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 was quiet, just staring at me.
“Years ago, my mother, she was sick. You remember, I told you about that.”
Quick nod.
“She had to be hospitalized for drugs and a lot of things, but when she got clean, she came to see me with my sister, Amy, and she brought me a toy horse. One of those Breyer horses I used to collect when I was little. And I didn’t understand why she would give a thirty-year-old man a plastic horse, but Amy told me it’s because that’s where I stopped in her head. She knew the ten-year-old me because that’s when her memory of who I was ran out.”
I had appreciated my sister, both for explaining things to me and for taking our mother into her home. There was money left from my grandparents’ will, and Amy wanted to know if we should split it, or if she should use the money to make changes to her home for our mother and for her continued care. I signed all of it over to her, and she cried in the lawyer’s office. We weren’t close, we’d grown up in different foster homes after my mother was hospitalized and my father died. Amy was adopted by a nice family in San Francisco, while I lived in a group home in Reseda with some stoners, who turned out to be really nice people. I still sent Christmas gifts every year, and Greg and Rita had even come out to see me when I opened my club. Blessings were all over; you just had to keep your eyes open.
“What are you trying to say, Chris?” Dawson asked me, sounding sad.
“You know what I’m saying. You’re in the space right now where you think we just broke up, but that’s because you just woke up from a coma.”
“I…”
“You stopped after the last time we saw each other in LA, but I kept going.”
“So what does that mean? Explain?”
“I’m telling you that I have almost two years of healing on you, buddy.”
And that time he heard me, because if I’d picked up a book and hit him in the face with it, he could not have looked any more stunned.
“Should I give you advice or just shut the hell up?”
“No, please, give me advice.”
“I think you should stick to your plan, do what you came here to do with your album. And I would love it if you played here every night while you’re in town.”
“Wait, I—”
“And if you could just give me a heads-up before you leave, I would really appreciate it.”
“I’m not gonna leave!” he yelled. “And that was all great, you figuring out my life there, but, Christopher Gardner, no matter what you say, I will get you back, and do you know why?”
I couldn’t wait to hear this. “Why?”
“Because I’m the best thing for you.”
I didn’t argue. What was the point?
The door flew open then, and Cami was there, running over to the cage and sitting down beside it, looking in at Otto for a moment before I had all her attention.
“You don’t knock? You don’t say excuse me?”
“Will you watch me later so Mama can go with her new friends to a party?”
I scrutinized her because I wasn’t stupid. “Am I invited to this party as well and you just don’t want to go to your granma’s house?”
She bit her bottom lip.
Clearly, Dawson couldn’t help it; he smiled at her. Even in the midst of our mess, he could look at Camille Joseph and know that she was both adorable and devilishly clever.
“Go tell your mother I will watch you, but only if she doesn’t make us dinner.”
“Yeah, okay,” she said, standing up and looking at me like I was brilliant. “That way she can’t make us eat something gross.”
I nodded.
She bolted out of the room but was back quickly, rushing over to Dawson. As she silently scrutinized him, I watched his brows furrow.
“Yes?” he asked her.
“Why’re you in here with Uncle Chris?”
“I like him,” he said, crouching down in front of her. “He used to be my boyfriend, and I want him to be my boyfriend again.”
“Oh, for—don’t tell her that,” I groaned.
“Why not?”
“Because she’s gonna get all—”
“I thought you said he was your best friend?”
“And my boyfriend,” he said with a sigh, sounding utterly forlorn.
He was killing me, because yes, I wanted to protect myself, and no, I didn’t want to ever grieve his absence again, but God, my first instinct was to trust and believe. Because clearly, he knew he screwed up, and he was as bereft as I had once been, but when you escaped the blender, why on earth would you ever want to take a chance and go back in?
“You could come have dinner too,” she informed him.
“He can’t do that. He’s singing here tonight.”
Her face lit up, and Dawson was back to smiling because she was. “You sing?”