Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 88317 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 442(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88317 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 442(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
I still had so many questions. Would I take him with me to the grocery store, or was it easier to have groceries delivered? What time did he go to bed? Does he need anything to get to sleep at night? Lorraine was going to be getting a ton of questions from me later, whether she liked it or not.
Somehow, I managed to get through the rest of that afternoon. I mainly sat next to Scottie while he watched his videos or while he played with an app that featured a talking cat that spoke back to you. Since Scottie mainly grunted and hummed into the screen, the cat did the same. I tried to interact with it, but Scottie frowned whenever I joined in—he didn’t seem to appreciate my efforts. Pretty sure if he could talk, he’d ask why this dumb bitch had suddenly come to invade his space.
When it was finally time to sit him down to dinner, I tried a few different things to encourage him to leave the couch. Nothing worked until I held up one of the dessert items: an Oreo cookie. He seemed to get the idea and got up to sit at the table in the kitchen.
Scottie immediately picked up one of the pieces of chicken and took a bite. The dessert was lined up just as Lorraine had instructed me to in her note.
Put down one square napkin. At the bottom place two gummy vitamins. Above that, add a cheddar cheese stick. Above that, place four Junior Mints. Then at the very top of the napkin, place two Oreos. His favorite are the double-stuffed.
Thankfully, she’d also left me a shopping list of must-have items.
As Scottie continued to chomp away at the chicken, the doorbell rang.
Hope bloomed in me at the prospect of Lorraine returning. But why would she ring the bell? When I opened, though, my heart skipped a beat as my body filled with dread. Suddenly, this difficult day had gotten a whole lot worse.
What is he doing here?
CHAPTER 2
* * *
CARLY
JOSH MATHERS TOWERED over me, smelling like leather, spice, and a hint of cigarettes mixed with the cold, fall air outside.
“What’s going on?” I blinked. “Why are you here?”
He walked past me into the living room, rolling a black suitcase behind him. “I came to relieve you.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ll be staying with Scottie,” he said, without making eye contact. “I was already planning on it. But then I heard you were here and put a rush on things.” The jerk finally looked at me with his piercing hazel eyes. “You can go back to La La Land.”
I’d only met Brad’s best friend a few times. And I sort of despised him, even though I didn’t know him very well. But I had a good reason for my disdain. Josh was a player and had been a bad influence on Brad growing up. He was the “wild one” and was always getting the two of them into trouble. I never liked it when Brad went without me to visit Josh in Chicago, either. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Brad. I just never knew what his friend might pull while the two of them were inebriated. Josh Mathers was bad news. The idea of entrusting him to take care of Scottie, therefore, seemed ludicrous.
“Relieve me? I just got here today,” I said. “But either way, I think it’s best for him if I stay.”
“I’m sure they taught you a lot in beauty school about how to take care of grown men?”
Placing my hands on my hips, I huffed. “I’m surprised you even remembered what I do for a living. You certainly never made an effort to get to know me when Brad was alive.”
“Seriously, Carly?” he snapped back. “You think you’re gonna be able to handle him?”
“It’s been fine so far.” I shrugged.
“You’ve been here all of what, a couple of hours? It’s fine until he has a tantrum and you can’t control him.” He gave me a onceover. “He’s three times your size.”
Crossing my arms, I lifted my head high. “Lorraine didn’t say she had any issues handling him, and she’s no bigger than me.”
“She wouldn’t have admitted shit to you if it might have discouraged you from coming. She’s his guardian on paper, but she’s been looking for her ticket out of this responsibility from the moment Wayne died. Did she tell you she had to solicit the neighbor’s help last week to get Scottie off the floor?”
I shook my head.
He nodded. “Abe is a friend of my dad’s and told him he helped out. Lorraine must’ve neglected to mention that to you.”
“Did she ask you to come here?”
“No. Like I said, I’ve been planning to come back out here to take care of things ever since Wayne’s funeral. I just had to tie up some loose ends first.”