I was born minutes away from the beach and minutes away from the sticks, in Logan’s Beach, Florida. Saltwater in my veins. Dust on my soul.
Which was probably the reason it never bothered me when Bear, King, and I didn’t spend our Friday nights like most teenagers in LB were. Kicking up shit in the woods or sneaking beer into the drive-in dollar movie theater.
Then again, King, Bear and I weren’t most teenagers.
Our Friday nights were spent a little differently. Like rowing out to an island to bury our ‘investments.’
Although it didn’t have an official name, we’d dubbed the little five-acre slab of land separating the Bay from the Gulf as Motherfucker Island.
MFI for short.
Motherfucker Island was uninhabited and only about as big as a typical strip mall. Dense brush covered most of it, for the exception of a small clearing in the center made up of red dirt and shell. An almost perfect line of mangroves lined the perimeter.
We’d started our ‘supply bunker’ a year before. It was really just a hole in the ground, but you could only reach the island by boat and the mangroves and alligator infested shallow waters around it didn’t exactly make it a hot-spot destination for anyone but three delinquent teens trying to hide newly acquired cash, guns, and drugs.
The apartment King and I were renting wasn’t much by way of security unless you consider the flimsy chain lock on the door with rusted hinges secure. Hence the need for MFI.
The sun was setting as we rowed toward Motherfucker Island in the tiny metal boat barely large enough to hold the three of us. The time of day when it wasn’t still day but night had yet to take over the sky. I liked to call it the time of day when I couldn’t see shit. The rays from the falling ball of fire in the sky reflected off everything in sight causing me to go half blind as I rowed, hoping King and Bear could keep us on target.
A manatee blew out water a few feet from our boat. “Hey, buddy,” I said, leaning over the side and lightly patting the surface of the water.
“What the fuck are you doing?” King asked with a laugh.
“Making him come to me. I saw it on a TV show when I was a kid.” I continued to pat the water. “Come here, buddy. Come to Preppy,” I said, whistling like I was calling for a dog.
“I’m pretty sure that only works for dolphins,” Bear said, a cigarette dangling from his lip.
“Manatees are dolphins much fatter, slower cousins,” I argued. I either remembered that fact from somewhere, or made it up.
Chances are I made it up.
The manatee’s head disappeared. He flipped his tattered back fin in the air before disappearing back under the water, creating a circular ripple in the surface where he’d just been.
“Anyone else think the manatee just flipped us off?” King asked.
“He sure as fuck did,” Bear agreed. “Way to go dolphin-cousin whisperer.”
I sat back up and glared at my friends. “It’s your attitudes that scared him off. It deters even the wildlife.” I reached for my lighter in my back pocket. “In addition to girls.”
“I don’t have any problems with the girls,” King argued.
“Yeah, they’ll fuck you, but they’re scared of you,” I pointed out.
“Don’t bother me none,” King said, taking a deep breath. “Prefer it that way, actually.”
“This town can be such shit,” Bear said, exhaling smoke. He pointed to his cigarette at the disappearing ripple in the water where the manatee had just been. “And then you see shit like that and it makes you think that maybe it’s not so fucking bad.”
“I fucking love this town,” I said. “And we’re gonna own it someday. Well on our way.”
“Then we’re gonna own one of those,” King said, tipping his chin to several huge homes on pilings, towering above the water. Some of them were dark, hurricane panels covering the windows and doors. A sure sign that they were owned by someone who only lived in them ‘in season’ which was somewhere from November to March.
“What a fucking waste,” King said, echoing my thoughts. He pointed up to one such house. A three story stilt home sitting almost right under The Causeway. It was completely dark, storm shutters on every window and door. It had a huge backyard with a neglected fire pit, bricks crumbling from the pile.
“Fucking shame,” I agreed. “When we get one of those big ‘ol fuckers for ourselves I’m never leaving the place. Like a king in his castle.”
King shot me a look. “We already got a King.”
I knew he was goading me because he had this thing he did when he was trying to be serious but about to crack where the corner of his lip would ever so slightly twitch like he was physically fighting his reaction. “Like a Preppy in his castle then,” I amended.
King smiled.
“I’m glad you let that smile out, Boss-Man. I was afraid for a second that you were going to spontaneously combust. That or you had a serious case of constipation,” I said.
Bear snorted. “Well, make sure that when y’all get one of them places that you make room for me,” Bear said, sounding defeated.
“Uh, Bear. You’re in a biker gang,” I pointed out. I quit rowing just long enough to pass him the dented Pepsi can I’d made into a temporary bong after dropping my rolling papers into the fucking Caloosahatchee. “I hate to sound all mean-girls on you, but...you can’t live with us.”
“It’s a motorcycle club,” Bear corrected, looking off into the distance. “And I ain’t moving in. Just make sure you have space for me if I need to crash.”
