Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76456 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76456 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Nothing against Dennis. I was sure there were people out there who were into middle-aged dudes with patchy attempts at a beard and a man bun that only seemed to accentuate the fact that his hairline was receding.
But, yeah, this woman was a fucking knockout.
Average height with soft curves under her flowing green skirt and white sweater. Her long brown hair was pulled up in a ponytail and secured with a dainty green ribbon that perfectly matched her skirt. When she moved her head and her hair caught the light, you could make out little flashes of red mixed in with all the brown and golden highlights. Her light green eyes were a dominant feature on her pretty face—round, doeish, lined with thick lashes.
There were tiny diamond studs in her ears and some sort of golden chain of a necklace hidden mostly by her shirt.
She seemed very put together.
Which was maybe an odd thing to notice. Especially since many women in the city looked like they’d just strutted off a runway or out of a fashion magazine. But, I don’t know, it was just something different, I guess. From the perfectly rounded nails that were all the same length and all neatly painted with a pale pink, to her shoes that didn’t have a single scuff on them, and the way even the wisps of hair around her face seemed intentionally left there.
She seemed to really fit in the flower shop. Way more than Dennis ever had. And I wouldn’t doubt that it was the same attention to detail that she’d put into her appearance that had transformed the store in the first place.
Though she wasn’t a manager.
She just… worked there.
She just worked there, but hadn’t seen her boss in what seemed like weeks. Maybe even more.
What the hell was going on around this place?
Maybe it had been reckless giving her my name. A quick internet search might give her more information than I wanted anyone in the town to know about me. Especially if some shit was going down that I would need to handle.
I tried to tell myself that I just wanted to make it clear to Dennis that, if he was avoiding me, it wasn’t going to work. I would come for him at every angle I could.
But I thought it might be more than that. That I just, for some reason I didn’t begin to understand, wanted her to have my name.
As I silently cursed myself for not catching hers.
Making my way back to my car, I shot off a text to Gav, asking him to get dressed so he could drag his ass down to Main Street and clear the sidewalk for the woman who really shouldn’t have been working when no one was in town shopping. The main roads were clear enough that my car would handle them just fine.
The same, though, could not be said for the neighborhoods. Like the one where Dennis called home.
The plows seemed to have entirely left them stranded, only piling up the snow even higher at the openings of the road in the name of clearing the busier streets.
Maybe I should have attempted it.
But I just didn’t feel like dealing with getting my car stuck, then needing to get it towed out.
So I turned my car back toward town, figuring I could check on Dennis the following day if he still hadn’t gotten in touch with me yet.
I drove down Main Street, noting that Gav, in his stupid-ass little peacoat, was red-faced and muttering to himself as he shoveled the sidewalk without gloves, as I made my way toward the town’s only real grocery store. Sure, there were a couple of mom-and-pop markets, but they weren’t the kind of places that carried everything, and the house was all but bare save for a few questionably old cans in the pantry and the coffee that had been just this side of stale.
We were clearly going to be in the area for a bit, so we needed some shit to be able to cook.
We were both passably good at the task, having been raised by a widowed father who, after the sympathy meals from the women of the family stopped coming quite so frequently, had needed to teach himself how to cook, and, in turn, taught us.
“Figure it’s a life skill,” he’d said, shrugging when we’d been little shits who complained about learning it when we thought maybe he should have only taught our sister. “Everyone needs to eat, not just girls.”
It was there, in that grocery store I used to frequent weekly back when I’d been stuck in Balm Harbor for my sins, that I nearly plowed my cart into another one.
One being pushed by a tatted redhead wearing a midriff-bearing vintage style video game t-shirt with a pair of men’s boxers and a set of knee high polka-dotted socks, exposing about two inches of skin between the boxers and socks.