“Yeah, it’s pretty fucking great, right? It was built in the 1920’s,” Preppy said. “It was abandoned ever since I could remember. Kids used to dare each other to spend the night inside because rumor was that it was haunted or a witch lives there or some shit. It was always changing. Anyways, a few years back, when anyone and their Aunt Tilly thought they could make money in the Florida Real Estate market, a developer bought it to demolish it and turn it into canal front condo’s but the market went belly up and it’s just sat here rotting ever since.”
“It would be a shame to tear it down. She just needs some work,” I said, shielding my eyes from the sun. I could only see from the second story and up behind the brush, but if I squinted hard enough I could almost see what the home looked like at one time. Wrap-around balconies where families could sit and have lunch overlooking the water or entertain guests. A sitting area or reading room making up the entire third story loft area, lit only with natural sunlight in the evenings.
“That it is. There isn’t anything like this around here anymore.”
“Who do you think lived here?”
“I’m not sure, but Thomas Edison and Henry Ford had winter places not too far from here, so maybe someone who brushed shoulders with that crowd. It’s definitely possible.”
“Wow. There is a lot of history in this town.” I never knew that. Slowly, I felt myself falling back in love with Logan’s Beach.
“This town is not exactly historical, although hysterical might fit just fine.”
I was still staring up at the house, imagining the boats that must have docked there and the parties the original owners must have had. It was a true piece of southern perfection. Like a southern bell with a dirty dress.
“One thing is for sure,” Preppy said. I turned around to find him tying off small hooks to the end of each of the nylon ropes. “Whoever lived here, they probably weren’t the type to do this.”
“What exactly is this?” I asked.
“I’m taking you for lunch. Sort of,” he said, opening the pack of hot dogs and breaking off pieces to set on the end of each of the hooks. “But we have to catch it first.” Preppy dropped the hook in the water slowly. “Gotta make sure it’s on the bottom,” he explained, tying off the line at the top of one of the pilings, then repeating the process with the other three ropes.
“What are we catching?” I asked, whispering, like whatever was on the menu could hear us and be spooked by our voices. I stepped up to the end of the dock and glanced down into the murky water where I couldn’t see anything but brown.
“You’ll see.” One of the ropes started moving and that’s when I realized that whatever Preppy was catching, it wasn’t fish because the line didn’t just dart away like it was eaten by a fish, but rather looked like it was…walking away?
“Here,” Preppy moved me in front of him so that his chest was to my back. He held up the line in front of his body for me to take so I did, but he didn’t move away, just bent over so his chin was resting on my shoulder. “The trick is to pull it up slowly,” he said, his breath tickling my ear. I tried to concentrate but I could feel his body, his nearness. It was like a low vibration or whistle that no one else could pick up on but me and it was so close I had to bite my lip to keep myself from pushing back against him. “Slowly,” he repeated, dragging me back to the task at hand. I did as he said, crossing my hands over one another, pulling up the rope like Preppy had showed me. Preppy stepped back for a moment, appearing again by my side with the bucket. He crouched down just as a face appeared just below the surface of the water, staring back up at me.
The face of a crab.
“Now don’t move or you’ll scare him,” Preppy whispered out of the side of his mouth, still as a statue. “The second you get him above the water, that’s when you have to move him over to the bucket as fast as you can before he let’s go and drops back into the water.”
For the sake of staying still, I didn’t answer. “You can talk,” Preppy whispered, trying not to laugh.
“Oh, yeah. Got it,” I whispered. Even slower than before, I raised the rope until the crab was free of the water. I quickly whipped the rope over the bucket, but a little too eagerly because Preppy had to dodge getting hit by the crab, who released his hold on the hot dog just a tad earlier then I expected him to. Preppy set the bucket back onto the seawall and I glanced inside at the blue crab who was only a little larger than the palm of my hand. He circled the bottom of the bucket, snapping at the plastic walls with his claws.
