Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 72154 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72154 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
“Clean what up?” she asked, sounding sleepy still.
“You know how I have my Roomba set to go off at three in the morning?” I asked calmly.
“Yes…”
“One of your dogs decided to shit on my floor last night,” I said carefully. “And my Roomba decided to run it over. And then track it all over my goddamn bedroom—and that’s not even including my living room and kitchen.”
The man next door started to guffaw, and I glared at the wall.
“Oh, shit,” she said. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“You have twenty minutes,” I said.
“Kayla, but…”
“You don’t leave for the airport for another freakin’ two hours. You have time.”
Then I hung up.
I would not be dealing with this shit. Literally.
I sat back on my bed and glared at the dogs.
“Which one of you was it?” I accused them both.
The dogs’ ears tilted at my low tone.
Neither one of them confessed, the bastards.
I idly started to flip through Facebook on my phone while trying really hard not to get nauseous from the smell.
Which, I might add, I wasn’t very successful at.
I was very susceptible to smells.
Unfortunately.
The first video I clicked on was a cat called the Cat Excavator. It was of one of those sphynx cats—the hairless ones—that was opening his jaws as wide as he could manage each time he took a bite.
I grinned.
Then moved on to another cat—this one a Maine Coon.
The next video was of a windshield cover that allowed your window to be ice/snow free when you came out in the mornings.
“I need me one of these,” I said as I watched.
Then, without even thinking, I forwarded the video to Parker.
I heard his phone ding on the other side of the wall, then his snort following shortly after.
“It doesn’t snow here, Kayla. It frosts, but if you start your car and let the heater run for five minutes, you’ll be golden.”
“But with this, all I would have to do is take it off and it’s good,” I countered.
“It takes five minutes to put it on and a couple of minutes to take it off. Then put it away. And by that time, you might as well have just started the car,” he pointed out.
I hated when he used common sense on me.
“Whatever,” I muttered, then smiled at the next video I saw.
A snowman—a rather ripped one at that—with a large carrot in place of the snowman’s dick.
I forwarded that one to him, too. But I didn’t get the same result from him.
“Gross.”
I grinned and continued to scroll. “Knock knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Atch,” I answered.
“Atch who?”
“Bless you.”
I grinned when he groaned.
The next video was of a gun that looked really pretty. So I sent that one, too. “Do you think this is stupid to have?”
“Honestly?” he asked. “I’ll never own a pink or blue gun. It just strikes me as riding a thin line. I know that kids should know better than to touch your firearms—and most of them do—but there are those kids who are curious. I wouldn’t want that extra temptation of pretty colors enticing them just in case.”
I actually kind of agreed with him.
Surprise.
“I’ll remember that,” I told him. “But, right now, I only own a taser.”
“Is it pink?”
I grinned. “Yeah.”
He sighed. “Why does that not surprise me?”
Someone knocked at my door, but I didn’t get up to answer it.
Instead, I texted Janie to ‘come in.’
She did, and immediately stopped right inside the threshold.
Her husband was right on her heels, and the moment the smell hit them both, they winced.
“Oh, God. It’s worse than I thought,” she moaned.
I agreed, but I also hadn’t gotten up to look because I didn’t want to know how bad it was. I just wanted to have it all cleaned up and go back to bed.
This had been the first night that I hadn’t woken up with a nightmare of a headache or Parker banging on my walls.
My eyes were heavy, and honestly, I could use the sleep.
Especially now that Parker wasn’t there to help me sleep.
“Janie?” Janie looked up and stared at me thoughtfully. “I don’t care if you don’t want to do it. You will, and when you finish, my house will be as good as new…oh, and that Roomba is yours. You’ll buy me a new one.”
I then stood up in my bed, uncaring that I was only in my t-shirt and panties and took a running leap toward my balcony door.
I landed on a clean patch—thank God—and slipped out onto the balcony.
“Where are you going?”
“Over to a friend’s.” I paused and looked over my shoulder. “Make sure you lock up. Oh, and ask someone else to watch your dogs. I might be mad at them for a couple of days.”
I closed the door well behind me, and then looked around the covered balcony of mine.
I hadn’t been out here much.
Maybe a handful of times.
But only because I disliked how close my balcony was to the one next door—Parker’s. There was another apartment on my opposite side, but that apartment had remained vacant for a while—I didn’t really know why.