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)
But she shocked me by saying, “I’d be honored.”
Like a knight of old, The Kevster offered his arm, she took it, and he escorted her to an open table.
Harlow and I watched them go.
If that wasn’t an unholy coupling, there wasn’t one.
We turned to each other.
“This is a magical place,” she whispered.
It sure was.
We grinned at each other.
Then I went to the register to punch in their order.
TWENTY
VEGAN CHEESE
I was bent over the basin in my bathroom, face an inch away from the mirror, trying to draw the perfect eyeliner wing, when my phone rang.
I looked down at it and saw it was Dream.
My sister.
Calling me.
Another first?
It didn’t matter.
She’d had a date with Byron last night.
I scrambled to grab the phone, nearly dropped my eyeliner, managed to draw a black line across the apple of my palm, but also managed to grab the phone, take the call, and put it on speaker.
“How’d it go?” I asked as greeting, and it came out expectant and breathy.
“I…he…we…” I heard her take a big breath. “He’s not my scene.”
Oh no!
My heart sank.
But…
I didn’t understand.
Byron seemed happy that day at work. I’d left him alone because I didn’t want to push the sister teasing too far too fast, but his dreamy, dopey smile was in full force all day.
“It didn’t go well?” I asked.
“No, Luna. It did. It went great. Like, really great. Like, he took me to this swank place and spent over two hundred dollars on a bottle of champagne. And that was just the champagne. The meals were expensive too. And all the vacuous Kardashian wannabes were milling about in tight dresses, plunging necklines and sky-high heels with enough makeup on their faces, it should last them a year, and Luna, he didn’t look at even one of them. Not even one.”
Whoa.
“He only had eyes for me,” she reinforced this concept.
Okay, I was confused. “But…that’s good, right?
“He eats meat.”
“A lot of people eat meat.”
“He wears leather.”
“A lot of people wear leather.”
“He’s Christian.”
“Many are.”
“Baptist.”
“Many are that denomination too.”
“He doesn’t compost.”
“It’s not easy to find a composting service in Phoenix.”
“Yes, it is!” she shrieked so loud, I winced. “I vetted three before I settled on the one I picked.”
I took a deep breath hoping she’d do it with me.
Then I advised, “Dream, honey, listen to me. If you’re feeling it for this guy, don’t put obstacles in your path.”
She was silent.
So silent, I thought I’d lost her.
“Dream?” I called.
“You called me honey.”
“Sorry?”
“You called me honey.”
“Yeah? So?”
“You’ve never called me honey.”
Oh.
That couldn’t be right.
But I worried it was.
“You call Raye honey. And Harlow. Willow. Shanti. Jessie. Not me,” she continued.
I wondered how I’d feel if my sister called everyone in her life honey, except me.
I wouldn’t like it.
Shit.
Okay, I was getting ready to meet a mob boss. I didn’t have time for a down and dirty chat with my sister.
But I had to make time because it was way past it for us to do this. This was priority, for me, her, our parents, and it was the only mission I had left to focus on, and I was at my best when I had a mission.
Especially an important one like this.
Though, I could do it multi-tasking, so I propped my phone so I could still talk, went back to my eyeliner and reminded her, “Like I said karaoke night, I don’t think I’ve been a good sister.”
“I don’t have any friends,” she announced.
Good Lord.
I couldn’t keep up with her jumping around on topics.
I grasped on to this latest and said, “Yes, you do.”
And she did. They were all flower children, like her, though more fun.
“I did,” she returned. “Then I started having babies. And they weren’t having babies. So I couldn’t go for drinks or to festivals or whatever, and eventually they stopped asking.”
I thought about this and realized, way late, that I hadn’t seen any of those bitches in ages.
And they definitely weren’t on tap to help her out the last year she’d been breaking her neck to save money for a house.
Right.
Now I was getting mad.
“Are you serious?” I demanded.
“Nobody likes a crying baby dragging on their Sunday mimosa-fueled brunch.”
I couldn’t argue that.
“And a couple of them even got embarrassed when I was breastfeeding.”
And I couldn’t champion that because, seriously, people needed to get over it. That wasn’t a big deal.
Anyway, we lived in Phoenix, and all year round, men would take to the sidewalks and run without a shirt on, and some of that flesh, I really didn’t want to see. But even if he was fit, it was almost worse. Like he was a showoff. Total yuck.
I wasn’t going to get into that.
What I could say, I did.
“So, they could find other things to do with you.”
“They didn’t.”
“Did you, uh…give it a go to try to find things to do with them?”