Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Josie’s eyes widened. Her hands flew to her curvy little hips. “Excuse me? I’ll have you know I do dishes. I even have a new kitchen faucet—which I installed myself the other day. And I might not be the size of an oak tree like you or do manual labor for a living, but I do Pilates five days a week and I use twelve-pound dumbbells to do the Jennifer Aniston arm workout four days a week.”
“A whole twelve pounds, huh?”
She scowled. “Don’t mock me.”
“Just being realistic.”
“No, you’re being a jerk. I should’ve watched the YouTube videos. At least there the people doing the teaching can’t insult the students. Can you possibly just tell me what to do and I’ll do it?”
I shrugged. “Okay. Go out front and grab one of the boards, then carry it up the ladder. Start in the corner. Lean one side of the sheetrock on the two by four you put up and square the edge to fill the corner as much as you can. Then screw it to the ceiling beams.”
“Fine.”
Josie marched out to the driveway. I watched from the house as she struggled to lift the sheetrock from the pile. It went against everything in me to stand here and not help. After a few seconds, she set the board back down in the pile and returned to the kitchen. I thought she was going to admit defeat, but instead she rustled inside a plastic Lowell’s bag on the table and pulled out a Gorilla Gripper—a tool that latched onto the sheetrock and allowed you to carry it with a handle. It made lugging boards a hell of a lot easier. A lot of my guys used gadgets like that.
Josie chucked me a feisty grin on her way back out. This time, she managed to lift the sheetrock, but it still wasn’t easy for her to haul into the house, even though it was only twenty steps. There was no way in hell she was going to get that thing up the ladder and screwed into the ceiling on her own. She made it as far as the second rung before the ladder started to tip. If I hadn’t been standing here to grab it, she’d be on the floor wearing a sheetrock blanket.
“Can I do it now?” I said.
“I’m capable. It’s just going to take me a bit.”
I gripped my hips. “How about this… We agree that you’re capable, but we also agree that it will take me a hell of a lot less time to get the ceiling done, and I have shit to do.”
She chewed on her pouty lip. “Alright. But only because you have a time constraint.”
I took the board from her hands. “Right.”
Over the next half hour, I threw four boards of sheetrock up on the ceiling. Josie watched, eager to help whenever possible. At one point, a cell phone rang from atop a box on the other side of the room. Josie ignored it. But a few minutes later, it started to ring again. This time she walked over and checked the screen. “Do you mind if I answer this?”
“Do whatever you need to do.”
Josie stepped from the living room into the kitchen. The house wasn’t that big, so it was impossible to not overhear the conversation. One side at least.
“Hello, Mother.”
Quiet.
“Oh no. Is she okay?”
I held off drilling in the last screw, so I didn’t interrupt her conversation. It sounded important.
“Will they keep her overnight?”
She sighed.
“Alright, well that’s good at least. I’ve been bugging her to go to the doctor. Thank God you were home when she fell.”
There were a few minutes of silence. When Josie spoke again, she raised her voice. “I wasn’t on vacation, Mom. I was in a mental-health facility. And you know that because I left you a message the day I went in.”
Silence.
“No, actually there is a difference. A vacation is very different. You know what, I have to go. Please tell Nilda I’ll call her tonight, when she’s done in the emergency room.” She swiped to hang up without saying goodbye.
After thirty seconds of shaking her head and staring at her phone, she seemed to remember I was there. “Sorry about that,” she said. “Do you need me to hand you anything?”
I shook my head and debated saying something. But she looked pretty upset. “You okay?”
“Fine.”
I waited another minute. “You want to talk about it?”
“Talk? I think you’ve said ten words to me since we met. And most of them were insults.”
“Some people say I’m a better listener than talker…”
“No. It’s okay. But thanks.”
A minute passed, and she still seemed pretty riled up from the call. “God forbid my perfect mother have a child who isn’t perfect. It’s the first time I’ve spoken to the woman since I checked myself into a mental-health facility, and she asks me how vacation was. Vacation! You know, like I was sipping a margarita and lying on the beach instead of having my shoelaces removed from my sneakers as a safety precaution.”