Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 153946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 153946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
When my phone rang, I walked over to the kitchen area and put the ice bags into the cooler I’d brought over yesterday. Then I hit the button on the bone-conduction headphones Phoebe had given me for my birthday. She’d told me to think of them as practice hearing aids. Because I was old.
I hoped her baby was as mouthy as she was.
“Hudson.”
“I have an idea,” Kingston said immediately.
I stripped out of my wet clothes and tossed them into the small stacked washer in what should have been a pantry. “You always do. Are you hunkered down at your folks’ place yet?”
“Yeah. I told them my place already lost power and I’ve been a New Yorker for so long I’ve forgotten how to ride out a storm.”
“They bought that?” I said, pulling on the dry shirt and thin sweats I’d left on the bed this morning.
“You know how egotistical Texans are about their hurricane survival skills.”
Considering what I’d just been thinking, I couldn’t argue.
“What’s this idea you’ve had since the last time I talked to you three hours ago?”
Thunder cracked loudly above me and I rifled through the refrigerator, looking for the deli salad I’d brought home from H-E-B last night. Had I already eaten it?
“The Lemons race.”
“What about it?”
“That’s the idea. I’m filming it. If it doesn’t turn out the way I think it will, I’ll use it as a teaching tool in my class next semester.”
There went my appetite. “No.”
“Want to try that again?” he invited in a deceptively mild tone.
I blew out an aggravated breath. “Okay. That doesn’t sound like the usual Kingston Haywood topic, buddy. What makes old dudes roleplaying in cars sound interesting to you?”
“That’s better. For future reference, you should actually listen to an idea before you shoot it down like a domineering dickhead. Didn’t you read the link I sent you?”
“Yes, and fuck you very much for that.” It had taken me to a group of threads with the title Am I the Asshole? He’d made his point, but I might never forgive him for it. How were there that many people masochistic enough to post their petty, and occasionally disgusting, personal problems online for the entire world to see and discuss?
Some of us knew how to keep shit to ourselves. I didn’t bother my friends or perfect strangers with my conflicted, fucked-up emotions. I kept them locked up in a fireproof box, buried in a mile-deep hole and protected by explosives. Like a normal person.
Keeping things to yourself got you here, dumbass.
Here was close enough to see August through a window, or through an open doorway every day as she thanked me for taking out the garbage. Close enough to give me half a dozen opportunities for conversation I’d managed to waste, while suffering with nightly hard-ons on a bed made for Lilliputians. If my fails with August were anything to go by, I was more than rusty at chatting up women.
You could try to be less subtle.
Sure. I could take off more of my clothes or tell her flat out that I was interested, but I’d kept my distance for so long, I thought she might need some convincing first. Which was why the first part of my plan had revolved around rekindling our neighborly friendship. Moving past the last few years of silence and regaining her trust by making myself useful. Giving her time to get to know me again.
It was decent, as far as plans made up on the fly went, and then yesterday happened. I’d stuck my foot in it so deep, I wasn’t sure I could get it out again.
“I told you about my problem so I’d have someone to bitch to,” I groused. “Not to give you ideas.”
“And yet I still have them, because I’m a creative genius.” He was typing in the background as he talked. “I’m sick of my usual topics. There’s too much shit in this world, and I’m tired of giving both it and all the pompous pricks who demand more suffering that kind of oxygen. This, on the other hand, has the potential for dramedy gold.”
“Dramedy?”
“A burnt-out mechanic who wants to quit the only interesting thing he ever does. The only thing that gets him out of his small, backwoods neighborhood and boring-as-hell little life. All so he has more time to potentially date. Not that I’m against that last part. I told you last week I’d set you up with my neighbor. But you had to be particular.”
I shook my head. “Burnt out. Backwoods. Boring as hell. I see your time living spitting distance from the UN headquarters has really fine-tuned your diplomacy skills. And it isn’t only to date. I was thinking I could learn to cook. Build a deck by hand. Maybe play some golf.” Anything that wasn’t related to cars or racing them.