“You’re too fucking kind. Now here,” Bear said, reaching down into a saddle bag that was right outside the door. “This is for you,” he tossed me an extra deep shirt box.
“What the fuck is this?” I asked, following him outside onto the front porch.
“Consider it a Preppy starter kit,” Bear said.
I set it down on the back of the railing and opened it up to find several shirts, suspenders, and bow tie sets. I closed the lid and set it aside. “Thanks, man.”
“When you’re ready,” Bear said, pointing to the box. “Just for when you’re ready.” For all the shit I gave him Bear always had an uncanny way of understanding me and knowing when not to push.
I nodded.
“Now look under the clothes,” he said the cigarette dangling from his bottom lip.
I cast him a ‘what the fuck are you up to’ look and opened the box back up. I felt around under the clothes at the bottom of the box. I pulled out a carton of cigarettes, a plastic bag with several already rolled joints, and a box of magnum sized condoms.
“Again, for when you’re ready,” Bear said, this time with a sly smile. He handed me two more boxes, that had been sitting next to his saddle bag on the deck, the smaller one on top contained smart phone and the larger one on the bottom a laptop. The boxes looked new, but the plastic wrapping had been removed.
“Thanks man.” I fished out a joint from the baggie and rolling it under my nose, inhaling deeply. “God I missed that smell.”
“Well, the weed and smokes are from me and King. Ti and Ray picked out the clothes. Ti even went as far as taking the laptop to the geek guy at the tech store and had him bookmark all sorts of weird porn sites for you. I looked at some of them, made my skin crawl so I think you’ll dig it.”
Fuck, I was kind of a dick to her...
“I met your girl the other day, she seems...interesting,” I said. Bear smiled. “She told me she was the one who pulled the trigger on...” I couldn’t bring myself to say his name. “That true?”
Bear nodded. “Yeah, she saved my fucking life, too. I’ll tell you this, you don’t know what love really is until you see your girl wipe your evil old man from the face of the fucking earth for you.”
“Fuck, I think I kind of love her too.” Bear was looking off into the distance like he was recalling a memory. “Think she’d be down for a pity fuck?” I asked, holding up the box of condoms.
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t fucking say that,” Bear said, his nostrils flared. He knocked the box from my hands.
“You’re such a brute,” I said, placing the joint between my lips and held my hand out for Bear’s lighter.
Bear shook his head. “No fucking way, man. You’re gonna have to go to the garage and hide in a fucking corner like the rest of us have to. Dead or not, Ray will toss you off the fucking balcony if you smoke weed by the house.”
“Since fucking when?”
“Since we got Sammy, Max, and Nicole running around here and are about to add to the litter with my kid. No smoking that shit until the kids are either asleep or at school, and even then it’s still only in the fucking garage.”
“Sammy?”
“You don’t know the kids’ names?”
I leaned over the railing, grateful that the sun was setting because it meant the pressure behind my eyes would ease up once it was tucked into the horizon for the night. “I mean, Doe told gave me the cliffs notes about the kids and I’ve heard them yelling at them. I knew the girl was Max and the boy was Doe’s...I mean, Ray’s, kid, but I never really thought about his name before.”
“Yeah, turns out she named her kid Samuel years before she met you, how ironic is that? Now we got two of you running around. He’s a good kid. Funny as shit too. One week he’s trying to copy me by wearing his own little cut and wanting to ride a bike and the next week he’s got belts around his arms ‘cause he wants to be like King. Get to know him. And the girls.” Bear turned sideways to face me, leaning his elbow against the rail. He pointed his smoke at me as he spoke. “Those kids are the best things that have happened to this place in a long fucking time.”
I absentmindedly went to light the joint again and Bear raised his eyebrows. I pulled it from my lips. “I can’t smoke a fucking joint in my own house? How do you people live like this?” I asked, appalled.
It’s not your house anymore.
He slapped me on the back. “One fucking breath at a time, brother.”
“I don’t think I was just gone for a while,” I said, tossing the joint back into the bag. “I think I fucking upset the space time continuum. You’ve got a girl, and I can’t freely engage in my love of illegal narcotics. What the fuck?” I realized I sounded like whiny kid, well, a whiny kid who wants to smoke a joint on his porch, but I was unable to stop the very real confusion that I was feeling.
A part of me, a VERY selfish part of me, always hoped that while I was gone the world was somehow on pause. But it wasn’t. The world moved on.
They all moved on.
“This bullshit, Prep, is called being an adult,” Bear said, slapping me on the back. “Fucking sucks, don’t it?” He laughed but his expression told me he thought it anything BUT fucking sucked.
