Page 3 of Trashed to Treasured
“Yeah, just grabbing donuts for the guys.” I held up the pink box and flipped open the lid. “Want one or are you picking up for Harris?”
“I’ll probably grab some for home, but I actually stopped because I saw theDump Your Junktruck.”
“Oh, yeah?” I grinned. “You getting rid of Harris’s porn collection?”
He laughed and pointed to his car with his thumb. “Actually, a friend of mine is going through a breakup and wanted me to get rid of all this stuff. Most of it probably needs to go to the dump, but I saw a video game console and snowboarding equipment. There’s some good stuff in there.”
I put the donuts in my truck and peeked in the window of Jesse’s car. “Yeah, I can take this off your hands. I’m collecting stuff for the youth shelter’s Christmas-in-July event, and they’d love that stuff. And anything I don’t give to them, I’ll either sell in my store or take to the dump on my next run.”
“Awesome.” He sighed in relief. “I didn’t want to just throw it all away when I know some of it can go to a good home.”
I patted his shoulder before opening the door to begin transferring boxes to my truck. “Glad you ran into me. And if he has anything else he needs to unload, give him my number. We can always pick up so you don’t have to deliver it to me.”
“Thanks, Aaron!” Jesse gave me a quick side hug before trotting around his car to the driver’s side. “I’ll let Harris know he owes you a win.”
I laughed at that and shook my head.
Apparently, Harris wasn’t the kind of Daddy to keep secrets from his boy because he must have shared our little system of cheating during the weekly poker games we played with some of the other guys. It started out as a funny accident, but now we all made a secondary game of trying to cheat our way to a win when the others weren’t paying attention. Since half the guys I played with had boys waiting for them at home, it was easy for us single guys to get the upper hand. But now I had the advantage of Harris owing me a little helpful tip the next time we played.
“He’s always distracted when we play, so I usually win, but you can still let him know he owes me. I’ll find the right moment to collect.”
After Jesse’s car was emptied, I watched as he pulled out into traffic and headed in the direction of his house before I hopped into my truck.
This was a damn fruitful trip to the donut shop.
Jesse wasn’t kidding about having some good stuff in those boxes. I didn’t even get a look at everything, but there wasn’t much that was heading to the dump. The backpack alone was brand new and worth a small fortune.
I couldn’t wait to see what I’d find inside.
* * *
“Boss, can I have this?” Seth, one of the guys I recently hired to help me run the shop, held up a paintball gun. “This thing is brand-new.”
I sighed. This always happened when good stuff came in. “I was planning to give that to the shelter for their Christmas-in-July program.”
Seth sighed too. “Yeah, you’re right.” Then he waggled his eyebrows at me, dangling the gun in front of me by a few fingers. “But if you’re wondering what to get me for my birthday…”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
These kids were just out of high school. They didn’t come from much, and if they weren’t working for me, they’d either be getting minimum wage at a fast food joint or getting into trouble.
But I did make a mental note to get him a gift card at the sporting goods store so he could buy a paintball set if he still wanted it by the time his birthday rolled around.
“Looks like you guys are through most of this. What can I help you with?” I had to help a customer carry a sofa out to his truck, so Seth and Jonas got started on the boxes without me.
“It’s just that one box and the backpack over there that we haven’t gotten to yet. You can tackle either of those.”
The backpack was closer, so I grabbed it and put it on the counter in front of me.
The guys were chatting about some video games they found when I opened up the front compartment and pulled out a thick envelope. It was addressed to Brody Mills, but it looked more official than just some junk mail. Curious, I dumped the contents into my hand and found a passport.
Fuck. I can’t imagine this was intended to be thrown out.
It was brand-new with no stamps inside, but my attention stopped at the photo page. The young man, Brody, looked so happy and excited, like he had a trip planned in which he intended to use his new passport.
My heart broke at the thought that maybe he did plan to give up the passport if the trip he had planned was with whoever he’d just broken up with. I shoved it back inside the envelope and continued to look through the backpack.
In a small pocket that wouldn’t hold much more than a set of keys, I found two pacifiers. Maybe Brody had a kid. That would certainly make a breakup even harder.
