Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 73398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Coke agreed with a grunt. “The entire job seemed rushed and not well planned. Even Cora’s father, Gabe, said the same thing.”
“Which begs the question…Who fucked up?” Jim murmured.
“Cora’s father is looking into it as we speak,” Coke admitted. “He’s got some sort of security business, and he’s utilizing those resources.”
Knowing I was eavesdropping, and probably shouldn’t, I quietly opened Coke’s door, and then closed it just as quietly behind me.
Then I took a shower and got ready—in ten minutes.
I wasn’t the type of woman who needed twenty.
***
Two hours later, I was just as curious as I was earlier. Only, with that curiosity came annoyance in the form of Janie.
“Stop looking at me like that, fucker,” I grumbled, casting sideways glances at Janie.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked, her hand going to the precisely stacked stack of papers that were on the edge of Coke’s desk.
I slapped her hand away.
“Don’t touch that. He has everything where he wants it, and I don’t want him to kick me out,” I hissed.
“Coke doesn’t like us here. He says we’re distracting.”
Probably because you mess all his carefully ordered crap up, and don’t care that it drives him crazy.
I had to admit, everything in Coke’s house and office looked immaculate. Likely due to him being a drill sergeant for so many years, that kind of thing was ingrained in him. There was nothing wrong with wanting order in your life.
I didn’t mind a little order…but that was neither here nor there.
What did surprise me was that he was so scruffy looking. I’d known that drill sergeants retired and lived a regular, normal civilian life, but I figured that just because they were retired, that didn’t mean that they stopped needing order and continuing with precise grooming habits. I didn’t think they’d be growing beards or gaining weight.
Coke obviously had the order part down. He also was in fantastic shape—God, was he in shape—but the clean-shaven part? Yeah, that was obviously something he was no longer adhering to.
Janie moved to the cup of pencils and took one out and flipped it up on end, replacing it so that the sharpened tip was facing up instead of the eraser.
I rolled my eyes, sighed and then flipped my notepad over. I found a blank page that I hadn’t used yet, and I started drawing again—this time for Janie, not for work.
This one took far less concentration to draw. I’d been drawing her for years. Janie’s character had changed slightly, though.
I smiled, glanced up at Janie’s chest, and then back down at my paper. Her boobs had gotten bigger.
I smiled, making her boobs match on the paper.
“My boobs aren’t that big, Cora.” Janie sighed. “But they are bigger.” She grabbed them and fluffed them up in the cup of her hands. “I’m glad you can tell. I wasn’t sure if you’d continue to draw me with those pointy missiles.”
That was true. When we were younger, Janie used to despise having her boobs look like triangles. At first, I drew them that way because I was still learning how to draw, and boobs were, for some reason, really difficult for me to learn how to incorporate into my drawings. Then I learned how to draw them, but I continued to make them pointy because it annoyed her so much when I did.
But she was right. There was no way I could justify them being pointy anymore. Especially with the way they were so round.
I did make sure to draw them up near her chin, which made me smile.
Then I started in on her feet.
“Oh my God, those look disproportional. My feet aren’t that big!”
“You did gain an entire shoe size while you were pregnant,” Kayla said.
“Why are y’all here?” Coke’s voice interrupted.
“Our friend is here,” Janie pointed to me and then June.
June snorted from where she was sitting down the counter, on the phone. It was more than obvious she was listening to every word we said, though.
Or at least every word Janie said seeing as I’d yet to talk of my own free will.
“Hmmm,” Coke said, peering down over my shoulder. “You missed the puke stain on her shirt.”
I looked up and studied Janie’s shirt, smiling when I noticed the spit-up stain on the collar of her obviously day-old t-shirt.
Janie looked down and sighed. “That’s not fair.”
Kayla snorted. “I have to get back to work soon or they’ll miss me and accuse me of not doing my job again. Then they’ll say that I probably should stop working because I’m thirty-seven weeks pregnant and try to make me go home.”
Janie looked at her with raised eyebrows. “I’m not really sure how much work you do now that you’re nearly full-term anyway. They only let you answer phones. That’s why I took you. They’ve already hired your replacement and everything. You’re still getting paid, too. I’d seriously just live it up while you can. You won’t be pregnant forever.”