“I can’t believe you’ve got a girl,” I said. “If I had to bet between you settling down and the zombie apocalypse, my money would’ve been on the zombies. So much has happened while I was...gone.”
Bear flashed me a sad smile. The kind of smile everyone was giving me since I’d woken up. The kind of smile that was making me both furious and sick to my fucking stomach. “So does your girl know you’re in love with me?” I asked, looking at his neck again before tucking the joint behind my ear.
“Prep,” Bear warned. “Later.”
“Buzzkill,” I muttered.
“And yeah I got a girl. Good one too. Knocked her up and everything,” Bear said proudly. He lit his cigarette and tossed me his lighter.
“Wow, you waited until I was gone to become the grand marshall of white trash?” I tapped the bottom the fresh pack against my hand a few times before pulling one out and lighting my own. The first inhale of smoke filling my lungs felt fucking GLORIOUS and gave me an instant high I hadn’t had from a cigarette since I was a kid, toking on my first smoke behind the portables at school.
“Nah, cause I put a ring on her finger, too.”
“There goes the parade I was gonna throw you.”
“Prep, Ti and I have been staying in the garage apartment while the club is undergoing a little bit of a makeover,” Bear said.
“What kind of makeover? Like a Renovation?”
“It’s a little more involved.”
I shrugged and took another drag. “Well, that place was always a shit hole. It could use some paint or getting rid of the swamp you guys call a pool in the middle of that damn thing. What did you start with?”
“Hazmat suits and blood removal.”
“Good call.”
“I thought so,” Bear leaned forward on the railing, looking out onto the ground below. “But since Grace...”
“Yeah...” I interrupted, letting him know there was no need to finish his sentence in order to site the grim obvious.
“Ti and I are gonna move over to Grace’s house real soon. I’m thinking ‘bout eventually buying some property on the other side of the bay and building something over there. Word is old man Jenson’s looking to sell, but I figured for now we’ll post up over at Grace’s house so we have some room after the baby’s born.”
“Grace’s house?” I asked. “You bought Grace’s house?”
Bear smirked. “Nope. Didn’t buy it.” He glanced over at me. “They didn’t tell you did they?”
I shook my head. “What, motherfucker? Tell me!” I demanded, stubbing out my cigarette on the bottom of my shoe.
Bear’s smile grew brighter. Shit, when did he get so many fucking teeth? “Prep, as it turns out, Grace was my Grandma.”
“Holy fucki
ng shit.” The first thought that hit me was pure fucking joy. “Man, I’m jealous as fuck, but that just might be the greatest thing I’ve ever seen or heard. Like ever.”
“Yeah, just might be,” Bear agreed.
“Well,” I pointed at his neck. “Maybe next to that fucking tattoo.
CHAPTER NINE
DRE
“I wish you weren’t leaving tomorrow,” I said to Brandon as we waited for the realtor to arrive. The house still needed some work. I hadn’t yet started on either the gutters or the painting but Brandon suggested we talk to a professional to see what they thought about listing price and sale time. Especially since I hadn’t gotten so much as a single call from my FOR SALE BY OWNER ads.
“I wish I could stay longer, too. But Ralph called this morning and it seems that the entire world is going to crumble if I don’t return by the weekend. At least, you know Ralph, that’s how he makes it sound. It’s only been a few weeks but alas, I am missed.”
Just then a newer model Honda pulled up and a tall man in his early to mid thirties stepped out. He had a lean build and wore jeans with a white button down and a blue blazer. His hair was slicked back and he wore thick black framed glasses that reminded me of my own. His boots were bright red and pointed at the toe.
“Hi, you must be...Andrea, is it?” he asked with a big smile, shaking my hand. “I’m Easton Feather, but you just you can just call me East because that’s what all my friends call me and I can tell from the second that we spoke on the phone that we are going to be great friends.”
I smiled at his enthusiasm. “Yes, I’m Andrea, but you can just call me Dre. This is my friend Brandon,” I said, and the two men shook hands.
“Do I know you? You look familiar?” East said to me, pulling his glasses down the bridge of his nose.
“I don’t think so, but I used to come here every summer so you might have seen me around.”
East snapped his fingers. “That must be it. It’s a small town and feels even smaller when you overhear how some of the women gossip around here.” East fanned himself with his clipboard and looked up at the house over my shoulder.
