Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 68500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
I got started on the bacon a few minutes later, pulling out two countertop griddles that I’d gotten from the thrift market down the road.
I’d just gotten the bacon package open when I felt Felix wander up and grab half of the bacon from me.
Together we laid the bacon out on the griddles, and then worked in tandem to get breakfast finished up.
Once everything was cooked and on my big ass table—one of the only things I had in my apartment at all—we sat and dug in.
“So you’re getting married,” Winston said between bites of bacon. “That’s kind of sudden, isn’t it?”
I looked up at Felix to see his jaw tight.
He didn’t like being questioned.
I opened my mouth to tell Winston to fuck off, but it was Felix squeezing my thigh that stilled my words.
“We found out some news last night,” he murmured quietly, then went on to explain everything, ending with, “I’ve never stopped loving her for a single day.”
“Val said that you only moved here to be vindictive,” Tony said. “Is that true?”
Tony’s husband, Slone, wasn’t there. He had a game in Michigan that night.
“It might’ve been originally,” Felix sighed. “I can’t say that I reacted all that well when I thought she just left us. Allowed our relationship, which I thought was absolutely perfect, to break. I hated that she left me to go to y’all and do something she fucking hated. I hated that she couldn’t call me and explain. I hated that she was ignoring my calls and truthfully, I was so hurt about it all that I might’ve reacted with an undue amount of spite. But that all flew out the window as she walked back into that ER, and I saw her again. My heart,” he placed his hand over his chest, right over his beating heart. “I didn’t realize that it wasn’t beating right until she came into the room.”
My throat felt thick at his words.
“That’s sweet,” Zip said. “How the fuck are we supposed to eat this cinnamon roll?”
Keene pulled out a pocketknife and started to cut into it, divvying it up into plenty of pieces.
And that was that.
My family accepted him.
There was no outward sign of aggression. No getting into their good graces. Just like that, he was one of us.
“I think you just pick it up and eat it like a slice of cake,” Crimson muttered from her chair.
“You don’t pick up slices of cake and eat them,” Keene pointed out. “You use a fucking fork, like a lady.”
“Do you ever wonder how many places we pass that have people in the basement?” Zip asked after that.
There was a long, hollow pause and then Hannibal said, “Well, I fucking do now.”
Felix snorted up some coffee, and then had to die for a few long seconds while Zip slammed her hand down on his back before he came back to life again.
“Thanks,” he wheezed.
“What the fuck prompted that question?” I asked right before there was a hard knock on my door.
“That must be Nash,” Winston said as he got up and headed that way.
“Who is Nash?” Felix whisper-asked me after I’d taken a seat from refilling my water.
“I asked that question because yesterday I watched a video about how long a Walrus comes for.” Zip paused when Nash came into the room. “What are you doing here?”
The sneer that followed those words had my eyes rolling and Felix’s eyebrows rising.
“What the hell?” he whispered.
“I’ll tell you when they leave,” I whispered back. “Long story short, though, Nash lives in our building. He’s a big-wig NASCAR driver, and Zip hates him.”
“Why does Zip hate him?” he wondered.
“Because she likes him.” I shrugged as if that was the most normal answer in the world.
“Women,” he muttered under his breath.
I pinched him, causing him to pull away and laugh.
Which then pulled everyone’s attention to us.
Well, not me, exactly. But Felix. Who happened to be sitting next to Zip and just a little too close.
Whoa there.
I hadn’t seen Nash act as if he cared one way or the other what Zip did, but with Felix there, an unknown, he definitely didn’t like the closeness between the two of them.
Felix, having noticed this, leaned slightly away from me and threw his arm around Zip, who didn’t pull away.
She was the snuggle bug of the family, she’d take a hug anyway she could get it, even if it was from a man she only halfway knew.
Though, I supposed that wasn’t all the way true. Zip had gotten plenty of time to talk with Felix over the phone in the years that I’d been with him. Zip had an iron clad memory. She remembered everything there ever was, even conversations that happened twenty years ago when we were still children.
So yeah, she might’ve just ‘met’ Felix, but she’d talked to him plenty to have formed an opinion about him.