Page 23 of One Last Chance

Chapter 10

For the firsttime in almost a decade, I woke up with music in my head. It spilled out of my mouth as I got ready to work, then sang a few bars as I pulled up the video tutorial I was going to be following for the day.

“Gonna replace those wires, yeah—make sure this place don’t catch fire, yeah, yeah, yeah—gonna save the man some cash while he’s sitting on his ass, yeah ye—oh… hi, Leroy.”

Leroy took one shaky step closer and peered at me over the brim of his glasses. “Sittin’ on my ass, huh? You got somethin’ to say to me, boy?”

I grinned at him. “Just rhymin’ with cash, boss.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay. What’s got you steppin’ so pretty today? You get’churself some rhymes-with-cash?” He laughed at his joke until he choked on it, then cleared his throat and sipped his tea.

“Nah, just feelin’ good about today is all.” I raised a brow at him, watching as he scrunched up his face with each sip he took from his cup. “When did you start drinking tea?”

“Doctor says I had to,” Leroy said. “Said my heart ain’t right, gotta lay off the caffeine.”

I leaned on the counter and looked at him from under my brow. “Caffeine? I don’t think it’s your coffee addiction screwing with your heart, man.”

He sucked his teeth at me and grinned. “Man, you rehabber’s blame rock for everything. Get goin’, ain’t you got work to do?”

“Just sayin’, man, maybe it’s time to lay off. Switch to green, it’ll be legal soon anyway.”

He snorted. “That’s what they say, anyway. But how they gonna make somethin’ legal and then not let the people go? It ain’t right. I swear to you, boy, if they open up one o’ them fancy dispensaries around these parts, they can forget about it. They won’t be getting my money, no sir, not till they let J.R. Smalls out of prison and scrub his record.”

“Man, J.R. was pushing heroine and you know it.”

Leroy sniffed and raised his brows in a mockery of righteous indignation. “It’s the principle of the thing.”

I laughed. “You say that like you got principles!”

“Hey now, everybody got principles. Some of ‘em aren’t real good, but everybody got ‘em. Take me, for example. I object to this fire marshal, city hall game on principle. Principle bein’, I ain’t about to pay for a game I’m not playing.”

“Point taken,” I said with a grin. “I’ll get back to work now.”

“Yeah, you will.” Leroy leaned back in his chair and chuckled. “Rhymes with cash.”

I left him there to grin and went to work on the old building, whistling as I went with my head full of Daisy. Her scent had almost faded from my memory while I was locked up, but now, after last night, it was all over my sweater. I was pretty sure I would never wash it again—not unless I could guarantee that it would smell like her again right after.

That train of thought sucked me into a daydream. Me and her, living together. Doing laundry in our underwear. Passing out in front of the TV together, in our underwear. Driving donuts in a field in the middle of the night, in our underwear. Okay, so maybe there was a lot of sexual frustration tied up in my imaginings, but mostly I was just happy to be close to her again. I never wanted to be away from her for that long again. Never imagined I’d ever have to be away from her for that long. Now that I knew what it was like, I was determined to never have to go through it again.

Which is why, when my work was finished for the day, I decided I’d get myself something to eat at Country Corner. It was just after five, so the library would be closed. She should be on her way home, unless she was stopping to pick up her old man’s beer. Either way, she’d pass by there.

“Finally came back to see me. You never called.” The goth teenager behind the counter glared and pouted at me all at once. Then she rolled her eyes as if it never mattered in the first place and tapped her long black fingernails impatiently against the side of the register. “Did you lose my number or something? Here, give me your phone.”

“Yeah, that’s not happening. Ring me up for a corndog and a lemonade, will you.”

She raised a brow and leaned over the counter, doing her best to show some cleavage. The uniform collar was high and she didn’t have much to work with in the first place, so the effect was sort of pitiful.

“Is that all you eat, Kash Lawson?” She batted her eyes at me and looked me up and down. I felt like a prey. Really large prey. Like a trophy buck who’s being stalked by a house cat. A relentless house cat.

“Nah. Sometimes I eat ramen. Occasionally I even eat a vegetable, but I don’t see any of that on your menu. $9.95?” I pulled out the money and held it out of her reach, waiting for her to put the order in.

“I should charge you double for being an ass.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder and punched my order in. “$9.95.”

I wanted to make a comment about how much she’d owe her own company if they really did charge for being an ass, but I could already see how she would twist that into something sexual and so I let it go. She really needed to get herself a guy her own age, but I understood her frustration. It was slim pickings around here, always had been.

She wrote her number on the receipt again, this time with a little angry face and broken heart. I threw it away in front of her. The flash of hurt on her face almost made me feel bad, but not really. I’d said it straight, I’d said it sideways, I’d said it more than once. If she couldn’t take a nice “no” for an answer, then she wouldn’t get nice.

I managed to keep caring all the way to the door, then forgot all about it as I stepped outside and into the fresh air.

---