Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 71858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
No, not usually.
But as he slowly did a pull-up, causing his shirt to ride up and show off an impressive six-pack of abs, I realized that I might’ve been doing myself a disservice.
He came back down, so controlled that it was obvious he did this a lot—worked out—and narrowed his eyes at me.
“You have really weird brown eyes,” Troup rumbled.
I blinked. “You have really light-colored eyes. They’re weird, too. The color of pond water.”
He burst out laughing.
“I’ve never heard that before.” He sniggered. “That’s great. Pond water.”
I shrugged. “I guess.”
I was such a dumbass.
“I guess they look like honey. But you know, when you hold the honey up to the sun and look through it? That’s what your eyes look like,” he explained his earlier comment.
A brrrrup had us both turning to see a cop car pulling up to the chain-link fence.
When my dad got out, my breath hitched.
“Ummm,” I hesitated. “That’s my dad.”
“Of course, you would be a cop’s kid,” he grumbled. “Of fuckin’ course.”
“Beckham, get your ass over here. You, too, kid,” my father ordered harshly.
I frowned at his harsh tone.
Hurrying to him, I started to get worried that something was wrong. When I finally got to him, I was a little out of breath.
“What’s wrong?” I gasped, feeling the familiar panic start to rise up.
I had panic attacks. Lots of them.
My father waved me off. “Nothing is wrong unless you count three different calls from three different concerned parents about two teenagers, one of them that looked shady, being at the park making it impossible for their kids to play.”
My mouth fell open. “You’re joking.”
“Not joking,” my dad immediately replied. “Look.”
I did and saw that a bunch of concerned parents were now staring at us with relief.
My shoulders slumped. “We weren’t doing anything bad. I left the house for a walk and wound up here. I…”
“Who are you?” my father barked.
Troup had finally joined us.
“Trouper Aoki,” Troup introduced himself.
That was it.
Nothing more, nothing less. Not even an offer of a handshake.
“Don’t you think you’re a little old for a place like this?” he asked.
Troup shrugged. “I was only swinging on the swings. Then I saw your daughter and thought I’d say hi.”
“How about you stay far away from my daughter,” my dad suggested. “And don’t play at the park anymore. You’re apparently intimidating.”
Apparently intimidating.
As if he didn’t have any other positive attributes, according to my dad.
“Dad,” I said. “You don’t have to be so mean. We weren’t doing anything wrong.”
“No,” he agreed. “Not right now.”
As if we would have done something wrong had he not come along.
I narrowed my eyes.
“Come on, I’ll take you back home. Your mother’s been calling me for an hour, saying that you were missing.”
“She has not,” I grumbled as I tossed Troup a look over my shoulder.
Except, when I looked back, he was walking away, through the middle of the playground, as if he seriously didn’t give a single shit that he’d just been told to stay away from there.
He made sure to walk right by the group of mothers that looked concerned for their child’s welfare all over again.
“Dad, that was rude,” I told him. “He didn’t do anything wrong, and neither did I. There’s no age limit on who can swing on the swings.”
“Maybe not,” Dad answered as he walked to the passenger side door and opened it for me. “But you need to stay away from him. He looks… pissed.”
Pissed.
Now that my father had said that, I agreed with him. He did look kind of pissed.
“Well, maybe a little bit of compassion would go a long way,” I suggested as I plopped myself into the front seat.
I didn’t bother with the seatbelt. The ride was literally two minutes tops, and the majority of that was navigating the parking lot.
“How do you know that boy?” he muttered as he maneuvered us out onto the road.
“I don’t,” I admitted. “I saw him walking down the street at the same time that I was. We met at the swings, him having gone the long way, and me taking the shortcut.”
He grunted something that sounded like ‘magnificent’ but I couldn’t be sure.
It was as we were turning into our driveway that I saw a flash of black.
I turned and watched out of the passenger window as Trouper walked across his front lawn to the front door of the house that was right next to mine.
Score!
“Son of a bitch.” My dad had obviously seen the same thing. “What are the fuckin’ odds?”
“What?” I asked innocently.
“Don’t ever, ever, ever go near that boy. Not unless you want to be a single mother at seventeen. That boy is Bad with a capital B.” He made sure to hold my eyes and let me know just how serious he was about that statement.
“Dad, he’s just a kid,” I said. “A teenager. What is this immediate dislike you have going on? That’s not like you.”