Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 73398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
A side-view mirror that looked like it had come off of a truck. A small tire, seemingly sized for a go-cart or a golf cart, rested against the computer monitor. A standard transmission with the stick shift standing straight up and a bright pink ball on the end was on the far side. Then there was what looked to be brake cables spanning the right side of the counter. The funniest thing, however, was the pair of truck nuts hanging off of a black trailer hitch assembly suspended above the counter by a wire that caused my mouth to turn up in a smile.
“Can I help you?”
I looked at the woman who I’d completely missed, sitting behind the computer. She was standing now and looking at me like I clearly didn’t belong.
June, the girl who had come with Janie and Kayla to my house.
I assumed she didn’t recognize me out of my work garb of sweatpants, holey t-shirt, and glasses.
“Is Coke here?” I asked quietly.
June looked me over, pursed her lips, and then nodded.
Protective of her boss, I could see.
I won’t hurt him, I gave her my best smile.
She disappeared through a doorway at the end of the long counter, and I waited as I took in the walls.
They were covered with those posters that men liked. Women posing in front of cars in their bathing suits. Some of them were beer posters, while others were of women posing erotically—although, luckily, all were fully clothed.
All of them were dated, I could tell. Some of the women still had big hair from the eighties.
I giggled.
“Can I help you?” Coke said, walking out of his office with his head down.
June followed close behind him.
“Uhh,” I paused. “Yes.”
Coke’s head snapped up, and a smile lit his face. “Hey, neighbor. Come on back.”
June’s mouth fell open.
Coke gestured for me to follow him, and I did, careful not to look at his ass the entire way back.
My luck, he’d look over his shoulder and catch me.
I didn’t want that.
I’d probably trip, fall and smash my face on the floor in embarrassment.
Coke turned suddenly, and I blinked rapidly.
“I looked at the box, and whatever you ordered is from the hatchery, but I seriously don’t think there is anything live in there. The box is too small,” he explained.
I shrugged. “I have no clue what I got then.”
He made a sound in the back of his throat, then took a sharp left into the door at the end of the hallway.
We entered into a large, open office.
The first thing I saw was a large picture frame on the corner of his desk with a young girl about sixteen or seventeen standing in a field of wildflowers. The girl was beautiful, and she was frowning as if she’d rather be anywhere but where she was, doing what she was doing. It was her dad, who was looking at her like she was a pain in the ass, that had me smiling again.
“She wasn’t happy that we were taking photos together,” Coke said as I peeled my eyes away from the photo to focus on him. “Those were her senior pictures.”
“Senior pictures?” I asked with a raised brow.
“My baby graduated early. She was sixteen, and too cool to take a picture with her old man.”
My lips twitched. “I graduated about a year early, too,” I admitted. “And my dad tried to get me to take senior pictures, but I told him that was unacceptable. I most certainly didn’t want to remember that time in my life. High school was absolute hell for me.”
“Was it?” he asked quietly.
His rough, raspy voice made my eyes bounce away from his to take in the wall behind him, and what I saw made my heart stutter in my chest.
Why?
Because the cartoon that I’d drawn for him was hanging on the wall, in a picture frame, in a place of honor.
“Uh, yeah,” I admitted, tongue-tied now. “I think life is hell for all of the people like me and your daughter. We don’t always fit in. The seniors didn’t like me because I was so young, and the kids in my actual age group didn’t like me because I was a senior. It was a lose-lose situation.”
He seemed thoughtful as his eyes went distant. “She never said anything.”
I laughed. “Do you really think that we’d want our dads to know that we weren’t happy? I don’t know about you, but if mine had known that people at school were being mean to me, he would’ve lost his shit.”
He chuckled. “Sounds like you had a good dad. That’s what I would’ve done…were you bullied?”
I thought about that question for a moment. “Not bullied, per se. More like teased relentlessly. But, I grew up around Janie and Kayla, as well as about fifteen hundred other kids.” I might or might not have exaggerated the number of children at the compound, but there were a lot once everyone was done having their children. “My dad and his buddies formed this sort of compound type place when they were fresh out of the military, and there they kind of had a village where all of their kids were raised. We were all different ages, and all of us were hard on each other. Not a day went by that I wasn’t taken by surprise by at least someone at Free—that’s what we call the compound. It was more like a small village.”