He takes my mouth with his, a hand grazing my throat like a warm, rough necklace.
"Touch me," he breathes onto my lips.
My hands slip under his shirt, over his abdomen, his muscles tight and warm against my fingertips. I touch the places on him I'...
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Monday, 10:12 AM
My uncle has no decorum.
"Good morning!" Pat says, opening my door with a large tin tray. I sit up in a grog, brushing my hair from my puffy eyes to see properly. As he walks to my bed, he sets the tray between us and sits before me. On it, two glasses of orange juice, two pieces of toast with cinnamon sugar, and a grilled cheese sandwich cut in half diagonally.
"Feeding me like I'm gearing up to run a marathon, huh? Thought I was on the pudgy side," I drawl, rubbing sleep from my eyes. I'm trying to pretend that comment didn't hurt. But it did.
Only a smidge, though.
Pat points to the glasses. "Orange juice is made from fruit."
I can't help my groggy smile, but as I mark his blue work shirt, I frown. "You went to work after the festival? Uncle Pat..."
"Veena kept me supplied with coffee and bran muffins. We heard about the accident with the fireworks. Is Greyson all right?"
I nibble on the toast, trying not to imagine Greyson as a stuntman gone wrong. "Yeah, patched up by the local heroes. Could've used Nurse Raveena's magic hands though."
"She wanted to drive outside town to see the display in the dark. I'm sorry we weren't there."
I glance down at the dark grey sweatshirt on my frame. "We figured it out."
"You all right today, sweetheart?" Pat asks, scanning my face, likely swollen from sleep and lined with fabric marks.
"Yep, just not ready to be a person yet," I admit, sinking my teeth into the grilled cheese and letting the comfort of melted cheese do its magic.
My uncle has no decorum, but he makes a mean grilled cheese.
We sit, eat, drink, and half-heartedly joke about how unhealthy our food is until I finally feel awake. My uncle, on the other hand, has a hard time keeping his eyes open. His face is weary, giving way to bluish-sagging skin under his eyes.
His pension will come soon. He'll have the retirement he deserves one day. He'll meet someone with a kind heart like his own and set up the reading room with two chairs instead of one. They could drink tea together.
"How was your shift last night?" I ask. "Other than the muffins and coffee."
"Always something to clean. But there was an accident early this morning. A drunk driver hit a little boy on a bicycle. The state he was in..."
My hand goes to his shoulder, and he covers it with his own, squeezing it.
"Sometimes I don't know how much longer I'll be able to do this job. It's hard on the old joints." Pat's face tilts into a sad smile.
We both know what he means—it's his heart that takes the pain. To work at a place where people come and go, and sometimes stay until their last breath. The place where he watched his son come into the world and his wife leave on the same day. Lynn suffered uncontrolled bleeding and didn't make it when she birthed their son, Henry.
