Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 78364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Authentic Mexican like what we’d had off the strip in Vegas was what he’d been pining for. “And you’ve been missing it in Chicago.”
He whimpered.
I chuckled, and he took Margo so he could lean into me and I could put an arm around him. “Don’t worry, we’ll get ya fed.”
He stayed right there beside me.
Once we got back, I was wrung out and needed a nap just like all the kids. I felt old, and seeing Hayden there, waiting for Bodhi, looking all hale and hearty—and who even said that besides old people—I felt absolutely decrepit. I needed a reality check about why Bodhi was spending time with me and not Hayden, and really, there was only one answer. I was hurt. If I wasn’t, he would be with his fiancé. I was being stupid, and so was everyone else, especially Angie. She didn’t really know Bodhi, knew me even less, and to think any different was insane.
Two, almost three hours later, my door was knocked on, and without me giving whoever was on the other side permission to come in, it opened.
There, standing in my doorway, was Bodhi, in a suit I’d never seen in my life. Honestly, I owned three suits total, two black, one navy, and definitely not one in the color he was wearing at the moment.
“So many questions,” I mumbled, squinting at him.
Closing the door, he turned on the light, nearly blinding me, and I sat up and looked at him again.
“What, um, do you call that color?”
He flipped me off.
It was sort of tan with a bit of mustard thrown in. Or orange. Like a blended-vomit color. “Are you being punished?”
“It’s clearly a summer suit.”
“Sure. Yeah.”
“It’s linen.”
“Okay.”
“This is what you wear to a summer social.”
With the suit he was wearing, he had on a crisp white cotton shirt, no tie, a floral pocket square, and brown suede loafers with tassels. I’d never seen him in anything with tassels. Eli, yes; him, no.
“You look nice,” I assured him, because really, Bodhi could wear anything, with his shoulders and the whole V shape of him. It was just that he looked uncomfortable.
“I look ridiculous.”
“No, no. It’s just not your normal, but that’s not bad. Eli always says that it wouldn’t kill us all to look better when we’re out on the job.”
Eli Kohn, our director of Public Relations, always looked like he should have been walking a runway in Milan. The man was never anything but metrosexual perfection, and often, he looked at me and Bodhi like seeing us, in old jeans, lots of flannel in winter, and sweaters with the necks stretched out, was physically painful for him. But I didn’t sit at a desk, and neither did my partner.
“I think he meant for you not to wear your cargo pants and for me to put on something other than a hoodie under my leather jacket.”
“Cargo pants just make sense,” I told him. “And the hoodie keeps you warm, but not too warm, and the leather jacket by itself in a Chicago winter would be no help at all.”
“That’s all reasonable,” he agreed. “But that’s not the point.”
“Please tell me what is.”
“That this is what I’m wearing.”
It hit me then. “Oh, you’re going to the party. Good. I’m glad. Have fun, and I’ll—”
“No,” he said, stopping me. “The party is here.”
“Whaddya mean the party is here?”
“The DuPonts, who were throwing the party, had an emergency, so it was moved here.”
“What kind of emergency?”
“Their oldest grandson, Flipper, he—”
“Flipper?” There was no way to let that one go. “Like the dolphin?”
“Yes. Just like the dolphin,” he said without a glimmer of mirth.
“Okay. Go on.”
“Flipper,” he repeated, glaring at me, “drove their speedboat into their pool.”
It took me a second. I’d just woken up, after all. “Sorry?”
“I guess he drove it onto the grass slope toward the lakefront and then into the infinity pool.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah.”
“Drunk?”
“Oh yes.”
“How old?”
“Seventeen.”
“Jesus.”
He shrugged. “I see rehab in his future, but anyway, because of that, the DuPonts asked if the party could be moved here, and Hayden’s parents agreed.”
“Okay.”
“The kids are all downstairs where they were last night and—”
“Oh, so I need to go and watch—”
“No, there are parents down there who had no desire to be at this party, like Angie and Josette, Shae, Keith, Meredith—you get the idea.”
“Got it. Is there food out there?”
“Yes, there’s—again, not the point. I’m here telling you this so you don’t come stumbling out in your jeans.”
“Got it. I’m not to come out. I hear you, and I promise not to leave this room. That is, as long as you bring me some food, because I’m starving.”
“Alternatively,” he began, “you could shower, shave, put on the white dress shirt I packed for you, and—”
“You lost me at shave. Have fun at the party, and I’ll just sit here and die from lack of food.”