I never knew when he’d be there. Rarely did I see him clearly, because it took a lot for him to be able to either talk or be seen. Both would take him out of commission for longer than he liked to leave me alone.
The days ran together, my only real friend a pain-in-the-ass spirit. Then one day about six months after Griz left, I found out I was actually being paroled. I’d earned an early release for my work in the prison and good behavior.
A little over two and a half years of my life, I spent in a South Carolina prison. Far less than I thought I would, but enough that it changed the trajectory of my life forever. It made me wonder if things would’ve been different if I hadn’t gone to that party. Or if I hadn’t been so hardheaded and cut Lila loose. Would she still be alive? Would she have waited for me even though I told her not to, if she had been? The thing was, those were all things I’d never know.
“Are you leaving now?” I asked the figure sitting on my bunk as I packed.
“Maybe,” he said.
I shook my head.
When I left the prison behind, I didn’t look back. And my “friend” still dropped by from time to time.
“You gonna stick around here?” my ghostly friend asked as I took my break behind the shop.
“Haven’t decided,” I said as I lit up a cigarette—my one guilty pleasure.
“Those will kill you, you know,” he said, causing me to choke on a laugh.
“I could be so lucky,” I scoffed. He was pissed at that. Not that I could see his expression, but the crackle of energy around me said enough. Then the cigarette was extinguished.
“Asshole,” I muttered. His laughter echoed, then faded away.
After almost five years from the day I’d been locked up, true freedom was within my grasp. My parole was coming to an end. Besides the obvious “no firearms,” I also had no drinking, no drugs, no trouble. Most of it I could deal with, but damn, I wanted a fucking beer.
I’d spent my twenty-first birthday behind bars, and I wouldn’t be able to drink until my parole was completely up. It fucking blew, because many nights I could’ve used a stiff drink, but I wasn’t risking fucking up and going back when I was this close. I knew they’d test me one more time before they cut me loose.
One more day.
I tossed the butt in the can by the back door and went back to work. Music filled the bays, and sweat ran down my back.
“Lucian! You have a phone call!” my boss, Miles, called from the door to the front waiting area and office. I didn’t have a cell phone. Other than my parole officer, I had no one to talk to. I was lucky my landlady let me give my parole officer her number for my home number.
I wiped the grease from my hands and made my way up to the front desk.
“Yeah,” I said when I put the receiver to my ear.
“Mr. Stone, I’m calling to confirm your appointment with Mr. Wallace tomorrow at 2:00 p.m.” It almost made me laugh because it wasn’t optional. At all. This was her polite way of saying “don’t fuck up.”
“Yeah, I’m tracking it. I’ll be there.”
“Very well. See you then.” She hung up. My parole officer’s secretary was abrupt, but hell, she dealt with ex-cons for three parole officers all day, every day. We weren’t exactly being invited in for tea.
“Tomorrow’s the day, right?” Miles asked when I replaced the receiver.
“Yep.”
“I’m happy for you,” he said as he scratched his gray beard.
“Thanks.”
Miles and I weren’t friends, because I didn’t have any of those—unless you counted Kip’s ghost. Yet, I believed he was being sincere. He’d hired me straight out of prison, and I hadn’t missed a single day. I knew damn well I was a good employee and so did he. I never wanted to give him a reason to regret hiring me, but Kip’s question burned at the back of my mind.
It sounded clichéd, but looking at the papers as I stood in the hot South Carolina sun, I experienced a true sense of freedom. I was done.
Holy shit.
Then I had a sinking sensation. Now what? I had no family—my mother had a heart attack the first year I was in and died. Not that she visited me once before that. My friends had slowly written me off, but that didn’t bother me. We weren’t the same people we were in high school. What the fuck would we talk about?