I was… excited for this.
Like, super-duper excited.
But then I felt bad because Murphy had started this corner store because he’d been bored. And without the corner store, how would he have any entertainment throughout the day?
Zach was right. Neither Murphy nor I was hurting for money. Murphy had won the lottery. To the extent that neither one of us would ever have to work another day in our lives. Hiring another person to work would be fine, but I highly doubted that they would want to watch Murphy. And I highly doubted Murphy would want anyone to watch him. He barely tolerated me.
Before I could argue, though, and tell him none of that would work, he continued without missing a beat.
“As for your car.” He switched sides from his right side to his left. “I’d buy the one car that he’s always wanted. I’d find the perfect one, paint it exactly like he always wanted to paint it, and then drive it around just to piss him off.”
I grinned then. “I would, but I have no clue how to find cars like that.”
“What is it?” he asked.
“In college, my dad had a brand new Chevy Chevelle. It was one of like ten, I think. Mint condition. Cherry red with white racing stripes. He loved that car, but he sold it so that he could pay for college.” I paused. “That’s the car that he’s always wanted back but hasn’t been able to find one like it.”
His head tilted slightly to the left.
“1970?” he asked curiously.
I thought about that. “I think so. But not really sure, to be honest. I’d have to ask Murphy.”
He grinned then. “Why do you call him Murphy?”
“Murphy is too cool to be called ‘Papap,’” I told him. “Although, I do call him Papap sometimes.”
He put both of his thighs together, then did a rather impressive stretch forward until his chest touched both of his thighs. The man was incredibly bendy.
“Let me see what I can do on the car,” he said softly. “For now, I’ll give you a lift home. You’re right next to me, if you can wait about twenty more minutes for me to run three really quick miles.”
I blinked at him. “You live what?”
“I’m right next to you.” He stood up and stretched his arms up high above his head. “I live literally across the street from you. Haven’t you ever noticed?” he asked.
If I’d noticed, I’d be stalking him way better than I currently was.
“No,” I told him honestly. “I’m up at the store at five in the morning to get breakfast started and make sure Murphy is moving and okay. Then I’m the only one up there until I close at some point for lunch. From there, I go home at about two in the afternoon since that’s the slowest point in the day and Murphy can handle it on his own for two hours before he closes. Then I go to the grocery store, buy fresh fruit, and go home and bake for the pies and pastries I have at the store for the next morning.”
He looked at me curiously. “When do you have time for yourself?”
I laughed then. “Time for myself? What’s that?”
Instead of answering or laughing at my joke, he shook his head, then walked to the finish line at the track and started to run.
I watched him make his first two laps and contemplated my life.
He’d hit me with a few things today that I really needed to think about. Those were also on top of the few things he’d hit me with last week that I hadn’t stopped thinking about.
What was it with this man and his truth bombs?
I hadn’t faced these things in years.
I hadn’t considered what all I’d been hiding from all these years.
Honestly, maybe I was just too nice of a person. Maybe I was…
“Holy hell,” a woman said from beside me. “Who is he?”
I looked over to find a woman that was vaguely familiar looking at me with a grin on her face.
Her eyes, though, kept straying toward the man that was running around the track.
She was a little on the shorter side, five-foot-three or so, and her hair was in a high messy bun on top of her head. Curly ringlets of a brownish auburn fell out of the bun and tickled her shoulder.
And her eyes were a beautiful green that reminded me a lot of Zach’s.
Which sucked because if anything he’d shown me in the last week, it was that he was very not interested in me, so I shouldn’t be comparing anyone’s eyes to his.
Because that would mean that I paid way too much attention to him.
And I shouldn’t.
Before I could answer her question, though, another woman arrived at the track.
She had a sheet of long black hair that fell down to her waist. A very curvy waist that showed off an incredible ass that I would kill for.