Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 138003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 690(@200wpm)___ 552(@250wpm)___ 460(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 690(@200wpm)___ 552(@250wpm)___ 460(@300wpm)
“I’ll get you all paint-y,” I protest, not that she lets go.
“I’ll take my chances, my little hedgehog.”
I frown and smile at the same time. It’s been years since she called me that.
“When an older woman starts seeing a younger man,” she begins carefully, righting the sagging neck of my old T-shirt, “she’s called a cougar.”
“Mum,” I say with a moan. “This is a line, right here,” I add, karate-chopping my hand through the air. “I do not want to hear you’ve been shagging full stop, let alone someone young enough to be my brother.”
“As if I would be that indiscreet.”
“Wait—you mean you are?”
“Did you change your mind, darling? Do you want to hear about my sex life?”
I quickly shake my head. Yet… I want to support my mum. But no. I couldn’t cope with the details.
“What was I saying again?”
“Older woman plus younger man equals cougar,” I mutter.
“Ah. Right. But do you know what they call an older man who marries a younger woman?”
I shake my head.
“Rich.” Then she pats my cheek.
Have I just been rumbled?
Nah. I don’t think so.
“I’ll just go introduce myself to Daisy, then toddle off home to my—”
“Gin?”
My mother’s laughter is infectious.
23
RAIF
“And then I flicked yellow paint on top, and do you know what color it turned then?”
Leaning back in my chair, I pick up my wine and give a little shrug.
“Everyone knows the answer to that, Uncle Raif,” Daisy insists.
“Not me.”
“Green—it turned green!”
“Amazing.” What’s really amazing is how effusive Daisy is this evening. She’s positively glowing as she recounts her day as an artist between bites of her burger. Her McDonald’s burger. I prod mine as it sits in its branded box, uneaten. Inedible, more like, I think, flicking the limp lettuce leaf hanging out of the bread roll. I glance up, feeling Lavender’s eyes on me. She shoots me a faintly evil-looking grin.
“How are you enjoying your first McDonald’s?” Lavender asks my niece, her smile changing depth.
“McDonald’s is… okay.” She pats her mouth with her paper napkin.
“You don’t have to be polite.” Lavender chuckles. “If you don’t like it, I’m not going to be upset.”
Daisy shakes her head, releasing a relieved breath. “I don’t know why everyone likes it so much. Sam’s burgers are much nicer, aren’t they, Uncle Raif?”
I make a noncommittal noise, not ready to give Lavender the satisfaction.
“The chicken nuggets are all right,” Daisy says, swapping the rubber burger for something much too white to be chicken and dipping it in a tiny tub of sauce.
“I wonder what makes that particular shade of orange,” I ask no one in particular. “Probably something nuclear.”
“I like the sauce,” Daisy says,
“It’s sweet and sour,” Lavender offers.
“Sounds like someone I know.”
“This is shit,” I mouth silently across the table.
“Baby,” she mouths back.
Maria would’ve ordinarily arranged a private chef from an agency, given Sam’s illness. But as she’d also come down with the flu, that task was overlooked until this afternoon. I’d called Lavender to ask what she’d like for dinner—it had occurred to me I don’t know if she has preferences or allergies—and I’d intended to order in from a nearby hotel when she’d offered to take care of dinner herself.
I should’ve asked her to elaborate.
“Lavender says that when I go to the gallery again, she’ll ask Tod to teach me to sculpt.”
“Tod?” I turn my attention Lavender’s way as my dinner turns in my gut. “Tod was at the gallery?”
“He works there.” From across the table, Lavender picks up her glass, her tone airy. “Didn’t I say?”
“No, you didn’t.” That spineless fucker lives with her—off her. And she pays him to hang out in the gallery? Maybe I’m too shocked to be angry. Or maybe I can just see through her little facade.
“I must’ve forgotten,” she says with a shrug.
Oh, darling. I have eyes in my head. I know you’re not in love.
Daisy continues with tales of “the best day ever” while Lavender and I maintain our stare fest. It looks to me as though she’s considering sliding the dishes to the floor in favor of lunging across the table to make me choke on her tongue.
Or maybe I’m projecting.
“And how was Tod?” I find myself asking, though my tone isn’t deliberately icy.
“His usually whiney self,” my wife replies.
My wife. Or not quite. Technically.
I glance down at my phone as it vibrates against the marble tabletop. No need to look at the display. I know who’s calling. The same person who’s been trying to get ahold of me all day.
“Tod is doing an art show,” Daisy puts in, taking another bite of her chicken nugget.
“Is he?”
Probably at Lavender’s expense. When will she see him for what he is—see him as not right for her?
You’re not right for her either. With a frown, I push away the voice of reason.
“I want to be an artist when I grow up.”