Mason chuckled, but he could see a spark of hope in his partner’s dark eyes.
Jesse
Jesse glanced up at the entrance doors to the bus station for the zillionth time, praying he’d see his best friend’s ugly mug rushing inside with a wide apologetic grin for being two hours late to pick him up. But unfortunately, it wasn’t. He checked his cell phone for any missed calls or texts which he knew wasn’t possible since he’d been clutching his phone in his hand all night. Jesse bounced his knee repeatedly while he sat uncomfortably on one of the hard wooden benches. At six in the morning, the station was bustling with people probably headed to their own new year’s destinations, all bright smiles behind their Christmas Starbucks cups. Jesse felt as if he stuck out like a sore thumb, like people could see he was either in a predicament or running from it.
The security guard had been watching him carefully as if he had a bomb in his duffle. He didn’t know what the guy’s deal was, but as far as he knew, he’d been a passenger, and he should be allowed to wait inside the building for his ride. However long that may be. Come on, Worm. Where the hell are you? Jesse tapped the receiver icon twice, redialing, again. And just like the other twenty times, it went straight to voicemail. “Goddamnit,” he spat.
The security guard stood up and put his hands on his big hips, and Jesse took that as his one and only warning. He waited until nine before he conceded that his friend wasn’t coming and he needed to find someplace else to wait. But Jesse didn’t know where else he could go. He was a stranger in a strange city, and his resources were limited.
He zipped his gray hoodie up to his neck, then pulled his leather coat closed against the nip in the air. It wasn’t as cold as Baltimore, where he and Worm were born and raised, but according to Google Maps, he had at least a forty-five-minute walk ahead of him to get to his friend’s house at the corner of Bryan Street and Chastain. Once he cleared the large parking lot, he blended in easily with the foot traffic moving eastbound. He tried not to worry too much. But there was no way Worm would stand him up and be a no call, no-show—something was wrong.
“I swear to god, Worm, you better be oversleeping from some wild party you went to last night,” Jesse mumbled low enough not to turn the heads of the couple walking in front of him. But he was anxious and scared. His only real friend left in the world had to be okay. He walked and walked some more until he was no longer surrounded by the early risers with energetic dogs and businessmen with a briefcase in one hand and cell phone in the other, already conducting transactions.
Jesse crossed the street toward a wide-open park, hoping he could cut through it instead of walking all the way around the block. His cheeks were cold, his feet hurt, and his stomach had expressed its lack of contents hours ago. Once he was with Worm, that’s when he’d concern himself with eating and sleeping. It wasn’t until he’d cleared another wall of dense shrubs that he noticed the shabby tents, blankets, trash, and people… people sleeping all over as if they were in the last hours of a slumber party. What the hell? It was a bunch of homeless people, even some with families. Oh my god.
“Hey, fella.”
Jesse swung around to a man that was sitting beside a trash can that smelled as if it was last night’s heat source. “Me?” Jesse glanced around stupidly. Of course he was speaking to him. “Yeah.”
“You got some spare change to spare for a vet?” he asked.
Jesse quickly dug his wallet from his backpack to remove a couple of ones—that he truly didn’t have to spare—when he heard footsteps behind him.
“What you got in that bag, kid?” A man with sunken eyes and rank breath stood only feet away, close enough that Jesse immediately knew something was off about him. He was staring intently at Jesse’s face, but it was as if he wasn’t seeing him. His eyes were red-rimmed, cloudy, and his hands twitched nervously around his unkempt beard. Those wild eyes dropped to Jesse’s wallet as if it was a steak and the man hadn’t eaten in weeks. Jesse forgot about his good deed and shoved his wallet deep in his bag and turned to haul ass when he felt a heavy hand clamp down on his shoulder.
Jesse hollered out in shock and scrambled to get free as the man kept his erratic gaze on Jesse’s bag. “Let me go!” Jesse snapped. His attacker felt unbelievably strong to be so old. Or perhaps it was the four or five extra layers of clothing that Jesse clawed at that made the man appear twice his size and unstoppable. As the bastard struggled to pry Jesse’s backpack from his hands, he got a better look at the guy’s face, realizing he wasn’t as old as he thought. He might’ve been more around Jesse’s age, but whatever shit he was on had aged him faster than Benjamin Button.