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)
He didn’t reply. Not that I expected him to.
Merlin was not a helpful dog. Nor was he a cuddler. A good thing, since his head came about waist-high on me and I doubted he’d fit on my lap. Mom and I hadn’t been sure what breed he was when we picked him up at the state line without a collar or a chip four years ago. But that smoke-black geezer-with-a-silver-beard look had always screamed part Schnauzer to me. The rest was all mutant mutt mystery, but for some reason, Mom hadn’t wanted to leave him at the nearest rescue. “I haven’t had a dog since you girls were little. It might be nice.”
I barely remembered owning a dog before him, since we’d moved too much to make it feasible. And I wouldn’t say he was nice. He was the grouchy, growly roommate I’d inherited with her absence. An elderly diva with demon-foul breath who’d seen some shit and had a chip on his shoulder. And based on his expression, he’d rather be enjoying the last bit of his life anywhere but here.
Join the club, buddy.
My phone chimed and I made a face. I’d been getting texts all morning. It was either the dog sitter with her hundredth message on the current status of Morgan’s “kids,” Morgan herself asking about my car while in another country, or Hudson’s Garage finally updating me on Myrtle.
I’d been waiting on that last one since I got up today. So far, I hadn’t heard a word.
You could always call him.
I could. What I couldn’t do was make myself want my car back badly enough to contact him yet. I’d already picked up my groceries. I’d be fine for a week or so.
Happily, it was another text from Chick.
Chick: Morning update request. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.
Me: 3 inquiries and a credit score to peruse. Haven’t looked yet, but they are there!
Chick: Wtf? Why haven’t you looked?!
Me: We didn’t agree to follow-up questions. Show me yours.
A moment later, I got picture of Chick looking mussed and rakish, with the biggest biceps I’d ever seen wrapped around his shoulders like a sweater.
Me: Glad the tux worked. Good job scaling that mountain!
Chick: It wasn’t the tux. It was my resume and oral skills ;) Look at those inquiries now, sunshine. We talked about this. This is a good sign that we’re going to be roommates soon!
I picked up a peanut butter cracker and handed it to the waiting Merlin before taking one for myself.
Chick and I had talked for hours last night—before he started scaling his wrestler mountain—and it did seem like a good sign. To tell the truth, I hadn’t thought there’d be so much interest this quickly. It was the reason I was out here, scrambling to create a clean-ish path to the apartment door, through a year’s worth of nature’s detritus, in case someone wanted to view it before signing a lease.
You don’t have to accept an application if you’re not ready.
Logically, I’d known that putting Mom’s place up for rent would bring some difficult emotions flooding back to the surface—not that they’d been that far away from it—but yesterday, it felt as if I were drowning again.
At least now I was back to treading water and focusing on the positive. “This is the right thing to do.”
I’d repeated that sentence a lot today.
Accepting Chick’s offer had me rethinking my priorities. Before I listed the house, I would need to fix it up, keeping appealing to a buyer in mind. The front yard, the courtyard and the garage would be top priority, because that was the first thing prospective buyers would see. Inside, the hideous wallpaper border in the living room had to go, the warped flooring needed to be fixed, and that hazard of a stair railing had to be replaced. I should also call in an AC guy to have the unit checked out, because it sounded wheezy to me, and air conditioning was a critical selling point in this state. Once that was done, the place would probably sell fairly quickly. According to Morgan, this was one of the top school districts in the area, and people around here always seemed happy with the fact that they had their own police force and there was no HOA.
Do you really think leaving is the right thing to do?
It was the one that made sense to me. I knew how to do it. After all these years, starting from scratch was second nature to me. I’d only taken the unique step of actually purchasing this house instead of renting because Mom was getting older and wanted to have us all in the same place again. But now…we weren’t.
Those first few years, we’d been inundated with invitations from Morgan and the Hudsons. From weekly floating dinners and game nights to group yoga classes at Bernie’s studio, they were always scheduling something to bring us all together. After dipping my toe in the unwelcome pool, I was usually too busy being “in the zone” or “in my writer’s cave” or “really invested in rewatching a series in my underwear while avoiding reality” to take part in those. Since my mother lived here and never turned down an invitation to anything, I considered her my proxy and hadn’t let myself feel guilty about it. Even when she told me I should.