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)
“Of course.”
“I’ll make her a jar of my dill pickles.” A shrill alarm went off, and Grandma reached for the overbed table. “Now, which reminder is that?” She picked up her cell phone, holding it out to read the screen. Then she shook her head and passed the device to me. “Done left my glasses at the house.”
“It says feed Cowboy.” The woman would set reminders to feed her dog but not to take her blood pressure medicine.
“That’d be ‘bout right. His dinner time’s always after Jeopardy.” She shifted in the inclined bed, fiddling with the IV in her arm. “You’re gonna stay at the house, right?”
I nodded toward the plastic-looking recliner in the room’s corner. “I was planning on staying right there.”
She huffed. “Ain’t gonna do no such thing. You snore like you’re sawing logs. Kept me up for eighteen years. And I already got enough beeping and chiming from all these monitors.” She waved an arm around the small room. “Besides, Cowboy gets lonely.” She patted my arm. “Why don’t you go on to the house and take care of him? Come by and see me in the morning?”
A bed sounded much more inviting than that recliner. “Okay, Grandma.” I leaned over to kiss her forehead.
She cupped a hand to her mouth. “And bring me some cigarettes,” she whispered.
The woman used to smoke like a chimney. After my grandpa had passed, she’d promised she’d stop.
“I thought you quit?”
“Practically have. Only have one after my morning coffee, one at lunch, and one after dinner. Maybe one when I wake up to take a tinkle at night.”
Shaking my head, I pushed up from the hospital bed. “I’m not bringing you cigarettes.”
“Don’t be givin’ me no grief, boy. I’m eighty-four years old, and if I wanna smoke with my coffee, I’m gonna have a smoke with my coffee.”
“I love you. But I’m still not bringing you cigarettes,” I said, smiling before I slipped into the hall.
Chapter Twenty-Three
BLAKE
Disoriented. No. Discombobulated was a better word. That’s what I was the next morning when I woke to the pounding of a jackhammer outside Margot’s apartment window. Man, how I missed the raucous ring of Vance’s alarm—especially when I grabbed my phone and realized it was half-past eleven and I was going to be late for the picnic I’d agreed to have with my dad. Not that he’d expect me to be on time.
I rolled off Margot’s pull-out couch and rummaged through my backpack for something to wear. Everything I dragged out had wrinkles. Maybe Vance had a point about neatly folding things. I decided on a crinkled sundress, then quickly brushed my teeth before shouting to Margot that I was leaving.
Thankfully, the weather wasn’t scorching, which made it a little easier to speedwalk across the city. I stopped across the street from Central Park, texting Vance while I waited for one of the horse-drawn tourist carriages to clip-clop past.
She’s savage AF
He sent me a picture of a gray-haired lady in a hospital gown flipping a bird to a man in a white coat.
From the framed photo on his desk, I would have expected her to be a gentle-mannered, Southern grandma. But from the looks of it, she was a rebel.
Do you know when you’re coming back?
It may have only been twenty-four hours since I’d seen him, but I missed him. Legitimately, hurt-in-my-chest missed him. Something was definitely wrong with me. I’d never been all needy and obsessed in a relationship before.
In fact, every single guy I’d dated had always given me grief about acting too blasé. Sure, I’d wanted to see whoever I was dating, but with Vance, it wasn’t a want. I needed to see him. I needed to kiss him. Fuck him. It was exhilarating and all-encompassing. It was everything I’d read about in romance books and scoffed at. And I was there for it. One hundred percent there for it with Vance.
My flight leaves early Friday morning. And I’m coming straight from the airport to you.
I felt the smile spread across my face as I crossed the street to the park.
Good.
“Well, don’t you look happy as a lark?”
Pocketing my phone, I glanced up. My dad stood at the edge of the grass, his salt-and-pepper hair in complete disarray and a picnic basket in his hand.
“Hey, Dad!” I closed the distance between us. The comforting scent of Old Spice filled my senses when he pulled me into one of his bear hugs.
“Sorry your trip got cut short, peanut.”
“It’s fine.”
We started across the lawn toward our usual spot underneath the shade of an elm tree, where Dad helped me spread out the blanket. After he’d unpacked the chicken salad sandwiches he always made, I told him about the trip and Vance, leaving out of anything remotely related to Paul or sex.
“Evidently, there is a big difference between the Italian words pecorino and pecorina.”