Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 87181 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87181 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
“Just because you have a pretty face doesn’t mean you get to wreak havoc and stand around to witness the aftermath. Go.”
“Screw you, grumpy.”
“Only in your dreams, Olive Oyl.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You ever see Popeye? His ditzy, unaware girlfriend, Olive Oyl. That’s you.”
“Did you just call me pretty?”
He blankly blinked at me. “What?”
“You called me pretty.”
“No, I called you Olive Oyl.”
I waved my hands in dismissal. “No, before that. You said just because you have a pretty face.”
“Christ,” he huffed, raking his hand through his hair. “That’s what you took away from my comment? That you were pretty?”
I felt my cheeks heat a little. What could I say? Three hundred and some days, folks.
I grabbed a large piece of glass, and Kai reached for it. “Careful. You’re going to cut yourself.”
“No, I’m not,” I argued, yanking it toward me.
“I didn’t ask for your help.” He yanked it in his direction.
“I didn’t ask to be asked!” I replied, yanking it back.
He tried to tug it one last time, and as he did, it sliced into the palm of my hand. A stream of blood began trickling down my hand and forearm.
“Look what you did!” we hollered in unison.
“Me?!” we both barked.
“Yes, you!” we scoldingly echoed.
He reached toward his back and pulled out a white rag from his back pocket. “Don’t move,” he said, taking my hand into his. He wrapped the cloth around my hand and applied pressure. “Hold this here.”
“You sure have a lot of demands for a man who cut me.”
“I didn’t cut you!”
“Yes, you did! You cut me deep!” I dramatically stated.
For a second, he went quiet, his hand still holding mine until I pulled it away from his warmth. I’d be lying if I said the cut didn’t hurt, but my pride wouldn’t allow me to showcase the pain in front of him.
I stood as I applied pressure to my injury and huffed at him. “I would say it was a pleasure meeting you, but I don’t like to lie.”
“Whatever you say, Olive Oyl.” He paused before he placed the piece of glass that sliced me into his box of shattered things. “Get that checked out. You might need stitches.”
“What do you care?”
“Trust me,” he mumbled. “I don’t.”
That was the last thing he said to me.
I took Kai’s lack of words as a sign that our exchange with one another was over. I wasn’t going to allow those brown eyes with flakes of emerald to showcase their disgust of me one last time.
KAI
A thousand dollars’ worth of alcohol wasted.
Pissed off didn’t even begin to describe the way I was feeling.
“It’s no big deal. It was an accident,” Ayumu told me as I walked into Mano’s Bar and Restaurant. “Brush it off.”
“I don’t know about you, but I’m not one to easily brush off one thousand dollars’ worth of alcohol with a simple shrug of the shoulders. Especially during our opening week.” I’d spent the past two and a half years prepping for Mano’s to open, and now the week of said opening, I was already in the hole with profit.
“It’s really okay, Kai. Trust me,” Ayumu swore. Ayumu was my best friend and business partner. When it came to being laid-back, he was the one who took on that role. Me, on the other hand? Uptight was my first, middle, and last name.
When I ordered a few specialty bottles, I’d accidentally had them shipped to my apartment instead of the restaurant. That might’ve been my fault, but everything else was due to Olive Oyl. She was the true villain of the day.
It wasn’t that the woman knocked the box out of my hands. It was the fact that she had enough nerve to try to blame me for the accident when her face was shoved five feet deep into the paperback she was reading. No part of her was aware of her surroundings, and when she ran straight into me, it was clear it was her fault.
I knew this wasn’t the first aloof moment of hers, either. I resided in the same building as that woman, one block away from Mano’s. I’d seen her come in and out of that building time and time again nose deep into her books. I’d moved into an apartment on the twenty-fourth floor a few years ago, and whenever I’d get on the elevator with her, she’d be engulfed in a book, unplugged from the world around her. I’d watched people move out of her way as she mindlessly wandered around as if she was Belle in Beauty and the Beast’s small town instead of a living, breathing person in Chicago. Her lack of self-awareness infuriated me. It was a shock that a taxi hadn’t run her down already with how oblivious she’d been.
Ayumu patted me on the back and held on to his big, goofy grin. “I already ordered what was lost. We’re in great shape to open later this week. Plus, did you see the fancy cocktail menu I drew up?”