Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 69582 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69582 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
“Okay, let’s see if you can figure out the next one.”
“I’ll bet it’s cobalt poisoning from her hip implant,” I mused.
Constance’s fingers flew on her phone as she Googled the answer, then laughed abruptly. “You’re right.”
This is how it went for the next hour. She would watch the first five minutes, I would guess the outcome, and she would Google the answer.
I was right nearly every time.
“This is amazing,” she said. “But, possibly, we shouldn’t watch any medical dramas. I think you’d be best served watching something that you can forget and just relax.”
Tacos and beer devoured, I helped clean up while she searched through the movies on Netflix for something to watch.
“If Peanut needs to go out, you can let him out the back door. It’s fenced,” she said.
I let him out and came back inside moments later to see Shawshank Redemption cued up on the television.
I nearly laughed out loud.
Of course she would want to watch a prison break movie.
I sat down as she leaned sideways and took off her socks.
She tucked her feet up underneath herself and reached for a blanket on the back of the couch.
She was almost completely covered as she waited for me to come sit down.
I took the seat that I’d had earlier, but kicked off my boots beside the couch and flipped the recliner up.
“This is one of my favorite movies,” she said as she hit Play. “I always love that he got out in the end. I hated that he was forced to be there.”
Something weird inside my chest tightened at her words.
“Yeah,” I agreed quietly. “I agree.”
She nudged the remote with her toe and said, “Here. Put this over there.”
I took it and laid it on the table next to the couch arm. When I turned back, she was a little bit closer.
Not touching, but not very far away, either.
All it would take is another couple of inches and…
The movie started playing, and I split my attention between the show and the woman at my side.
Despite it only being eight thirty, her eyelids started to droop and her face was half buried in her blanket.
“You want me to go?” I asked about twenty minutes in. “You look tired.”
She sat up straight. “No. Stay.”
The forceful way in which she said it had something inside of me stilling at her words.
“Okay,” I said. “But let me know if you want me to go.”
She nodded.
It was cute.
The next thirty minutes she tried valiantly to stay awake.
She would nod off and jerk herself back upward, looking at me to see if I’d caught the slip.
She was like a child who refused to say that she was tired.
I watched more of her than I did the damn movie.
At one point, I couldn’t take it anymore and reached for her. “Come here.”
She looked at me, trying and failing to open her eyes all the way. “It’s just that movies are really hard for me to stay awake through. I’ve been this way since I was a kid. I think I watched the entire Little Mermaid in bits and pieces. Never the whole thing at once.”
She was a chatterbox when she was tired, too.
It was cute.
I curled my arm around her and tugged her into my side.
She came willingly, and then curled into me tighter, keeping her knees up in between us.
Her feet snuck under my butt, and her head came to rest on my shoulder, right above my collarbone.
I never knew it but, this was exactly what I needed.
Her in my arms.
I hadn’t realized how right it would feel until that very moment.
She sighed, parroting my thoughts.
“This is one of my favorite parts,” she said when the scene where he became the prison accountant began. “I like how badly they need him.”
I hummed in agreement.
I was starting to get a bit of her movie drowsiness.
But then she shifted and her body moved into mine just a little bit deeper.
Her arm wrapped around my gut, and then she was pressing a little bit further into my space.
It was obviously the signal that my body needed to completely relax.
My eyes closed and my brain shut down.
The last thing I remembered was hearing Andy say, Get busy living, or get busy dying.
My last thought before I fell asleep with Constance on my chest was, maybe Andy was right.
Maybe I did need to get busy living. Because suddenly I wasn’t all too keen on dying.
Eighteen
My neighbor’s diary says that I have boundary issues.
—Coffee Cup
Odin
“Do you want to build a snowman?”
I blinked open my eyes to see bright baby blue ones right next to my face.
“Uhh.” I blinked a couple of times to clear the sleep from my eyes. “Is there enough snow to build a snowman?”
I let my hand drop and felt nothing but empty couch.
“Coco is in the sanctuary,” she said. “A baby mountain lion came in, and Grandma needed help. Grandpa is out on a call two hours away. Grandma also wants to know all about you.”