Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 74730 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74730 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Chapter Twenty-Six
Denver
It was another slow night shift at the diner in a week of too-slow shifts. Business was down, which sucked for the upcoming meeting on the fate of Honey’s, but it also left me with far too much time for thinking. Tonight, though, I had a minor distraction in the form of Tammy, who’d brought a slim laptop to the diner, one of those cheap, smaller-style ones good for surfing but not much else.
Despite the diner having Wi-Fi, I’d never known Tammy to play around on her phone, let alone a computer, but during a lull with no customers, she sat at the far edge of the counter and typed away.
“What are you working on?” My curiosity and the need for a distraction got the better of me. “Applications in case the family votes to sell?”
“If I was smart, I would be.” She gave me her version of a stern look, which was not unlike a bossy kid. Tammy might be older, but her youthful demeanor often made me forget her true age. “You too, hot stuff. Gotta stay ahead of bad news.”
“Trying. Can’t wait for shit to hit the fan.” As I said the words, I wondered if perhaps I tried too hard to outrun messy endings. How many times had I left before a job was truly over? Ended a fling before it had run its course? Skedaddled out of a city I liked? And usually, I’d be on the road by now, but here I was, still at the diner, still in town, still responding to Sean’s short texts, unsure what to do with any of it. “Gotta figure out my next plan, same as you.”
Tammy snorted. “Ha. You’re not a planner type, and we both know it.”
“I could be.” I knew I wasn’t. I wasn’t like Sean with his calendar, Tammy with her stack of private dreams, or Wren with their future in science all planned out. My only real plan ever was to avoid disaster, minimize hurt feelings, and not get attached.
“Oh? What’s your big plan for if—when—the Honey family votes to sell?”
“Not sure,” I mumbled. I didn’t have a pep talk in me right then about how the family might not sell. They would. That was simply how things went. “Hey, I thought we were talking about you suddenly taking up typing practice.”
Tammy pursed her lips like she was about to tell me off, then sighed and looked at the computer. “It’s an email to my daughter,” she said softly.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. I didn’t know you had kids.” This was why I sucked at small talk. Given how long we’d worked together, I should’ve known more about Tammy. I knew she was sober and had heard about a comical string of exes, but never any mention of kids.
“I don’t talk about it much. I’ve never met her.” Tammy studied her bracelets, her typical stack of gaudy costume jewelry at odds with her somber tone. “I was seventeen and scared, and back then, adoption felt like the most loving thing I could do. Tried not to think about it after that. Outrun it, outdrink it.”
“I get that.” God knew I had my share of stuff I’d tried to outrun and out-party.
“But you can’t outrun hurt. It comes out eventually.” Tammy’s voice strengthened, adopting a sager tone. “Learned that in my meetings. So I sat with my hurt for a good while. Wrote a letter to the adoption agency, but it folded years ago. Then I saw a commercial for one of those DNA tests.”
“You took it?” Wow. I couldn’t help my wide eyes. I was stunned by her courage. I’d seen the same ads and had flipped the channel every damn time. There was plenty I didn’t want to know.
Raising her gaze, Tammy nodded. “Biggest leap of faith I ever did take. But she was out there. Waiting. Sent me a message as soon as my sample processed. She’s a bit older than you. Married with teenagers. Three of them.”
“Are you going to see them?”
“Dunno.” Tammy exhaled hard. “Gotta write back first.”
“Oh.” This was that new, and I’d wandered right into the thick of her dilemma. I was laughably ill-equipped to offer advice.
“Maybe I shouldn’t. Shouldn’t open the past back up.”
Hell. I personally would rather eat gravel than dig through the sandbox of my past hurts and regrets. But I tried to think what Sean, my always-optimistic, always encouraging, smiling guy, would say.
“She reached out. She wrote to you. That’s a sign.” I swallowed hard. Signs. Sean thought maybe I was looking at the wrong ones, and for the first time, I considered what I might be missing.
“You and your signs.” Tammy scoffed. Huh. I guess I did talk a bit much about signs, usually negative ones.
“Well, I think this is a good one,” I said stubbornly. Stubborn. I had a flash of my conversation with Wren about Eric dating and big feels. “It’s okay to feel…whatever you’re feeling. Scared?”