Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 68735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
I winced. “Yeah.”
I pointed at my pineapples and said, “Don’t eat all of those. No matter how good you think they are.”
Gunner’s lips twitched. “I don’t even like pineapples.”
“You’ll like these,” I promised at the same time Creole murmured, “You think that would matter, but it doesn’t. These pineapples are different.”
“Lorax!” Lottie screamed.
“Get to that, Dad,” Creole said as she patted Gunner’s shoulder.
Gunner didn’t pale like he had the first time I’d said it.
He smiled softly, touched Creole on the top of the head, and headed for the living room and his fifteenth showing of The Lorax.
Creole followed me outside, and when I expected her to go to her car that was parked at the curb, she walked with me to my work truck.
“Umm, what are you doing?” I asked, heart slightly pounding.
“Going with you to visit your mom,” she said. “Then you can bring me back here before you start work.”
She paused next to my bike and pointed at it. “Unless you want to go on your bike?”
Of fucking course I did.
The chance to have her pressed up against me for an hour?
That sounded pretty close to my idea of heaven.
However, I thought it might be pretty close to hell for her.
“Uhh,” I hesitated. “You’ll have to be pretty close to me.”
A determined look crossed her face before she said, “I should’ve brought up my issues with you a long time ago, and maybe you could’ve set me straight years ago.”
I tilted my head. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she confirmed. “And maybe I would’ve been able to be close to someone without my stomach feeling like it was about to revolt.”
“Are you saying I don’t make you want to throw up?” I asked.
“No,” she admitted. “I can stand as close to you as I want and not throw up.”
I nodded. “What about hanging onto me?”
She bit her lip. “I think I can do that, too.”
I nodded and did an about-face, then headed right back inside to get the spare helmet I saw Gunner had.
“Gonna borrow this,” I called out to him as I passed.
He was on the couch with Lottie bouncing on his knee, singing about dancing with trees.
His eyes sparkled as he said, “Sure thing.”
I was out into the blistering heat moments later.
Creole waited patiently beside my bike, and I had a moment of ‘hey, she knows which one is mine’ when I walked right up to her and said, “Can I put this on your head?”
She visibly wilted. “Yes.”
I put the helmet on her head as I said, “No clue who last wore this, though. You might have two tons of glitter in your hair when you’re done.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I was a boy mom, so we never did the glitter thing.”
“I think the glitter was from Gunner’s last conquest.”
She burst out laughing. “Oh. I thought it was from Lottie.”
“Definitely not Lottie,” I said. “Lottie had men raising her. Do you honestly think we’d allow glitter to come into our lives?”
She snickered as I pulled away, then I helped her onto my bike.
She scooted right up to me, putting her arms around my belly.
She didn’t get super close, but she was close enough that this would work.
Every last piece of me was electric at having her this close.
Now that she wasn’t hating me, I let the old feelings that I had for her slowly seep in.
God, my poor thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen-year-old self would be having apoplexy right now.
I’d wanted her with my every breath, but hadn’t made a move because I knew that Laney had a thing for me, and Creole would never go there.
But now that Laney wasn’t here…
I started the bike on that thought, then turned to say, “Hang on.”
I backed out of the driveway and waved at the neighbor, that I was fairly sure was already writing in her neighborhood app that one of the gay couple was now riding off with a woman.
It’d probably be whispered about until tonight, when I met up with Gunner on the front porch with a beer.
I gave the nosy neighbor a wave, then headed to the long-term care facility that my mother spent her time at.
When we parked, I couldn’t force myself to get off the bike.
“What’s wrong?” Creole asked.
I squeezed my eyes shut and said, “I told Dad to get a divorce from her fifteen hundred times now.”
“Maybe you should tell your mother to,” she suggested.
That was a novel idea.
“What kind of faculties does she have?” Creole wondered.
I got off the bike, then held my hand out to her to help her do the same.
When her tiny hand closed in mine, a feeling of rightness overtook me for a few long seconds before she slipped her hand free.
I took off my helmet and placed it on the handlebars before reaching out for Creole’s.
Only when she had her helmet off and I was smoothing a few crazy hairs away from her eyes did I say, “She’s fully cognizant of everything that she’s done. She knows where she’s at, what is going on. She just can’t function as well as she used to. She can’t move around easily because of her stability issues. When she shot herself, they had to remove half of her brain, and apparently that was the half that helped her with her motor skills. She can see out of one eye, but she has to have a feeding tube because she blew off her jaw, and they weren’t able to reconstruct it.”