King and I glanced at each other and understanding passed between us that Bear meant he needed a place to crash for when his ‘ol man, Chop, pushed him to the edge, which he was doing more and more of ever since Bear turned official Prospect for the MC.
“Sure thing, man,” King said, casually.
The three of us continued to survey the darkened waste of real estate until we came upon one that was different than the others.
It was lit up and being that it was closer to the water than the others, we could see directly inside to where a family was eating dinner together at the dining room table. A mom, dad, and little boy. They were smiling and laughing together. “Didn’t know families actually did that,” I said, not realizing how sad it sounded at the time.
“You don’t want that,” Bear argued. “Shit looks boring as fuck.”
King agreed with a slight nod of his head.
“I didn’t say I wanted that,” I quipped, shrugging my shoulders. “I just didn’t know people actually did that. Thought it was made up or something you only see on TV.”
“It is,” Bear said. “What you just saw there was a lie. The dad is probably fucking his assistant, who’s a dude, mom’s knocked up by the principle of junior’s school and has a thousand dollar a day drug habit, plus junior is so high on ADD meds he doesn’t know his dick from a wet noodle.”
“I feel like you’ve given this way more thought than it deserved,” I observed as the family eating dinner grew further and further away. “Wait?” I faked a gasp. “Are YOU the one fucking the dad?”
Bear punched me in the shoulder and smiled. “Boring as fuck,” he said again, like it was a fact he wanted me to remember. He slid his cigarette to the side of his mouth so he could use both arms to row against the growing current.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Boring as fuck.”
As we approached the island everything was cast in shadows, making the long roots of the mangroves look like hundreds of skinny legs dipping into the water. The trees themselves appeared to be large spider-like creatures standing guard around the island.
I held the flashlight, trying to find the clearing we’d hacked out months before. The light caught the yellow glowing eyes of a dozen or so gators lingering at the surface of the water. Some darted under the second they found themselves in the way of the beam, other braver ones slinked toward our boat without creating any sort of wake to better inspect the intruders.
; Us.
“It’s like a gator orgy out here,” I said.
“Yeah, so let's get over there quickly without tipping the goddamned boat before it becomes a gator buffet,” King said.
Once we found the clearing we paddled toward it with all of our strength to keep the tide from pushing us back. The second the boat made contact with land King jumped out first pulling the boat further onto the shore, scraping the metal bottom of the boat over the rock and shell.
Bear and I followed, each of us carrying backpacks with our stash. It only took us an hour or so to locate our hole, dig it up again, bury our stash and cover it back up.
As we made it back to the boat my flashlight again caught the yellow eyes of the gators surrounding the boat. One thrashed as it caught a fish in its mouth before diving back under the water with its meal between its teeth. “Great night for a swim,” I sang, looking back at King and Bear.
“You afraid?” Bear said, slinging his empty backpack into the boat.
“You’re the pussy out of the three of us,” I said. “Bet you wouldn’t dip your big toe in the water.”
Bear raised a brow. “Oh yeah? I’ll do you one better, I’ll run in, knee deep if you run in with me.”
“One lap around the boat?” I asked, already kicking off my shoes and rolling up my pants. Bear did the same. We both looked to King.
“Fuck,” he said, tugging off his boots. “The only reason I’m doing it this is so I don’t have to fucking hear about it for the rest of my goddamned life.” He stood at the edge. “Don’t tell Grace a word of this,” he muttered.
The three of us stood at the edge and Bear pushed the boat halfway into the water.
“Ready?” I asked, cracking my neck and rolling my shoulders. “First motherfucker to get eaten...well, dies.”
“I’m not scared,” Bear said.
“Me neither,” King chimed in.
“Okay then,” I said. “Ready. Set. Goooooo!” I shouted as the three of us splashed through the water like a herd of zebra running from a lion. It only took a few seconds for us to round the boat before we collapsed onto the shore, breathing hard from the adrenaline rush.
“All thirty fingers and toes accounted for?” King huffed.
“Yeah,” Bear and I both said at the same time. I held a finger in the air, “But Bear’s pinky toe on his right foot is weirdly smaller than the rest of his toes, so the ‘all finger and toe’ thing is subjective at best.”
“Shut the fuck up, Preppy,” Bear said, reaching for me to hit me but his fist fell short, smacking the ground instead.
“That wasn’t so bad,” I said, still gasping for air.
My life would never be like the perfect-looking family eating dinner in that window, but it didn’t have to be, because at that moment, with my friends by my side, I decided I’d much rather live the kind of life that had me splashing through gator infested waters, feeling very much ALIVE.
I glanced over to King and Bear who recognized the look on my face and cringed.
“Wanna go again?”
