Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 155798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 779(@200wpm)___ 623(@250wpm)___ 519(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 779(@200wpm)___ 623(@250wpm)___ 519(@300wpm)
I didn’t know why I was hiding from Lo.
She would’ve talked to Travis, gotten his side of the night. By now she’d heard all about Brett, the same Brett who’d come on strong, texted me, made me feel all sweet and warm, and who I’d not heard a word from today. That Brett.
He should be doing the courting. That was the word Vicky and Howard used, and it stuck because it was the truth. The getting-to-know-you stage in the beginning was supposed to be the guy’s job. If he was willing to do that work, it showed how important you were to him.
Therefore, I felt it was important to wait for him to text.
I wanted to see if he followed through on what he promised, another thing that said a lot about a guy. But who knew if I was right to wait or not. The two relationships I’d been in had been good. Safe. I’d felt pleasant enough around them, but the spark hadn’t stayed, and both had ended because we were better friends than lovers. So maybe it was me? Maybe I was doing something wrong?
But that wasn’t really true.
I didn’t date because I hadn’t wanted to. My life’s purpose wasn’t to get married, have kids, get a certain type of house. I’d seen too much already, and knew that vision could be bullshit. My life’s purpose was to feel safe, and I did at Vicky and Howard’s, with the hens close by. That was good enough for me.
“Mom—” Lo shouted, from the coop, by the sound of it.
Vicky cut her off, shouting back, “She’s in the kitchen.” A beat later, she spoke normally, “You would’ve known that if you’d checked the house first. She’s been here all afternoon, helping me out.”
Vicky totally had my back. Go Vicky. I loved Vicky.
“Uh-huh. I’m sure.” Lo’s tone was dry, like mine had been earlier.
I chuckled.
The screen door opened and shut.
“She’s in a tizzy.” Roger came up next to me and bent over to wash his hands in the sink. He swung his hips to bump mine gently. “Heyahowyadoing?” He always said it as one word.
“She’s in a tizzy? Like mad?” I’d not been expecting that. Maybe a stern reminder about the goodness of Travis or “What are you doing with a celebrity?” Something like that, but she’d let it go and tell me she would support me no matter who I picked. She had to.
“I think she’s hurt you didn’t say anything about seeing Brett Broudou again.”
Oh, no. A hurt Lo was another beast, and she’d been heading to me, to share, and I ran from her. That probably hurt her feelings because we all knew I’d not been helping Vicky this whole time. If Vicky needed help, she’d wrangle Howard to peel some potatoes. She liked to cook by herself otherwise, but the cleanup was always for the rest of us.
I sighed. I need to fix this. “It wasn’t like that. He rejected me—”
The door slammed shut, loud and abrupt enough that I jumped, and then came a low and barely controlled, “He did what?”
Lo stood in the doorway, her eyes locked on mine and her jaw tight.
I was really messing this up.
10
BILLIE
“It wasn’t like I was trying not to tell you about him. It’s just that our first meeting was a lot, and he was a lot, and then he thought something about me that made him not want to do the coffee, but he explained later that he’d messed up and he was sorry about it and he wanted…” I’d been rambling for the last twenty minutes about why I hadn’t told Lo about the coffee date with Brett initially.
In this family, getting rejected was something we shared. I should’ve told Lo about it. Or not that I got rejected, but that it hurt me. That’s what she cared about, and now I was trying to explain myself without giving her a bad first impression of Brett. Because let’s face it, rejecting me because he thought I was sent to con him wasn’t a stellar beginning.
Even as I scrambled to unhurt Lo’s feelings, it was in the back of my mind that Brett still hadn’t reached out. I snuck a peek at my phone before we sat down to dinner to make sure I hadn’t missed anything before I turned it to silent while we ate. I hadn’t. It went back in my pocket. As we ate, I was acutely aware of the vibrations of people shifting in their seats, but none of those movements came from my phone.
“Oh my God, stop,” Lo finally said, after several minutes of silent treatment. She gave in, holding up a hand. “You’re forgiven, but this guy—I don’t know about him, Billie.”
Great.
Crap. This was what I’d been worried about, though I still wondered if I needed to worry about it at all.