Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 70485 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70485 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Sometimes, I still couldn’t believe I’d helped create this little person. Christ—even when he drooled on my damn face. I groaned and laughed and wiped at my cheek. Which he found hilarious.
Since the day he was born, my mom had demanded weekly updates, and it’d led to another kind of story time. She’d started opening old photo albums and loved to tell me how Colin was just like me. She’d compared baby pictures too. Sure, the resemblance was there, but he took after Nikki as well. Colin’s eyes were slowly taking her green shade, and the temper sure as fuck didn’t come from me.
Since I didn’t know Nikki’s natural hair color, I had nothing to go on there. Colin’s messy little mop was almost as dark as mine.
At the sound of keys turning in the lock, I tilted my head toward the door and spotted Roe coming through with his arms full of…I didn’t even know. Five big boxes.
“Baaa-wow-bam! Uck!” Colin yelled.
“Yeah, it’s Uncle Roe.”
“Hey!” Roe smiled and kicked the door shut.
I sat up, and Colin tumbled down my front before he began his speedy crawl toward Roe.
“What the hell is all that?” I asked.
“A good fuckin’ bargain is what this is,” he said proudly. “A table and four chairs for the balcony—they were half off because it was some display item. Let’s assemble them before dinner. Is your grandma here yet?”
I nodded and got to my feet. “She’s restin’.” I picked up the pace when Colin blocked Roe’s path, and I threw my boy over my shoulder. A table and four chairs, huh? We’d talked about buying a grill for the balcony, but this made more sense as a first step. Roe would undoubtedly collect brownie points with my grandmother too, because my plan had been for us to either go out or sit on the couch.
In my defense, it was a big couch.
*
All right, it was a good purchase.
I could suddenly see myself spending many late nights out here on the balcony with Roe and Colin. The noise from the courtyard was nothing in comparison to the traffic and food trucks on the outside of the building; now we were just one of the handful of residents having dinner with friends and family. A couple kids were in the pool while their parents used the barbecue area down there, and someone’s cat was wailing in an open window.
I grabbed another quesadilla from one of the food containers and leaned back again. Colin was asleep on my chest—a bit early, but it was fine. He usually slept through the night anyway.
I didn’t say much, too content to watch Roe and Grandma across from me. Safe to say, Roe was a crowd-pleaser. Grandma had already insisted he call her Grandma Josephine.
I was just so fucking content, I couldn’t find the right word for it.
“In that case, I’ve seen all the episodes,” Grandma summarized. “My favorite was when y’all went to North Carolina, of course. I was born there, as you know. It’s more than the Outer Banks.”
I smiled. That’d been a fun episode. I’d obviously given her a shout-out, because it was her advice we’d taken on where to go. Which had sort of become the secondary concept of The Hundred-Dollar Nomads. We ventured off the beaten paths and showed hidden gems often missed by tourists. Big Sur had obviously been our exception.
“Way more,” Roe agreed, reaching for the nachos. “That was a good trip. Even if Jake doesn’t remember much.”
I chuckled. “Can you blame me?”
“Unfortunately, not one bit.” He winked. He turned to Grandma next. “Your grandson is a damn wizard behind the camera, but I need him in front of it too.”
Heh. I was working on it. A lot had changed. Becoming some sort of actor would have to be dealt with in baby steps. At most, I was a decent sidekick and made frequent appearances with minimal interaction.
Last year had been too much of a whirlwind. Just a couple weeks after Nikki had told me she was pregnant, Roe’s network connection had come through. Our pilot had been picked up, and we’d been contracted for six episodes. Between ultrasounds and holding Nikki’s hair when she’d vomited, Roe and I’d had to fly across the country on a tiny budget to put together our show in a mad rush.
Getting that confirmation—hearing those words that someone had picked up our pilot—wasn’t all sunshine and roses. That deal didn’t automatically mean a network wanted to invest a lot of money in you. But we’d fucking shown them, and now we were in preproduction for season two. Twelve episodes. A slightly bigger budget. More support.
“I did notice you have wonderful chemistry on the show,” Grandma said with a thoughtful nod. “Viewers like that, darlin’. That’s entertainment.”
“Exactly. She gets it.” Roe was a fan of Grandma. “We got our highest ratings when Jake and I joked around.”