Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 74227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Then there was her hair, which I hadn’t seen since she had it tucked up underneath the ball cap until I was much closer.
Tiny tendrils escaped the hat, twisting and turning this way and that, and brushing against the collar of her shirt.
She had blue hair.
And not a light blue, either. It was a deep, rich, royal blue that was shocking compared to the white-blonde hair at her roots.
On the top, she looked fairly normal, but on the bottom, it was as if she’d dipped the ends directly into a jar of blue paint.
I wanted to touch it.
Fuck.
The pounding of my running feet on the pavement finally caught her attention, and she turned.
What I saw made me stop, making my knee scream in pain.
I winced and came to a stop about three feet from her, and I narrowed my eyes.
The pain in my knee made my words come out a lot harsher than she probably deserved, but I couldn’t help it.
“Why are you crying?” I barked.
She bit her lip and looked down at the trash can she was carrying out to the curb, and then back to me.
“Uhhh,” she hesitated.
“And since when do you live here?” I questioned.
Surely, she’d just moved in.
“Since I moved in.” She paused. “Which has been for a while now.”
I narrowed my eyes. “If you’ve lived here all this time, why did you have your belongings in the car when it was repossessed?”
Why weren’t they in the house? I wanted to yell. Then I wouldn’t have gotten chewed out by fucking Travis when I told him I needed to get all the shit out of the car and take it back to the owner.
Which was a big no-no, by the way.
When a car was repossessed, unless otherwise stated in the loan papers, all belongings are returned by the lender. Unfortunately, Lark’s car loan was owned by none other than the dick head on his golf cart. He had a clause in the contracts that if there were any possessions in a car when it was repossessed, then those belongings were sold in an auction to help raise money for the back loan payments.
I should’ve known then when I told Travis I was taking that shit out of the car and returning it that this girl was different.
She looked away guiltily.
Right at the house beside her, and that was when I realized that the little fucker in his golf cart was pulled up under a specially made parking area/carport that was the perfect size for a golf cart.
Literally, the only other thing that could go there besides a golf cart was maybe a ride-on lawn mower.
“The last time I moved stuff in, somebody made a noise complaint because I was opening and closing my car door too much.”
I could tell that was partially the truth, but not all of it.
But before I could say anything more than I did, she turned her eyes away from the man and his stupidly perfect yard, and back to me.
“I have to go to work,” she grimaced.
I looked at her curiously.
“Like that?”
She looked down at what she was wearing.
“Today is a stocking day,” she explained, shrugging. “I get to wear whatever I want today because it’s closed.”
“Ahh,” I understood now. “Is this at the grocery store or the Taco Shop?”
Why was I still talking to her?
I should leave.
“Grocery store,” she answered. “Why?”
I shrugged.
“Are you alone when you do this?”
Why did I continue to ask her questions when she’d already said she had to leave?
My only reasonable explanation was that I didn’t want her to go off with those fucking tears in her eyes.
Her gaze kept drifting back to the purple flowers that she’d dumped into the trash, and then back to me. Almost as if she was sad to see them go.
They were cute flowers. My mother had picked mine out, and they were nearly identical. She must’ve shopped at Lowe’s, too.
She sighed and continued to roll her trash can down the length of the driveway, stopping when she got to the bottom.
The loud hum of the wheels had caught someone else’s attention, too.
I winced at the whiny voice.
“You can’t put your trash can out!” Harold bawled like the fat heifer he was. “It’s only two p.m.!”
I narrowed my eyes.
“You made her rip up her purple fucking flowers,” I said to him. “The least you can do is let her leave the trash can out.”
“No, I don’t,” he countered.
“Mr. Harold, I have to work until well past morning. The trash men will be here to pick the trash up before I even get home from work,” Lark - yes, I’d finally put two and two together - cried out. “That’ll mean it won’t be able to go out until Wednesday night, and since I was fined for having ‘smelly trash’ just two weeks ago for the very same situation, I don’t know what else you want me to do.”