All It Takes Read Online Free PDF

here. Can’t this girl see that?
    “Look,” she says, “I get this is kinda awkward, but I heard you talking to the waitress inside.” She nods toward the diner. My most recent failure. Fan-fucking-tastic.
    “Yeah,” I say, and reach into my pocket for my lighter. I light my cigarette and take a drag, and try to resist the urge to fiddle with the lighter. Playing with a flame in a public place probably isn’t going to endear me to the hot chick who clearly knows enough of my history to be wary of me. No wonder she’d looked so freaked out when I knocked on her window. Must have scared the life out of her. Shit.
    “Listen, your history is your business. Not mine. I’m just wondering if you’d be willing to help me out with something.”
    Ah, shit. She’s one of those girls. The ones that want to walk on the wild side without ever getting their own hands dirty. Crap.
    “I’m not into that shit anymore,” I tell her. “I’m clean now. Five years.”
    Her eyes widen and her mouth drops open a little. A beat passes, and I wonder if I should just sprint to my car. It couldn’t be any more uncomfortable than what I’m dealing with right now. I glance over my shoulder and . . . yep. The blonde waitress I asked about a job is watching us from the front window of the diner. She’s probably getting ready to call the cops if I hang around Star much longer. I need to get out of here.
    “That’s not what I meant!” Star yells, and I shuffle to a stop before I even realize I’ve moved. I’m halfway to my car. Well, it looks like the old fight-or-flight instincts are still intact. That’s something. “Look,” she says. “My mother just died and I’m cleaning out her house. But I can’t do it by myself. I need help, and I can’t afford to hire professionals. I can’t pay much, but I just thought . . . ”
    I look back at her, and I’m surprised to see that she looks just as freaked out as I feel. But for once, her nerves don’t seem to be caused by me. Something else is bothering the crap out of her, and I kind of want to throw my arms up in victory that it isn’t me. I’m a bastard.
    “Not to sound ungrateful . . . ” I say, turning and taking a step back toward her car. I take another drag from my cigarette. I’m going to have to start rationing the damn things soon. Maybe quit altogether. Mom would like that, if she bothered to give a shit. She’d been after me to quit since I was a teenager. “But why me?”
    Star’s teeth worry at her lower lip, which only makes it look plumper and
fuck
. Not the time. Then she sighed and let her head flop back against the headrest. “My mother was a hoarder,” she says, her voice so quiet I can barely hear her over the road noise and the jangling of the bells over the diner door as an old man and his grandson exit. The old man shoots me a bitter look when they walk by, and he keeps the kid on the other side of him, shielding him with his body. Yeah, like I’m going to attack a kid and an old man. In broad daylight. Jesus, people in this town are even more fucked up than they were five years ago.
    Then Star’s words niggle at something in the back of my mind. “A hoarder,” I say. “Like those crazy people on that sho—”
    “Yes,” she snaps before I can get into all the weird crap I’m imagining, like layers upon layers of dead animals crushed under broken lamps and half-full bags of cat food. Then she sighs again, and lets go of the steering wheel she’d been holding in a death grip to press the heels of her hands into her eyes. When her hands drop back down, I can see that
this
is what’s bothering her. And it’s bothering her enough to ask me for help, a guy she knows just got out of prison.
    Fuck. And
I
thought I had problems.
    I’m still weighing it in my mind—the desire to eat and maybe one day having an actual roof over my head versus digging through a garbage dump—but my mouth is already moving and words are escaping without my