Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 88215 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88215 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
The choking feeling in my throat dissipates and I find my ability to swallow again.
Yup. I’m going crazy.
“Sarah? Where did you go?” Duke calls from the kitchen.
I step back inside and shut the door, locking all the bolts out of habit. “You and those damned locks. Your dad really is paranoid, huh?” Duke says, coming up behind me and lifting me off the ground. I kick my feet in the air and laugh. He carries me into the kitchen and sets me down on the center island. He turns his cap backward, takes a joint out of his back pocket. He lights it and takes a long pull.
“Your pops might be paranoid and ignore you all the time, but I think it’s fucking awesome he lets you smoke weed in the house,” Duke says on an exhale.
I shrug and take the joint from his fingers. Taking a long drag, I hold the smoke deep in my lungs before exhaling slowly. The pot does the trick and within a few seconds the tension eases, my shoulders drop.
“Even if he wasn’t okay with it, I doubt he’d notice,” I reply, sounding bitter.
“You alright, lady?” Duke asks, searching my eyes for clues.
“I’m fine. I just haven’t been sleeping all that great,” I admit. It’s the shortest explanation of a much larger issue, but Duke and I don’t have a big issue kind of relationship. We have a smoke a joint in the kitchen, make out until I send him home kind of relationship.
“Here,” he says, pulling a plastic sandwich bag chock-full of joints from his back pocket. GrubTrain is only one of Duke’s part-time jobs. A lesser paying one than his main job of weed dealer. He pulls two joints from the bag and places them in an empty coffee tin on the counter. “These are for later. It will help you sleep.”
“What do I owe you?” I ask, leaning back on my hand and taking another hit.
“Oh, I can think of things. Actually, I can think of many many things.” Duke drags his gaze over my body. He lifts his hand to his mouth and playfully bites down on his knuckles, making a growling sound I can’t help but laugh at.
With a wink, he moves over to the bags and begins to take things out and put them away. Having been my grocery delivery boy for months now, he knows his way around the kitchen as well as I do. “The weed is on the house, of course,” he says.
“Thanks,” I say, and I mean it.
Duke’s always nice to me. I mean, he’s nice to a lot of girls, but he’s genuine and that’s why I’ve broken my rules and allowed him into my life.
Duke’s the popular kid at school and a total man-whore. He’s stuck his dick in most of the cheerleaders on the varsity and junior varsity cheerleading teams, but he doesn’t lie about it, doesn’t make them any false promises. Honesty, for me, is the greatest quality a person can possess. I value it above all else. Maybe, it’s because I’ve been forced into dishonesty for most of my life. Maybe, it’s because my father’s entire life was a lie.
Duke must be reading my mind because he flashes me his Hollywood smile. “Have you heard?” He folds the paper bags and shoves them into the recycling bin. He then launches into an animated retelling of the ‘most hilarious’—his words, not mine— dick and fart joke he heard in the weight room from some jock on the football team.
I take another hit from the joint and drop my shoulders. I tilt my head back and exhale toward the ceiling. The front of my brain feels fuzzy. A soft buzz travels to the rest of my body, continuing to dull the sharp edges surrounding me.
“You know, you don’t act the same here with me, when we’re alone, as you do in school,” Duke mentions out of the blue. I’m blinking rapidly as I try to take in what he’s saying. “Why is that? You walk around with your hair in your face, staring at the floor all day. You don’t talk to anyone. You don’t look at anyone. I bet you most of the kids in school couldn’t point you out of a line up.”
Bingo.
“Not even me,” he continues. “You ignore me like you don’t even know me. But we’re…friends, right? Because here, with me, you’re…”
“Normal?” I suggest. “At least, normal-ish?”
Duke shakes his head. “I wasn’t going to say that.”
Maybe, he wasn’t going to use that exact word, but I sensed him searching his mental thesaurus for something comparable.
“Why? Why are you so different here than you are there?” He asks, with what sounds like genuine concern in his voice.
I crook my finger at him like I’m about to tell him all my secrets.