Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 94624 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94624 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
“No, I’m the one who got lucky,” he teased, kissing my temple and nuzzling his face in my hair.
“I mean, to have you,” I said, not taking the bait, needing him to hear how much I loved him. “I’m very blessed.”
He grunted, as was his way when he was a bit overwhelmed, and rolled me to my side so he could spoon around me.
“I love you,” I said, turning my head, leaning over my shoulder for his kiss.
“I love you too,” he replied gruffly, kissing me gently before he settled behind me.
I heard his breath even out, though his arms did not let me go, and after a bit, I felt movement on the bed. Chilly, I knew, settled behind Sam’s head, and Dobby came around by me, and after several squirmy turns, and getting up and flopping down, he finally curled into a doughnut near my head, yawned big, and sighed deeply. He was out in seconds. And with that, my brain turned off. It was a perfect New Year’s Eve.
The day after was even better.
My children, along with Jake and Harper, arrived at my home the next day around one, and Sam and I watched all four of them lurch into our kitchen and then move through to the table and take seats around it.
Jake put his head down on his folded arms. Harper had his face in his hands. Kola, in dark oversize Prada sunglasses that I knew were Hannah’s and a hoodie, was sitting quietly next to Jake. Hannah, across from Harper, had her aviators on, the mirrored ones, a Chicago Bulls baseball cap, and her hair fell down around her shoulders.
“No ponytail today?” I asked without smiling, which was pretty good I thought.
“It hurts too much,” she whined.
“And you with the hoodie pulled around your face and the glasses, are you going on a stakeout later?” I asked my son, smiling that time.
“My teeth hurt,” he informed me. “I have taken at least six Tylenol and one of Jake’s eight-hundred-milligram ibuprofens left over from when he hurt his jaw, and nothing’s working. Do you have any thoughts?”
“That’s far too much medicine,” I scolded my son. “As pre-med, you should know better.”
Jake moaned.
“It didn’t seem like that much,” Harper said, and started listing the many, many drinks he had the previous evening.
“Are any of you hungry?”
They all said no softly and at the same time.
“Well, you’re all going to have to drink a couple of hydrators for me, and then water. Then I’m going to make you very plain turkey-and-cheese sandwiches which you will have with salty potato chips and soda, and then you can all take a nap.”
Lots of whimpering, and Sam chuckled, getting to work on mixing the hydrators into cold bottles of water for me as I started the sandwiches.
Much shock and awe that the salty potato chips helped, as well as the water and caffeine. Kola hugged me really tight, and Hannah sat on the couch, leaning against her father, his arm around her as he watched whatever had him riveted at the moment. Why Sam was addicted to police procedurals, only if they were set in the United Kingdom, made no sense. But maybe he couldn’t pick it apart that way.
There was not a lot of moving later on. Instead more of the same lethargy, lots of lying around in a vegetative state, no one asking Sam to change the channel, all of them watching what he was, until Kola broke the silence and offhandedly mentioned that he saw Harper kiss Wick.
“Awww,” Hannah cooed, “did you hit that?”
“Eww,” Jake said to her. “Why you always gotta be so crass?”
Kola scoffed.
“Yes, I kissed him,” Harper confessed, smiling mischievously. “But that’s all that happened. We’re going on a date later in the week. We were thinking we’d do something today, but he called to say he was dead and was letting me know.”
“You people are all lightweights,” I assured them. “I used to drink like a fish, get up and go to work the next day in the same clothes as the night before with club stamps on my hands. You’re all weak.”
Kola took that moment to moan.
“I did not get lucky last night,” Hannah confessed. “I was too barfy.”
“Please don’t talk about barfing,” Harper warned her. “That sandwich is the first thing I’ve kept down all day.”
Sam snickered.
“I was holding her hair,” Jake began, “but watching other people barf makes me barf so…”
“He barfed in my hair,” Hannah whined to her father, burrowing into his chest. “Daddy, it was so disgusting, I started barfing all over again.”
He kissed her forehead and cuddled her close. “I’m sorry, bunny. Boys are bad.”
“Yes, they are,” she whimpered.
“I was in the hospital,” Kola told me.
“What?” I gasped.
“The police made us go, for the report.”
“What report?”
“Because Finn was in a fight.”