Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 139088 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 695(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139088 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 695(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
“Alexis, if this guy is such a great PI, tell my why you two are still in an apartment,” her father responded.
“Well, for one, he wants me to have the wedding of my dreams,” she returned. “And even though all of our friends kicked in, and it’s going to be everything I want, and then some, I was stupid in one thing. Jacob overheard me telling Patsy I found my dream gown, but I couldn’t buy it because it was too expensive. As in, fifteen thousand dollars expensive.”
“Well, shit. That is expensive,” Rhea whispered.
“And Jacob bought it for me,” Alexis stated.
“Well, shit,” Rhea, Jessie and I repeated.
“And I can’t dance forever, Dad,” Alexis carried on (she was, not incidentally at this juncture, a ballerina at the Arizona Ballet). “I’m aging out. So Jacob asked me what I wanted to do. I said I wanted my own studio. So we’re saving what we’d put down on a house so he can give me my studio. I tried to fight him on it. He wouldn’t listen. He said we’re in a good spot, someplace we both like being, if it takes another couple years for us to find the home we’re gonna put kids into, it doesn’t matter. But he wants me spending my days doing something I love, so I’m gonna do that.”
Oh jeez.
I was getting all teary-eyed, because that was so sweet.
Jacob was the man.
Alexis’s dad’s jaw was working, but obviously, to all his daughter had said, he had no retort.
Alexis did, and what came next broke my heart.
“I thought you’d get over it,” she said. “I thought you’d come around. But this?” She swung an arm to indicate the courtyard. “This is unforgiveable, Dad. I rescind mom’s and your invitation to the wedding. I want you nowhere near the Oasis when I become my man’s wife.”
Jacob was suddenly there (which meant now Cap was doing what Knox was, sidling close to be on hand just in case).
He put his arm around her and curled her to him. “Stop talkin’, baby, so you don’t say anything you can’t take back.”
“I’m okay with everything I’m saying,” she retorted to him then looked to her dad. “I don’t know what the flipside of disinheriting is for a kid, but I’m disinheriting you.”
She looked over her shoulder, so I looked over her shoulder, and I saw her mother was now deathly pale.
“Both of you,” Alexis concluded.
“Roy,” her mother called anxiously.
“Fine by me,” her father, who apparently held the world record for the amount of stubborn he could display, shot back. “Your mother has always wanted to go to Paris, and we can have a slam-bang trip with your wedding fund.”
Alexis flinched.
Jacob growled.
I fought giving her father a bloody nose my damned self.
“Roy!” her mother shouted.
“You’re a goddamned piece of work,” Jacob muttered, beginning to turn Alexis toward their apartment.
“Speak up, boy,” Roy ordered. “Be a man and say that to my face.”
Cap and Knox stopped sidling and closed in.
But Jacob simply turned back and said, “You just let the most precious thing on this earth slip through your fingers. You’re not worth it. And I gotta look after my woman, who seriously fuckin’ is.”
Bill and Zach, one of our two-bedroom couples, our official community organizers, the presidents of our residents’ association and recently, part of the residents’ wedding planning team (long story), came jogging up with Bill asking, “What’s happening?”
“Alexis, honey.” Her mom reached out to her as Jacob guided her into their apartment.
But Alexis withdrew from her touch.
Her mother quailed.
Jacob closed the door.
Now it was Martha in Roy’s face.
“You’ll be leaving now,” she declared.
“I don’t take orders from some spinster cat lady who lives in a shabby apartment complex,” Roy rejoined.
Everyone in the audience (save probably Knox and Cap) gasped in afront because Oasis Square was not shabby.
It was the best complex in Phoenix.
Maybe not the most expensive.
But still the best.
(Part of our gasps was about him being a dick to Martha as well, it’s important to note, but since we all knew Martha could dish it out and take it, it was mostly his dis of Oasis Square.)
“Wrong again,” Martha fired back. “I was married for years to the best man on this planet. Unfortunately, most of those years he was battling cancer. Fortunately, he was a goddamned warrior with that, and he stuck around long enough to help me raise our three boys and do it right. After we succeeded in that magnificent achievement, he left us all, even if his love didn’t, and his memory never will.”
She had him in her thrall with all of that, so she edged closer to Roy and lowered the boom.
“Now, all my boys are married. And I can’t say I like any of the women they chose very much, though I know on some level I don’t because I know to the depths of my soul no woman would be good enough for any of my boys. That doesn’t mean in reality that’s true. It’s just a parent’s prerogative to think that way. But I put up with them because my sons love them and they make my boys happy. That’s my job. I might be mildly crotchety about it sometimes…”