Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 77205 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77205 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
“What time is it?” I asked, even though I didn’t even know what the time had been when I’d originally passed out.
“Almost five hours after you crashed,” he told me. “You talk in your sleep, by the way,” he said, lips twitching.
Oh, God.
Did I?
What did I say? Anything that might tell him what was really happening in my life?
“What did I say?”
“Something about a cocoa cup?” he said, brows scrunched.
“Cocoa… oh,” I said, laughing at my subconscious mind and its ability to think of the most random stuff. “I had a hot chocolate cup as a kid that I lost when moving apartments,” I said. “I cried about it every night for weeks. It was all very dramatic,” I told him.
“Did it have a flying pig on it by any chance?”
“That was a stuffed animal I lost,” I admitted.
“Bad at keeping track of your shit, huh?” he asked as he turned the car down a street, taking us out of the worst of the traffic.
“I was a child,” I insisted. Though, admittedly, even as an adult, I had a knack for losing things. But he didn’t need to know those sorts of personal details.
“How far of a walk is it?” I asked when he found a spot to park the car.
“Right there,” he said, waving maybe half a block ahead of us. “Sit tight for a minute, I’ll take Storm for a walk to the park over there,” he said, waving behind him. I didn’t even bother trying to turn to look.
“How did no one look at me?” I asked a few minutes later as we got in the elevator car in his apartment building lobby.
“It’s the city,” he said, shrugging it off. “No one pays attention to anyone else. Once was on a train where a guy stripped naked while ranting about the government lacing his clothing with LSD. No one even spared him a glance.”
I couldn’t decide if that was comforting or sad.
Luckily, we got to his floor, and I had other things to think about as he found his keys.
It was a small building, with only four doors on this floor. His was situated closest to the stairwell, something I committed to memory, in case I needed to make a quick escape.
I didn’t know the guy, so I had no frame of reference for what his place would look like. Still, I found myself both surprised and impressed.
As a girl who once dated a guy who lived in an apartment where he kept his old, empty liquor bottles on a shelf as ‘decor’ and didn’t own hand towels, I didn’t have high hopes when it came to a man’s home.
Still, this place was gorgeous.
It was a wide open space with an exposed loft where the bed was located.
Three of the walls of the space were red bricks. The final one, on the wall where the door was located, was covered in some sort of thin wood panels.
The opposite wall of the entry door had a strange slanted wall of windows, bathing the space in light.
The whole space had a sort of industrial feel. But in a cozy way. If that made any sense at all.
Beneath the loft was the kitchen, a U shape that gave it a lot of counter space.
Beyond that was the living space that featured an unexpected yellow sectional. Yellow. I found I liked that a lot more than I would have if he had a typical leather couch or something like that.
The wall opposite the sectional featured a long console table with a massive TV on top of it.
“Pretty self-explanatory,” he said, waving around. “Bathroom is behind the TV. Across from that,” he waved, “is a walk-in closet. And that’s it. I got a feeling I know the answer, but my ma would box my ears if I didn’t offer to give you the bed.”
I glanced over at the steep, backless stairs.
“God no,” I said, my ribs aching at the idea of climbing them. Besides, I didn’t think Storm would be willing to go up those steps.
“Figured. The couch is comfortable as fuck, though. Well, as comfortable as you’re going to be able to get with those ribs anyway.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you should go into medicine with that killer bedside manner?” I asked, getting a little lip twitch out of him.
“I’ll grab some shit to make up the couch,” he said, making his way toward the walk-in closet while I inched my way toward the bathroom.
If there was one thing I could say about this Silvano Costa guy, it was that he was neat.
It hadn’t been the first thing I noticed, since his place was so pretty. But as I moved around, and especially as I went into the bathroom, I realized he kept this place almost meticulously clean. I couldn’t find a speck of dirt anywhere.