Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
It was fitting.
I didn’t.
But maybe someday.
And it was where my plants were going to live, since one thing the new house did have was amazing windows and light. I also didn’t have any curtains, so there was nothing to obstruct it.
I took the new plants inside in trips, setting them on the edge of the pass-through toward the kitchen that sat at the front of the house just behind the entryway with its powder room, door to the garage, and door to the mechanical room.
On the other side of the passway from the kitchen was a tiny dining space that flowed into a grand living room with a fifteen-foot ceiling and windows that crept all the way up. A fireplace was on the wall—all white marble. Then there was the stairway up to the second and third floors.
The second floor featured only the primary bedroom and bath. The third floor had two smaller bedrooms with a shared bath.
It was pretty large for a townhouse, and it was nice feeling like I had room to breathe. I don’t think I realized how claustrophobic I’d been feeling at the often-packed clubhouse until I got inside and felt my shoulders drop and my jaw unclench.
There wasn’t anything inside. No rugs covered up the dark wood that stretched across the whole lower floor. There were no couches, no end tables, no art on the white walls. The kitchen—with its white cabinets and white marble countertops—didn’t have any plates or forks in the cabinets or drawers. The fridge had nothing good inside it. There wasn’t even a coffee machine on the counter.
What the kitchen did have was a bay window that I believed, according to Rue’s little chart, would provide the best indirect light for some of the plants I’d bought.
I found, oddly, that I actually gave a shit that they lived.
If you asked me before I’d gone into that shop if I’d had any kind of feeling about plants, I’d have said no. Sure, they added a certain something to the rooms I’d seen them in. I’d just never felt the need to have any of my own.
Now that I did, I wanted them to thrive.
Maybe my claim to be really into plants hadn’t been a complete lie after all.
I found the placements for three of them, deciding to bring the ‘starter’ pothos plant back to the clubhouse with me so McCoy knew I was committing to the job.
I walked back through my house, finding myself viewing it through the eyes of someone who loved plants and wanted more of them. I could imagine where I’d put all the ones I’d spotted at Vital Greens that I’d been interested in.
“Christ,” I said, letting out a huff of a laugh as I made my way back down to the first floor, looking around the empty space and suddenly feeling like I needed to fill it. A couch, coffee table, some lamps so I didn’t have to use the overhead lights, a nice TV. And, of course, a coffee maker and a mug for the kitchen.
Just the bare essentials I’d need to feel comfortable if I needed a break from the clubhouse and all the craziness there. A place to unwind. I wasn’t going to move in or anything. Even if I was suddenly imagining how I would decorate the primary bedroom.
Maybe I would do just one more quick errand to the home improvement store for some paint, drop off the supplies at my house, then head back to the clubhouse to debrief McCoy about my suspicions that Rue wasn’t in bed with the competition.
With any luck, McCoy would tell me to keep investigating. Then I’d get the excuse to keep visiting the shop. And the time to disappear for hours to work on my house without anyone getting suspicious.
Just until Huck came back.
Then I was going to fess up.
Well, to the house.
Not the fact that I wanted to fuck the woman who may or may not be working directly with our competitors.
That shit was something I was going to play close to my vest.
CHAPTER FIVE
Rue
Vital Greens was closed one day per week. Tuesdays, which my grandmother had learned after years of operation, were the slowest day of the week.
Maybe it was crazy, but I didn’t love days off.
I found that when I had too much free time on my hands, my anxiety tended to spike. Would my old therapist think that simply avoiding free time was the healthiest way to cope? No. Of course not. But we all had to work with whatever coping mechanisms made our lives easier.
For me, that meant that Tuesdays were full of everything I could pack into them. All my cleaning chores, grocery shopping, lunch-prepping for the week, lawn care, laundry, and socializing were done on this one day a week.