Текст книги "Shiver : 13 Sexy Tales of Humor and Horror"
Автор книги: Belle Aurora
Соавторы: Penny Reid,Ruth Clampett
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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 39 страниц)
Candy, Dentures, and Way Too Much Spandex
by R.S. Grey
…or My Night Chaperoning a Nursing Home Halloween Party
“There’s been a murder in Paradise Springs!” Sandy exclaimed, clapping her hands wildly in the front row of the residents’ meeting.
“Well there will be,” I clarified, trying to calm the outburst that was sure to ensue.
Sandy’s grin gave away the fact that the theme for the Paradise Springs’ Halloween party had been decided in her favor. The small living room erupted into shouts as other residents clamored to be heard. As the head of the party planning committee, it was my job to make sure these meetings ran smoothly.
“I don’t think a murder mystery party will be fun for everyone,” a resident shouted.
“What’s wrong with doing the Hawaiian Halloween party again?” someone else yelled from the back. “Why does Sandy always get the final say in these things?”
I was standing at the front of the room, surrounded by drapes that hadn’t been updated since the 1950s and couches that always had a certain stench to them. I tried to get everyone’s attention, but it was no use.
I thought being a nurse would be glamorous. While I studied on nights and weekends in nursing school, I’d picture myself walking through the halls of a hospital in perfectly fitted scrubs. There’d always been an imaginary fan blowing my hair back, and I’d point to someone and wink as I walked by them in slow motion.
Sadly, reality hadn’t worked out that way. I’d graduated from nursing school during a year where the job market was flooded with new applications. As a mediocre human being with average grades and of average height, I’d wound up as a nurse at Paradise Springs, a premiere retirement community, or so it was described on the information packet.
“Everyone, calm down!” I said, raising my voice to be heard over the group.
There was no use in even trying. It was the start of October, and we’d just voted on what the theme would be for Paradise Springs’ Annual Halloween Party. And no, apparently “Halloween” isn’t a theme in and of itself. I’d had my head chewed off for suggesting such a ludicrous idea when I first started my job two years ago.
Last year’s theme was “Christmas in October”, and our Jewish residents had protested outside of the party with signs and tastefully done sugar cookies that involved decapitated Santa Clauses. For dramatic effect, they separated the heads and the bodies onto two plates. The year before that, it was a “Hawaiian” Halloween. They’d tried to stuff a live pig, but it escaped and ran around the community for two days before Animal Services had finally come in to catch it.
So you can imagine my surprise when the residents voted on a theme for this year’s party and it actually made sense.
This year we would do a Murder Mystery Halloween Party.
“How much does it even cost to hire one of those fancy party crews?” one of our residents asked. “You know, the ones who come in and set up the murder mystery for you.”
I glanced down at my clipboard where I’d circled the party’s total budget in red pen three times. I wouldn’t let them sweet-talk me into breaking it again this year. Last time it ended up coming out of my paycheck.
“Guys, we have $100 to spend on the entire party. That includes food, drinks, and decorations. I don’t think we can hire a party crew to come in and host the event.”
“What about having George write a script for us?” Anne asked from the front row. I smiled down at her, glad to have an ally during these monthly resident meetings.
“Oh please,” Sandy responded haughtily.
“What? I think he could do a great job,” Anne insisted, swiveling around in her chair to turn her green eyes on Sandy. The two did not get along very well, but I was team Anne all the way. You would have been too. She looked like a cooler version of Queen Elizabeth, and she was my best friend.
George, who had remained silent until that moment, stood up and straightened his black-framed glasses on the tip of his nose.
“I accept the role and will gladly write a murder mystery! The likes of which could grace the Broadway stage,” he said, holding his chin up high and exiting the room while we all watched him, confused as to why he was leaving considering the meeting wasn’t over yet.
“Are you kidding me? Him?” Sandy asked, pointing to the doorway that George had just exited.
“He’s worked in theater his whole life, and it’s not like we have any other options,” Anne protested.
I glanced around the room, toward the other silent residents, but no one seemed to want to volunteer to argue with Anne or Sandy.
“Okay,” I sighed. “It’s decided. We’ll have a murder mystery Halloween Party,” I said, setting the clipboard down on the table behind me. “I’ll talk to George about the script and make sure it’s ready in time.”
“Now, let’s talk about the food,” Sandy said, rubbing her hands together like she was planning something diabolical.
