Page 31 of Color Chameleon
He didn’t know about that.He just tried to live his life doing better than the people who had kicked him to the curb for who he was.And now he got to do that with Charma.He knew that what that made him was a lucky man.
ChapterSeven
The festival had been fun and people hadn’t been mean to Darcy at all.Oh sure, there’d been a lot of questions because everyone was curious, but nobody had been nasty.To either of them.
Mom had sent them home with more than just biscuits, so they were going to eat like kings for the next few days.And they’d had the Uber deliver them to the grocery store so they could pick up butter for the biscuits.That had been Darcy’s idea, and definitely a good one.Mom’s biscuits were made for butter.It wasn’t a long walk from the grocery store to home, but their bags quickly got to feeling heavy.
“Maybe we should have gone out for butter tomorrow,” Darcy suggested as he put his bags down and shook out his arms before picking them back up.
“Yeah, that might have been the easier choice.”
“I can’t wait to look through the bags, though, and see what all is in here.It’s obviously a lot more than just the biscuits she promised us.I didn’t want to be rude and look through it while we were there,” Darcy admitted.
“It’ll be like unwrapping gifts when we get home.”Given that she’d obviously planned on giving them all this in advance or she wouldn’t have had four big bags to give them, Charma hoped that a few of his favorites that only she made right would be included.
“We’re going to get spoiled for our own cooking,” Darcy suggested.
“Tell me about it.That’s one of the things I missed the most when I moved away.And I don’t mean her doing the cooking itself, I mean the actual food.”
“I hear you.”Darcy tilted his head.“You know, I can’t honestly remember if the woman who gave birth to me was a good cook or not.Everything from earlier is kind of blurred behind the ‘trying to force the gay out of me’ thing they had going.”
He wanted to give Darcy a hug, but he couldn’t, given both his hands were full.So he just bumped their shoulders together and offered a soft, “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too.”Darcy shrugged.“It was what it was.I can’t change it so I’ve given up dwelling on it and just try to live my life going forward.”He got a brilliant smile from Darcy.“And right now, I’d have to say I have a lovely forward to be living in.Looking forward to?I don’t know, I think I lost the metaphor there.”
Oh, he did love everything about Darcy.“I’m pretty sure I know what you were trying to say and I agree.Our future looks bright.”
“I guess we’ll have to wear shades,” Darcy added as they turned the corner to their block.
He cackled at that, Darcy joining him.They were still chuckling as they approached the door.
Out of the blue, some big guy in camo knocked Charma to the side, his shoulder hitting the building.“Ow!”He took a breath, about to give the guy a piece of his mind.
That’s when a second guy grabbed Darcy.
“Hey, get off me!”Darcy shouted, his bags dropping as he tried to get loose.
The asshole who’d bumped Charma grabbed Darcy’s legs and the two guys carted him toward a waiting truck.Dropping his own bags, Charma shouted and launched himself at camo guy’s back, trying to get him off Darcy.The guy had at least a hundred and fifty pounds of muscle on him, though, and he shrugged Charma off like a bug.
Darcy had stopped shouting, one big hand over his mouth, so Charma started crying out.
“Help!Somebody help!Call the cops!Kidnapping!Kidnapping!”
He leapt onto the asshole’s back, biting at his shoulders and trying to get his hands around the thick neck to squeeze.Nonetheless, the guys got Darcy into the back of the truck, and then the guy Charma was trying to stop grabbed one of his arms and dragged him off, throwing him to the ground.
He could hear Darcy screaming as one of the guys followed him into the back of the car.The guy Charma had been grappling with slammed the truck door closed and got into the front seat before Charma could even get up.Then the vehicle peeled away, pulling into traffic.
Somehow, Charma had the presence of mind to zero in on the license plate.It had Famous Potatoes at the bottom and 10B 4 were the only digits he could make out before it disappeared in the traffic.It had been a dark gray truck.Maybe a Ford?Maybe a Dodge?He couldn’t be sure.He wasn’t good with makes and models of trucks and cars.He kept repeating potatoes and 10B 4 in his head, over and over as people came over to where he stood, food spilling out from the bags all around him on the ground.
“I’m on the line with the police,” an older woman with an orange floppy hat told him.“Are you okay?Do you need an ambulance, too?”
He shook his head.“I’m fine.My friend has been kidnapped.Gray truck 10B 4 and Famous Potatoes.”
The lady repeated the information into the phone.“They said they would issue an alert for the truck and they’re sending a car here.Do you know the make and model of the truck?”
Charma shook his head.“I think maybe a Ford or a Dodge?”
“It was a four-door Ford F350,” one of the other people who’d gathered said.“An older model, too and a little banged up.”
