Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 73817 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73817 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
But that doesn’t bring me any closer to helping out my new acquaintance here.
Speaking of: “So what do I call you?” I ask him. “I can just keep callin’ you ‘kid’, but that’s gonna feel weird after a while.”
He doesn’t answer right away. But when he does, his eyes turn soft and thoughtful: “Sunny,” he decides.
That’s a burner name if I’ve ever heard one. Or he was inspired by the unhelpful place we just left. “Sunny, okay. We’ll go with that alias for now.”
“It’s my real name.”
No, it isn’t. “It’s alright. I understand you’re protecting yourself. That’s important. I’ll call you Sunny. I’m Cooper, but I suspect you already knew that.”
“Yep.”
“You gonna tell me yet what brought you out here to Dreamwood? Or do I have to keep prying and fishing?” He doesn’t answer. “Prying and fishing it is.”
“No one’s gonna have a free room, y’know.”
“People owe me favors,” I remind him, “and I—”
“Obviously they don’t owe you enough to actually pay. You heard your so-called ‘buddy’ at the Sunnyview place. No one’s just gonna hand you over a free room when that room can be paid for by some big happy family with deep pockets. It’s just bad business.”
And now this cute, cocky kid is gonna school me about business practices? “We’ll see about a spot at the Elysian. I know the general manager.”
“Isn’t that even pricier and fancier than Sunnyview?”
“Let me worry about the pricy and fancy,” I sass back.
But when we reach the Elysian Seaside Resort & Spa, just across the street from the boardwalk, I’m met with the same damned resistance from my friend Armando, general manager of the place. “This is truly a week like none other,” he says in his soft yet authoritative drawl, lightly accented, his heavy-lidded eyes blinking apologetically at me. “Just got off of the phone with Luke, even El Amado is at max capacity. Are you not swamped at your bar tonight? I would imagine you’d be quite busy. Too busy to be …” His eyes fall on Sunny. “… entertaining company.”
I lean in close and bring my voice down. “He’s not just a guy I picked up. He’s in a situation. He needs a room.”
“A situation? Now you make things interesting.”
“I just want to help him out, alright? Get him off of the streets for a night.”
Armando clicks his tongue and shakes his head. “Truly I’m sorry. I fear I don’t even have a storage closet for the poor soul. Have you tried the Hopewell’s? They must have fifteen bedrooms in that mansion of theirs off the pier.”
My patience is wearing thin. “I’ve stretched Finn and his dad’s resources enough. Besides, they’re busy with all the extra Pride stuff this weekend.”
“Wasn’t that last weekend?”
“It’s every weekend,” I mutter, and to that, Armando rolls his eyes and says, “Touché.”
I don’t get any farther with him than that.
We sit on the edge of a short concrete wall outside the Elysian, staring out at the beach and the boardwalk across the street, the small L-shape of my Easy Breezy bar in the distance. It’s dark now, and I am no closer to getting this poor kid off the street than I was when I was just chasing him across the sand over a can of peanuts.
“I’ve still got my spot in the park.”
I lift an eyebrow at him. “What? You’re not sleeping in the park.”
“It’s handy. Near everything. Well, there’s the issue of dealing with the twitchy weirdo who acts like he’s my new best friend, always trying to get me to tweak out with him and won’t leave me alone. But I can deal with him. I found a pizza thrown away in the movie theater dumpster once, still in its box, totally untouched. Tourists are wasteful.”
I don’t know what to do. I’m running out of options.
“Look, I don’t need your money,” he says, “or … or whatever it is you’re doing. I can take care of myself.”
“I’m sure you can as you obviously have up ‘til now,” I say less than patiently, “but the difference between you taking care of yourself and me giving you a hand is you having a decent meal in your belly and a roof over your head … instead of secondhand pizza, druggies harassing you in the park, and flies biting your butt.”
He scrunches up his face. “Flies doing what now?”
“You heard me. Sleep in that park long enough, flies are gonna swarm and bite your butt in your sleep.”
“Flies don’t bite.”
“But if you enjoy flies biting your butt and eating pizza out of a dumpster, be my guest.”
“Well, what other options do I have?”
I gnaw on my lip, staring across the road and the sand, at the quaint, friendly shape of the Easy Breezy.
The only option that’s left is the very last one.
The one I was trying to avoid.