“So Dre,” East started, as I told you on the phone that I recommend that we tour the property first so I can see what we’re working with and then I’ll pull up some comparable homes that have sold in the area recently so we can get a better idea of price. Then I’ll go over my listing plan with you and let you know what I’m going to be doing in terms of marketing like hosting an open house, posting on the latest real estate apps, and so on.” He looked up at the house and made a few scribbles on his clipboard. “Sound good? Shall we?” he asked, ascending the porch steps and letting himself in the front door without waiting for an answer.
“I guess we shall,” Brandon said with a laugh as we followed East into the house.
Over the next two hours East did exactly what he’d promised and made a full evaluation of the house as well as a plan to sell and market with a full list of comps. After taking pictures for the listing he shook our hands and said good-bye, promising to email me the link to the listing in the morning before it went live.
“He’s an...odd one,” Brandon whispered without moving his lips as we waved back to East who had just pulled out of the driveway and taken off down the road.
“I like him,” I said. “He’s nice. And honestly as long as he can do what he says he can with the house he can be as different as he wants to be.”
“True story,” Brandon said, holding open the front door for me while I passed through under his arm. “Wanna help me pack?”
“But you aren’t leaving until tomorrow,” I started to whine. But then I saw something in the corner of my eye, something in the back yard. When I went to the window and spied out the back I could have sworn what I saw hoping over the fence was a little kid. He disappeared as quickly as he’d appeared.
“What?” Brandon asked, standing beside me at the window. “What did you see?”
“I think there was a kid in the backyard,” I said, opening the back sliding door and shuffling over to the back gate with Brandon on my heels.
“A kid? Like small and scraggly looking?”
“Yeah? I thought you said you didn’t see anything.”
“I didn’t. Not right now, anyway. But the other day I was pulling out when I saw him standing behind me in the rearview mirror. By the time I turned around he was running away. Must just be a kid from around here, curious as to who his new neighbor lady is.”
“Yeah, must be...” I said walking back to the house with Brandon. My phone buzzed.
“Hello?”
“So we’re having a party tonight,” Ray practically shouted in my ear. “Come to the house around nine. One of the GG’s is watching the kids at her house so we’re going to have a big bon-fire. Lot’s of booze. Be here or I’m coming to get you myself!” Ray didn’t give me a chance to answer. The line went dead.
“Party?” Brandon questioned. “I mean; I could go for a party.” He paused. “Or would it be too weird for you to be there?”
The sound of a branch snapping caught my attention and I turned back to the woods. There was a slight rustling of the brush. I waited and listened.
Nothing.
“Dre, did you hear me?” Brandon asked. “Would it be too strange for you to be there? You know, since HE is going to be there.”
“Stranger things have happened,” I said, still looking out into the woods.
“Huh? No offense, but...what the fuck are you talking about?” he asked. “I’m talking about a party and you’re looking out into space like you just saw the ghost of Christmas future or some crap.”
“Party. Me. You. Got ya. I’m in,” I said, heading back into the house with an eerie sense of dread looming over me. I didn’t know if it was because of the party and the thought of seeing him again, or because when all the hairs on my arm stood on end I couldn’t shake a certain feeling.
A feeling like I was being watched.
****
CHAPTER TEN
PREPPY
“Hey! Get your ass up and come to the garage. We have something for you,” King boomed from the bottom of the porch. I sat on the front steps of fucking around with my new laptop. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Looking up nude pics of your mom.”
“Turn off the porn and come with me,” he demanded.
“I’m not even looking at porn. Just checking to see what the fuck’s been going on in the world since I dropped off the face of it,” I admitted.
“Anything interesting?” King asked, putting a cigarette between his lips but not lighting it.
“Well, it seems I missed the election,” I said.
“For what?” King asked.
“President.”
“Of what?”
“Of the United States.”
“Of what?” King asked, again.
I glanced up to see him smiling. He’d been fucking with me. “You’re such a fucker. I was starting to think all that tattoo ink seeped into your brain,” I said. “I thought I was the one who is supposed to have all the jokes.”
Bear appeared next to King. “We’re just filling in for you until after the surgery,” he said, firing a text on his phone and shoving it back into his pocket.
“What surgery? What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked, wondering if I’d missed something.
“You know, the one to remove your head out of your ass,” Bear said with a booming laugh.
I flicked him off. “I hope your kid doesn’t inherit your dick-headedness, in fact, you better hope it doesn’t get your looks either because you got nothing to offer in that department.”
“I actually agree with you there. The more the kid gets from Ti the better,” he said, looking less like the grumpy as fuck Bear I remembered and more like this weird happy guy who invaded his body. It was like watching one of those alien invasion shows and Bear was the product of some happy as fuck alien who decided to t
ake up residence in his shirtless as fuck body. “But right now,” Bear
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