Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 112917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
There’d been plenty of times early on in our professional relationship when I’d tried to poke around about his sexuality, but he hadn’t taken the bait. I’d told him about a friend of mine who’d come out to me as nonbinary and how “I hope I’m a safe person to come out to.” He’d agreed politely that I probably was and wished my friend well, but that had been the end of that.
Rinny had returned to a spot on the other side of the island, filling halves of hard-boiled eggs with “devil,” or whatever the gooey inside of the deviled egg was called, and she made a point of lifting an eyebrow at me to remind me I had work to do.
I immediately found my own spot at the island and began snapping beans. Carrie-Beth asked me how my Shaky Knees performance had gone and if I’d met Chet Hamer, who’d taken the stage after me. I answered with all of the gossipy details I knew she was hunting for, and the conversation quickly took its usual turns. Several of my cousins and their friends asked me about various aspects of touring and being famous, each of them obviously on different points of a spectrum between genuinely curious and downright mercenary.
This was the usual fare when I visited Barlo, so I did my best to feed the beast and give everyone the access they craved while also enjoying being surrounded by familiar faces from home.
Bear never wandered far. He used the downtime to check his email, and I was pretty sure he was also sounding the alarm with his boss about the target stamp. But he remained calmly and quietly in the background as usual. Two of Pearl’s friends kept flashing him looks and then dissolving into blushing giggles periodically, but I could hardly blame them when I, too, had a ridiculous teenage crush on the man despite being more than a decade past my teens.
At one point, Bear leaned in to speak low into my ear again. “FYI, the motorcycle belongs to one of JK’s friends who has an active warrant for a firearm-related charge. You know the drill. We leave, you get someone to ask him quietly to leave, or we call in an anonymous tip and he leaves here with local LEOs.”
I closed my eyes and sighed before waving Rinny over.
“What is it, darlin’?”
“JK has a friend who came here on a motorcycle. He needs to leave, or he risks being arrested for an outstanding warrant.”
She rolled her eyes. “John-Keith couldn’t stay away from trouble if trouble was a snake with ten fangs, I swear to all that’s holy. I told him not to bring that kid. I’ll handle it.”
Thankfully, it was handled without drama, but I noticed Bear stood directly behind me until he got the “All clear” message in his earpiece that the guy was gone.
The rest of the morning passed peacefully, and I was convinced to join the guys for the start of the Falcons–Ravens game in the family room after most of the supper prep work was done. The coffee table in front of the big sectional was overflowing with chips, dips, soda cans, and beer bottles, but I managed to find a corner where I could sit to enjoy the BLT Gran had put together to tide me over until supper.
JK made one of his friends switch places so he could take the spot closest to me. “Hey, so, ah… I was wondering if I could ask you about something.”
“Sure,” I said, wondering how Gran still had home-grown tomatoes this far into October. The sandwich was magical, just like always.
JK lowered his voice. “You know that building up on Clinton and Walnut that used to be a pawn shop?”
I tried to picture the corner he was talking about. “Green-striped metal awning? Next to the store that used to sell ceiling fans?”
“Yeah, yeah. That’s the one. They’re offering a killer deal on a lease, and a buddy and I were thinking about opening up a CBD store.”
JK was about as responsible with money as my parents had been. “Oh. Yeah?”
“Yeah, so like… we’ve done a bunch of research and shit. Seems like we’ll only need about fifty grand to get started. The building needs some fixing on the inside, and then we’d have to buy, like, shelves and stuff, you know? Display pieces, they’re called. And then we’d need an iPad register thing, but someone said they can help us figure that out at the bank when we open our accounts.”
The sandwich suddenly didn’t taste quite as good as it had when I’d first sat down. “Sounds exciting.”
He shrugged. “You can buy into a franchise for ninety thousand, but we figured we can do it on our own and not have to split the profits, you know? My friend’s got a cousin who does something similar down in Dothan. Says he’s raking it in.”