Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 82715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Uncle Will nodded. “It’ll get better.” He looked around the yard until he found my aunt Molly. “Never fades completely, but it gets a helluva lot better.”
“Does Aunt Molly still…”
“Rarely, but it happens.”
“What—” I swallowed hard. We didn’t talk about shit like this. With my dad, maybe. With my mom, sure. But never with Uncle Will. “What should I do?”
“Get up and check the house,” he said simply, smiling at me. “You’re a good boy.”
“Thanks?”
“Don’t fuck up again,” he ordered, getting to his feet. “You’re lucky Otto went for ya before I did that night because I woulda dropped ya.”
My face went slack with surprise.
“Figure that girl doesn’t have a dad lookin’ out for her,” he said quietly. “And the one she had was shit.” He looked at me. “Consider me a stand-in.”
It took a few minutes for me to pick my jaw up off the ground and he was nearly halfway across the yard before I could think of anything to say.
“Don’t you think that’s a bit incestuous?” I yelled, making heads jerk my way in confusion and disgust.
Uncle Will just flipped me off over his shoulder as he reached Aunt Molly.
“Get off the table,” my mom ordered as she and Emilia came up behind me. “We’re setting the food out.”
“What’s wrong with your face?” Emilia asked, grabbing my arm as I tried to get out of the way.
“Just had a super fuckin’ weird conversation with my uncle,” I muttered. “You can call him Dad from now on.”
“Wait, what?”
“New weird conversation coming in hot,” my mom announced as my dad strode toward us.
“You ask ’em?”
“I didn’t say anything, Thomas,” my mom replied primly, bustling around the table.
“You find anything you wanna do yet?” my dad asked Emilia bluntly.
“Uh, no,” she replied slowly. “I was thinking teaching, but—”
“They don’t get paid shit,” he barked.
“You’re off to a great start,” my mom told him, laughing. “Keep going.”
“You know, you could be quiet for two fuckin’ seconds,” he shot back.
“What fun would that be?”
“Dad, did you have an idea?” I asked before their bickering really got going.
“Real estate agent,” my dad said, grinning. He made a frame with his fingers and looked at Emilia through it. “It’s perfect.”
“Um.” Emilia looked at me, her eyes so wide it looked like she was having some kind of fit.
“I’m serious,” my dad said, nodding. “You can sell my houses.”
“Sell your houses?” Emilia said slowly.
“He’s not insane,” my mom said drolly. “Just looks like it.”
“Look, I wanna flip ’em,” he said, ignoring my mom. “I don’t wanna do all the paperwork shit when I’m buyin’ and sellin’, so I have to hire a realtor for that.”
“You want me to buy and sell houses for you?”
“Heather takes care of the accounting shit, so we don’t go under.”
“Thank you very much,” my mom said, taking a small bow.
“But I need someone that’ll write up the offers and do all that shit and then get the word out and negotiate and shit when I’m sellin’.” He looked back and forth between us, grinning. “I don’t know what all goes into it, but I’d rather be payin’ you commissions than some dumb fuck I barely know.”
“Uh.” Emilia looked like a deer caught in the headlights.
“We’ll talk it over,” I told my dad, who was still grinning like a lunatic.
“Best thing is,” he said, still trying to sell it. “It’s not full-time, yeah? Work around Rhett’s schedule and shit.”
“It sounds really great,” Emilia replied tentatively. “I’m just not sure how much school that takes—”
“We’ll figure it out,” he said happily, reaching out to squeeze her shoulders. “Business partners.”
As he walked away, my mom laughed. “He’s had the idea for weeks, but he was worried you’d say no.” She shook her head. “It took a couple shots and a pep talk for him to say anything today.”
“It’s actually kind of a good idea,” Emilia said, glancing at me.
“I figured you could branch out,” my mom said with a shrug. “Once you’ve got your feet under you, maybe take on more clients or whatever. You’d have a built-in client base with all the people connected to the club.”
“We’ll talk about it,” I replied firmly. I wasn’t about to have Emilia railroaded into a new job that she hated. I steered her away from the tables, glancing back to make sure Rhett was still happy with Gram before I brought her around the edge of the building for a little privacy.
“Don’t say yes just because my dad asked,” I ordered, backing her up against the wall.
“I won’t.”
“You can choose whatever you want to do. There’s no rush.”
“I know.”
“And he’s a giant pain in the ass to work with—just warning you now. I see him every day at the garage, and half the time, I want to beat him to death with a wrench.”
“You hide it so well,” she teased.