That was the point where I pretty much tuned out. It’s strange that nowhere in my nursing training had they discussed proper party planning techniques. Oh yeah, because they’d assumed I’d actually be a nurse. I mean, I did do some nursing duties, but when I first started at Paradise Springs, they’d been majorly understaffed. Management had asked me to help coordinate a few things, and I agreed without a second thought. As the months passed, and they continued to be understaffed, I fell even more into my “jack of all trades” role.
“No! No! I said Halloween Chic, do you think marshmallows made to look like spiders is chic, Mary Joe?” Sandy’s harsh words pulled me out of my daydream.
“Okay, alright.” I held my hands up in the air like an orchestra conductor. “Let’s settle down, everyone.”
Thirty minutes, one pair of missing dentures, and one hysterical Mary Joe later, I finally walked out of the meeting with Anne by my side.
“Boy, I tell you, that Sandy is a piece of work,” Anne said, taking her glasses off so that they hung limply from the lanyard around her neck.
“Yeah. Don’t worry about it, though. The party will be a hit, and George will make a good script,” I said as we rounded the corner toward Anne’s room.
“I hope so. My grandson will probably be attending the party,” she said, sliding her gaze to me from beneath her lashes. I knew what she was doing, and still, I was helpless to stop the blush that always crept onto my cheeks whenever she mentioned her grandson, Sawyer. A vision of his handsome appearance popped into my head before I could tamp it out.
“Yeah, well, I’ll probably have a date, so we can introduce them,” I said, flailing for a response and landing on one that had no basis in reality.
* * *
October 31st arrived much faster than I had hoped it would. My plan had been to transform into a cooler, sexier version of myself before the Halloween party so that I could impress Sawyer, but as I stared at the mirror inside the employee bathroom of Paradise Springs, I decided I hadn’t even come close.
My pale blonde hair was styled in a pixie cut, and my brown eyes were rimmed by lightly mascaraed lashes. I mostly looked like a grown-up version of Tinker Bell, which I knew from experience, was not every adult male’s fantasy. On a scale of one to Kim Kardashian, my curves and sex appeal fell at about a one.
I sighed and exited the bathroom, knowing I was already ten minutes late starting my rounds. I had a few residents who were assigned to me as patients. Most of them didn’t need constant supervision, but it was still policy that at the start of my nursing shift I was supposed to check-in with all of the residents on my watch.
First up was always Sandy. I made it a point to get her over with at the very beginning.
“Sandy, are you done getting ready for the Halloween party?” I asked, knocking gently on the cheap chipboard doors that dotted the hallways of Paradise Springs. I didn’t want to knock. Given the choice, I would have walked right on by Sandy’s door, but I had no choice.
Let me warn you. Sandy is the opposite of a fine wine. Instead of getting better with age, she’s only become crabbier. And don’t you dare pity her. She wasn’t like some of the patients here who were irritable because they were experiencing chronic pain or some other serious illness. No, Sandy was fit as a whistle and was the resident ringleader at Paradise Springs. She ruled that nursing home cafeteria with an iron fist, and she even scared me a little bit.
“Oh yes, I’m ready,” she sang with her shrill voice.
I wish I could go back in time and throw bleach on my eyes before opening that door, but alas, time travel hasn’t yet been invented. So instead, I opened the door to see Sandy standing in a head-to-toe black spandex jumpsuit that was only half zipped in the front.
You know who shouldn’t wear spandex? 80-year-old women.
“AHHHHhhhhhh.” I couldn’t stop the scream that erupted from me, but midway through I felt bad so I tried to turn it down a notch.
“I know! Have you seen a cat woman this sexy before?” she asked, staring at herself in the mirror.
I couldn’t answer that question because my eyes were trying to retract into my brain. She spun around in a circle for emphasis, and I just stood there, too shocked to comment.
“Sandy, are you going to zip it the rest of the way?” I asked, trying to sound gentle and not judgmental, but, I mean, her left boob was just hanging there, flapping in the wind. And while I see a lot of body parts in this job, usually they aren’t just out there for anyone to see.
She glanced down. “Damnit, the left one keeps popping out.”
Andddd, my life is now complete.
“Alright, well you tuck that back in there… and I’ll see… go… the party starts in thirty minutes!” I dashed out of that room like my life depended on it, not bothering to form a complete sentence prior to my departure.
I know what you’re thinking and, yes, my job as a nurse in a “retirement community” is pretty glamorous. What twenty-three-year-old wouldn’t want to spend their Halloween night supervising a bunch of crazy old people? I didn’t need friends or a boyfriend when I had these guys to keep me company.
