Total pages in book: 45
Estimated words: 43920 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 220(@200wpm)___ 176(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43920 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 220(@200wpm)___ 176(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
He nodded. “That’s fair.”
“Thank you.”
“So how about I kiss you instead?”
“Have you lost your mind?”
“Christopher Isiah Gardner, have you lost your mind?” Georgine yelled, echoing me as she charged into the room.
“You people need new material,” Dawson stated.
“A rabbit?” Georgine asked loudly, slipping in front of me, obscuring my view of Dawson.
I gestured to Otto with both hands. “Ta-dah!”
“Absolutely not,” she informed me, then looked at the pile of gifts Dawson had moved. “And what in the world is all that?”
“I’m gonna say your kid made out like a bandit on the last day before winter break, and the rest of this is…well, it’s rabbit stuff.”
She refocused on me. “I do not like rodents.”
“Rabbits aren’t rodents.”
“How do you know?”
I squinted at her.
“Oh shit, that’s right. Her report with the rabbit ears.”
“Yeah,” I grumbled, picking up the cage and moving it from the table to the sunny spot in the corner by the chair and ottoman, relieved to know that I was done after that. The next person moving it anywhere would not be me. “Rabbits are part of the Lagomorpha order of mammals with other animals I don’t remember. And I only remember Lagomorpha because Cami said it like eight hundred times and it started sounding like a magic spell.”
“Yes, it did,” she agreed.
I pointed at the cage. “That thing is heavy, by the way, so wherever you decide to put the little fucker in your place, you better like it.”
“You bench way more than that at the gym, and isn’t that what you’re doing there? Building all the pretty muscles?” she asked, gesturing at me.
“I carried it from her classroom to the parking lot,” I informed her. “There are stairs, as you recall.”
“Oh yeah, okay. You win, that is far.”
“See?”
“Well, maybe we’ll just leave it in here over the break.”
“A rabbit in a place that serves food?”
“I could tell anyone who asks that we’re making rabbit stew and we like to keep the meat fresh.”
“Okay, that’s horrible,” Dawson chimed in.
“Well, then he’s going to have to carry it again out to my car and then into my house,” she snapped at him, then rounded on me.
“Midnight is going to love the bunny.”
“Oh God.” Midnight was her little black kitten that someone had left in the alley behind the club in a sealed box a month ago. The plaintive meows had not gone unnoticed by Conner, who was out there texting with Andy, his boyfriend of three weeks. Conner heard the kitten, a prelude to how loud the little fellow could get.
When Conner carefully got into the box with his butterfly knife, he found a very cute, very smelly—as he’d peed himself at some point—little black kitten. Carrying him inside, he took the creature reeking of ammonia to the kitchen to wash him because we had the cool power nozzle in the industrial sink. Conner figured that since they used Dawn soap on oil-covered ducks, the kitten could stand a bit of it in his fur for one bath. Of course, that was when the cat began wailing as if he was being drowned, and that was when Georgine first saw him.
From her face, how she cooed at the little demon when the two of us went out there, it was love at first sight between herself and the small, sassy, spicy, spitting ball of fur. He thought he was big and scary, and though he had tried to take Conner’s face off, he curled up in Georgine’s hands when he was passed to her wrapped in a dish towel.
“He’s an angel,” she’d murmured.
“He’s from the other place,” Conner had made known.
“What if Midnight tries to eat—what’s the rabbit’s name again?”
“Otto.”
“What if Midnight tries to eat Otto?”
“Since Otto is bigger than Midnight, I wouldn’t worry about it.”
She scowled.
“Oh, gimme a break. What was I supposed to say with your daughter looking at me with the eyes and the face? And her teacher thinking you’re the coolest because not only are you taking care of the class rabbit, but you sent your small child to school—where there are nuns, by the way—with a bottle of booze.”
She grunted.
“Is that even legal? Having a minor transport alcohol?”
“Probably not.”
“The rabbit is super cute,” Dawson asserted as he fed the small creature a piece of lettuce he’d gotten from one of the bags. “I mean, the red eyes are kinda creepy, but other than that…”
“Apparently, he’s psychotic,” I reminded him. “So I wouldn’t get too close or he’ll try and bite you, and you need your fingers to play your guitar.”
“True,” Dawson agreed, giving him another piece of lettuce.
“This is for all of winter break?” Georgine clarified.
“Oh, suck it up. It’s a small price to pay to make your favorite person happy.”
“Is it?”
“You need to go back out there and let Nicole talk to you about a piece in Food & Wine magazine she wants to do on you and—”