Page 25 of No Romeo
After Chad finished the lemons, I placed them in the cooler, then checked out with the manager, Pete.
During my shift, I’d missed a text from Kyle warning me that his crazy, drunk Grandma Ida-Mae was over, which meant he couldn’t pick me up.
I wasn’t in the mood for her to try to pay me to take Kyle’s virginity tonight. Every single time she came over, she tried to bribe me into it. I texted back, asking him to tell me when she was gone, then made my way toward the bus stop across the street.
I stepped over the curb just as a shiny, black truck rumbled to a stop beside me. Chad leaned out the window. “You catching the bus?”
“Yeah.”
His blond brows furrowed. “I’ll give you a ride.”
“You know I live in Dayton, right?”
“Yeah. Get in.”
Well, I’d rather ride with him than sit on the bus next to Cookie, the local crackhead in his assless chaps, while he took his nightly nap.
Leaning across the console, he shoved the passenger side door open for me. The interior lights flickered on, revealing the immaculate interior. I climbed in and dumped my tattered backpack in the footwell before settling on the pristine leather. I was probably soiling it with my presence.
The drive out of Barrington was silent, and as soon as we got into Dayton, I wanted to sink down in the seat. I wasn’t ashamed of being poor, but Dayton… It was definitely something to be ashamed of.
Chad stopped at a red light in front of a pawn shop, an obvious prostitute waving at him from the corner of the street. “Which way do I go?” he asked.
“Right.” I directed him to the abandoned house a few blocks over from Kyle’s, and he pulled over at the curb. “You want me to leave youhere?”
“I’ll be fine.”
The frown on his face told me he was not convinced. “Lola—”
“I grew up in Dayton, Chad. Trust me, it’s fine.” I grabbed my backpack from the footwell and hopped out. “Go back to Barrington.” To his golden, blessed life, where no one would try and steal his car at gunpoint. I shut the door, and I cut through the overgrown yard.
I made it to the side of the house before his truck rumbled away. He probably thought I was insane.
The scent of burned wood hit me when I reached the edge of the dark tree line, and I came to a halt. My heart sank, then broke when my gaze landed on the burned oak tree. A single, charred board was all that remained of the treehouse.
It must have been Hendrix. This was what he did when he was hurt; he destroyed the source. He’d burned the treehouse down, destroyed the memory ofus.
Tears stung my eyes, and I bit the inside of my lip to stop them from falling. It was only wooden pallets, but it felt like losing a piece of myself. He might as well have burnedme.
Lost and grief-stricken, I turned away and wandered aimlessly through the dimly lit streets of Dayton until I found myself in the park we used to come to as kids when our moms were “working.”
It was past ten at night, which meant crackheads and creeps would be lurking in the shadows. I could throw a punch just about as good as any guy, but I had to admit coming here in the middle of the night wasn’t the smartest idea. The whole burned tree house thing had me emotional and reckless.
Dry grass crunched beneath my shoes, silencing the crickets as I made my way to the play area Hendrix and I used to bring Gracie to.
Everywhere in this damn town was tainted with him, attached to a memory I couldn’t escape. I couldn’t escapehim, and the problem was I didn’t really want to. By choice, I never would have left his side.
I climbed the ladder, absorbing a moment of rare silence as I pulled myself into the wooden fort attached to the monkey bars and slide. No sirens. No distant gunfire. Just me and my thoughts—none of which were good.
Soon enough, the pad of footsteps broke the peaceful lull. A thud echoed up the slide when someone evidently took a seat at the bottom. Great. Just what I needed.
“Hey, man,” a deep voice came from the dark park. “Can I get a dime bag?”
Oh, now there were two of them, and they were making a drug deal. I sank a little deeper into the corner of the fort. The night just got better and better.
“You dragged me all the way out here for a dime bag? You said you wanted an ounce…”
I wanted to bash my head against the wooden wall when I heard Hendrix’s voice. Of all the damn people, of course, he would be in this exact park making a drug deal while I hid in a kid’s play fort. And so, the curse continued…
