The Auspicious Troubles Of Chance by Charlie Cochet

Author:Charlie Cochet [Cochet, Charlie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

MY LEG healed pretty quickly, and soon I was back on my feet. It wasn’t that I wanted to make Jacky’s life miserable, especially knowing how he felt about me. It just wasn’t easy for me to not be me. I ended up getting shot a second and third time. Minor wounds, really. More like grazes. By the third, Jacky had caught on to me, like a parent catching on to a petulant child. He threw me the medical officer’s bag and walked away, leaving me to dig the bullet out of my own arm. I revisited my lunch twice but managed to get it done.

As I sat in the shade of some palms in the winter heat trying to make the world stop spinning, Johnnie and Bobby came to check up on me. Judging by the scowls on their faces, it hadn’t been out of their own personal concern for me. Up until now, they had done pretty good pretending I didn’t exist.

“What’s wrong with you?” Johnnie finally asked, shaking his head in disgust. “Why do you always have to do the opposite of what he says?”

I shrugged and took a swig of water from my canteen. “Because it’s fun?” And it was. Afterward, anyway, because that was when Jacky would make it all better. He had tried to say no once, but that had only lasted about as long as it took me to get down to my birthday suit. By the end he could barely remember his own name. We both agreed that withholding sex from one another was just a silly and unconstructive notion that involved no winners.

“I don’t know why the hell he bothers. You think he doesn’t have better things to do than babysit you?” “You mean like babysit you?” I didn’t appreciate the way he was shooting daggers at me. Like I was personally responsible for whatever tragedy had befallen him. “What’s your beef, kid?”

“You’re an asshole,” he snapped, looking about ready to take a poke at me. I secretly hoped he would.

“Well, hell, that ain’t exactly gonna make the front page, is it?” I was calm as can be, my lips quirked in a smirk, knowing it would drive him off his nut.

Bobby put his hand on Johnnie’s shoulder, a worried expression on his little face, and I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

“You strut around here like the world owes you a goddamn favor, like you’re the only mug who’s been through hell,” Johnnie growled, his lanky body quaking with anger, his nostrils flaring and his eyes jet black. “Well, guess what. You ain’t so special. Look around you. Every other Joe here has trudged through his own personal river of shit, just to end up here. So forgive me if I don’t get down on my knees and kiss the ground you walk on, Chauncey.”

I was on my feet with a fistful of his tunic before he even blinked. The look on his young face, the rage and pain coming off him in waves, was too raw, too familiar.

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