CHAPTER SIX
Dre
After Preppy left with Kevin I called my dad to reassure him I was okay. He sounded as if he’d been waiting by the phone so it took quite some time to calm him down and put his mind at ease that I was safe, which was hard when I wasn’t so sure myself. Apparently, I didn’t do that great of a job convincing him because he decided to stay in town for a while. At least until he was sure whatever threat was looming out there was gone.
After we hung up and I promised we’d get together in the next day or so, I realized that in all the confusion over what had happened the night before I’d forgotten a few things. Number one, I didn’t get a chance to give Preppy his surprise, but he’d seen it and thanked me for it with his tongue between my legs. The shiny black classic Chrysler was now sitting in the darkened back corner of the parking space under the house, covered with a tarp.
I’d also almost forgot that Mirna’s house was now mine again.
Not mine. OURS.
That thought made me smile from ear to ear.
I don’t know how Preppy and Ray pulled it off, especially without telling me for so long, but I was beyond grateful they had. That house meant so much to me and I couldn’t wait to get back in it. It was like the start of a new life and the rebirth of an old one.
Moving was the perfect distraction I needed to take my mind off the events of the night before. When the rental truck showed up at the house I immediately felt a sense of relief that I could focus on something other than who could be out to get me, although the stinging pain from the wound on my leg and other numerous scrapes and scratches, took the liberty of reminding me every other movement.
Besides one small scrape on the side of his arm you’d never thought that King had been in an accident the night before, never mind one where the truck flipped on it’s side. When I thanked him for coming to my rescue, he looked at me as if my thanks were ridiculous, and then him and Bear started loading up everything from the garage apartment into a we-haul rental truck, including the sofa, and the bed, which had already been dismantled. Come to think of it, the bed being in pieces was probably the reason I’d woken up in Max’s room that morning.
We didn’t have much by way of furniture, but we didn’t need it. Thankfully Mirna’s house was cozy and it wouldn’t take much to fill it up.
Everything else we owned, clothes and all, had already been packed up into boxes so it didn’t take long for the boys to get it all onto the truck.
Ray came back from the beach with the kids and when Bo came bounding out of Ray’s new SUV I hugged him tight and didn’t let go until he started to wiggle in my arms. “Are you okay?” I asked. The sound of him calling for me still echoing in my thoughts. I shook it off, not wanting to pass on any of my worry or fear to him.
Bo nodded and pointed to a scrape on my cheek.
“I’m okay,” I said, touching my fingers to the small scab. “It’s just a scratch.” I took his little hand in mine and we piled back into Ray’s car together.
After the ritual of making sure everyone was back in the car and buckled in their boosters and car seats, checking to make sure every buckle was at chest level and every safety latch was tight, we took off for Mirna’s.
Home.
Bear and King were already unloading when we arrived. Some of Bear’s guys were there as well, standing guard along the perimeter of the yard and at the end of the driveway.
“You remember this place?” I asked Bo as we un-piled all the kids one by one and set them free to run about the yard and house.
Bo nodded enthusiastically.
I crouched down next to him and hugged him close to my side. “Do you want to go pick your room? You can have either the first one on the left, that used to be my old room, or the room at the end of the hall.” Before I’d finished my sentence Bo was already up the steps and in the house, darting past King and Bear who were carrying the sofa inside.
It took less than an hour to unload everything. Bear and King checked with the bikers they’d left behind and took off. Ray stuck around for a little while to help put dishes away in the kitchen but it didn’t take long for the kids to grow restless.
“Thank you so much for all your help,” I said to Ray as we stood outside her SUV after packing all the kids away again. I’d left Bo in his room, the one that used to be the grow room, laying on his back staring at the ceiling fan spin round and round with a goofy grin on his face.
“No problem. Thia’s sorry she couldn’t help but Trey’s got another cold and she didn’t want the other kids to get it.”
“Tell her not to worry about it and when Trey’s feeling better we can have a girl’s night.”
“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Ray said.
“Thanks again, Ray,” I said, wrapping her in a tight hug.
“Is this pre or post kiss? Doesn’t matter. Either way, I’m very okay with your decision to step outside of our m
arriage...but only if I can watch.” I didn’t need to turn around to know that Preppy was standing behind me, but when I did, I was surprised to see Kevin still with him. Especially because Preppy had called to say he was dropping him at his place before meeting me at the house.
Ray got in her SUV and buckled her seatbelt. “I’ll see you later,” she said to me before turning to Preppy. “For the record, Preppy you showed up post kiss, and you missed it. It was pretty epic. Tongue and everything.” Ray stuck out her tongue as she backed out of the driveway. All three kids in the backseat mimicked her, sticking out their tongues as well.
“Can you just lie to me and tell me that really happened?” Preppy asked, wrapping me in his arms. He stared down at my lips. “Never mind. I like the idea of these lips being only mine.” He pressed his soft lips to mine then pulled back slightly. “Unless you really did do it in which case...”
I laughed and gave my man a quick kiss. “Hey Kevin,” I called