Page 54 of Alonzo

A few seconds later I hear screaming inside.

“Holy fuck.” Vann looks at me. “What’s going on? Should we go see if she’s OK?”

“No. Just stay put.” Because it’s the good kind of screaming. The kind of screaming when someone comes back from the dead and upends your whole world.

She knows these people.

She knows my Lonnie.

What are the chances of that?

“I don’t like this,” Vann says. “Something feels weird.”

“Yeah. I know.” I look over my shoulder and see two men walking towards the house. Talking as they look at each other.

One is shirtless, one is not.

One of them is…

“Holy fucking shit, Vann. Oh, my God, there he is.”

I lean back in my seat and then slink down.

“Who?” Vann asks.

“Don’t look! Don’t look!”

He looks. His window is rolled down so Lonnie and his friend glance at Vann as they walk by the truck and nod their heads. Both of them say, “Sup?”

Vann does that nod thing guys do. “Sup.”

There’s more excited screaming from inside the house.

I catch Lonnie saying, “What the hell?” as he and his friend climb the porch stairs, throw open the screen door, and disappear inside.

I’m here.

He’s here.

He’s real.

We’re together. In the same town. Practically in the same fucking house!

This is my daydream, right?

This is my chance.

This is everything I’ve been longing for.

So why am I suddenly so fucking pissed?

I don’t know. Belinda, maybe? She lied to me too. She’s not who she said she was. She kept that secret all the way down here. She knew who Lonnie was and didn’t say anything for three days.

But that’s not really it.

It’s him. Lonnie. Walking down the street with his buddy. Some friend I didn’t even know about even though we’ve been phone-fucking for two years. Talking, and shirtless, and all fucking hot and sexy in his cute tropical neighborhood filled with family-owned cottages. The ocean is so close, you can smell the salt in the air. Hell, I can practically feel the mist wafting in through my open window.

“Is anything in my life not a lie, Vann?”