Page 101 of The Guy in the Alley

“Hey, fuck you,” I laughed.

Chip gasped. “You said fu?—”

“Don’t even think about it,” I replied quickly.

This wasn’t my first rodeo.

“But if you can say it, then I can?—”

I shook my head. “No. You said it yourself, I’m eighteen—I’m a grown man. And your ma’s a hundred. When you turn eighteen, you can swear all you want.”

He scowled at me.

I mock-scowled right back.

“I’m gonna say a bad word,” he whispered. “Jagoff.”

Oh, but… “That’s fine.” I shrugged. “Jagoff ain’t really a bad word. Mommy just says so, and she’s a hundred years old.”

“You’re gonna milk this too much,” Ben chuckled. “Meanwhile, I’m gonna go find someone who’s at least in his thirties.”

The fuck he would. He earned the next scowl, and there was no mocking about it.

He puckered his lips at me.

Jagoff.

* * *

“Dad, I’m only gonna have five more,” Alvin said. “Stop me if I try to take extra.”

In other therapy news, Rose was teaching Alvin to set boundaries for himself, and it was affecting his intake of pretzel sticks and Nutella.

“I’ll stop you,” I promised. “In fact, return the bag to the kitchen.”

He nodded and rose from the desk chair. “That’s clever.” He took the Nutella with him too.

I wiped some sweat off my forehead and then bent down to drag the roller through the paint. A beat later, Trace was back with our water.

“Why was Alvin muttering to himself that he should’ve said ten instead of five?”

I grinned and accepted the glass. “He limited his pretzel obsession.”

“Unwise. It never works.” He shook his head and picked up his own roller.

I watched for a few seconds, because Trace Kalecki doing handyman work was my new fantasy come true. He had some blue paint on his jaw, his hands might as well belong to a Smurf, but he got the job done without streaks on the walls. That was all that mattered.

I chugged my water as he bent over again to get more paint.

“Enjoy the view while it lasts, hon. I gotta get to work in half an hour,” he said.

“Oh, I’m enjoying it.”

I was gonna spend the rest of my life with that ass.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Trace Kalecki

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