Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 60950 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60950 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Until Not even death do us part.
EPILOGUE
One Month Later...
Preppy
“Shit,” I swore. Jumping when pancakes shoved his cold nose against the back of my pant leg. I’d almost dropped the box I’d been carrying, my shoulder still weak from the gunshot wound, but overall it was healing nicely. I pointed at Pancakes. “Dude, it’s frowned upon to come at someone from behind without proper warning, trust me, I know these things,” I scolded.
King appeared in the doorway. “He’s always doing that. It’s kind of his thing,” he said. The coyote darted out the door and disappeared. “Guess he doesn’t like being told what to do either.”
“Guess not,” I agreed.
King followed me over to my car.
“So tell me this Boss-Man. Did Bear think he’s such a big biker badass that he couldn’t just go get a regular dog at the pound like a normal person?” I asked. “I mean he could have gotten a lab or a poodle, or even one of those ones that mixes the two, a labradoodle or some shit. No. The motherfucker had to go get himself a goddamned coyote.”
King snickered. “This coming from the guy with a giant pig?”
“Oscar’s the shit man. Seriously, though. I’m getting Bear a goldiepoo or some shit for Christmas.”
“You settled down and now you’re an expert on the perfect family dog?”
“Once you’re married you’ll understand,” I said sarcastically.
“Oh that? We got tired of putting it off, so we just went and did the thing,” King said like it was no big deal. I noticed a tattoo on his hand I’d never noticed before with Ray and the kid’s names linked together around his ring finger.
“Oh yeah, that...Wait, what! You did what?” I asked. “And I wasn’t invited?”
“Nobody was. It was the day we stuck you with the kids. I was getting tired of having her not be my wife and she told me she didn’t want the shindig so we just did it. Now she’s Mrs. Brantley King and I’m an old married man just like you.”
“Wow, congrats, man,” I said. “Do you think when Bear gets married he’s gonna have the full out biker wedding with brawls and revving engines during the ceremony?”
“Probably,” King agreed.
“I wonder if he’ll wear a shirt...”
“So you finally came to get the rest of your shit?” King asked, pointing to the box in my arms.
I set it down in my trunk and slammed it shut, brushing the dust off my hands by clapping them together. “Yeah, figured it didn’t do you any good to have it lying around here taking up space when I’m not living here anymore.”
King and I both leaned up against my trunk. He lit a cigarette and passed me his lighter so I could do the same.
“I know I’ve been gone for a bit and I still come over pretty much all the time,” I said, looking up at the house that had been my home for ten years, minus several months in Narnia. “And it feels weird to say this, but I’m gonna miss this place. I think leaving some of my shit here made it feel like I hadn’t really moved out, not all the way. Now? Now it all feels really fucking real.”
“What are you going to miss about it the most? The parties? Girls? All the bad fucking decisions we made?” King asked with a smile. He took a long drag of his cigarette, ashing it onto the gravel.
“Hey, I’ll have you know that some of my favorite memories started with those bad decisions,” I pointed out. “I feel the need to defend all of the ridiculous fun we had here.”
“You remember the day we moved in?” King asked, looking up at the house.
“Like it was yesterday.”
“It was a good day,” King said.
I scratched my nose and waved the smoke from my eye. “It was the BEST fucking day ever, Boss-Man,” I agreed. “The BEST.”
King nodded and we both just stood there, staring at the house as if we were waiting for it to chime in with an opinion. The day we moved in really was a great day. Neither one of us owned much so when we moved from the roach infested apartment we’d been renting previously it only took one trip. And then it was just the two of us in an empty house with an old boom box. We took turns choosing songs to play while swigging from the bottle of whiskey and snorting lines off the kitchen counter.
“We were just a couple of stupid kids back then,” I said. “It was so run down then.” I pointed to the fresh paint and new siding. “I like what you’ve done with the place. How you and Ray have fixed it all up. It looks more adult and less ‘hey lots of illegal shit going down inside.’”