I waited, wanting to actually talk to her for once.
And I was back to this: Kess Foster. Beautiful and she was the kind that didn’t know it. And what was more, she wasn’t a common beauty; she was unique. Her hair was so blonde, it was almost white. It looked like she dyed it with some dark roots, but that was just her hair.
Heckler had the same hair, and it was weird.
If we were told that aliens came down and had been walking among us, I would’ve instantly thought Heckler and Kess were from them. That was in addition to their eyes. I had clear blue eyes. I knew this, and it was something I got a fuck-ton of attention from. They were my weapon. I could yield them how I wanted, but in her school, I kept my head down and my mouth shut. No one messed with me, but that was a testament to the school itself. The dynamics had been interesting here.
But my eyes weren’t like hers.
Hers were an ice blue. Almost gray, almost just white too. I’d never seen eyes like hers.
One woman giggled over Heckler, saying his eyes were like a vanilla chai latte with a dash of light blue in them. Eerie.
But Kess didn’t know.
She’d been in a crew, and those five guys had been protective of her. That was, until a storm went down and their crew disbanded. I watched it happen.
I watched as each guy left and were now already doing their own thing. One guy remained, but he’d shunned her, and I had no idea why.
She was alone, and she just graduated high school.
She shouldn’t be alone.
This was the summer she was supposed to have a last hoorah with her friends before heading to college. That was one thing I had been proud of, because she was smart. She was going to school. Some in our life, my life, didn’t do academic institutions. They were looked at as weapons for the ‘other’ way of life.
Max didn’t view them that way, and I was glad that Heckler said his niece didn’t either.
She was going to a fancy sounding school.
I was happy. I was proud.
She was smart. She was self-reliant. She wasn’t a big fighter, but if push came to shove, she’d pick up a gun. She had good aim. I’d watched her at the gun range.
She’d be just fine, but she was alone, and I didn’t like her being alone.
I also didn’t like that she wasn’t prepared for what kind of attention she was going to get moving forward. That made me worried, and my dick grew, calling me an asshole, because yeah, I was one of those guys.
I wanted to give her a whole bunch of attention.
5
Kess
He was still staring.
I hated to admit this, but it was just making me hotter and more bothered.
What was wrong with me?
I’d never been this girl. Ever. It’s not that guys hadn’t been interested, but once I joined my crew, those guys went away. There’d been a time I had dated one of my crew members, but it would’ve gone bad fast so that stopped immediately. After that, we’d been a no-dating crew. I loved my guys, or had loved them. They were my brothers. My family. We joined our freshman year, and our crew name had been Shane’s Crew. Nothing fancy and named after Shane Lorenzo. He’d been our leader, but the rest of us all got along. There’d been problems, which was why I felt so blindsided.
They’d been my security blanket, and now, nothing.
Shane went to Alaska. Kemp and Gorrup were on their backpacking trip together. Johnny was still here, but not speaking to me. I had no clue why. And Curtis was probably face first in his girlfriend’s pussy since we’d disbanded. She’d been eager for the end of us and now that it happened, I guess she was his new crew in the whole girlfriend/boyfriend thing.
Mostly we liked to drink beer and laugh together. We did pranks sometimes, mostly on teachers or the principal, or anyone who messed with us. But we weren’t a fighting crew. We weren’t known for that. We were just there in the background.
Christ.
They were me.
I was them.
That was me.
I was ‘the background’ and it was hitting me how stupid I’d been.
There had been conversations over the last year about the summer and next year. The guys had even said they were looking into going backpacking, but I thought they’d talk about it with the rest of us. And Shane had mentioned Alaska. I told them I was going to college. Johnny was doing the same.
But… just to disband? It hurt. It hurt a lot.
“Wanna get a burger?”
His gravelly voice pulled me out of my thoughts, and I tuned back in. His head had remained to the side, those eyes on me, piercing through me, and I was getting all flushed having different thoughts instead. Thoughts like something other than his eyes checking me out.