Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 80176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
I shrugged. “My father says that if you don’t pass the salt and the pepper together, you lose your girlfriend.”
He blinked, then blinked again.
“W-what?” he stuttered, sounding utterly confused.
I nodded soberly. “I’m not sure if you actually lose your girlfriend,” I babbled. “But I’ve done because it makes my family laugh. Even my brother did it. My sister. Her husband. Their children. I think at this point, it’s just a habit.”
He muttered something under his breath.
“I see that.” He used the salt and pushed it back to me, then pushed the pepper down a moment later.
“You just lost your girlfriend,” I informed him, a smile on my face.
He grunted. “That might be why I don’t have a fuckin’ girlfriend.”
I don’t know why hearing that news made me so blessedly happy, but it did. However, I chose not to comment when it was clear that he didn’t want to speak.
Both of our orders were called at the same time, and he got up and brought both back to the table before I could so much as stand from my chair.
So, there I sat, enjoying my burger, while I tried not to stare.
It worked.
At least for a little while.
“Napkin?”
I handed him a napkin, then decided to be proactive.
“Anything else? Steak sauce?”
I never understood steak sauce at a burger joint, especially one with burgers that tasted as good as Maple’s did. Nonetheless, it was there so I thought I’d offer it.
He shook his head and reached for multiple napkins, laying them out on the table before taking his bun off.
Then, before my eyes, he blotted his burger with the napkins, and then proceeded to do it again and again until there was no more grease to be soaked up off the burger.
So that had been why he’d had all of his condiments, mustard and ketchup included, put off to the side.
He quickly reassembled his burger, putting back first the onions, then the cheese, followed by the mustard, pickles, and then the ketchup.
Once everything was piled high, he shoved the bun on and squished it down so that mustard and ketchup squirted out the sides.
“Are you new around here?”
His eyes, those beautiful steel blue ones that were quickly starting to be my favorite color, turned to me.
“No,” he grunted. “I went away for a while, but I’m back now.”
I wanted to ask him more questions, but he shoved his face full of French fries and turned his face away so that he was staring at his tray and nothing else.
He ate fast.
So fast, in fact, that I was only through half my burger and only some of my fries when he was collecting his trash and standing to go.
“See you around,” I called to him.
He glanced down at me, shook his head, and then walked away without another word.
Rude!
Chapter 2
I’m a simple woman. I like handsome, muscled, tattooed men with beards and donuts.
-Kennedy’s secret thoughts
Kennedy
I hoped that whatever news that we got today, that it wasn’t something detrimental.
But it has to be, my sister’s words from earlier still rang in my ears Why else would the doctor call me into his office if it wasn’t bad?
The other question was what if there was something seriously wrong with her? How the hell were they going to pay for it? She and I came from a family of farmers. Her husband was a fourth-generation farmer. There’d been a drought this year, and honestly, I was halfway convinced that they didn’t even have health insurance.
Not to mention they had four young kids.
And it wasn’t like I could help.
I was a farmer, too. I lived off my craft. I lived simply. I had insurance…what I did not have was insurance that was very good. I had the bronze plan—the lowest of the low.
But at least I had insurance…
Oh, God. This was going to be horrible.
“Are you ready, Freddy?” I asked my sister.
She turned her haunted eyes to me.
“Yeah,” she mumbled.
I offered her my hand, and we walked, holding on to each other into the hospital.
***
Shock resonated through me at hearing the doctor’s words.
“I have what?” my sister gasped.
The doctor looked at her with pity-filled eyes.
“Ovarian cancer,” he repeated. “Stage three.”
I looked around the room.
She’d gone to the doctor for a routine physical for work. Now we were here today facing a nightmare.
“What now?” I finally settled on, noticing that my sister was too surprised to talk.
“Now, you fight.”
“I didn’t want to fight. I wanted to live my life. I wanted to go to work and spend time with my family and friends. I wanted to freakin’ live!”
Fighting meant a whole lot of pain, and since she was a nurse—though she hadn’t worked in well over six years—she knew more than most.
Hell, even I knew that the debilitating pain that lay ahead for her. I knew that she’d wake up most days and not feel like getting out of bed.