Now, what was I thinking about before I’d gotten distracted?
A recipe. I’d been trying to work out a new recipe in my head. That was what I’d been thinking about when TSN—The Sports Network—had flashed that familiar man across the screen and I’d instantly gone for the remote to change the channel. It took me a second to get back to where I’d last been on the recipe train. Bananas and chocolate were about as far as I’d gotten before I’d been weak and got sucked into what the commentators were saying, even though I knew better. It wasn’t like they ever said anything nice.
But anyway.
All the time I spent standing around thinking had been my favorite thing about this job before. It was time I could use working out recipe ideas in my head, weighing their pros and cons while I got paid. I liked getting out of the house and had made friends here. It had been a win-win.
And then Gunner happened.
My phone vibrated against my butt cheek, and I looked around to make sure Asshole 1 hadn’t come back in and wasn’t hiding around the corner, waiting.
He wasn’t. At least I was pretty sure he wasn’t.
Pulling it out, I took a peek at the screen, half-expecting a message from my sister since I hadn’t heard from her all day.
I wasn’t disappointed.
CONNIE LOVES PECKER: Do I need to help you find a date to Lola’s quince?
Wasn’t that… months away? And did you even need a date to a fifteen-year-old’s birthday party? Sure, that part of the family was spending something like twenty thousand dollars on my second cousin’s party; my sister had called to tell me how dumb they were for throwing money around like that when we all knew they couldn’t really afford it. For Connie’s fifteenth birthday, our parents had bought her an ancient car that didn’t run; she still griped about it. For my fifteenth birthday, Mamá Lupe, my abuelita, my grandma, had given me money to go to a theme park in San Antonio, and my cousin Boogie had taken me for the day. I’d wanted to go to Disney, but there hadn’t been money back then. My parents had said they would take me someday, but I was twenty-seven now and still waiting on them to hold up that promise.
But I was finally going to Disney World this year, and I was excited. It was my gift to myself for surviving Kenny and his bullshit. I was going to celebrate my future with mouse ears on.
I glanced up to make sure Gunner’s creepy ass still hadn’t magically appeared and sent my sister a response real quick.
Me: I need a date?
I had just barely slipped my phone back into my pocket when it vibrated with another incoming text. A second one came through before I even managed to pull it back out. But they weren’t from my sister.
They were both from Boogie.
BOOGIE IS MY FAVORITE: Call me as soon as you get a chance
BOOGIE IS MY FAVORITE: Please B
I could count on zero fingers the number of times my cousin—my favorite cousin who was basically my brother and definitely one of my best friends, tied with my sister—had ever asked me to call him. He was allergic to phone calls. And he rarely ever texted me on the weekend either, especially now that he had a girlfriend again.
Gunner could suck it if he caught me; my cousin needed me.
I hit the phone icon on the message and put it to my ear. Boogie answered on the second ring, freaking me out even more. I could also count on one hand the number of times he’d answered any call from anyone on the first ring. I would know. I’d been with him a thousand times when he’d looked to see who was calling and then spent twenty seconds debating whether or not to answer.
“Bianca,” Boogie whispered before I even got a chance to say hi or ask what was wrong. “Paw-Paw Travis is in the hospital.”
“Oh” was what came out of my mouth first, mostly because my brain was still hung up on needing a date, the recipe I had been trying to figure out, how I needed to get out of here, and how much of a shithead Gunner was. But I caught on fast. I went straight for the name he’d said. Paw-Paw Travis? What were the chances…? “Oh shit. Is he okay?”