“Wow, how did you learn to do that?” I asked, looking down at my achievement with wonderment as he snapped at the air with his claws. Preppy didn’t immediately answer, so when I looked up to the other side of the bucket I found him staring at me, his mouth partly open. “Preppy?” I asked, my voice sounding scratchy and rough.
“Oh,” he said, coming back from wherever he’d gone. “This guy King and I used to sell weed to when we were kids taught us. There was one summer we ate so much of these fuckers we had to stop when we realized we started to smell like them too,” he said with a laugh, recalling the memory.
“They’re so small,” I pointed out. “Hardly seems like enough for two growing boys.”
“It’s not. That’s why we need more,” Preppy said, yanking me by the hand back to the end of the dock. We caught seven of them before Preppy declared that was enough for our lunch. We drove to what looked like an abandoned shack in the middle of similar looking shacks in the middle of the causeway. The smell of freshly fried seafood wafted from the little building making my stomach growl. “Hungry?” Preppy asked, guiding us into the small space which only held a few mismatched tables and an old Pepsi cooler.
“Starving, you?” I asked, surprised when we didn’t take a seat. Preppy pushed passed the counter into an even tinier back room where a large man with silver hair was standing over a pot.
“Preppy, my good man, what do you have for me?” he asked, taking the bucket from Preppy’s arms.
“The gift of crabs,” Preppy announced.
The man chuckled and set the bucket on the ground next to the stove. “This might be the only time when crabs make a good gift,” he said. “You want them the usual way?”
“You got it,” Preppy said, tugging me by the hand out the back door. “Oh, and this is Dre,” he called back my last minute introduction. “That’s Billy.”
“Like Dr. Dre?” Billy asked.
“Yep, she has a sister named Snoop,” Preppy said, opening the creaking screen door. We sat on yellow chairs at the single rickety patio set that looked like it had been rotting in the sun for quite some time.
Preppy leaned in closer like he was studying me.
“What are you doing?” I asked, leaning back from his intense glare.
“Trying to figure you out.”
“Huh? Me? Why?”
Preppy pointed to my face. “You have these huge eyes and although they’re dark as hell, they’re still bright somehow. You’ve got seriously black hair, so black it’s almost blue, but your skin is only slightly tannish. What are you? Some flavor of Spanish? Oh! I got it, a little Asian? No, that’s not it. Caribbean islander, maybe? Barbados? Antigua? Narnia?”
I shook my head. “Narnia? That’s not even a real place. It’s fiction.”
“Have you ever been there?” Preppy challenged.
“No.”
“Then how can you be so sure?”
“I guess I can’t be.”
“I rest my case.”
I laughed. “Well, real or not, I’m not…Narnian. My mom’s background is English if you go way back and my dad’s side is French Canadian.”
Preppy slid his sunglasses down his nose. “So…you be a white chick then?”
“Like, I totally be a white chick.”
Preppy sighed. “Bummer. Here I thought we were all interracial and shit.”
“Disappointing, I know.”
“The struggle is real.”
After a fe
w moments of comfortable silence, Preppy spoke first, “What are you thinking about over there, Doc? I can see your wheels turning.”
I shrugged. “You’re just always so comfortable. Around everyone. You know, when you’re not threatening me or trying to teach me a lesson or dragging me around somewhere.”
“And?” he asked, swallowing hard.
“And I was wondering how someone…in your line of work can be so relaxed all the time.”
“And what line of work is that?” Preppy asked, leaning in toward me and grinning like he was up to something.
“You know, dealing the drugs,” I said, wincing when my sentence came out as awkward as I felt.
“Well, Doc, I can tell you that, although I deal in the drugs, the reason I look so comfortable is because I am.”
“Don’t you have enemies? Business deals gone bad? I mean, you carry a gun so you have to be worried about something.”
