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“Hot damn.” Wanda shakes her head. “Where was that when I was younger? Could have saved me a lot of shifts at the library.”
“You loved working at the library,” I remind her.
“I’d have loved it a hell of a lot more if someone had paid me to get naked in it.”
“In another life,” I chuckle, “you would have ruled the entire camgirl scene.”
“And don’t you forget it,” she tuts.
Even as I throw the last of the clothes from my closet into a bag, I feel her eyes watching me from across the room. I wait until the sack is full and tied off before I give her my attention. “What?”
“I just want you to be careful,” she says a little more gently. “There are a lot of weirdos out there.”
“I’m going to be fine,” I assure her, pretending that her concerndoesn’t make me want to smile. She may be cantankerous ninety percent of the time, but Wanda cares about me more than my own mother ever bothered to. “I promise. It’s good money, and he was incredibly nice. I scoped his Facebook, too, and he has a daughter.” A pretty one too. Seriously, thegenesin this family. “Besides, if the vibe is bad, I can leave, okay?”
“You kids and your vibes,” she grumbles. “When I was your age, we didn’t have vibes, we had instinct.”
“You realize it’s practically the same thing, right? Also, you could stop griping and help me pack something.”
Wanda crosses her arms. “Gotta rest my back. Got a bingo match tonight.”
I don’t ask for elaboration, not wanting to know if she needs to rest for bingo or for whoever she will inevitably bring home after. She and Fred Wythers got into a fight last week, so I imagine he’s on the outs.
“Aren’t you the one always saying that you’re old, not dead?” She gives me the finger, and I laugh. “Hey, did you know the middle finger is the fastest growing nail?”
“Oh, to hell with your damn Snapple facts.”
I bite back my smile as I give my attention back to packing. When the tiny space is packed away in various boxes and bags, I nod appreciatively at a job well done, thinking that the place looks bigger somehow when it’s mostly empty like this. The furniture stays, seeing as it was here when I got here. Plus, I won’t need it since I get my own furnished room at Aiden’s place.
There’s only atinyflap of butterfly wings in my stomach when I am reminded that I will be under the same roof as Aiden Reid.
“I think that just about does it,” I tell Wanda.
“I guess so.” Wanda eyes the scattered bags on the floor. “I just know they’re going to let a weirdo come in here after you.”
“Maybe it will be your soulmate.”
Wanda snorts. “Don’t need one of those.”
You have to admire her independence, that’s for sure.
Wanda has never settled down in her long life, as far as I know, always bouncing from one man to the next. She makes it seem fun, don’t get me wrong, but surely it has to be lonely sometimes. I like to think that the two of us needed each other equally as much when we stumbled into each other’s lives. She became an unlikely surrogate mom and best friend all rolled into one, adopting me into her life and treating me like the kid she never had. I’m not entirely sure that I knew what real affection looked like before I met her.
“And you’resurethis is a good idea? You could still do the booby cams.”
I consider that, knowing that Wanda likes to live vicariously through my OnlyFans endeavors (seriously, this woman missed her true calling), and itwouldbe easy money if I could build a following again, but I can’t bring myself to. Not after what happened.
“I’m sure.” I nod, mostly for myself. “You can tell me you’re going to miss me, you know.”
“Miss you?” She snorts as she pats me on the shoulder. “You don’t come visit, I’ll come looking for your ass.”
I pull her into a hug, breathing in the familiar scent of her White Diamonds perfume and a bit of talcum powder underneath that I’ve always found strangely comforting. “It’s going to be great. You’ll see.”
Wanda still looks unconvinced when she pulls away, and as I start to pile up what’s left of my things in preparation for the moving service that will bring the rest of my things tomorrow, I do my best to seem as confident about the whole thing as I’m pretending to be.
—
Aiden’s town house is located in a gated community, a quiet residential area of three-story homes lining the street. Aiden’s in particular has a cute little yard, lined with a block wall and closed off with an iron gate. My old Toyota parked in front looks out of place amid the rows and rows of shiny-looking town houses but to be fair, so do I. I check the house number one more time in my emails as I unlatch the gate, feeling only a little nervous as I approach the front door.