I kept walking down the hallway in pursuit of my next resident, trying to scrape the image of Sandy’s boob out of my mind. Before I could turn the corner toward Anne’s room, I saw Gertie– one of Sandy’s side-kicks– walking straight toward me with a friend. She was a small woman, seemingly even tinier every time I saw her. Her back hunched over at a chirp angle, but she wore bright colored muumuus and always had her hair styled into cute, white curls.
“Oh Ruby, you look like a prostitute in that outfit,” Gertie hissed as she passed me in the hallway with her walker.
I glanced down at my navy blue scrubs and Nikes. “Gertie, these are my work clothes… I’m not even dressed up for Halloween.”
Gertie’s friend, who was walking beside her with a walker of her own, patted her on the back. “If she wants to dress up like a slutty nurse, let her. She’s young. These kids are so reckless these days.”
They kept walking off in a tizzy, shaking their heads at how deplorable I was dressed.
“I’m literally in my normal work scrubs!” I yelled after them, only then realizing that they couldn’t even hear me anymore.
I pressed my fingers against the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes, repeating the phrase “I love this job, I love this job,” over and over again in my mind.
This was going to be a long shift. I had actually been looking forward to a quiet night at home in my apartment. I was going to make some popcorn and talk myself into buying Halloween candy for kids, but then eat it all myself since no one trick-or-treats in an apartment complex. It would have been perfect.
Instead, I’d picked the short straw at the beginning of October and had landed Halloween duty. But, I’d come prepared this time. I had two years of Paradise Springs under my belt, which is why I had the following items inside the pockets of my scrubs:
– Band-aids
– a roll of butterscotch Lifesavers
– a pair of small latex gloves
– two condoms
– a small bottle of disinfectant
One couldn’t be too prepared during the Halloween shift at Paradise Springs. I was running through the possible outcomes of the night in my head when I knocked on Anne’s door. Anne was always my favorite stop during my rounds. I’d camp out in her room during my shifts, explaining that she needed some extra TLC. In reality, we would sit on her bed flipping through rag magazines and gossiping together.
When I knocked and entered her room that day, she was sitting at her small vanity getting ready for the party. I breathed a sigh of relief as I pushed through the door and closed it behind me. Her vanity was small and old, a relic from her house. It didn’t seem to belong in the sterile room when she’d first moved in, but we’d decorated her room for months, making it feel homey and comfortable. Now there were a series of framed photos that hung on the wall beside her vanity: her and her late husband, her and her grandchildren, and even one of her and me together.
“Hot mama alert!” I said as her gaze met mine in the mirror.
“I thought you said you were going to dress up,” she frowned.
I reached to grab the pair of ears out of the back pocket of my scrubs. The moment I positioned them on top of my short pixie cut, Anne smiled.
“There, much better. Those mouse ears really suit you,” she said, adding a bit of blush to her cheeks. If I had any say in how I aged, I hoped I would look like Anne. She was beautiful with emerald green eyes (just like her grandson), white hair that she always spun into artfully done up-dos, and just enough wrinkles to give her a wise appearance.
“Are you saying I’m mousy?” I joked, narrowing my eyes on her as I moved to take a seat on the end of her quilted bed.
She laughed. “No. You’re cute, like a little mouse.”
“Whatever you say,” I smiled. “What are you supposed to be anyway?”
I glanced down her royal blue dress that wrapped around her in tight folds. It was beautiful, but I couldn’t place it as any costume I’d seen before. A gold statement necklace wrapped around her neck and hung down her chest.
“I’m not dressed up as anything. I wasn’t sure what we were supposed to do since George will be giving us characters to play in the murder mystery. I thought it’d be too confusing if I was in costume as well.”
I nodded. “That’s a good point. Too bad Sandy is already dressed up as Catwoman.”
Anne’s mouth dropped open. “Is she really?”
“Yes, and Gertie called me a whore in the hallway.”
Anne started laughing then, and the skin around her eyes crinkled as her grin overtook her features. When she finally took a deep breath, I asked her a question.
“Hey Anne, is it really a good idea to do a murder mystery in a nursing home?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
I pressed my lips together as I tried to work out the precise way I should word the next sentence.
“It’s just that… some of you are older… not you, Anne, but you know.” I was flailing around like a fish on a hook.
She laughed and clapped her hands together. “You mean because one of us could actually die!?”
