Total pages in book: 191
Estimated words: 182070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 182070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
I watched the front door as a couple of regular members came in and headed straight for the front desk. I smiled at both of them, holding the phone up to my ear with my shoulder, and scanned their passes. “Whatever you need.” There wasn’t a single thing I wouldn’t do for him, or for any of my loved ones, and I had a lot of them.
Paw-Paw included.
I’d never forget the kindnesses he’d paid me when I was younger. I hadn’t seen him in a while, but the last time I had, he’d given me a big hug and asked me a thousand questions about how I’d been doing since the last time we’d seen each other—a year before that. When I was little, he’d pull quarters out from behind my ears. For one of my birthdays, he’d given me a pendant of a flamingo that had belonged to his late wife. I still had it in my jewelry box.
Guilt nibbled at my stomach as I sent a silent prayer up that he was fine. If he was, I’d do better. I could visit a little more, maybe each time I went to see Boogie. I could call to at least check up on him. I could send him some gifts. Boogie had complained to me not that long ago about how Paw-Paw was still trying to do too much for his age.
“—tell him.”
“Have a good workout,” I whispered to the members as I pulled the phone away from my mouth. “I’m sorry, Boog. What did you say? I’m still at work for another twenty.”
My cousin repeated himself. “Zac’s not answering his phone. I’ve tried calling him and so has his mom, but he isn’t picking up. Can you go by his place and tell him?”
The hell did he just say?
He wanted me to go tell Zac his grandfather was in the hospital?
Zac Travis, who had been the starting quarterback of the National Football Organization’s Oklahoma Thunderbirds? The one the TV anchors had literally just been talking about? The man whose life I’d saved when we were kids?
Seriously, what the hell were the chances?
“Please, B. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to.”
Of course I knew that. Boogie rarely asked for anything. So, of course, of freaking course, when he did it would be something like this.
“But he’s not picking up, and I’ve been blowing him up for the last hour. His mom’s been trying to call him too and nada,” my cousin rattled on, stress and worry hanging on his every syllable.
He’d used the same voice back when Mamá Lupe had been sick. But this was different.
My cousin wanted me to go tell his best friend that his grandfather was in the hospital because said best friend wasn’t answering his phone.
It was that simple, and it made a whole lot of sense.
In a way, it was nothing.
My cousin wanted me to go tell his best friend, who I had known almost my entire life, who had loved me and treated me like a little sister once upon a time, that there was something going on with his grandpa because he wasn’t answering his phone. Because he needed to know. Of course he did. Of course he should.
There was no reason for me to say no. No real reason for me to even hesitate. So we hadn’t seen or spoken to each other in almost ten years; it wasn’t like that had happened because we’d gotten into a fight or because I’d done something dumb to make things weird.
Nope. There was no real reason.
Just me being a coward.
And him… well, it didn’t matter anymore.
“Bianca?”
“I’m here,” I replied, looking at myself in the reflection of the long mirror that took up the majority of the wall directly in front of the front desk and juice bar where I stood all day. Even with my hair down, I could see the bags under my eyes from all the way over here. I’d stayed up too late watching this Turkish romance online last night, and it had been totally worth it. It wasn’t like the gym members hadn’t seen me at work on three or four hours of sleep on a regular basis.
But….
Why did he have to ask for this of all things? Then again, it was a Christmas miracle that it had taken this long for me to get put into this position in the first place: having to go see Zac. It wasn’t like I’d thought I’d never see him again. Just not any time soon. Maybe the next decade. From the moment I’d heard that he was living in Houston, I’d kind of prepared for the fact that my time was coming to an end, and it had been pretty much a miracle of its own that my cousin had been working out of the country for the last couple weeks so he hadn’t gotten a chance to come down to visit.