Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 89012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
“Gee, thanks.”
She smiles. “But now you don’t know the definition of a vacation. It’s good for the soul. You should try it.”
“Yeah …”
Dad walks in the kitchen, whistling an old game show tune. “Hey, boys.”
“Hey,” Banks says.
“Hi, Dad.” I lift my spoon toward him like a toast. “What are you up to today?”
“Talking your mother out of buying a couch for the hundredth time this month,” he says, making a point to glare at Mom before winking at her. “She’s hell-bent on getting a new one.”
She pushes her chair back and stands. “It’s disgusting, Kix. It’s time. Hell, it was time when the date still started with a one-nine.”
“A little dramatic.”
She sighs. “One of these days, I’m going to just buy one. I’m trying to be reasonable and let you help me pick it out, but you’re pushing my limits.”
Dad puts a pod in the coffee maker nonplussed. When nothing happens, he taps his palm against the front. “Looks like we’re going to have to get a new machine.”
“You get a new coffee thing more than I get new sheets,” I say, rolling my eyes.
He smirks. “My coffee thing probably gets more action than your sheets.”
I burst out laughing. Mom, too, tries to hide her giggles.
Banks throws his hands up and groans. “Can we not go there? Please?”
“I can guarantee that’s true for Banks since he never goes home,” I say, annoyed that I found him on my couch again this morning.
“I do go home, asshole. But then I wake up and need a snack or I’m bored, so I come over to see if you’re up and wind up falling asleep. Not my fault.”
“Should’ve saved our money on Banks’s house,” Dad says before kissing Mom loudly. “I’m going to go find some coffee.”
“It’s late afternoon, Kix. You’ll never sleep.”
“Guess we’ll have to find other things to do then.” He wiggles his brows before disappearing around the corner.
I sit back in my chair, leaning so that I’m in the sun. As Banks and Mom discuss him helping her with her landscaping tomorrow as repentance for the cookie jar—something my brother does with her all the time anyway—I let my mind wander.
If I took a day off, what would I do?
I do some sort of work every single day. It took me a long time to figure out what my passion was—real estate, not marketing like I went to college for—and I’ve had a hard time walking away from the office ever since.
My intensity with my business took the place of my obsession with wrestling and then partying.
I lived wrestling, breathed it. I was pretty fucking good at it. But there’s no real future in wrestling, so I gave it up before college. Then I partied most of the time to fill the hole. Now, I work.
“Ooh,” Banks says, drawing my attention back to the table. “Look at this.”
I glance down at his phone. A tracking number is printed on the screen.
“My stickers,” he says, smirking. “They shipped.”
I set my spoon down. “Are you really doing that?”
He nods.
“Banks, really. Jess will kill you if you break into his house and stick your face all over the place.”
“He won’t kill me if he doesn’t know that I did it.”
I give him a look. “It’s going to be your face. What do you think he’s going to think? That Moss had stickers printed of you and then plastered them all over? Come on.”
“Hey, that would be a good alibi. Why would I use my face if I was going to do it? It’ll throw him off. He won’t know it’s me.”
“Of course, he’ll know it was you. Just like Mom knew you broke her cookie jar.”
“She didn’t know. You told her.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “You basically owe me now.”
“Banks, honest to God, you owe me already for the rest of your life. Just take it off your tab.”
I get up and carry my bowl to the sink.
“Hey, look at this,” Banks says a little too loudly.
If his enthusiasm is this high, I don’t even want to know.
“Nah, I’m good. I think I’m gonna head home and return a few calls,” I say.
“No.” He looks at me with a mixture of somberness and mischief that makes me both worried and curious. “You have to look at this.”
I rinse out my bowl and stick it in the dishwasher. Then I make my way back to the table.
I stop behind Banks and peer over his shoulder at his phone. The Social app is on the screen—an app that I mostly detest. Nothing on there is real, nor is it healthy.
“You see this?” Banks asks.
“What are you …” I flinch. “What is that?”
I rip his phone out of his hands and sit beside him.
He chuckles. “You have your own account on your own phone.”