One (Bar Dance) Read Online Free Page B

importantly his family. Now we move on.” I shook his arms with the ‘we’. “His family has had to cope with waiting for the loss. Now they can try to heal. His doctors and nurses, including me, can go on to help who we can.”
    Rand put his hands against my neck and never got a chance to speak. Dakota’s parents walked out the door of his room. They were shattered. I saw it immediately but I dared not move. They saw me and stopped. I spoke as I separated   myself from Rand. “Kim, Jim.” That is all that I got out.
    “You were his favorite. He talked about you when you weren’t there.” Jim said and cleared his throat. Twice.
    “The song that you sang, the last one.” Kim looked at me with a look that was more than pleading, “We are having a memorial not a burial. He wanted to be cremated. Will you come and sing that, for us. For Dakota?”
    I always had a pad of paper and a pen in my pocket. I wrote my cell number and my e-mail down. “I’ll be there. I would be honored to be there.” I grabbed Kim’s hand. “I have a friend that plays the guitar. I’ll try to get her there too.”
    Jim engulfed me in a hug and let m e go. Kim took both my hand before she did the same thing. After they let me go Rand took my hand in his.
    I spoke directly to Dakota’s parents. “I know that the doctor is in with him. I would like to get you some names of grief counselors. They really can help.”
    Kim’s breath hitched. “We have been seeing one for a few months.” She looked to Jim. “We aren’t okay now but we will be.”
    They held each other then turned back towards Dakota’s room. I nodded and let Rand lead me down the hall to my locker.
    “So.” Rand started when I walked out of the changing room, “Food, clothes, dance, sex. Let’s go.”
    I stared at him and started giggling.
    “Woman.” He said to me.
    I gigged harder. Then I laughed. “Food first. Sex last. Go, go, go!” I gave a shooing motion with my hands.
    Then we left to go to get food, clothes, dance and sex.
    What more could a girl ask for?

 
    Chapter Four
     
    I don’t know why it made me uncomfortable to let Rand in my home. Sam had insisted that I move here. She had told me that the ‘Asshole Toad’ wasn’t going to find me here.
    Maybe I was leery because it really wasn’t mine. Probably because I felt that it was but I had never had a man inside before. I did let Rand pick me up there after I had changed clothes. I met him out front not going inside. He had a SUV. An older Ford Explorer. Not as old as mine. My dad, Sean, had bought mine for me when I turned sixteen just weeks before he moved out and divorced my mom, Mary.
    Mom had never remarried but she had a companion, Shawn that moved in two years after the divorce. Weeks after I graduated from high school.
    My dad remarried almost as soon as the ink was dry on the paperwork from my mom to his dental hygienist, Lisa that he had been having an affair with for a year.
    Surprise, surprise , to her, when five years later he did the same thing.
    I actually like his third wife, Gloria. Glory for short. Well maybe not her, but I adore her three kids. Shyanne, Shelby and Austin. Eleven, fourteen and seventeen respectively. I know them. I even spend a little time with all of them. Not as much as I should but life does get in the way sometimes.
    Glory was smarter than the previous two wives and didn’t sleep with my father until the ink was dry on his second divorce. She also kept working in his office as his hygienist. When she wasn’t cleaning teeth she filed papers, answered phones, kept track of patients and my dad. Mostly just keeping tabs on the feel of the office. She also wouldn’t sign a pre-nuptial agreement. If he screwed around on her she was taking him to the cleaners. Her words, not mine. She made no bones about that. Got to admire a woman like that. And I did.
    I walked to Rand’s car, climbed in, buckled up while apprising the interior of his car. “Nicer than