Miss Rose went for blankets and a pillow as I laid Amanda down on her couch, before I knew it, Amanda kissed me! I enjoyed the three seconds before I ...eft. Later that day, the doorbell rang, I opened the door to see Amanda, she came in. "Where's your mom?" I asked, she responded, "she got called into work" then she added, "I wanted to thank you for being there for me while dipshit cheated. How can I repay you?" A few thoughts raced through my head, plus the replay of the kiss, but I replied,. "I didn't answer."Jesus Christ!"He looked at me and stuck out his hand, "I'll work Mr --." Terry," I said and took his hand. "Come on we'll get you cleaned up a bit."The women gasped when they saw him, Agnes cackled and asked him if he'd been hit by a bus.I'll give him his due though, he took it well, I'd done it in front of the entire workforce, and he still had to go and face them.They cleaned him up, and I told him to take the rest of the day off."I can't Terry," he said. "We need to finish. On top of that, our produce shipments were again being harassed. These attacks were not on the scale of those a few years ago, but the ambushes were enough that we felt the need to reinstitute the sweeping maneuver we had used before. Arturo and Julio resumed leading the guards as they protected the produce wagons. So far, none of the York employees had been hurt, but we were all frightened at the potential injury or death of someone.All of the attacks had been with just two or three attackers,. I couldn't pay for our few purchases fast enough and we just about ran from the store all the way home. I cried for hours. My life was a failure, and my wife had been right to want to leave me all along. My 'feast' for the only person in the world that I cared about, and who cared about me was to be a few tired scraps of produce, a stale hunk of bread and a tiny bird that was probably 90% bone by weight, and I was already plotting how to boil the scrawny carcass to become stock for our soup.