Page 17 of Your Every Wish
Emma shakes her head and pushes the cart toward the deli aisle. “How do you feel about bacon?”
“Bacon?” My half sister is the queen of the non sequitur.
“I’m assuming you’re not a vegan.” She eyes my carton of Häagen-Dazs. “So, bacon? Do you eat it?”
“Yes, I eat bacon.”
“Well, at least we have that in common.”
Bacon and the same useless sperm donor.
We check out of the store and head back to Cedar Pines. There are hardly any cars on the road, just a few pickup trucks that pull ahead of me in the passing lane. Admittedly, the drive is pretty. Lots of tall pine trees flanking the highway and everything is greener here than it is in Nevada. The best part is that it’s far away from Caesars and the tentacles of Brock Sterling, who has threatened to make my life a living hell if I don’t make good on returning his money.
“I hope you don’t mind, but my boyfriend may be coming Saturday,” Emma says.
“No.” Though I do. The place is tight with the two of us. Add a third and it’ll be stifling. “How does that work with him coming? Does he stay the whole weekend?”Kill me now.
“I don’t know because this’ll be the first time since I moved up here. But I assume so. He’s a trader and works in the financial district during the week. So, all we have are weekends.”
Somehow, I don’t see her with a buttoned-up financial type. She strikes me more as the kind who goes for angsty guys with man buns who are either working on their screenplays or novels. Just goes to show how little I know about my half sister.
“Just as long as it doesn’t get weird,” I say. “It’s a small place.”
“Small? It’s the largest home I’ve ever lived in. Granted, it’s a little worse for wear. But I already have ideas of how to make it cute.”
“Don’t get too attached.” I hang a hard right into the trailer park and take the rutted road to our unit.
We start unloading our packages when Emma stops in her tracks. “Do you see what I see?”
“What?”
“Look at the living room window. Is it my imagination or has it been fixed?”
I walk closer, to take a better look. “Not your imagination.” I touch what appears to be a brand-new vinyl casement window. The one with the broken glass is gone. “Oh my God, do you think he heard us?”
“Who?”
“The cute, weird guy. The one who was loitering earlier.”
“I don’t see how he could’ve. We were in the car with the windows closed. Should I go ask him?”
“Just wait until we see him again. For all we know he’s a stalker and used the excuse of installing a new window to get inside and sniff our panties.”
“Kennedy! That’s gross. He probably saw the broken window and, just like you, noted that it would be getting cold soon. I don’t think anyone has lived in this trailer for months. Maybe years. It was a super-kind gesture.”
“That’s the thing: People aren’t usually kind unless there’s something in it for them.”
“Really?” Emma shakes her head and unlocks the door. “That’s sad on more levels than I can count.”
“But it’s true.”
In the fading sunlight, the trailer looks even worse than it did a couple of hours ago. The lime shag carpet in the living room is the stuff you’d find in a time capsule. And the dark paneling on all the walls makes the space feel like a cave. I’d say the view is nice—we can see the creek from the windows—but the birds are so loud they’re giving me a headache.
The furniture is the same era as the carpet—more ’70s than midcentury—and appears to be well used. I wouldn’t be surprised to find varmints living in the couch. Or lice.
The kitchen isn’t much better. I can’t tell if the linoleum floors are speckled or dirty. And the electric stove is the old kind with coil burners and big knobs in a lovely copper-tone color that matches the Formica countertops.
“Why are you putting your Pop-Tarts in the fridge?” Emma laughs. “You know they have a shelf life of, like, a thousand years.”