Well at least she thought I was a hoot. You see what I just did? “A hoot.” When you work with old people for two years, you start to adopt their language. I would have never said “hoot” before becoming best friends with Anne. Yes, I am friends with an eighty-two-year-old. But, let me tell you, she can kick my ass. They did a self-defense class one time at Paradise Springs right after I was hired. Apparently, there’d been a break-in and they wanted to make sure everyone knew some basic skills on how to defend themselves. (Seriously, who breaks into a retirement home? Apparently, the criminals didn’t take anything except for some chocolate pudding from the kitchen. And I’ll admit, if I no longer worked at Paradise Springs, I’d break in for that chocolate pudding, too.)
Anyway, yeah, Anne was my partner for the self-defense class. She was putting me in a choke-hold, and when I thought I was going to pass-out, I tried tapping out like the instructor had shown us. Anne wasn’t listening during that part, so she thought I was just encouraging her to strangle me harder. No, yeah, please keep going. I want to die at the hands of an eighty-two-year-old today.
And that’s the story of how Anne almost killed me.
After that, we’d become inseparable.
“Well, I for one, think it’d be hilarious if someone keeled over today. It would make the murder mystery feel real.”
I burst out in laughter, holding my hand over my mouth.
“Anne, if you’re killed,” I began in a mock serious tone, “I swear I will avenge your death and find your murderer.”
She laughed, and then turned around on her chair to face me.
“You’ll have Sawyer to help you solve the mystery. He’s supposed to be here any minute.”
My heart rate picked up at the mention of her grandson, but I tried to sound casual as I asked my next question.
“Oh, is Sawyer going to be here tonight?” I glanced down at my hands spinning circles on her hand-made quilt. I didn’t think I was fooling anyone, least of all, Anne. Even still, something kept me from admitting my serious crush on him.
“Yes. He promised me he’d stop by before he went to another Halloween party. I thought I had already mentioned this to you?”
She had, but I didn’t want to appear too obsessed with him. “Do you think he’s bringing a date?”
The edge of Anne’s mouth tipped up. “You know, I’m not sure. He broke up with that Lisa girl. Did I tell you that?”
My eyes practically bulged out of my head. “What?! No, you didn’t tell me that!”
She smiled. “Surprise.”
* * *
The first time I saw Sawyer, I’d only been working at Paradise Springs for two weeks and I had urine in my hair. Not my urine. No. I was going through rounds during my shift and making sure that everyone was doing okay. I’d just left Mr. Tennon’s room, where he’d thrown a fit about getting a sponge bath. He was one of the high maintenance residents, and I was still learning how to handle him (I’d learn six months later that if you enticed him with the promise of an episode of Baywatch, the man would do anything you wanted).
Anyway, I was helping Mr. Tennon take off his clothes and as I dipped down to pull his pants over his ankles– I felt it. Urine seeping into my hair and running down the side of my face. I tried my best to stay calm, it’s not like he meant to pee on me. I knew incontinence was something that came with the territory, but it was a low blow to my self-esteem either way.
Becoming a nurse seemed so much more heroic and adventurous when I was studying in school. I thought I’d be caring for gunshot victims and yelling things like “10 ccs stat!” and “We’re going to have to intubate!”
Instead, I was standing in Mr. Tennon’s bathroom with my head under the sink faucet, taking deep breaths and trying to calm my anger.
My hair was still wet and I was patting my face with some scratchy paper towels when I finally stepped out into the hallway to check on my next resident. But, the moment I shut his door behind me, I wished I’d just stayed under the urine stream.
Because he was right there. The man that I would pine after for the next two years:
Sawyer.
“Oh, sorry,” he said, gripping either side of my shoulders to steady me. I’d almost walked directly into him when I’d exited Mr. Tennon’s room.
His hands dropped back to his sides as I turned to take him in. He was tall, taller than me by a couple inches, so I had to tilt my head back to look up into his emerald green eyes. Those eyes were connected to a face that was friendly, open, and handsome. It wasn’t perfect in the traditional movie star sense, but it made me pause all the same. His brown hair was a little too long on top, and his thin layer of facial hair made him look older than he was.
“I… have to get urine out of my hair,” I stammered like a simpleton before staring at him for two more seconds and then turning to bound down the hallway.
After that first day, I chopped my long hair off into a pixie cut and wore a shower cap whenever I was undressing Mr. Tennon.
The second time I saw Sawyer, I was sitting in Anne’s room during my lunch break. We were sharing a chicken salad sandwich and watching daytime television when there was a knock at the door. Anne told the person to come in, and as the door opened and Sawyer walked in, my mind froze.
