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* * *
When I pulled up in the alley behind Ace’s House and parked, our head of maintenance, Vern, was out there, breaking down cardboard boxes and trying to fit them into our already full dumpster.
He smirked when I got out of my truck. “Heard you chucked a rock through Red’s front window.”
“It was a brick,” I said, yanking my bag from the tangle it was in on the passenger seat. The long strap had gotten stuck on the metal seatbelt clip when I’d dumped it into my truck in my rush to not be late to work and piss Theo off further. “But yeah, you heard right.”
He raised an eyebrow and adjusted his Ace’s House baseball cap. “Should I ask?”
“Please don’t. I’m so mad at myself for doin’ it. And Theo’s pissed.”
“Oh yeah,” Vern said. “I heard that loud and clear when I got here a little while ago. Why do you think I’m out here? He was yellin’ at Brady on the phone. They never fight.”
“That’s probably ’cause Brady told him about his genius plan to have me and Red switch jobs next week, which means you guys will have the pleasure of workin’ with that old jackass.”
But if it kept me out of jail, I was all for it.
“Ah, Red’s harmless,” Vern said. “And don’t worry. I’ll keep an eye on things, and you know Theo would never let him do anything to hurt anybody.”
“I know. Thanks, Vern. It’s just that some of these kids are confused and fragile. You know? What if he says somethin’ stupid and they believe him?”
“They won’t, Devo, ’cause you’ll be back, and all they have to do is look at you, at how you live your life. You’re a good person.” He chuckled. “You know, when you’re not breakin’ people’s windows.”
I shrugged. I tried to be a good person. Had my recent lawbreaking stricken it from my record?
“Thanks. You want coffee? I think I’ll run over to Coffee Shot and get Theo his favorite. Maybe I can get ahead of his bad mood.”
“Naw, thanks though. I’m tryin’ to cut down on caffeine. I’ve been workin’ out, and I’m changin’ up my diet.” He lifted his arms and flexed his biceps. He’d worn his usual white tank over jeans, and I could see the difference already. He’d really been paying attention to his appearance lately, which was night and day from when I’d first met him. I would’ve even gone so far as to say that Vern was handsome, and I’d even noticed a couple of tourists ogling his backside last week at the farmers market.
Backing away, I whistled. “Lookin’ good!”
“Aw shucks,” he said, red-faced, and I giggled.
Vern was an odd guy, but he’d turned out to be one of the nicest people I’d ever worked with. No matter the task, he was always willing to help or get his hands dirty. I’d known he was a good person and a hard worker the first time we met. Everyone thought I was nuts for trusting him, but I knew all he needed was a chance and someone to rely on him, someone who valued his opinion. He found that in Theo, and in me, and now, Vern was a different guy. He took pride in Ace’s House, and it showed in his job.
If someone like Vern could change his mind when he’d spent most of his life around crude, intolerant people, why couldn’t Red do the same? Or was everyone else right that Red wasn’t really homophobic and I was just blind to the truth?
“Alright. See you in a bit.”
“That you will,” he said as he turned and pulled his boxcutter from the loop on his jeans, then twirled it in a circle in his hand. “You surely will.”
* * *
I made my way across Main Street and stepped over the threshold into Coffee Shot, and as a gust of really cold air conditioning rushed at me, cheers erupted from the customers. People smiled at me and clapped.
“What?” I said, stopping in my tracks and looking around, confused.
“It’s about time somebody put Red in his place,” Finn Cade, one of Wisper’s resident horse ranchers, said. He tossed a wink my way and smirked.
“Yeah,” Aubrey said, laughing. “He deserved it, but don’t do that to my window, okay?” She owned the only bookstore in Wisper, Your Local Bookie, and was a member of Wisper’s romance book club.
Abey belonged to that club. I’d seen her going into the library for their meetings. Thinking about that had me wondering just what they got up to at their meetings. How detailed did they get when they discussed the sex scenes from the books they read? Imagining Abey reading raunchy dialogue out loud made me blush a little.
I shook the thought from my head. “It was wrong. I shouldn’t have done it.”
Walt, the owner of Coffee Shot, handed me my favorite, an iced double shot cappuccino. “Saw you comin’. It’s on the house.” He winked and smiled, but it didn’t surprise me that he wasn’t voicing his praise for my misdeeds. He probably didn’t want to risk people talking badly about him or his business, but the feisty smile on his lips said it all.
No one liked Red. He really was a jerk, not just to me but to most people. He was rude to just about everybody he encountered. Men, women, even children. But nobody seemed to know why. What had happened to the guy that had turned him into such an outright dick?
