Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 90682 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 363(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90682 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 363(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
“On second thought, let’s go back to callin’ me Steele Dragon.”
“Not happening.”
I have his list in my hand, and as I suspected, he’s tossed in twice as many things than are on it. The total tallying up in my head, I pray he has his wallet along because I’ll never be able to afford all this if he doesn’t.
“Hey, Dink, would you be a doll and grab me that bottle of balsamic from the top row?”
What he says is: “If you’re gonna insist on calling me that, I’m gonna insist on coming up with a name for you.”
What I hear is: If yor gonna insist on cawlin’ me that, I’m gonna insist on commin’ up with a name for yew.
The Southern is too much for my vagina and ovaries, especially with the cologne he’s wearing and the five o’clock shadow.
“I had a nickname once. My girlfriends in college called me Kettner.”
“That sounds like a last name.”
“That’s because it is my last name.”
“That’s not a nickname, then. You were robbed.”
“Posey Kettner.” He puts the names together, testing them out. “Is that your real name?”
He’s staring at me blankly, hand paused over a hunk of Swiss cheese.
I roll my eyes at him again, for the third time today—not that I’m counting.
“Yes, that’s my real name.”
“Actually?”
“Why does it matter?”
Duke doesn’t so much as blink. At least, I don’t think he’s blinking. It’s hard to say behind his dark lenses.
“Nope.” He clicks his tongue. “But I need to know your actual name.”
I almost laugh. He’s so grumpy and rude.
“My real name is Josephine, but I go by Posey.” On we go toward the almond milk.
He grabs three cartons.
“Josephine, can you grab me three cartons of eggs, please?”
“You can call me Posey like everyone else does, or Pose. Whichever works.”
“Eh. I like Josephine.”
Of course he does.
He likes it because he’s difficult and doesn’t give a shit that no one else calls me that, not even my grandmother—except when she’s scolding me.
“Can we call me something neat, too? Like Smooth Talking Criminal or Night Dove?”
“Night Dove?” He lowers the sunglasses to gaze down at me. “No comment.”
“Listen, Dink, you do not get to pick what we call me.”
We bicker as we stroll along, filling the cart with more food than two people can possibly eat in a two-week period, and I wonder who’s going to cook it all.
Not me.
“Josephine, should I get this?” I look over to find Duke—wig and hat and all, looking decidedly like a professional wrestler you’d see on television—than the simple man he’s desperately trying to portray.
He’s holding a watermelon in one hand, balancing it on his palm like a basketball player.
As if it weighs nothing at all.
“Uh. Sure?”
Duke stows it in the bottom of the cart where he’s slid a pack of two dozen water bottles.
Doesn’t he know the water from the tap is just as good?
“Josephine, do you like chips and salsa?”
He’s got a bag of tortilla chips in one hand and a jar of salsa in the other.
“Um. It’s not my favorite.” But it’s everyone else’s. I can see that he isn’t sure whether or not to place it in the cart, so I ask him a follow-up question. “Would you rather have that or the cheese chips you picked out?”
“Cheese chips.”
Honestly, he needs to stop grabbing shit. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“When’s the last time you were grocery shopping?”
He removes the hat on his head to scratch at his scalp, then squints up at the ceiling, toward the fluorescent lights. “That’s a good question. I’d have to say a few years?”
A few years!
No wonder he’s treating this like a free-for-all!
“Who does your shopping?”
“Housekeeper.” He sets the OREOS back on the shelf. “And the cook.”
That figures.
By the end of this outing, I’m exhausted, grateful that he nabbed a cooked rotisserie chicken for dinner so there won’t be anything to prepare when we get back to my place, along with a few hot deli items to eat with it.
When he whips out a black metal credit card at the end, I breathe a sigh of relief, shoulders relaxing because the total had me gasping out loud.
“I can take a vacation with all the money you just spent,” I tell him as we’re unloading everything from my car to the kitchen. Duke has both arms loaded with bags, hanging like coconuts on a palm tree, and me with my puny few.
“I think you’re underestimatin’ how much I’m gonna eat.” He surprises me by not only unbagging everything but by finding room in the refrigerator and cabinets as well. I just assumed he’d disappear into the abyss when we got home the way he’d done the day before with dinner cleanup and leave everything to me.
Don’t get used to it, I remind myself.
“Would you please take that wig off?” I’m watching him guzzle a sports drink, wiping his mouth on the hem of his T-shirt. “You look ridiculous.”