Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 117494 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117494 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
She grinned, ruefully, at me. “Hi.”
Machete was right behind her, his arms full of equipment. He gave me a grin. “Where do you want this?”
I pointed to the back. “My dad’s already here. He’s set up.”
He paused. “Grill Master?”
“Grill Master.”
Claudia frowned.
He said, with a small grin, “Cool. This will be awesome.”
A second later, the air filled with beats from Tag Team. The Sugar Hill Gang would be on deck, and there were a ton others right after. I lifted up a thumb, heading down the porch to Claudia. “That music won’t be stopping till late tonight. Hope you’re okay with it.”
She gave me a look. “This is not the first family cookout I’ve been to.” She gave me a hug, wrapping her arms around me.
“We got a DJ.”
“What? Really?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s my cousin Trevor, but he DJs as a side-gig. Also, are you ready to eat, because there’s going to be a lot of eating. A lot. There’s going to be dancing all night too. Karaoke. You do know the rule?”
Her smile was wiped clean.
“What? No. What is it?”
“You gotta dance as if no one’s watching. That’s the whole point. And definitely you have to dance if someone points to you. No matter who it is. My niece? Dance. My cousin–”
“You have like thirty-eight cousins! What do you mean if one of them points to me?”
“Dance.” I wasn’t done. “And if my great-grandmother points at you, you really dance. You hearing me? I only got one left. All the others are gone, so Great Grandma Martha is kinda like a goddess to us. I’m not joking.”
Claudia had met my Great Grandma and a few of my cousins from Chicago, but not a ton. A few. And in small doses, but there was a whole event happening tomorrow and a ton of my family flew in to be a part of it. It was enough to make me cry and laugh at the same time.
Love. Laughter. Togetherness. Dancing. And eating. That’s what it was all about.
I patted Claudia on the back. “You’ll get it. Just wait till Great-Grandma Martha gets here.”
“Kali!”
I twisted around, Claudia’s arms still around me. My dad had an apron on, a t-shirt under that said Kali’s Dad, and giant-sized tongs in one hand. He held them up to me. “I don’t have enough spices. We are the spices. This is a big deal.” He barely blinked, waving his tongs. “Hi, Claudia.”
“Hi, James.”
“Your mother coming tonight?”
She nodded, her whole body stiff in my arms. “She and my dad got a divorce. Did you hear?”
He gave a nod, not showing a thing. “I heard. I hope she’s doing okay.”
She gave another nod. “Me too. I think she is. It was a long time ago, just making sure you knew.”
Again, he barely blinked. He was picking up what she was putting down. “Her bar doing good?”
“Yep. It’s doing real good, Mr. Michaels.”
“That’s good.” He flashed me a grin. “She as tight as she always was?”
I dropped my arms from around my sister. “Dad!”
Claudia laughed. “You know Ruby.”
“I do. Oh, boy, do I. Kali.” He waved his tongs back in the air. “I need the seasonings. This food takes hours to properly season!”
I had no idea what he was so stressed about, but then again, I was not a Grill Master.
I headed for him, pulling my phone out. “Okay. Tell me the seasonings you need.”
They were playing Catch Phrase when I walked by, hearing my Uncle Toby saying, “It’s a Southern word for pop.” I was pretty sure he was describing Coca-Cola.
A second later, I heard, “You can’t say soda!”
“I didn’t.”
“You did.”
“I said pop.”
“You said pop, and then you said soda.”
“It’s on the card!”
“Those are the words you can’t say.”
“Oh! Well, why isn’t that in the rules? Should be in the rules.”
“It’s in the rules. I’ve told you seven times.”
“Hey.”
An arm circled my waist later, when I was watching my dad and his dance crew on the dance floor. I was pulled back into the shadows. I knew whose arm that was, and I was already smiling, turning around to meet him. I reached up on my toes, pressing my mouth to his. “Hi.”
Shane smiled down at me. “Hi back.”
It’d been a year since I pulled that trigger.
Since then, he picked me up. Literally.
He carried me at times when I couldn’t walk.
He was there when we went back.
When we met Aly. When Brandon hadn’t been such a fan of Shane then.
When I called my father, told him what all happened, he had so severely not been happy. He refused to meet Shane until months later. Shane was with me at every step of the way back, and the way back was a long trip. But we were here, and I was feeling we’d finally arrived once more.
I killed Estrada, or I thought I had, and his club swarmed me. They covered me, but there’s been no investigation. Nothing. The most I saw was when I woke one morning and two cops were talking to Shane, Boise, and Machete in the driveway. They left and none of the guys ever said a word to me what that’d been about.