Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 82715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
“I broke your card thing.”
Charlie scoffed. “It goes down at least twice a week. You didn’t break it.”
“I spilled shit everywhere!”
“You should’ve seen how much Kara spilled the first week she was working in our old shop,” she countered. “She slipped in it and nearly took out the entire shelf of syrups. At least you didn’t do that.”
“Because I was frozen in terror.”
Charlie’s bark of laughter startled me, but I couldn’t help the smile that pulled at my lips.
“Listen,” she said, still smiling. “I didn’t want you to think I was mad at you or anything. You worked your ass off even if you didn’t get everything right. In my book, that goes a lot further than slinging drinks like you’re Tom Cruise in Cocktail.”
My cheeks burned with embarrassment, and I had no idea what she was talking about, but Michael murmured, “Nice reference,” under his breath.
“Take tomorrow off,” she said as she got to her feet. “Take the day to have Farrah or Aunt Callie fix your hair and to decide if you want to come back. I’d love to have you, especially considering how worried you were about being five minutes late this morning—most people don’t give a shit—but I don’t want you to come back and be miserable.”
“Thanks Charlie,” I said as I followed her to the door.
“Of course, dude.” She made it two steps outside before spinning back around. “Uh, I wasn’t sure if you noticed—” She grimaced and then laughed lightly. “But that shirt you were wearing today?”
“The one you gave me?”
“Yeah, it’s got some writing on the back.”
“It does?”
“You don’t seem the type to wear it to work.” She paused. “Or anywhere near an elementary school.”
My eyes widened in horror.
“Okay, bye!” She jogged down the steps, waving over her shoulder.
“Michael,” I called as I shut the door. “Did you notice anything about the shirt I was wearing today?”
“No?”
I hurried up the stairs to the bathroom and pulled the shirt out of the laundry hamper, flipping it right side out to read the back.
Young enough to steal your boyfriend, old enough to fuck your dad.
“Oh my god,” I breathed in embarrassment as Michael came up behind me and started laughing.
“I wore this to work,” I whispered, horrified. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You had a coat on,” he said defensively as I tossed it in the garbage.
“I’m going to bed,” I announced, pushing past him. “To sleep.”
“We weren’t done talking,” he argued, catching me around my waist.
I deflated against him, the headache I’d pretended to have suddenly becoming real. “Can we talk tomorrow?”
He sighed and kissed my temple. “Sure. I’m gonna turn off the lights and then I’ll be right behind you.”
“Thanks,” I said, squeezing his arm before pulling away.
“Emilia,” he called softly as I reached the bedroom doorway. “We are gonna talk tomorrow, sugar.”
It sounded less like a promise than a threat.
Chapter 14
Michael
I climbed out of bed that morning, knowing there was no way that I was going to work. After the conversation we’d had and the way Emilia had clammed up right before Charlie had come knocking, I knew that if I left all day by the time I got home that night, she’d be all balled up again. I never wanted to sit through another dinner where she picked at her food and put up a very transparent front trying to act like everything was okay.
The car shit had thrown her, and the bad first day at work had exacerbated it—but there was something else going on that I wasn’t quite seeing. She was so fanatical about paying her own way and doing things herself, it almost seemed like a compulsion. Logically she knew that I could fix up the Subaru no problem with minimal costs, but she was still panicking about paying for it. She hated the job at the coffee cart after one day, even I could see it, but she didn’t speak up and tell Charlie that it wasn’t going to work out—even though Charlie had given her the perfect opening.
I needed to figure out whatever the hell was going on in her head, because if we didn’t, eventually it was going to become too much, and I had to know how to mitigate the fallout.
Sighing, I started a pot of coffee and leaned against the counter. I’d thought after we decided to be back together that everything would settle into something easy, but that just wasn’t happening. Little things that I hadn’t paid much attention to had practically lit up like neon signs as I’d lay in bed trying to sleep. The way she’d taken so long to come home after her parents died because she’d wanted to save up money, instead of running back as fast as she could like it was clear she’d wanted to. She’d given in about letting me pay the rent but had stocked my kitchen with hundreds of dollars in groceries and hadn’t let me pay her back. How little clothes she had, even though Rhett was fully kitted out. The way she’d made such a stink about me buying her new tires or getting her car detailed. How she’d assured me over and over that she’d find a job and pay her own way, even though I’d assured and reassured her that I wasn’t worried about it.