate of him.”
When an incident can pull at the heartstrings of a street hustler, you know it’s bad.
We walked side by side across the dark park.
“You think if we drink enough, we’ll forget it happened?” she asked.
I stopped underneath one of the candelabra lampposts and cocked a brow. “I will never, in a million fucking years, forget that happened.” And neither would anyone who had witnessed it. It would be one of those ridiculous tales passed down through generations. It would probably end up on at least one semi-viral thread on TikTok.
She fiddled with the label. “I’m not very good in situations like that. You know, situations where I panic or don’t know what to do.”
Like anyone who knew Blake expected her to be calm and collected. I had been in the breakroom with her once when a spider crawled across the wall beside the coffeemaker. She’d screamed. Okay, standard. But then she took the coffeepot from the burner and chucked it at the wall. Glass shattered, and hot coffee went everywhere.
I glanced down at her. “Really? I’d never have guessed.”
She whacked my stomach. “Don’t be so patronizing.”
Fighting a smile, I followed her across the gravel path toward a bench tucked beneath two cherry blossom trees, where she took a seat.
“So, how are you feeling about the whole ‘there’s no such thing as being cursed’ thing now?” She turned up the bottle, then offered it to me. “Stuck in an elevator. Rat attack.”
“Still don’t believe it, and just so you know—” I said, necking the wine as I dropped to the bench beside her—“sharing alcohol this way one hundred percent makes us look like hobos.”