The next morning, Del woke up to the rumble of the school bus passing by his house. With his bedroom being toward the front yard, the bus woke him up more often than not, if he’d stayed up too late.
It still felt weird, waking up to it, because it felt like sleeping in big time. Working in kitchens and then running one had had him on crazy schedules long enough that waking up in regular person time was still a luxury.
He’d gotten less sleep than he normally did these days after dropping off the O’Dwyers. It had taken him ten months to get to a steady six hours-ish of sleep every night, and having less than that felt like an odd, unwelcome jolt to his system.
He got up and staggered into the bathroom, and as usual, by the time he got to the kitchen he was relatively awake.
He used his F
