Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 68459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 342(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 342(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Plus, Quincy wasn’t being a butthead anymore.
And since Quincy was a cop, I needed to make a choice, and it was him.
“Why did you have that look on your face when I walked through the door?” I asked.
He groaned. “You’re not going to like this…”
Then he proceeded to tell me everything and not a bit of it surprised me in the least about my parents.
I had wondered where they got the money to do what they did.
I mean, when I was a kid growing up, those kinds of things weren’t available to me.
You don’t just walk into that kind of life without winning the lottery or something.
Which, I guess, for them they did.
Until they were caught.
The assholes.
I pulled back, and then rubbed my face with my hands, hating the way my parents always tried to cut corners.
“Let me tell you a story,” I said, eyes alight with fire upon hearing everything he’d told me about Tayson and my parents. “When I was ten, I asked for a Barbie for Christmas. They didn’t get it for me. They got me the wrapping paper and gave the actual Barbie to my sister. When I was twelve, I asked for three dollars to go on a field trip. They refused, and then I had to sit at the school because I couldn’t pay. When my class got back from the field trip, they told me they saw my mom, sister, and brother there, all of them in the gift shop buying souvenirs. When I was fifteen, I bought a car, fixed it up, and they sold it and kept the money. When I was eighteen, I moved out with the clothes on my back. So, when I tell you that this is their problem, I’m not lying. I tried. I really did. It’s not my circus anymore.”
That’s when he suggested that we go out to eat.
“We can go eat. Anywhere you want to go,” he said.
“How about that hamburger place next to the hospital?” I requested.
He blinked. “You just had that for lunch.”
I was already shaking my head. “When I went to eat it, I had to pee really bad. So, I put it on the table and went. Only, when I got back it was in the trash with the lunch you packed, too. There was a bunch of unknown liquid on it. So, I couldn’t eat it.”
Quincy’s eyes narrowed. “That’s fuckin’ bullshit.”
It really was.
“Only, if we go there,” I said as I thought about how nice it would be to take my bra off and collapse on the couch. “You have to get me ice cream after. From the grocery store on the corner. They have the kind I like.”
He winked. “Done.”
“You know,” Quincy muttered under his breath. “You’re acting a whole lot like Tay right now.”
My head whipped around, and my eyes narrowed. “Take that back.”
He held up his hands. “It’s just that he was a shit all day, too. Though, at least you are cuter when you’re mean.”
I flipped him off.
We were placing the carton of ice cream into the conveyor belt of the checkout when a woman sporting way more items than ‘15 or less’ cut us off.
“What the fuck?” I heard her grumble under her breath.
I wasn’t the only one to hear it, either. The woman in front of me in the checkout lane turned to survey me.
Quincy groaned under his breath.
“What?” she asked, her gaze traveling up and down over the length of my body, and obviously finding me lacking.
So I was wearing sweatpants. So I had my hair up in a bun. So I had Crocs with Croc Lights on.
A woman could be comfortable! And dammit, but the hallway and the stairwell were dark. Sometimes a woman wanted to make sure she didn’t fall down the stairs!
“Math wasn’t your strong subject in school, was it?” I asked, pissed off at her obvious disdain.
Quincy caught me around the belly and turned me, his eyes huge, as he gave me a look that clearly said, “Behave!”
“Because you definitely have thirty items in a fifteen items or less line,” a voice finished for me.
At least during the 1918 pandemic, they had cocaine in their soda.
—Text from Hollis to Quincy
QUINCY
I stared up at the ceiling, wondering if I was about to have to deal with a fight.
Luckily, the woman turned around and ignored them.
I glanced behind me at the woman with her own cart of ice cream, and nearly laughed when I saw Hollis notice her.
“Ellodie.” Hollis smiled. “Like minds!”
She moved so that this Ellodie chick could see her cart.
“They’re buy one get one free today,” she said. “And this is my favorite kind of ice cream. My favorite is the cookie dough. And though I have a test due in an hour and a half, I had to run by here after I got off shift.”