Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 83167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
“I was young then. I’m an adult now,” I babbled.
“Totally can tell. You just adulted all over the ethnic food aisle at King Soopers.”
I sure did that.
“It would take a lot to make me get in a catfight now that I’m all mature and, uh…everything,” I told him.
“Lottie, you were two seconds from taking her down by her hair in a real-life GLOW move.”
I totally was.
“Fortunately, Rhonda appeared,” I remarked.
“Depends on how you look at it,” he muttered.
He was.
He was teasing me.
He might actually be flirting with me.
Damn.
“When do you have time to ask around about me?” I asked.
“When you shower. You take really long showers.”
Ah.
Why are you asking around about me?
That question was not audible.
I couldn’t go there yet.
Perhaps Mo wanted a détente, but still, he’d said some rough things and that conversation was not for King Soopers.
However, now that we were speaking again there was one thing I wanted to know.
No.
Two.
“I’m assuming that you all aren’t close to finding that guy.”
Any remaining amusement went out of his face.
“No.”
Great.
“Right then, before we carry on, why did that woman cheat on you when she practically begged you with her eyes to do her against the udon noodles?”
Mo commandeered the cart and set us in motion, doing this by bending way over, crossing his forearms on the handle and moving forward.
I quickly grabbed some buckwheat udon and followed him.
I suspected his movements meant he wasn’t going to answer and I didn’t blame him. It wasn’t my business.
“She likes dick.”
After I tossed the noodles in the cart, I walked beside him and had the unusual sensation of looking down on him.
He kept his eyes aimed forward.
“And I work a lot,” he finished.
“Ah,” I murmured.
I murmured that like I got it, but I didn’t get it.
Then again, I wasn’t a cheater.
My man wasn’t taking care of business, there’d be a chat, never a cheat.
But that was just me.
“And she’s the kind of woman who’s always on the lookout for the next best thing.”
I stutter stepped to a halt.
“What?”
He stopped and looked over his shoulder and down his bulk at me.
“What, what?”
“The next best thing?” I asked.
“Can we get the shopping done?” he asked back.
I started moving again, and when Mo moved with me, I kept at him. “What do you mean the next best thing?”
“You saw her new man.”
“Yeah.”
He said no more.
“And?” I pushed.
“Let’s not do this,” he said on a sigh.
“Do what?”
“Go there.”
“Go where?”
He stopped again and looked up at me.
“I’m a guy, Lottie, and even I can see he’s better lookin’ than me,” he stated firmly.
I stared at him.
“He also makes more money than me,” Mo continued. “He’s an attorney.”
That explained a lot, but only about the boyfriend and his apparel choices for a shopping expedition at King Soopers on a Sunday.
The rest was still unexplainable.
“She moved on from you to an attorney?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he answered.
I busted out laughing.
And I did this so hard, I slapped him on the shoulder blade to work some of it out.
“That’s hilarious!” I cried.
“It’s really not,” he said.
I ignored him. “Ohmigod. What an idiot. You dump her and—”
“She dumped me.”
I stopped laughing and started staring at him again.
“She traded up,” he stated conversationally. “Now can we finish this and get back?”
“She didn’t trade up, Mo,” I told him quietly.
He sighed again but said no words through it this time.
“She totally didn’t. And she knows it.”
“Lottie—”
“She either dumped you so you wouldn’t dump her, because, really, she’s a bitch and probably knows it and definitely knows you aren’t stupid so you’d figure it out. Or she instigated a faulty play, thinking you’d come to heel if she not only cheated on you, but acted like she was down with losing you and prepared to move on, all this so you’d fight to keep her.”
“You were around her for maybe ten minutes. I lived with her for two years. I was there, Lottie. I know what happened.”
But I wasn’t seeing straight.
I wasn’t seeing anything.
They’d been living together?
From far away (even though he was still right there), I heard him murmur, “Oh fuck.”
I started walking.
Fast.
“Where is that bitch?” I demanded, still walking (fast).
I came to a halt when he caught me by the waistband of my jeans again.
He used it to turn me to facing him and kept his hand there.
My breasts almost brushed his chest, we were that close.
We’d never been that close.
I was also standing in the curve of his arm.
He was almost…
Holding me.
Whoa.
“She’s history,” he shared.
“She’s a bitch,” I returned.
“Yeah. And so she’s history. Move on. I did.”
“She didn’t trade up, Mo.”
“Okay.”
He said that just to appease me.
I was not appeased.
I was a lot of things, including laser focused on his face.
He thought that.
He honest to God thought that.
And something had to be done about it.
So I decided instead of finding Tammy and taking her down I had bigger fish to fry.