I hadn’t known he was at Paradise Springs for Anne the first time I bumped into him, so to suddenly glance up and see him standing in her doorway really threw me for a loop.
“Oh, Sawyer! I wasn’t expecting you so soon!” Anne pushed up off her bed and went to greet him as I sat in complete shock. Their hug gave me a quick second to take him in without them noticing, and boy, did I take him in. He was wearing black converse, jeans, and a soft-looking t-shirt that fit him well. He looked to be a little older than me, but it was hard to tell.
“Yeah, I was able to cut out from work early,” he said, dipping to kiss her cheek. It wasn’t until he pulled away that his gaze finally settled on me.
The normal reaction would have been to keep eye contact and smile or wave. Instead, I dropped my gaze to Anne’s quilt and ignored his presence all together.
Did he remember me as urine girl?
“You got a haircut,” he said, drawing my attention back up to him. He was smiling as he crossed his arms, not in a rude way, but in a relaxed, easy-going sort of way.
“Yes,” I answered meekly.
“You know Ruby, Sawyer?” Anne asked, glancing back and forth between us.
I pushed off the bed and straightened my scrubs.
“No, I ran into her a few weeks ago, but we didn’t get the chance to meet,” Sawyer explained. “She ran off too fast.”
At that fact, Anne turned toward me with a look like she was about to reprimand me.
I squirmed in my shoes. “That was the day that Mr. Tennon had an accident on me, so I was in a rush,” I explained, knowing she’d recall that sordid tale.
Her brows nearly shot up to meet her hairline and her laughter rang out around the room. “What an interesting first encounter,” she said between laughs.
Interesting didn’t even begin to cover it.
“Well, I have to get back to work,” I said quickly, brushing past them and out of the door before anyone could continue the embarrassing conversation.
The third time Sawyer came to visit Anne, I finally got the chance to talk to him. I was down in the kitchen fixing a meal to bring up to Sandy, who didn’t “take her lunch in the dining halls” like everyone else. I was preparing her plate with all the specific things she’d requested (“I like a little bit of mustard on my sandwich, but not too much, and make sure the mustard is touching the turkey and not the cheese or I won’t be able to eat it”). Sawyer had come into the cafeteria to get some frozen yogurt for him and Anne.
I saw him out of my periphery, but I didn’t work up the courage to look at him.
“Ruby?” he asked with a confident half-smile.
I peered up at him as if shocked to see him. “Oh, hello!” I said, my voice an octave higher than it usually was.
He smiled wider. “Hi, I’m Sawyer, Anne’s grandson,” he reminded me.
He even reached his hand out to shake mine, that’s how polite and adorable he was. I was completely out of my element.
“Oh, yeah, I remember,” I said, reaching out to shake his hand and cringing when I saw a bit of mustard on my thumb. I pulled back just before our hands touched. “Mustard,” I said, reaching for a napkin and wiping it away.
He laughed as I held my hand out again.
“Want to try it one more time?” I asked, mostly because I just really wanted to touch him.
We shook hands, bouncing them up and down for what felt like five minutes before either one of us thought to pull away.
“I was going to tell you that I liked your new haircut the other day, but you ran off too quick,” he said as he put his hands in his back pockets.
“What – me? This – hair?” I could apparently say words, but stringing them into a coherent sentence was another thing all together.
Sawyer laughed and glanced down to his feet before turning back to the frozen yogurt machine.
“Well, I better go get some yogurt for my grandma or she’ll kill me.”
I cleared my throat and turned back to Sandy’s sandwich. “Okay, I’ll see ya.”
He gave me one more smile before leaving.
And that’s how it went for the whole first year that I knew him. He’d visit Anne at least once a week, usually on Thursdays. So for one year, every Thursday, I put on a little bit more mascara and made sure I didn’t have anything embarrassing in my teeth in the hopes of running into him. I’d try to bring him up to Anne as casually as possible and try to plans subjects we could talk about if he came to visit so that I wouldn’t look like a blubbering idiot.
Then one year after I first met him in the hallway, Anne broke the news to me that he had a girlfriend and my school-girl crush started to crack. I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter that he had a girlfriend since we hardly knew each other. But most days I’d wander through my shift at work and think about what it would be like if he suddenly appeared in front of me, single and ready to mingle.
It wasn’t easy to push him out of my mine, and I hated to admit that my crush had grown even more in the last year, but I’d kept it to myself.