“You’ve seen too many movies, Doc. Although sometimes I do have to use it for more than putting it to your head while I make you come,” Preppy said. I blushed. “It’s BECAUSE I carry a gun that I’m not worried.” He looked out over the water. A rusted shrimp boat was slowly pulling up to the dock. One man jumped off onto the dock, while another shouted instructions and tossed him a rope. The gentle breeze blew Preppy’s sandy-blond locks around the top of his head. He turned back to me “And you’re wrong you know.”
“About what?”
“I’m not always a hundred percent comfortable around everyone,” he said, locking eyes with me. “There is this one person. This girl who I think…” Just then Billy pushed open the door.
“Hot plate!” he announced, setting down a huge platter of newly steamed crabs in the center of the table. The platter actually wasn’t a platter at all I realized, but an upside down lid of a metal garbage can.
“What’s that amazing smell?” I asked, leaning in over the crabs and inhaling the spicy-sweet scent coming off the crabs that were still steaming.
“Old Bay seasoning. It’s great on any kind of shell fish. I make my own version of it. It’s my secret ingredient,” Billy said.
“Billy, I hate to be the one to tell you this but when you tell everyone about it, it’s not much of a secret anymore. And copying a name-brand isn’t exactly an original creation.”
Billy smacked Preppy on the shoulder with his rag. “Touché, my friend,” he said with a burst of laughter. He placed his hand on the back of Preppy’s chair. “Listen, I wanted to thank you for helping me get the stoves working again. I’d be cooking blue crabs under a bridge right now if it wasn’t for you making that call and getting me those stoves.”
They shook hands and did the secret handshake all men seemed to know, the one that ended with a half hug and a clap on the back. “Couldn’t have my favorite chef without a kitchen, who would feed me?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe one of the dozen old ladies who make you whatever you want. Maybe Grace. Maybe one of the biker whores,” Billy said, with a smirk. He turned to me. “Sorry about the language ma’am. I mean the ladies that are associated with the Beach Bastards.”
“No worries,” I said, deciding right then and there that I liked Billy.
“Dude, I wouldn’t do you wrong like that,” Preppy said. “None of them make seafood like you do. Nobody.” Preppy reached for the crab with his hands and set one on a plate, handing it across the table to me. Billy gave him a knowing look. “So are we cool?” Preppy asked, adding, “It’s not you, it’s me?” He held up his arms in surrender as Billy swatted him again with a dishtowel. He thanked Preppy again and headed back inside, whistling along to a staticky version of the Billy Joel song playing through the small radio on the floor, where it was also keeping the door propped open.
“I almost forgot to give you these,” Billy said. The door swung open and he tossed two plastic yellow crab crackers over my head and onto the table.
I’d successfully ripped the first leg off my crab and was doing my best with the cracker to rid my lunch of his shell when I looked up to find myself locked in Preppy’s intense stare. “This looks so great, doesn’t it?” I asked, trying to break the thickness of the air between us.
Preppy remained silent as he lifted a crab off the platter and set in on his plate. Then he made a show of lifting two very familiar fingers to his mouth to slowly suck the seasoning off, just like he had before. My panties dampened, instantly. I held back a groan and cleared my throat, turning my attentions back to my plate. “Are…are you hungry?” I asked shakily, trying to sound unaffected as my nipples pebbled through my shirt.
As if on cue Preppy’s gaze dropped to my chest, lingering there, like he was admiring what he’d done to me.
“I’m fucking starving.”
Twenty-Eight
PRESENT
PREPPY
“There is one thing you haven’t thought of,” I said, sitting up as straight as I could.
“Oh yeah, and what the fuck would that be?” Chop asked, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against the wall with a shit eating grin on his face.
“You’re a fucked up individual,” I said, pausing to adjust to the sharp pain in my ribs.
“Is that it?” Chop asked, rolling his eyes.
I shook my head. “No, you didn’t let me finish.” I pushed against the floor and slid my ass against the wall, bracing myself into the corner. “What you don’t seem to understand is that there ain’t nothing you can do to me that ain’t been done before. You’re an amateur. A fucking hack. You think threatening to have me ass-raped is going to break me?” I laughed. “Think again cocksucker, ‘cause my stepdaddy already had that honor.”
