Read Online Rest in Pieces by Katie Graykowski - Free Book Online Page B

for using prepositions at the end of sentences. I wasn’t sure what a real life drug lord would do if I didn’t eat his croissants—chop off my head, draw and quarter me, force me to sing show tunes? They were equally bad.
    I stuffed half the croissant in my mouth, which was impressive because Daman Rodriguez liked his croissants almost as big as he liked his houses. I chewed and chewed half of the world’s largest croissant until I was finally able to swallow it. I shoved the other half in my mouth and chewed and chewed. It finally went down, too. My eyes were watering and I was breathing heavy. I didn’t know that eating could be considered aerobic exercise.
    I glanced at Monica. She didn’t seem to be angry at not being Daman’s center of attention; in fact, she’d pressed her lips together trying not to laugh.
    “Nicely done.” Daman grinned. “I like a woman who eats.”
    “I didn’t think you were going to make it, but you pulled through in the end.” Monica slapped me on the back and then took the other croissant and nibbled it. “Impressive.”
    Monica might have called dibs but she wasn’t holding that against me.
    “Shall we head to the gun range?” Daman’s hand went to the small of my back again. There he was with the over solicitousness. Again, not that I didn’t like it, but it was weird.
    First Ben and now Daman? Was my body emitting some sort of I’m–single–and–slutty sex hormones? I started to discreetly sniff my armpit, but there was no way to discreetly sniff my armpit, so I just kept walking. We traveled through a huge living room with five story tall ceilings and no less than ten brown leather sofas in groups of two. I had no idea where someone would get ten matching sofas, or why they would want that many, but here they were. I don’t think I own ten matching anything, including socks.
    We walked down a short hallway and arrived at a bank of three elevators….because I guess one wasn’t enough? If he was single and lived alone, why did he need three elevators? Riding all three at the same time must have been problematic…and time consuming.
    We took elevator one—they weren’t numbered or anything—this was just the first elevator on the right, down two floors to the subbasement.
    Having lived in Texas my whole life, I’d never been in a home basement, much less, a subbasement. Five stories above the ground wasn’t enough? He needed a couple of floors underground? This house made Tony Stark look like a pauper.
    We walked passed a set of double glass doors with ‘Cinema’ spelled out in neon above the doors and took the second door on the left.
    “This is my indoor pistol range. I don’t think you ladies are ready for the rifle range.” He smiled down at me like I was supposed to say something.
    “Okay.” I shrugged.
    “I think we should keep it small caliber today. Nothing over a nine millimeter. I think a forty–five is too much for them to handle. What do you think?” Haley sounded like she was picking out flowers to plant in her front yard. Yes, let’s plant the forty–five calibers in between the lantana and the mountain laurel.
    “Yep, we don’t know her at all.” Monica shook her head.
    I was beginning to see Monica’s point. I thought that I knew Haley, but clearly there were aspects of her life that she kept to herself.
    I felt the hand at my back drop. I missed the warmth.
    He opened the door for me and held it open for Monica and Haley. The room was a long rectangular hall–type thing lined on all four walls with pointy, gray foam that reminded me of egg cartons. Way at the back was a paper target of a white silhouette outlined in black clipped to a metal line that ran about five feet above our heads. Daman pushed a red button on the wall next to a tall podium with shelves that held other targets. The white silhouette whizzed toward us and stopped about ten feet away.
    “The range is fifty meters, but we’re going to start closer than that