Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 69910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Dad huffs and stuffs a piece of bacon into his mouth. “Gosh darned fridge.”
“God danged fridge,” Gerry curses at the same time.
They glare at each other and stare more murder daggers. Dad looks at me like he’s thinking about writing me out of his will. I would never glare back with a look that equally says I’m going to change my main beneficiary to Bitty Kitty. My dad and Patience are in my will right now, split fifty-fifty. But she doesn’t know that.
“I can’t work with this…this…” My dad starts making air quotes for no apparent reason, looks at me again, studies Patience, and drops his hands. “Alright. Alright, we’ll clean it out in some kind of orderly fashion where we have to work together as little as possible.”
I made sure everything was such a mess that it was going to take them more than a little while. It won’t be possible to not work together.
“Okay.” I manage to keep a straight face.
Patience still won’t really look at any of us.
When we’re done with breakfast, we leave our dads inside and head out together. The garden really is a mess. It’s half overgrown and half weeds, and it’s hard to tell which is which.
Patience has seen the garden every time she’s gone outside. She’s seen the pool. She’s seen pretty much everything. She shades her eyes from the bright sun, rolls her shoulders back in her vintage T-shirt with alien bats on the front, and shuffles in her flip-flops and cut-off shorts. Then, she smacks a fly or mosquito with the back of her hand.
“You did it, didn’t you? Messed up the fridge? I thought I heard someone downstairs raiding for a snack last night, but it was you, wasn’t it?”
“It was. My dad is enjoying the enchanted worlds theme room way too much to get up for a midnight snack.”
“And my dad says he likes the volcano in his room. He says it’s epic, even if it’s just painted on the wall. And he likes the leaf bed.”
We both pause at the edge of the garden. “Do you think they’ll tear each other apart?” Patience bites down on her bottom lip, which sends a shower of sparks through my blood. It feels a lot like adrenaline and a pretty obvious boner that is getting harder with every passing second. I did the jeans and T-shirt thing and threw on a pair of rubber boots so the bugs wouldn’t chew me alive out here. And thistles. They’re in the garden, and they’re rancid.
“I hope not. If they start throwing pickles and condiments at each other, I’ll rush in and put a stop to it.”
“You didn’t bring your phone out here to monitor the security.”
“I can tell the Mushroom House Manager to shut the place down.”
Her lips twitch at the corners, which is an improvement over the eye twitching that normally happens when she’s worried or annoyed.
“I think we’ll hear them yelling and carrying on. I left all the windows open, and sound carries out here.”
“Hmm.” She gives me a weird look, which makes my dick even harder. She quickly looks away—not from my dick, from my face—but it’s like she knows what’s going on in my jeans. Her cheeks flush slightly.
She stalks through the garden and stops at a huge thistle plant. “I like these. Can they stay?”
“They’re not really the friendly kind of thistles. They’re more like the move-in and take over the whole place kind of thistles.”
“Oh. Well, I didn’t see any flower gardens. You should make some. Get some real thistles. Some of the globe ones. And bleeding hearts.”
She still loves those flowers. I didn’t forget. I just didn’t want to presume, either. I thought I’d let her figure that out for herself later. She’d be great at making flowers grow around here.
“Is there actually rhubarb, or do we need to run to the store somewhere or find a farmer’s market and get some?”
I point to the far corner of the garden where I can see the epic huge leaves just sticking out above the weed line. “It’s over there.”
“Thank goodness. I didn’t want to have to go anywhere. Not when the chance of catastrophe is massively high.”
We pick our way between weeds, thistles, and the stuff that is supposed to be growing and go over to the sprawling patch. The rhubarb is already going to seed. It grows all spring and summer. I tried to plant it in a cool part of the garden, where the huge trees on the far end of the yard give a little bit of shade at certain times of the day. It’s really grown like crazy, creeping along the far edge of the garden.
I know some people hate rhubarb, but I don’t understand that. Rhubarb is the spice of life. It’s good raw, put in baking, made into muffins, stewed, turned into sauce, reduced to spreads or jams, and probably a thousand other things I don’t even know about.