“All you’re doing is telling me that you’re white trash. Like I didn’t already know. Why don’t you shut the fuck up so you can die with a little fucking pride,” he said smugly. “Come to think of it, maybe I should call him up and invite him over for a visit? Wonder what he’s up to these days?” He was goading me, using what I’d told him to try and get a rise out of me.
Think again, motherfucker.
“He’s just peachy. Rotting in the swamp right where I left him,” I said without so much as a flinch, even though the pain shooting through my spine was crippling.
Chops face momentarily fell. He pushed off the wall and knelt down beside me. “So you killed a man? So what? Should I be impressed? You think some story about your pathetic childhood is going to make me feel bad, and then what? You think I’m just going to let you go?”
I shook my head or, at least, I think I did, all the muscles in my neck were numb at that point. “No, what you don’t seem to understand is that all this is pointless. You can have me ass-raped and it’s not going to break me. You can keep torturing me, but what you don’t get is that half that shit makes my dick hard. You can have me killed…” I leaned in closer and smiled. “But I’m already dead, bitch.”
Chop reared back and kicked me in the ribs with his heavy steel-toed boot, sending me crashing into the wall beside me, my teeth chattering with the overwhelming pain ripping through my body.
Either Chop left without saying a word or I passed out from the pain and didn’t get to hear his last thoughts on what a piece of shit I am. Regardless, when I opened my eyes I was grateful to find that once again I was alone.
Except, of course, for the woman who wouldn’t tell me her name. I should’ve been happy to not be alone, but every word out of her mouth made me cringe and every time Chop left she had a comment.
“You know, provoking him isn’t going to make things any easier on you. I’ve learned that lesson the hard way,” she said softly.
“Hello?” I asked, and when she didn’t immediately answer I figured I was just hearing things, so I did what anyone losing their fucking minds would do and finished out the lyrics to the Lionel Richie song.
“Hello? Is it me you’re looking for?” I sang out, grabbing my ribs as every word felt like I was stabbing myself in the gut, but the son
g needed to be sung or like a fairy would lose its wings or some shit.
“I never did like that song,” the woman said again, and this time I was positive I wasn’t hearing things. Or like, close to positive. Like, forty percent.
“Listen lady, I don’t know if you’re even real at this point but if you are real, then I’ll forgive your temporary lapse in judgment when it comes to the greatness that is Lionel Richie.”
“Do you ever shut up?” she said, annoyed.
“Yeah, I do this thing when I pass out where my mouth stops running,” I said.
“No, actually it doesn’t. Yesterday you were commentating like you were an announcer over some sort of competition,” she huffed.
“Probably American Ninja Warrior, always thought I’d be good at that.” I adjusted so it didn’t feel like I would crack my tailbone under my own weight. “Well, now that the pleasantries are out of the way, are you finally going to tell me your name?”
“Names aren’t important,” she said.
“Sure they are. My name is Samuel Clearwater, but my friends call me Preppy,” I said, although I was pretty sure I’d already introduced myself to this annoying bitch. “If you’re not going to tell me your name you can at least describe your tits to me. Bra and nipple size if you please.”
There was a brief pause. “He’s not going to kill you, you know.”
“That’s…disappointing?” I said, although it came out as a question. I didn’t want to die, but being tortured every single day wasn’t exactly on my bucket list either.
“Chop believes in taking lives,” she said, stating the obvious.
“I kind of got that. He been hitting you in the head?”
“No, you don’t get it. There is more power in taking lives than there is in ending them. By keeping us alive and trapped down here like rats, he dictates how we live and if and when we die. And if a situation arises where he can use us, he’ll toss our gaunt bodies at the feet of whoever he’s trying to intimidate by showing them how much power he really has.”
King Series Firsts Box Set: King, Lawless & Preppy Part One Page 63