Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 94897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 474(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 474(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
“All right, Mal. But just to say, it’s clear there’s more, and if you need to talk, like I told you, I’m there.”
Mal nodded a boy-man nod that was more man than boy. “Thanks. Though even if Dad doesn’t get to call very often from where he’s at, he calls. I talk to him. So I’m cool. Honest.”
He wasn’t cool.
But again, they got what they got that day, and it was more than Mal had been giving.
So he wasn’t going to push.
“Okay, buddy,” Jagger said.
Mal turned back to his drink and sucked more up.
He then said to Jag, “I never had a cherry Coke. It’s pretty sick.”
Jag grinned at him again. “Stick with me, Mal. I’ve got a lot of things to share that are awesome, and totally bad for you.”
Mal grinned back, it was genuine and there didn’t seem to be anything dragging on it.
A minor win, but a win.
He’d take it.
And for today at least, they’d managed to get it done.
Chapter Fourteen
The House He Built
Jagger
“I don’t think I’d ever even heard of a yurt until Archie mentioned it.”
“Her trip to Portugal sounded totally rad. I wanna go and stay where she stayed.”
“Archie’s gonna do Archie, but you won’t catch me staying somewhere that I don’t have my own bathroom and the room isn’t cleaned every day by maids.”
“You are so boujee.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“It kind of is. You’re like, not enlightened at all.”
“Power to the people and especially power to the ones with vaginas, and my power is going to be making scads of money and then staying at the Ritz during my bi-annual trips to Paris to go shopping.”
“Ugh, gross.”
“Whatever.”
The comment about the yurt was Haley’s.
The ensuing discussion was between Hellen and Liane, Haley’s daughters, Archie’s stepsisters.
Hellen was twenty, going to the University of Colorado in Boulder, studying business. She was the boujee one, and she didn’t let down that side and dressed for dinner at what was still her home, considering she was a student, like she was having sushi with some real housewives somewhere.
Liane was eighteen. She was also at U of C in Boulder, her major undeclared. She was the granola one and she also represented, wearing a tee that said A Well-Read Woman Is A Dangerous Creature, dark-wash jeans that, regardless of the wash, still had a number of splits and tears in the legs and Birkenstocks.
Jagger really wanted to find their conversation hilarious, because it was. They’d generally been hilarious since he and Archie arrived.
But Archie and her dad had disappeared into the kitchen with the last of the dinner dishes, with Andy telling Haley to take a load off, he and Archie were going to serve dessert.
And since dessert was cupcakes, which didn’t take a lot of prep, Jag was distracted because they’d been in there a while.
He didn’t get a read from her dad, or Haley, or the girls, that they didn’t dig him.
There had definitely been a lot of looking him over.
But Archie was chill. He was chill.
And Jag found out straight away he had no worries about any of them having an issue with bikers.
This was because he’d discovered that fathers of daughters with dead mothers had long memories.
Jagger had won the guy over years before and Andy wasn’t effusive about that, but he also didn’t hide it. The rest of them fell in with that from the moment Jagger walked in the door.
So he wondered what was up with the disappearing act.
He turned his attention to Haley, who was fidgeting with the napkin in her lap.
Instinct, or more aptly, the vibe of her attitude took his attention to Hellen, who did not miss her mother’s manner, which seemed suddenly anxious, and Hellen didn’t like it.
Liane, the baby, didn’t notice it.
Shit.
Archie had told him she’d finally begun to bond with her stepmom, and she was super happy about it. But she also told him that she’d always liked Haley.
She wouldn’t want her anxious.
And she probably wouldn’t keep this from her stepmom anyway, it was just likely that she didn’t want to get into it and drag down what had been a good meet-the-boyfriend night.
“It’s not my place to say,” Jagger started.
All three women turned their eyes to him.
“But Archie has been having some issues with the way the building she co-owns with her brother is being handled,” he continued. “She confronted him with that today and it didn’t go too good. It’s a guess, but I suspect she’s sharing that with her dad right about—”
“It’s entirely unacceptable!”
Everyone at the table jumped, including Jagger, as they heard Andy’s thundered words coming from the kitchen.
“No!” he roared. “You absolutely do not treat your sister like that!” A beat then, “Absolutely not! This is done! Your stepmother and I will buy your share!”
Okay, well, first, he wasn’t yelling at Archie.