Page 23 of With Spite

I took a sip of my own coffee, catching the last dregs, before setting the empty cup on the porch railing and heading down the length of my walkway toward the road.

Glancing at my watch, I started off down the road at a slow jog.

Today I was running seven miles.

A short run for me.

I’d intended to start it earlier, but Hampton and Harvey had wanted to meet up early to get the weight room in since they were both off work for the day. Now, I was left running a couple of loops around town before heading home the same way I came in.

I heard the truck slow as it passed me and watched her wave at me.

I didn’t wave back.

But I did watch her until she disappeared out of sight.

All the while, I wondered if she was going to be able to stick it out like I thought, or take off.

Some deep, dark part of me wanted her to stick it out.

Why, I couldn’t tell you.

But I still wanted her to make it.

Week Two

I watched her through the side window of her bedroom.

I shouldn’t have been able to. She had curtains now, but she didn’t use them. Not on that window.

No one else besides me could see her from this particular direction.

Everyone else didn’t have west-facing windows on their house due to the harshness of the sun. I, however, had put in a window when I’d moved in so I could see out of my house from any angle.

Being in the Marines had taught me to watch my back, and I couldn’t do that if I had a blind angle.

With my lights off and my curtains parted, I could see everything through the window that led into her bedroom.

Today, she wasn’t doing anything fun—like getting undressed to take a shower. She was, however, still captivating.

She was folding a load of laundry on her bed.

There was no rhyme or reason to her laundry.

She washed whites with reds. Reds with yellows. Blacks with white. Towels with delicates.

It was honestly kind of funny to see what color some of her whites would come out when she didn’t take care which clothes she threw in the washer.

Needless to say, I had a goddamn easy chair in front of the window that I watched her from.

She was like my own personal form of entertainment.

Even worse, when she was at work, I would pull up my cameras that hooked up to The Mercantile and I’d watch her that way, too.

I knew everything that my mother said and did to her.

If it was something that I vehemently disagreed with, I’d confront my mother right then and there.

If it was something that I thought was bullshit, but that I figured Bernice could stick up for herself on her own, I’d leave it alone.