Page 18 of Warming His Bed

9

DREW

The text from my sister taunted me. At first, I ignored it. But for the past hour I’d been stewing in doubt. Was she joking around or genuinely upset?

Scary that I’d gotten to the point where I didn’t know how to interpret my own sister’s words because I’d pushed her away for so long.

I’d spent all day demoing the seventies kitchen in the flip I was working on. Even destruction couldn’t clear my head today. Dropping the sledgehammer, I turned over an empty crate and plopped down on it. I pulled my phone out and reread her words.

Val: Should I be insulted that I haven’t seen your dumb face in six months and had to hear it through the grapevine that you had a houseguest last night?

I rubbed my temples. Had it really been six months since I’d seen her?

The tension in my neck and shoulders had started out from all the sledgehammering, but the slow creep of guilt up my back wasn’t helping things.

I’d brushed off her invites to join her and Kevin over Thanksgiving and Christmas. Holidays were the worst. At this point, I didn’t bother making up excuses and she didn’t bother expecting them.

When was the last time I’d seen her before that?

I racked my brain before the memory washed over me in bittersweet amusement. It was a few weeks before Halloween. She’d dropped off two giant Costco-sized bags of individually wrapped candies because I’m not going to let you be the only asshole on the street who isn’t giving out candy again. The middle schoolers are starting to talk.

I’d kept my porch light off and dumped all the candy in a laundry basket I left sitting at the end of my front walk. So kids wouldn’t get any ideas about coming up to my door.

I stared at the message again. The fact that she referred to my dumb face was reassuring. She only used that phrase lovingly. And unless she’d managed to fundamentally alter her DNA since the last time we’d talked, my sister was incapable of holding a grudge. Her desire to mend every tear, be it in your sweater or your soul, was too strong.

I took a deep breath and typed out my response.

Drew: Not so much a houseguest as a trespasser I opted not to let freeze to death in the backyard. You know how much I despise paperwork.

Drew: And who did you even hear about it from?

Val: Please. Have you forgotten how your hometown operates? It’s been greater than 12 hours since she left your house. Who haven’t I heard about it from?

Val: Yvette, Old Man Turner, Brody, Grace over at Strange Brew, the Fitzgeralds…need I go on?

Val: Because I can.

Drew: Jeez, no. I get it. It was no big deal. Sorry for not mentioning it. I had no idea it would be considered front page news.

Val: I also heard it from Sadie. She came into the diner for breakfast.

Fuuuck.

If she had anything to be upset about, that would be it. Hearing gossip from the rest of the town was to be expected. But actually hearing it from the woman herself—that a random stranger spent the night in her childhood home currently inhabited by her recluse brother—had to come as a shock to Val.

Sadie.

Her name had floated in and out of my mind all day today. I’d never bothered with introductions last night, but she’d left me a thank-you note this morning before skipping out while I was still asleep.

Why had I tucked the note into my pocket instead of throwing it in the trash?

Couldn’t say.

But it was back in my hand again, and this wasn’t the first time I’d found myself rubbing the paper between my thumb and forefinger as if I could conjure it into being a lock of her hair instead of an old pizza receipt that must have been lying on my counter when she came downstairs.

Dear Norman,

I took her salutation as a crack about my decor, and the fact that the ad she’d answered sounded like it was written by a psycho.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com