Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 114211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
“Hmm.” Trey’s fingers play along the counter in thought. “I could probably find out.”
“No, no,” I quickly insist, “don’t worry about it, please. Not a big deal, really.” I chop another slice, then pause. “Some people … just go through life without learning common rules of decency.”
“Phew, tell me about it.”
“Yep.” Chop. “I mean, what even is a jack-off wagon?” Chop. “We all have bad days. Doesn’t mean we need to take everyone down around us, right?” Chop, chop.
“Right.”
I just realized I’m making a bigger deal out of something I just said not to make a big deal out of. Also, I don’t want him thinking that last thing I said had anything to do with him. I pivot. “But you and your husband seem like really great people. I’m very grateful for your hospitality, welcoming us into your house like this.”
“Oh, it’s our pleasure. We’ve been looking forward to this for a while now, and you’re an added bonus—a cucumber-massacring one at that.” He watches my hands for a moment. “I’m sorry that guy was your first impression of Spruce, though … whoever he is. Everyone’s really nice here, I promise. Even my dad whose neck I might wring,” he adds in a voice so small, I don’t think he meant me to hear it. “Duncan’s a sweetheart. I keep trying to talk him into being Santa for us at the church. He keeps turning me down.” He takes a breath and refreshes his smile. “So what about you?”
I look up from the cucumbers. “What about me?”
“I get Pete, but what brings you out to Spruce? Why’d you tag along? I get a sense you’re not just here for moral support.”
I shrug. “I guess you can say the last eight or so years of my life have been … loud.”
“So you came here for … quiet,” Trey finishes for me. I nod. “You couldn’t have picked a better place. That’s all you’ll find out here in sleepy Spruce, especially this time of the year.”
Anthony’s angry blue eyes.
Bare body drenched and dripping and stinking of gasoline.
You’re my problem, you jack-off wagon.
“That’s great to hear,” I say, mostly to shut up the guy’s voice in my head, then paste a smile over my face. “I’m looking forward to some peace and quiet.”
Pete bursts in from the back door. “Guys, Bridge, after we eat, we’re hittin’ the town with Cody! Saturday night on the town, all four of us!”
Trey and I stare at him, Trey with his blank eyes, me wielding the knife, a slice of cucumber stuck to it, then slowly sliding off.
3
ANTHONY
“Fuckin’ just fuckin’ shoot me now, fuck,” I growl, barging in.
“That bad?” asks Juni through a yawn.
I kick my shoes off somewhere, throw my nasty tank top at the laundry basket—it misses, what a surprise—then cut through the apartment straight to the bathroom. “That asshole, that cocky asshole … fuck, I can’t catch a break.”
“You smell flammable.”
I stop at the bathroom door where I fight to get my pants off. “Some out-a’-towner dick tried to get me fired today.”
“That’s not nice.”
“I was this close to knockin’ his teeth out. But two times in jail was enough for me, and I wasn’t about to sink to his level.”
“Jail is so unsanitary.”
These pants sure fell off easy at the gas station when I didn’t want them to. Now they’re super-glued to my thighs. “I’m so tired of these outsiders trottin’ through our town like they have a right. After that crazy pageant auction however long ago, with all those whackos showing up in town wanting in on it because of viral social media crap, I’m about up to here with seeing new faces. I don’t want any new faces. Plenty happy with the old ones.”
“I’m an outsider.”
I squint. “But you’re different.”
“How so? Oh, did you take my phone charger? I can’t find it.”
I stop battling my pants. Juniper is a bombshell. That’s what everyone’s first impression is. Either that, or she’s Drunk Beauty Queen Barbie, because she talks like she’s wading through a dream with her every slow, bewildered thought. She’s originally from a trailer park in a small town outside Dallas, but after winning a small fortune several years ago in a local lottery, she left, and now she’s basically an aimless, refreshingly unpretentious tornado, and that’s about as poetic as I’ll get in describing her. I guess you can take the girl outta the trailer park, but that trailer park ain’t ever coming out of the girl. She’s my roommate. Actually, I’m hers. This is her place, impulsively moved in to when she decided to live in Spruce “for a lil’ bit, I guess, maybe, for now,” in her words. It’s a unit in a small, L-shaped, one-story complex off of Peach Street called Happy Trails—real name. We share the rent, but she might as well buy the building so we can stop getting noise complaints at 3 AM when we finally make it home after another night out, the inner party monster awakened fully in the twisted pair of us.