It was hard to face him when he came to visit Anne. Every time I saw him, I feared his girlfriend would be by his side, but she never was. The whole time they dated, he never brought her to Paradise Springs.
But apparently now he was SINGLE again, and Anne decided to break that news to me three seconds before his arrival for the Halloween party.
Just great. I had no planned conversations, I hadn’t practiced talking to myself in the mirror in months, and I could have at least stashed my mouse ears under Anne’s bed.
I was going to have to kick some grandma ass.
Or yeah, maybe she’d kick my ass again. I wouldn’t test her.
* * *
I stood at the top of a ladder trying to hang balloons from the ceiling in the dining hall. The party was due to start in an hour, but no one had signed up for the decoration committee, which had left me as the only back-up available. I’d already blown up two dozen balloons and was feeling the effects of depleting all of my oxygen stores, but the old people needed balloons, because y’know maybe this would be their last Halloween and who was I to stand in the way of their death and one last night of geriatric partying.
My head felt woozy, and I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to catch my bearings.
“Sweetie, you don’t look so good up there,” Anne called as she held the ladder for me. I was a good ten feet off the ground, and the longer I hovered in the air, the more I realized that I should have blown the balloons up on the ground.
“I’m fine, I just feel lightheaded,” I assured her as I tied off the balloon and reached up on my tiptoes to tape it to the ceiling. You know what looks like crap? Balloons stuck to the ceiling in random spots. Once again, I thought of how strange it was that my nursing curriculum had failed to teach me party decorating considering it made up 50 % of my job. The other 50 % consisted of urine. So much urine.
“Grandma, they have you on ladder duty?” A deep voice asked from a few feet behind me. I twisted around with enough force to cause the ladder to twist out of Anne’s grip.
“Ahhhhhhhhh,” I screamed as I tried to grab onto anything around me, but I was only coming up with empty air. My life was flashing before my eyes as that ladder slowly toppled toward the ground.
“Byyyyeeee Annneeeeee,” I said in what felt like slow motion speech, just as I fell into strong arms.
“Whoa,” Sawyer said as he steadied the two of us. “Are you okay?”
AM I OKAY?!
I am in the arms of my lover. My unknowing lover. I’ve never been more okay.
“I fell,” I said lamely.
A smile broke out across his face, and I caught an up close view of straight, white teeth. “You did, and then I caught you.”
I nodded, connecting the dots.
“You’re really strong,” I pointed out, appreciating his physique. “Like the hulk.”
He laughed and then slowly set me back onto my own two feet. If I had thought faster, I would have feigned injury to stay in his arms. Oh weird, my leg just fell off, so why don’t you just carry me around all day? That would have worked like a charm.
“Sawyer! You made it!” Anne sang as she swooped in and gave him a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. I took the moment to take him in, appreciating his soccer jersey and jeans.
“Hey grandma,” he said before meeting my eye. “Hey Ruby. Cute ears.”
I instinctively reached up to feel the fuzzy, gray mouse ears. I’d forgotten I still had them on.
“Oh hi – thanks,” I said.
“What’s with the jersey?” Anne asked, eyeing his choice of clothing with an air of judgment.
Sawyer reached down to hold the loose material between his fingers. “It’s the only thing I had at my apartment that would work as a costume.”
“So – you’re a soccer player?” she asked, trying to connect the pieces.
He shrugged. “I guess. This is Liam Wilder’s jersey. He’s a forward for the LA Stars.”
Anne narrowed her eyes on him. “That doesn’t count as a costume!”
“I think it does,” I protested. The words were out before I could stop them. Anne shifted her gaze to me and raised her brow, shocked that I actually contributed to the conversation. Sawyer gave me a wide grin.
“There you have it. You’ve been outvoted, Grams,” he said, patting her shoulder.
It was always about this time in my encounters with Sawyer that I would excuse myself to get back to work, so I took a slow step backward, hoping Anne wouldn’t notice.
“No. No, don’t even think about,” Anne said, holding up her hand.
“What? I have to get back to my shift.”
“Bullshit.”
Sawyer’s eyebrows shot up. “Grandma! Let her get back to work.”
Anne shook her head, staring at me with narrowed eyes. “If Sawyer hadn’t just walked in here, you would have stayed and continued to decorate with me for another thirty minutes. You always just skiddadle as soon as he arrives.”
My mouth fell open in shock. No she did not just call me out.
“Grandma,” Sawyer warned again.
I couldn’t even look his way at that point because the old ho-bag had essentially just spilled all the beans for me.
