Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 73398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Chapter 2
Autocorrect has not figured out how often I swear and how rarely I talk about ducks.
-Text from Coke to Frankie
Coke
I couldn’t get the woman—girl—out of my mind.
I’d allowed the truck to rest—knowing that I wouldn’t get it done in time to use it tomorrow like I’d originally planned—and went into the house.
It felt empty and barren—which it was. Without Francesca, my seventeen-year-old daughter, there, there was nothing that made my house a home.
After I’d divorced my wife, Frankie had come to live with me. It’d been just the two of us for two years now, and then she’d gone and grown up on me by graduating early and moving into a goddamn college dorm with boys.
Needless to say, I still wasn’t doing well with that, but it was what it was. My girl had grown up on me without my permission, and she’d demanded to do adult things—like go to college two hours away so she could join a biology program that I couldn’t even pronounce, let alone complain about her going to.
My girl was smart. She was fierce.
And she was gone.
Which led me to now.
I was officially a single man, living on his own, and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself.
Before, there’d been sports, homework, food to cook.
Now, I didn’t have any of those things to worry about. So, I’d found myself a hobby—which happened to piss off my cute, little new neighbor.
And she was cute.
She was very soft spoken, and I was honestly worried that she was going to curl into herself when I’d seen her walk up. Truthfully, I was downright impressed that she’d even taken the first step toward me.
Which happened to also be why I’d stopped working on the truck when I had a fuckin’ deadline. It took courage, what she did.
Therefore, I gave in to her request that I call it a night. I’d also give her the twelve that she asked for.
Any other time? She’d have to come over and ask again.
Smiling, I made my way to the bedroom. Once there, I dropped all of my clothes into the ever-filling hamper.
With Frankie not here to do laundry anymore, I wasn’t too sure what to do with myself.
It’d been awhile since I’d actually had to do laundry. My mother had done it when I’d lived at home, and then my ex, Beatrice, had had the maid do it. Finally, when I moved out, Frankie had figured out how to do it and took over the chore. Which left me quite unsure what to do with it.
Logically, I knew how to do laundry—what threw me off was having to do such small loads and using these new washer and dryers that were smarter than I was.
Since I have had no desire to do laundry, and had plenty of clothes to go through, I’d put it off. Like I’d been saying since she’d left for college, I’d figure it out…tomorrow.
No, but really, I would. Tomorrow was the last day that I’d have a clean pair of pants, and it couldn’t be too hard.
I’d been procrastinating long enough.
Tomorrow, I’d conquer the washer and fix the truck.
I hoped.
Laughing at my inability to get anything done despite having more time on my hands, I walked to my bathroom naked and turned on the shower.
Without waiting for it to heat up, I stepped inside and shivered.
Why I always stepped in before it’d warmed up, I didn’t know. It was just a habit at this point.
Sometimes, it was still a surprise to have the water actually turn hot.
When I was growing up, hot water was definitely something we didn’t always have. And, when I was in the military, sometimes I got the last shower which was usually cold.
I was one of eight boys. Though we did have a hot water heater, it wasn’t sufficient enough to supply showers for my mom, dad and all eight of us children. Usually, by shower number four, the water was cold.
Most of the time we went from youngest to oldest, since we couldn’t let the little boys take a cold shower.
I was rinsing out the shampoo when the water turned warm, and then my mind wandered.
My neighbor had said that she’d moved in last week.
I’d seen the moving truck through the part in the trees that separated her house from mine and had wondered not only who was moving in but also who could afford that place.
I had asked the previous owners if they wanted to sell, and they gave me the price they wanted for it, I immediately backed off of it.
There was no way on God’s green earth that I was going to pay what they wanted for it—which again made me wonder how in the hell such a young woman could afford it.
She hadn’t been wearing a wedding ring, and I assumed that if she had a man, he would’ve been the one to make the late-night call to tell me that I’d been interrupting their sleep instead of her.