Total pages in book: 188
Estimated words: 185811 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 929(@200wpm)___ 743(@250wpm)___ 619(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 185811 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 929(@200wpm)___ 743(@250wpm)___ 619(@300wpm)
“She likes dick.”
After I tossed the noodles in the cart, I walked beside him and had the unusual sensation of looking down on him.
He kept his eyes aimed forward.
“And I work a lot,” he finished.
“Ah,” I murmured.
I murmured that like I got it, but I didn’t get it.
Then again, I wasn’t a cheater.
My man wasn’t taking care of business, there’d be a chat, never a cheat.
But that was just me.
“And she’s the kind of woman who’s always on the lookout for the next best thing.”
I stutter stepped to a halt.
“What?”
He stopped and looked over his shoulder and down his bulk at me.
“What, what?”
“The next best thing?” I asked.
“Can we get the shopping done?” he asked back.
I started moving again, and when Mo moved with me, I kept at him. “What do you mean the next best thing?”
“You saw her new man.”
“Yeah.”
He said no more.
“And?” I pushed.
“Let’s not do this,” he said on a sigh.
“Do what?”
“Go there.”
“Go where?”
He stopped again and looked up at me.
“I’m a guy, Lottie, and even I can see he’s better lookin’ than me,” he stated firmly.
I stared at him.
“He also makes more money than me,” Mo continued. “He’s an attorney.”
That explained a lot, but only about the boyfriend and his apparel choices for a shopping expedition at King Soopers on a Sunday.
The rest was still unexplainable.
“She moved on from you to an attorney?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he answered.
I busted out laughing.
And I did this so hard, I slapped him on the shoulder blade to work some of it out.
“That’s hilarious!” I cried.
“It’s really not,” he said.
I ignored him. “Ohmigod. What an idiot. You dump her and—”
“She dumped me.”
I stopped laughing and started staring at him again.
“She traded up,” he stated conversationally. “Now can we finish this and get back?”
“She didn’t trade up, Mo,” I told him quietly.
He sighed again but said no words through it this time.
“She totally didn’t. And she knows it.”
“Lottie—”
“She either dumped you so you wouldn’t dump her, because, really, she’s a bitch and probably knows it and definitely knows you aren’t stupid so you’d figure it out. Or she instigated a faulty play, thinking you’d come to heel if she not only cheated on you, but acted like she was down with losing you and prepared to move on, all this so you’d fight to keep her.”
“You were around her for maybe ten minutes. I lived with her for two years. I was there, Lottie. I know what happened.”
But I wasn’t seeing straight.
I wasn’t seeing anything.
They’d been living together?
From far away (even though he was still right there), I heard him murmur, “Oh fuck.”
I started walking.
Fast.
“Where is that bitch?” I demanded, still walking (fast).
I came to a halt when he caught me by the waistband of my jeans again.
He used it to turn me to facing him and kept his hand there.
My breasts almost brushed his chest, we were that close.
We’d never been that close.
I was also standing in the curve of his arm.
He was almost…
Holding me.
Whoa.
“She’s history,” he shared.
“She’s a bitch,” I returned.
“Yeah. And so she’s history. Move on. I did.”
“She didn’t trade up, Mo.”
“Okay.”
He said that just to appease me.
I was not appeased.
I was a lot of things, including laser focused on his face.
He thought that.
He honest to God thought that.
And something had to be done about it.
So I decided instead of finding Tammy and taking her down I had bigger fish to fry.
Though I couldn’t fry them shopping in King Soopers.
“Let’s get this finished,” I mumbled.
“Thank Christ,” he said and let me go.
He went back to the cart.
I’d lost my list somewhere along the way.
Oh well.
Fuck it.
I’d wing it and if we forgot something, we’d come back.
We had to get this done.
I had fish to fry.
CHAPTER 6
TELL THEM TO WORK FASTER
Mo
He’d thought he’d wanted her back in the way he could have her, that was chattering at him and being comfortable in his presence.
Another mistake.
He had her back, but she wasn’t back, as such.
Any man would read it the way Mo was reading it.
She was his.
He knew this partly because the floodgates had reopened on the gabbing, but apparently, it’d been a rainy season because she seemed incapable of shutting up.
He now knew about all the girls at Smithie’s, who was putting themselves through school, who baked the best cookies, who knew the best zit-covering strategy, and who they were fucking, one doing a bouncer.
He further knew that Smithie would find out about the bouncer, because he always found out, and fraternization between employees was prohibited.
He also knew Smithie would go apeshit, but in the end not do anything but be loud and threatening while going apeshit, which was why the strippers routinely slept with the bouncers regardless that it was against employee policy.
And he knew Lottie’s mom and Tex were always on her ass about adopting a coupla cats.
Further from that, he knew she was considering it, she just was building herself up to go to the shelters because when she did, if she hadn’t established impulse control, she wouldn’t adopt a couple of cats, she’d adopt fifty (this, by the way, he did not find a surprise).