The After of Us (Judge Me Not Spin-off)

by S. R. Grey

  Good luck with that, I think bitterly. Jackpot, my ass. If anyone needs to hit a fucking jackpot, it’s me.

  Suddenly, drug-induced visions of flashing pots of gold swim lazily into my head, along with some break-dancing leprechauns, and I can’t help but chuckle.

  Tate looks over. He must think my mood has improved, ’cause he starts talking all excitedly about how much money we’re going to make from our new business venture with Kyle. I listen to his voice, not really hearing any words, but then the cell buzzes and I am alert, very alert.

  Tate tosses it my way. “That there would be the ladies,” he says—all smooth like—as I catch the cell with one hand. Even impaired, my coordination is impeccable.

  “Ladies, my ass.” I roll my eyes.

  Tate laughs, knowing as well as I do that the two girls we’re meeting up with tonight are no ladies. They’re looking for the same thing we are, but therein lies the beauty.

  “What’s it say?” he asks, nodding to the cell.

  The text is kind of blurry, but, then again, everything is. I blink a few times and my vision clears. When I read it out loud, I mimic a high-pitched girl’s voice, just to be an ass. “Crystal and I are almost at the lake. Come prepared. Tammy. Laugh out loud, winking smiley face.”

  “Dude-e-e.” Tate shoots me a knowing sidelong glance. “You know what come prepared means, right? You got that covered, yeah?”

  As reckless as I am—and that’s pretty fucking reckless—I always make sure I wrap my shit up. Better safe than sorry. But as I feel around in the pockets of my jeans I realize I’ve left the condoms at home. “Fuck,” I mutter.

  The blue Welcome to Pennsylvania sign looms ahead, our headlights flashing off the reflective letters.

  Tate asks, “What?”

  I rake my fingers through my hair. “I forgot the goddamn things at home.”

  “Not a problem. We’ll just stop at the convenience store across the state line.”

  “Bad idea,” I counter. “Cops are always hanging out in there. You think they won’t notice how fucked up we are?”

  “How fucked up you are,” Tate corrects, laughing. “I didn’t smoke nearly as much as you.”

  “You smoked plenty,” I mumble under my breath.

  But Tate is right, I smoked more. And Tate smoked only weed. Plus, my friend didn’t see the pills Kyle slipped me before we left.

  Still, I nod to the almost-empty bottle. “You pretty much drank that whole thing, dickhead. You’ll never pass a field sobriety test.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t plan on taking one, my friend. And, I hide it better than you.” He shrugs. “Trust me, I got it covered. Just wait in the car. It’ll only take a sec.”

  Tate’s always confident like this. He can talk anyone into just about anything. I always tell him he’s a natural-born salesman. Maybe if we ever get our shit together he can do something legit using his smooth ways. It’s cool, it’s Tate’s thing, and it helps make him popular. He’s an okay-looking guy—brown hair, brown eyes, kind of skinny—but it’s his smooth talk that gets him in with the girls. They eat that shit up.

  We cross the state line, turn into the convenience store. No cop cars. “See, we’re good,” Tate says, still as confident as ever.

  I flip up my black hoodie hood and slouch down in my seat. “Just be quick,” I mumble.

  Tate hesitates, and I know something is up. “What the fuck are you waiting for?” I ask.

  He begins his sentence with “Don’t be pissed—” and I cut him off right away, hoping I won’t have to kick my good friend’s skinny ass. It would be a damn shame really, since Tate wouldn’t stand a chance against the likes of me. I am way bigger and far stronger, and the rage within me has no match.

  “What?” I spit out, clenching my jaw.

  Tate ignores my attitude; he’s used to it. “I kind of need you to hold on to something while I go in there. Just in case.”

  “Just in case of what?”

  I am running out of patience. I scrub my hand down my face, wary to hear what Tate the salesman is up to now.

  He smirks, and I tell him to knock that shit off, save it for the “ladies.”

  “Okay, okay.” He raises his hands in mock surrender. “I may have kind of asked Kyle to give us a little something to get our entrepreneurial gig started.”

