Page 6 of Cueball & Double-Z (Alpha’s Rejects #5)

“We’re too broke to do anything. I gotta paycheck comin’ next week, and it’ll take a couple of days to clear the bank. Until then, we got twenty fuckin’ bucks to last us.”

Gio flicked his finished smoke outside and down to the street before shutting the window.

I huffed teasingly at him, hopefully to get him to lighten up a bit. ‘You have zero brain cells.’

I smirked when he smiled. He shook his head, chuckling.

“And you have no brain at all. Nada. Zip. Zilch , ” he responded, making me laugh and feel better.

If he could still make our stupid little joke, we’d be okay.

As long as I could pull a smile from him and have him say that, we’d always be fine.

He suddenly grabbed a fistful of my bangs, humor in his eyes, and yanked my head back. “Dork. You need a haircut. Fine, whaddya have in mind? It’s gotta be free.”

My breath caught, and my heart stopped for a second, but I got my body under control. It wasn’t the first time he’d done that, but it always made my heart skip a beat. ‘Skating. It’s sunny out.’

He let go of me and ran his fingers through his hair, tucking some fallen strands behind his ears before standing. He stretched, his hoodie and T-shirt rising to expose inches of solid, smooth, creamy skin. He was losing weight, though. We both were. You could see his rib cage.

“Yeah, why not?” he said. “Let’s get some skating in, but we gotta get back to packing. We’re running out of time.”

I stood, clapped, and then threw my arms around his neck.

He huffed a laugh and held me back. “You’re welcome.”

The skatepark was busy, but I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised since the mid-January day was about fifty degrees. But it’d get cold again soon enough.

Gio sat on top of a picnic table, elbows resting on his thighs, watching me as he smoked.

I waved at him and stood on my board. I tipped it into the bowl covered in gorgeous, colorful graffiti, then dropped, pumping with one leg to pick up speed, gliding around other skaters, careful not to crash into them.

When I came up on the other side of the lip, I grabbed my board, keeping it pressed to my feet before I came down and skated around the bowl.

Gio and I used to skate all the time after Mom and I moved in with him and his dad.

He’d been nervous around me at first, but soon, he loosened up and we became really good friends.

I’d also been nervous because he was older and bigger, worried that he wouldn’t like me.

Then, when we found out we had our love of skating in common, well, you couldn’t separate us if you tried.

Skating brought only happy memories, like new brothers, best friends, and a unique kind of freedom.

Freedom to be creative and to let go of all your worries, even for a little bit.

I used skating to get away mentally from my bullies back at school.

I was picked on a lot for being smaller.

Still, I had some really good friends, so it hadn’t been all bad.

I never saw those friends again after the accident. Not that they didn’t care, but Gio took me away to live downtown so it would be easier to find work. We’d lost the house already, so what was the point in staying?

The sun and cool breeze eased my troubled thoughts about our future. Skating helped, too. My mind cleared whenever I focused on balance and doing tricks.

As I skated around, a huge dude skating in the bowl caught my eye, even through the crowd of skaters.

He stood out among everyone else there. Usually, bigger guys made me anxious, and while he was big and broad, I liked his bald, shiny head.

He was totally chill, skating, low-key gliding around other skaters, with hands in his pockets, not doing any tricks.

He seemed completely at ease as he almost floated gently on his board.

There was just something so chill about him that put me at ease, rather than make me wary.

I smiled and moved on, practicing more tricks. It’d been a while since we skated, so I was a bit out of practice.

After about ten minutes, panting and starting to sweat, I looked around for Gio, but couldn’t see him. He must’ve gone off to skate, too. As my board rolled, looking to find Gio, I suddenly crashed into someone.

When I almost fell, the board slipping out from under my feet, someone caught me. I looked up to see that it was my cruising, big, bald friend.

“Whoa, easy there,” he said in a deep voice.

His tone was kind, but his face was hard to read.

He showed very little reaction, but I got sucked into his amber eyes.

The prettiest things I’d ever seen in my life, next to Gio’s eyes.

The man’s eyes were so unusual, filled with intelligence.

He also had really full lips, like Gio did.

I was a sucker for full lips; it was like they were perpetually pouty. So cute and sexy.

He wore black skating chinos and a black short-sleeved button-up shirt over a white thermal.

I itched to rub my hand over his baldness, which I could see he shaved instead of being a hair loss thing.

God, he was handsome in a stoic sort of way.

Where Gio wore all his emotions on his face, this man was devoid of expression, making him hard to read .

He let me go and checked me over. “You okay?”

I smiled and nodded at him. ‘Thank you. Sorry,’ I signed, quickly forgetting that most people didn’t know sign language. It’d become second nature to me. Hell, maybe it was first nature by now.

My eyes grew wide when he actually signed back. Holy shit! He signed and said out loud, “No problem. It’s crowded. Be careful.”

