The Bookworm's Guide to Faking (The Bookworm's Guide #2) - Emma Hart Page 0,45
with a crush and fucked the whole lot up.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN – HOLLEY
rule fourteen: your pants will not, in fact, set on fire.
“So that’s it?” Kinsley made the turn into the retirement home and flicked off her blinker. “You’re telling me that his granddad thinks you’re dating, and you have to go along with it?”
“Yup.” I popped the ‘p’ as I looked out at the expansive building that housed the White Peak seniors.
Sounded like a pop band.
A very, very cheesy pop band.
“I mean, I assume that’s still the case,” I continued, unbuckling my seatbelt as she killed the engine. “Seb said he’d talk to his family, but he had to see his doctor this morning so I haven’t spoken to him to be able to confirm it.”
“Seb, huh? Wasn’t he Sebastian just a few days ago?”
“Shut your ass.” I glared at her over the top of her car, ignoring her smirk. She knew as well as I do that this past weekend had changed just about everything, and I was struggling to adjust to my new view of my world and our history and how everything fit together.
I had never had closure over the ending of my friendship with Sebastian. For ten years he’d been the closest person to me other than my sister and my best friends and losing him had felt as if someone had reached inside of me and ripped out a piece of my soul.
But now that piece of my soul was back, and despite the wedding, I didn’t know what to do about it.
Ever since he’d taken me to pick up my car yesterday morning, I’d had some much-needed space from him and our… situation. I was hesitant to call it a relationship because I didn’t really know what defined it just yet, so ‘situation’ was definitely a better descriptor.
Sadly, the clarity I’d hoped would magically slap me on the ass hadn’t happened.
The only thing that’d slapped me on the ass was the freezer door when I went for more ice-cream.
Such was my life.
Maybe the universe was trying to tell me something.
Like to stay out of the freezer.
Quacking from the duck pond filled the air. It wasn’t what I’d consider a nice, calm quacking—not that I was sure there was such a thing, if you asked me all quacking sounded somewhat violent—but this was…
Intense.
“What the hell is going on here?” Kinsley asked, shoving the car door shut.
“I have no idea, and I’m not entirely sure I want to find out,” I admitted, following suit and heading toward the front door so we could sign in at reception.
I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to sign in, but here we were.
Besides, the seniors were expecting us. It wouldn’t go down well if we backed out now.
We signed in using the guest book at the front, took visitor badges from the new nurse at reception, and headed straight out to the expansive back yard where it was freezing.
I don’t know who let these people get ducks.
They clearly hadn’t considered the implications of old people looking after ducks in the winter in Montana. It wasn’t like we lived in Florida up here. These people were already walking hospital admissions without the threat of rogue ducks in icy weather.
We walked out into what could only be described as a bloodbath.
Without the blood.
Fine.
A featherbath.
It was a featherbath.
There were feathers everywhere. White, brown, black, purple—why was there a purple feather? Surely that wasn’t from a duck?—feathers were strewn across the smattering of snow that had dusted the ground early this morning. A sizeable number of the residents were outside, wrapped up in their winter best, and appeared to be desperately trying to put—
“Is that a coat?” Kinsley asked, squinting.
I removed my glasses and used the end of my scarf to clean them, then put them back on. “Looks like it. What are they doing over there?”
“I don’t think I want to know,” she replied, simply reaffirming that my earlier thought was absolutely correct.
We should have gone for soup instead.
God, I loved soup.
My stomach rumbled.
Great. Now I was hungry.
Kins glanced at me but didn’t say anything, although she couldn’t hide the small twitch of her lips.
This was what happened when I skipped breakfast.
“Grandma, what is going on?” I asked, drawing level with the bench where she was sitting with a thermos full of tea. “You can hear that noise in the parking lot.”
“I imagine you can, dear.” She sipped tea out of the little silver lid. “Mabel has lost her marbles.”