  “Us?” I say, feeling the anger rise up. “You didn’t even know I was going to sell with you until about ten minutes ago.”

  “What can I say, man.” Tate places his hand over his heart. “I had faith.”

  “Whatever.”

  I try to stay pissed, because what he did was really out of line, but my anger fades fast. High as I am, these strong emotions are too fucking slippery to hold on to for very long.

  Tate hands me a plastic packet filled with little pills, a rainbow of color. “Jesus.” I know all too well exactly what this shit is. “X? You’re fucking higher than I thought. We’re supposed to start small, bitch. Move a little bud, see how it goes.”

  Tate shrugs. “We’ll make more money this way. Like, I know we can sell to the girls tonight. Hell, I bet we can talk them into buying our hits.”

  He’s laughing at his own ingenuity, but I ignore him. I’m too busy trying to count the pills in the packet. But being in the condition I am in, it’s a bit of a challenge.

  “How much is this anyway?” I ask, giving up on figuring it out for myself.

  “Twenty hits,” he tells me, and then he has the balls to throw another packet in my lap. “Make that forty…maybe a little more.”

  “You’re fucking crazy. If we get caught, Tate, this isn’t possession. This is possession with intent to sell.”

  “That’s why I’m leaving the shit here with you.”

  “Oh, that’s real fucking cool.” Back to being pissed, even my high can’t calm me now. I whip one of the packets back at Tate. “I am so not getting caught with forty hits of Ecstasy, asshole.”

  “Calm down, man.” He gingerly picks up the packet I’ve just thrown and holds it out for me to take back. “If a cop shows up just hit the road.”

  “What about you?” I ask as I grudgingly accept the X.

  Tate grins. “Don’t worry about me. You know I can play it cool. Just swing by after the heat’s gone, and we’ll be back in business.”

  “The heat? What is this, the seventies?” I ask, laughing, but Tate’s already out the door.

  I tuck the two packets of Ecstasy into the back pocket of my jeans and think nothing more of it. Until a few short minutes later when a state cop pulls into the lot. Then, I panic.

  I start climbing over the console to get the fuck out of there, but, suddenly, with every fiber of my being, I know I’ve just made the dumbest mistake of my life. That, however, doesn’t stop me from slipping down into the driver’s seat, throwing the car into reverse. I hit the gas, peel out of the parking lot, and leave a cloud of gravel and dust in my wake.

  I’ve got the Focus up to eighty, music playing…loud, loud, fucking blaring. Maybe I can outrun this cocksucker? I’m tapping my hands on the steering wheel along with the beat, flying so fast it’s amazing I don’t lose control and crash.

  But I don’t, I stay steady.

  I even make it a good five miles down the road before a cop heading my way—backup, I’m sure—screeches to a wide arced stop in front of me. His patrol car blocks the entire road, so I have no choice but to hit the brakes and squeal to a halt.

  My car ends up parallel to the cop car, both of us straddling the lanes, engines idling like we’re in some fucking action movie. The air reeks of burning rubber, and smoke billows around us. The speakers beat out a song from 50 Cent that is frankly ironic at this point.

  When all the smoke clears, the sign for the lake is right smack dab in front of me. I can’t help but laugh. The shit situation I’m in, and all I can think of is that Crystal and Tammy are out there, waiting, for two boys who are never going to show.

  Two more cops—incl
uding the one from the store—pull up behind me. I pitch the door open, tumble from the seat. I hit the warm pavement and try to stand. Someone yells, “Hold it right there, hands on your head.”

  I hear guns being drawn, cocked. This isn’t a movie, I know they’re loaded. I squint to try to see what’s happening, but all the flashing lights leave me blinded. Before I can think another drug-muddled thought, someone tackles me from behind. My face smacks right into the yellow center line, but I don’t feel a fucking thing.

  Whoever tackles me yanks down my hood, frisks me, and comes up with my wallet. Oh, and the forty hits of X, of course.

