Play to Win by Jodie Slaughter

Author:Jodie Slaughter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

14

LEO

Quentin had convinced Leo to wake up at the ass crack of dawn on a Saturday morning to go to some sort of combo farmers’ market / flea market. Leo had been to plenty of rubbish sales and church donation bin pickups, but Quentin had explained that this was different. He’d used words like “local honey” and “antiques” to describe it, words that meant next to nothing to Leo, if he was being honest. But he’d agreed because he wanted to spend time with his boy. So much so that it didn’t matter what the hell they were doing. It also didn’t matter when the market got rained out by a summer shower.

Leo hadn’t spent his time away from Greenbelt making friends. Honestly, he’d done the exact opposite. He’d avoided almost all meaningful connections. Partly because he knew that no one could compare to the people he’d left behind, and partly because he didn’t feel like he deserved it after what he’d done. Almost a decade spent in some kind of self-imposed isolation and Quentin could have asked him to help unclog his toilet and he probably would have been fully on board to help.

So much of his brain space had been rightfully filled with guilt over leaving Miri, but he was starting to see that he’d been shortsighted. Thea, Ahmir, and the kids, Quentin, all his cousins, hell, even all the church aunties. He’d cared about them, which probably meant that they had cared for him too.

Was it ridiculous that he’d never really considered that? The possibility that the people he loved would love him back and—in return—miss him when he was gone?

Thea had been telling him for years that she missed him. That she wanted him back in Greenbelt with her and the family. And to be honest, he’d dismissed it as the kind of stuff everyone said when their family moved away. When he thought about her and everyone else back home, he’d imagined them as almost unchanged. Going about their lives completely normal as if he’d never been there in the first place.

Now, sitting across from his best friend in a booth at Minnie’s Diner, he wasn’t so sure.

“You know we still come here every Tuesday night,” Quentin told him, eyes on the laminated menu as if it hadn’t remained unchanged for longer than both of them had even been alive.

“You and Chuck?”

“Yep, and my mama and daddy too. Every Tuesday, rain or shine. Who does shit like that anymore?”

Leo didn’t know if there was a single Greenbelt citizen who could consider themselves as anything other than a regular at Minnie’s. Even his aunties, who hated anything that wasn’t made by hand in one of their kitchens, made their way down to Minnie’s for a meal on the regular. It was a Greenbelt institution. The one thing that brought everyone in town together to some extent. They might not have liked each other, but they sure liked Minnie’s peach cobbler or meat loaf and cabbage.

“You know Greenbelt.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.