I nodded dumbly with a stupid grin on my face. It was so rare to come across someone who could talk to me, and someone so gorgeous, too. ‘You know how to sign?’

“Yeah, I learned a long time ago. I studied both ASL and S.E.E., but I’ve kept up with it.”

‘I love that,’ I replied quickly, not sure why my stomach was all fluttery. It was just such a rare thing to meet some random dude who knew how to talk like I did.

The man looked to either side of my head as other skaters blew by us, completely oblivious to my sudden fascination with him, someone who could probably break me in half.

“I don’t see a hearing aid. Fully deaf?” It was a bold question. Most people never asked. They just assumed I was deaf, which I suppose was a reasonable assumption. But I liked that he bothered to notice, rather than assuming I was hard of hearing.

I shook my head and signed, ‘Mute.’

“Ah, organic, cerebellar, aphasia, or selective?” he asked out loud, though he was still signing. Another bold question from someone who was a stranger, but smart, too, so I really didn’t mind. He was observant, which showed a lot of intelligence. I liked that. I was the same way.

‘I stopped talking three years ago. Doctors said it’s selective.’

He nodded thoughtfully. “I’m Cueball, by the way. I’m around here often, but I haven’t seen you before.”

I spelled out ‘Z-I-L-C-H’ so he’d know it was my name instead of the number. It was hard to sign in a way people understood. Then I pointed at myself. I also didn’t want to just hand out my real name. ‘I really like your name,’ I said.

His grin was small, tugging at one corner of his mouth. Before he could say anything, Cueball’s eyes instantly darted behind me.

“Hey!” I heard Gio snap angrily. “I remember you. What the fuck are you doing? Get away from my brother!” Why was he so angry? Had they met before? Had that man bothered Gio?

I looked up at Cueball, my brow furrowed, now feeling that ever-familiar anxiety coming on. I’d been comfortable around him, but Gio’s tension made me tense in return.

“Ah, it’s the little thief who crashed into me.” Cueball’s face was set in stone, but his voice was tinged with humor.

I looked at Gio and signed, ‘What does he mean?’ I knew we shoplifted sometimes because we didn’t always have a choice. Did this man catch him stealing?

“He means nothin’,” Gio growled.

The corner of Cueball’s mouth curved up, turning into a slight smile again.

It lit up his face. “It means he stumbled into me just like you did, Zilch. What are the odds both of you crash into me, and that you two know each other?” He jutted his chin at Gio, but was looking at me, still smirking.

“Your brother was in the store, walking out with stolen goods. He bumped into me and dropped everything from under his coat.”

Cueball’s smile dropped, but his amber eyes were alight with humor and the sun.

I blanched, hating that Cueball thought of us as criminals or something. Only when we were desperate. I quickly signed to explain that we were broke and Gio had lost his job, but Gio stilled my hands and shook his head. “He doesn’t need to know shit about us.”

When he let go of my hands, I asked him, ‘Why are you being so mean?’

Gio huffed. “I’m not. Grab your board. We’ll skate somewhere else.”

With a sigh, I picked up my board, and as Gio tugged me out of the bowl by my arm, I turned to look back at Cueball, who watched our every move. Gio didn’t seem to like him, but I did. It was instant. Gio was just mad he got caught. I wiggled my fingers at Cueball to say bye, and he waved back.

Yeah, he seemed nice. And so cute. I hoped to see him again. He said he was there often. I’d just have to convince Gio to come back. This was our first time at this skatepark, since it was relatively new. Usually, we went to the older one across town.

I tugged on Gio to stop. He turned around, still scowling at Cueball, who’d already gone off to cruise around the bowl again.

“What?” he asked, his eyes darting back at me.

‘Why were you so mean? He’s really nice.’

His entire body deflated, guilt threading in his eyes. “I was just… embarrassed, okay? He didn’t turn me in or call me out on the stolen shit, but… the fact that we have to resort to theft is… humiliating. I just hadn’t expected to see him again. Seeing him is a… fuck . A reminder of that.”

I rubbed his arm affectionately. ‘That’s fair. I get that.’

He said nothing as he turned to walk off and skate somewhere else before I pulled on his arm again.

“What?” he sighed.

‘His name is Cueball. He knows how to sign. That’s so cool.’

Gio reached for my face, as if he wanted to pull away my overgrown bangs, but he curled his fingers back and dropped his hand. “Yeah, that’s pretty cool.”

‘It’s like fate. We both crash into him. He knows how to sign and talk to me.’

Gio’s brows dropped, and he shook his head, frowning. “There’s no such thing as fate or destiny, Cole.” With that, he dropped his board, hopped on, and skated off, and I followed.

I didn’t agree. I totally believed in fate. Maybe not everything, but I believed some things were definitely destined for.