Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
“Is his current wife that young?”
“No. This one is actually an appropriate age. Actually, she might be the exact same age as him. She was a paramedic and wanted nothing to do with him for years. She said she had his number and she wasn’t going to fall for good bedside manner rebranded as workplace flirtation.”
She liked the current stepmom. It was there in the way her smile made her eyes crinkle, in the warmth in her voice.
“How’d he win her over?”
“He had a heart attack,” Dasha said. “She was the one who kept him alive on the way to the hospital. She said it was the first time she saw him as a man, not a doctor. They’ve been together ever since.”
“But they live abroad?” I asked.
“Sasha has a lot of family in Spain. After a bunch of holidays there, they finally decided to move.”
“Leaving you here by yourself?”
“I was twenty-one at the time,” she said, shrugging it off. “I was more about friends and fun than I was about family. And Sasha always reminds me that they have room for me. That probably sounds crazy to you,” she said as we moved up in line. “It sounds like your family is very close.”
“They are. Some might say too close.”
“How can you be too close with someone?”
“Mandatory family dinners.”
“Sounds really lovely.”
“Sometimes, the aunts will sneak into your house and stuff your freezer with meals.”
“Sounds incredibly convenient. And I bet they’re all amazing cooks.”
“The best around. Put the food at Lucky’s place to shame.”
“That is hard to imagine.”
Suddenly, I was picturing climbing out of the car at my mom’s house, of walking hand in hand inside, of introducing her around, of sitting next to her at the table as she soaked up the atmosphere, as she tasted the food.
Now, I’d always known I would settle down eventually, that I’d have a girlfriend or wife with me at family functions. But I’d never pictured who that woman might be.
But here I was, imagining that woman as Dasha. When I hadn’t even kissed her yet.
“Hi!” she greeted the woman in the black baseball cap behind the counter. “We’re great, how are you?”
She wasn’t faking that friendliness either. There was something really charming about how sweet and open she seemed to be with everyone.
Then, unwanted, the memory of her anxiety at her shop popped up in my mind. Then, immediately following that, the one about her employee raising his voice to her.
Unexpectedly, anger boiled in my gut, making me want to charge back to the repair shop, round up those mechanics, and demand to know who’d been making her so anxious and unhappy at her own damn business.
“Santo?” Dasha asked, pulling me out of the thoughts that had my hands balling up into fists.
“Hm?”
“Food?” she asked, giving me a bemused smile. “I got a BLT,” she added.
“Right. Sorry. How about the steak sandwich?”
We waited for our food, stashing our drinks in Dasha’s purse as she gushed about the decor. “I know that the garage can’t look this bright and girly, but it would be nice if it looked like it was part of, you know, this century at least.”
“It’s already looking better,” I told her, taking our bag of food. “Within another month or two, it will be like a new place. You don’t agree?” I asked when a dark look crossed her face.
“Hopefully,” she agreed.
“What’s going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“You seem a lot less enthusiastic than you were the last time I saw you.”
“I guess I’ve just been giving this whole move and career change some second thoughts.”
“Because the guys at the garage are assholes?”
“Well, that’s, you know, part of it,” she admitted, and I liked that she didn’t feel the need to keep that secret.
“What’s going on, Dasha?” I asked, sensing she needed a little push as we crossed the road toward the marina park.
To that, she exhaled hard.
“I was kind of attacked recently, and—“
“Whoa. Back up. What the hell do you mean you were attacked?”
She exhaled hard, looking down the slope the sidewalk was about to take, then over at the hospital to the right, at the little park to the left where they played live music sometimes. Anywhere but at me.
“My uncle had a storage unit. I decided to use it to store a bunch of junk until I can get rid of it. Have you ever been to a storage unit? With the lights that only go on when you walk under them? Super creepy.”
“Yeah, not the best in terms of safety. Something happened there?”
“I was going back and forth to my car, so I left my unit open.”
“Of course.”
“When I came back one time, one of the lids on the containers was askew. I didn’t notice it right away, though. Not until I came back to find the same container missing.”