  It’s all ambient noise from that point on, but I do hear, “Chase Gartner, you’re under arrest.”

  I have no idea that, despite the altered state I’m in, these will be the last coherent words I will remember for a very long time.

  The time following has no sense of structure. Days, weeks, they all blend together. I’m in jail, facing a long, long list of charges. But it’s the X that has me fucked.

  Bond is set high. I call my mom, but all she does is cry. Like, these horrible wailing sobs that do nothing but make my head ache more than ever. She keeps apologizing for not having the money and swears she’ll help me when she can. I hang up. I won’t be holding my breath. The past has taught me not to put too much stock into Abby’s flimsy promises. Mirages in the desert are what they are—get too close and they disappear.

  My grandmother wants to mortgage the farmhouse, all the property around it. We’re talking a good fifty-five acres. It’d be enough to make bail, but I tell her no way. She’s done enough for me already, and look at how I’ve repaid her. I don’t deserve her money…or her love.

  So I’m on my own. And not thinking very clearly. Once all the illegal shit is out of my system, I find myself in a constant state of agitation. I can’t sleep, I barely eat. I sweat bullets even when it feels like I’m freezing.

  Eventually all that passes, but then all I want to do is fight. Like beat heads in. It’s worse than when I was back in Vegas; I feel so much more fucking rage. I sit around clenching my fists, hoping for a chance to kick some poor unsuspecting soul’s ass.

  Finally, my wish is granted.

  They throw a cellmate in with me and my ass is on him like an animal, beating the hell out of this never-saw-me-coming sap. But then two guards see what I’m doing, pull me off the bloodied and broken man, and promptly return the favor.

  Another blur of pain.

  This one, though, I welcome. The medical staff gives me plenty of drugs, legal ones this time. And still more before I am put before the judge.

  Even in the sedated fog I float around in, I quickly learn the law…and some new math.

  MDMA, Ecstasy—X, as I like to call it—is a schedule I narcotic, and carries as stiff a penalty as heroin if you’re caught dealing, which they naturally assume I was. Casual users don’t tote around forty-plus hits of Ecstasy, but dealers do.

  I say nothing one way or the other to dispel their myth, I rat no one out. I just stay quiet and accept my fate.

  My math lesson continues…

  Ten pills are equal to one gram, and I’ve been caught with over forty pills. Forty pills equal four grams, which is more than enough to be charged with possession with intent to sell. But I already knew that part, right?

  My lesson isn’t over though. It’s only just beginning.

  I learn in Pennsylvania, the state in which I’ve been apprehended, four grams can easily earn you a prison sentence. This is especially true when you don’t have enough money to hire a good attorney. Add to that, your public defender isn’t getting paid enough to care. Not that you’re doing much to help the overworked, underpaid man do his job. And, oh yeah, don’t forget that one prior arrest for fighting last fall. It didn’t seem like much at the time, but it sure haunts your ass now.

  Are you keeping up?

  Some final math…

  Four grams buys you a six-year sentence at a state correctional institute when you have no resources, and, really, no heart to fight it.

  Twenty years of age feels like ninety when your freedom is stripped away.

  It takes one hundred and forty-three steps to walk down a long, noisy corridor to reach cell block seventy-two.

  And when they turn the key, you hear one life—the only one you’ve ever known up until now—ending.

  “It’s all about the numbers, man,” as Tate would say.

  It sure is, my friend. It sure is.

  Continue the story…

  Keep reading I Stand Before You

  Read other books by S.R. Grey

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not considered to be real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The After of Us

  Copyright © 2016 by S.R. Grey

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  ISBN-10: 0-9861565-6-6

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9861565-6-4

  Editing: Hot Tree Editing

  Cover Design: Najla Qamber

  Cover Photography: CJC Photography

  Cover Model: Garrett Finn

  Interior design and formatting by E.M. Tippetts Book Designs:

  www.emtippettsbookdesigns.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Other Books by S.R. Grey

  About The After of Us

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  I Stand Before You

  Copyright Notice