Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 81076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Her brother starts yelling again, but I can’t hear a word he’s saying. Nora’s laughing too hard. And so am I.
Damn, she makes me laugh.
Finally, she shouts, “Oh my God, of course, I’m kidding, you weirdo. Go start a pot roast for Gram for dinner tonight. The meat in the fridge needs to be used before it goes bad.” She sighs and rolls her eyes again. “Of course, you can do it. Just follow the recipe. Cooking isn’t that hard, I promise. You do way more complicated things. You skate and fight people with sticks at the same time. I’ll call you when I have news. Until then, sit tight and don’t stress. Matty has sworn to defend me with his life, and I can tell he means it.”
“I do,” I call out, earning a stricken look from Nora that I don’t understand until Aaron starts talking a mile a minute.
“Well, now you’ve done it,” Nora whispers with a shake of her head. “Here,” she adds, holding out the phone. “Now he’s insisting on ‘talking’ to you, AKA threatening you within an inch of your life.”
“It’s okay, I can handle it,” I say, smiling as I take her cell and bring it my ear. “Hi, Aaron.”
“Hey,” he growls. “You’d better do more than watch out for her, Matty. You’d better throw yourself in front of a bullet for her.”
“I will,” I promise. “But I seriously doubt it will come to that. I’m going to do everything in my power to ensure Nora is safe. And thanks for taking care of Mel last night. I appreciate it.”
“Is that what she said?” he asks, a strange note I can’t quite read creeping into his tone. “That I took care of her?”
“Um, no, I actually haven’t spoken to her yet,” I say, glancing back at the television. “I’m starting to wonder if the cell tower near her place is down. She’s not far from Harmony Creek and I know the road there is already washed out.”
Aaron curses softly. “I knew I should have made her come with me to Gram’s this morning. But she was determined to kick me out and go it alone.”
I frown. “You stayed at her place last night?”
“I did,” he says, a little defensively. “If your friends came after her again, I didn’t want her to be alone. Even if she was determined to take on the entire world like some kind of one-woman army with nothing in her house but a weird, handheld blender for protection.”
“She’s stubborn,” I say, still frowning. “But she was fine when you left, right? No one came sniffing around last night and she was feeling okay about things this morning?”
“She was feeling great,” he mutters. “She seemed to really enjoy seeing me get sexually assaulted by that squirrel on the way to my rental truck.” He breaks off with a considering sound. “The truck is pretty high off the ground. If she needs someone to come get her before she’s trapped, I can go. I don’t mind.”
“Thanks,” I say, my every instinct insisting there’s a lot more to this than Aaron is letting on.
But I also don’t know Aaron well. Thankfully, however, I have eerie twin-mind-reading-powers with my sister. Even over the phone.
All I have to do is get her on the line, and I’ll have answers to all my burning questions about what went down with her and Nora’s brother last night.
“I’ll let her know you offered if I talk to her,” I continue. “But I’m guessing she’ll want to stay put. Her house is above any flood danger, she has two freezers’ full of food, and I installed a generator for her last winter so she and Chase wouldn’t get in trouble if the power went out. She should be fine. And Nora will fine, too. I promise.”
Aaron grunts in response. “You can’t promise me that. Not any more than I can promise you Melissa is okay out there at her place all alone. She seemed sad, Matt. About her kid. And her ex. And…stuff.”
My stomach sinks and the familiar guilt sets in. I’m there for Melissa a lot, but not nearly as much as I would like to be. And when I leave, I won’t be there at all, not for things like checking the bed for monsters and setting up generators and assuring her that her latest recipe is fantastic. Phone and video chats will help us stay up-to-date on each other’s news, but it won’t be the same.
There’s no Nora in South America, either. No Nora smile or Nora laugh or Nora kiss or her incomparable, unicorn pussy…
Shaking away thoughts of Nora’s pussy—not a kosher thing to be thinking about while on the phone with her big brother—I say, “I know. It’s been a hard time. I’ll call her now. I’ll let her know I’m thinking about her and promise to check on her as soon as all this mess is sorted.”