Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 97409 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 487(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97409 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 487(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
“My version of a chicken quesadilla.”
“Well, whatever it is, my mouth is watering.” She smiles at me.
“Do you want to go and sit on the couch until it’s ready?”
“I’m good waiting with you.” She pulls out a chair and sits, looking at me. “What time do you start work?”
“Seven.” I flip the tortillas in the pan to the other side.
“What?” she says, shocked. “You start work at seven, and you are here at three in the morning?”
“Yeah,” I confirm, as if it’s not a big deal. “I set my alarm for two-thirty.”
“Do you go back home after you leave here?”
“No,” I admit. “I start work so I can maybe finish early.” I shrug. “That hasn’t been the case the last couple of days.” I don’t bother telling her the reason why.
“So how many hours of sleep do you get?” I grab a plate and put one of the tortillas on it.
“Enough.” I know I said I wasn’t going to lie to her, but if I tell her I’m averaging four hours a night, she might refuse to see me. “You want sour cream?”
“Do I have sour cream?” She laughs nervously.
“You do.” I cut the tortilla in two, putting the plate down in front of her before getting the sour cream. “I wish I had bought guacamole.”
“Are you going to sit with me?” I smile and nod my head, but I grab some fruit before I do.
She takes a bite of the tortilla and groans. “This is so good. How do you know how to cook?”
“I like to watch cooking shows,” I confess to her, “and after I moved out of my parents’ house, I got tired of fast food really quickly, so it was either learn to cook or starve.” She laughs. “Do you know how to cook?”
“A bit.” She takes another bite. “I learned really young that if I didn’t cook for myself, I would starve.” She avoids my eyes. “My parents weren’t the best.” She shrugs, and I know I need to ask her about it, but I don’t want her to shut down on me.
“What is your favorite thing to cook?”
“Probably chicken-fried steak.” I make a note to grab a recipe online. “But with the real sausage gravy.” She laughs. “It’s not as good as the kind the real Southern grandmothers make, but if I ever get a wild hair on a day off, I try to make it.”
“When is your next day off?”
“Not this weekend, but next weekend, I have four straight days off. Though I might pick up a couple of shifts . . .” She trails off. “Not sure, I’m going to see how I feel by next week before I ask for them.”
“Why don’t you just take the days off and recover?”
She dips a piece of quesadilla in the sour cream before looking at me. “I’m going to be off work for a bit when the baby is born, and I figure I should have a nest egg in case something happens. I heard babies can be pretty expensive.”
“They are,” I agree as she finishes what I made her. “You want the other one?”
“You’re not going to eat it?”
“I made both for you. I ate earlier.”
“Oh. Thanks. I’ll take it for my lunch then.”
I get up and store it in a container. “If you want, you can go to bed, and I can clean up here.”
“I was going to go and sit outside a bit,” she says. “You want to come with me?”
“Yeah.” I follow her to the front door, where she puts on a pair of flip-flops before heading outside. She walks down the stairs and heads to the side.
“Where are you going?”
“The door to go out back is broken.” I follow her around the house to the back deck. It needs to be ripped out and replaced. “No trees here,” she says of the empty backyard, “so you can see the sky.” She sits at the top of the two steps, and I join her. “It’s peaceful, isn’t it?” She puts her elbows on her knees. She looks at me. “Are you scared?”
I tell her the truth. “Petrified. Knowing you were pregnant was one thing, but seeing my child—our baby—and listening to his or her heartbeat made it so much more real.” I smile shyly. “You?”
She takes a second to think about her answer. “You have no idea,” she starts softly, and I put my hands on my knees like she has hers. Her shoulder rests against my arm. “I hate that I said I wasn’t going to lie to you.” She smiles sadly. “Not that I lie in general. Actually, I hate lying altogether, but I have been fibbing about a couple of things the last couple of weeks to everyone I work with. It’s been eating at me, and I know soon I’m going to have to tell them the truth, and I’m a little bit afraid no one is going to trust me anymore.”