Page 9 of Cueball & Double-Z (Alpha’s Rejects #5)

A car horn blared, startling me awake, my heart hammering hard enough to hurt.

“Fuck,” I groaned as I yawned and stretched, but there wasn’t much space to move around in the car while pressed up against Cole in the back seat. He could sleep through a nuclear blast. At least he’d stopped having regular nightmares. I was grateful for it, and for him.

Cole and I had to sleep snuggling against each other for warmth.

The nights were freezing, as were most days, and I couldn’t run the car to keep it warm unless we wanted to be poisoned to death.

I only turned it on for short periods to run the heater, then I had to turn it back off.

But at night, the car stayed off as we slept.

We were pretty insulated, and our shared body heat kept us relatively warm throughout the night.

Living like that was fucking hell. It was uncomfortable, crammed with all our shit. Suffocating. Claustrophobic.

I sat up, climbed to the front of the car, while trying not to kick Cole awake.

I slid into the driver’s seat and dug around in my backpack, sitting on the floorboard on the passenger side.

I pulled out deodorant, shoving the stick underneath my hoodie and T-shirt, and swiping it over my pits.

I shivered from the cold, being away from Cole’s warmth, so I turned on the car, keeping the heater off until it warmed up.

I turned to face the backseat after Cole tapped me on the shoulder. ‘What time is it?’ he signed, yawning.

I looked at my cheap digital watch. “Just past eight. I gotta head into work. Do you wanna park the car at the restaurant while you wait, or do you wanna drive around and do your thing?”

My boss knew about my situation. I had to come clean because sometimes I needed to park there and leave Cole behind to wait for me.

‘Drive. Need to keep looking for work, and go to the library.’

I nodded, though I didn’t hold out hope he’d get a job anytime soon. If he’d gone to college like he was supposed to, he could’ve eventually found a job that worked for him, where he fit in and didn’t need to talk all the time.

The guilt gnawed at my empty stomach, wishing we could’ve afforded college for him and me. Apartment living and the cost of education, along with books, were more than we could afford, even with student loans. Menial jobs wasted Cole’s intelligence.

I fucking hated life sometimes. Most of the time.

Once the car warmed up, I cranked the heater and sighed at the needed warmth.

“Let’s grab a quick bite to eat first,” I said.

Another drawback of living in a car was that you couldn’t cook your meals, so I had to spend more money to eat.

I drove us to the nearest fast-food restaurant where we had some breakfast sandwiches, orange juice, and shitty coffee. Before I headed into work, we washed our faces and brushed our teeth in the restaurant’s restroom .

We hadn’t showered in a few days, and we would need to find a way soon. My hair was starting to get greasy. Dry shampoo had become our salvation.

It was just after ten-thirty when we showed up at the restaurant.

I hopped out as Cole climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Be back at ten tonight.” He nodded quickly.

“Oh, and while you’re at the library, use its computers to look up where we can find a public shower.

Also, check the weather.” Before he drove off, I stopped him.

“And could you check our balance at the bank? I want to make sure my last paycheck went through.”

He nodded again and closed the door before driving off.

My already aching back was going to hurt even more pulling a double shift, but I needed to make as much money as possible.

“Morning, Gio,” Jim, my boss, said, waving at me from behind the bar.

“Mornin’.”

“You get two thirty-minute and four fifteen-minute breaks today.”

“Thanks, man,” I replied and headed toward the small employee lounge.

I dumped my backpack into a locker and grabbed the white kitchen button-up with the restaurant logo stamped on it.

After I put it on over my T-shirt, I headed into the kitchen.

The air was already filled with the scents of pizza dough, garlic, and wing sauce.

Lunch soon started, so it didn’t take long for the dishes to pile up.

As buckets of plates, glasses, silverware, and pans were brought my way, I rinsed them off in the industrial sink, scrubbing any stuck-on food before stacking them onto a dish tray and running it through the commercial dishwasher, where they were sterilized.

Once they were finished being cleaned, another dude would come and put them away.

On my break, I grabbed a slice of pepperoni pizza and a small side salad to get some veggies in, something Cole and I never got enough of. Then, I had a quick smoke before returning to work.

And so the rest of my day went.

When my shift was over, I stretched my aching back in the lounge before pulling off my filthy kitchen shirt, covered in grease and old food, and dumping it into the bin for washing.

I put on my hoodie and jacket over my T-shirt and grabbed my backpack, heading outside to wait for Cole, lighting up a smoke as I did .

God, I was smoking too much lately. Just more fucking money spent. Then I looked up at the sky and groaned in annoyance as soon as the first flurries fell on my face.

Fuck me. I used to love winter. Now it just got on my fucking nerves.

A clap on my back made me jump. I turned to find Jim smiling at me. “Nice work today. You really kept up with the crowd, keeping those dishes clean.”

“Yeah, no prob, man.”

Jim held out his hand, and I looked down to find a wad of cash. “That’s for you. Tips were great tonight, and you get a little share of that.”

He was full of it. I didn’t get tips, but I took the money anyway. I fucking hated charity or people taking pity on me, but I wasn’t stupid either. “Thanks, man,” I mumbled, shoving away the sting in my eyes as I pushed the cash in my pocket, not counting it in front of him. It’d be disrespectful.

Jim stared up at the cloudy sky. “Well, snow’s coming. We’re expected to get several inches. If it snows more than two inches tomorrow, don’t bother coming in. Don’t risk the drive. But if the roads clear up, I expect you to come in, okay?”

“Yes, sir. And thanks.”

“You’re welcome, Gio,” he said, patting my back before walking off, but he stopped to face me. “Do you need a ride somewhere, or… a place to stay?”

God, it’d be nice to have a warm bed and a roof over our heads that wasn’t a car. But Jim was my boss, and it felt weird to accept that sort of help from him. I shook my head and blew out the smoke I’d just puffed. “Nah, Cole’s on his way. He’s usually on time. We’ll… be fine.”

He gave me a curt nod. “Well, goodnight then.”

“Night.”

Not ten minutes later, Cole pulled up in my shitty red CR-V. I was shivering by then as the temperature kept dropping and the snow kept falling harder, not that my jacket was warm or anything, but it was all I had.

Maybe Cole and I could hit Goodwill to see if they had any thicker coats we could buy.

I quickly jumped in, shut the door, and buckled up. As soon as Cole drove off, I put my hands to the heaters that were running on full blast .

Once my chapped hands stopped being numb, I pulled out the cash and counted it. A hundred and twenty. Fuck. My boss was so nice, but I hated needing the handout. What I made should’ve been enough to live on.

“Hungry?” I asked Cole, shaking the wad of cash at him. “Boss gave me some extra tonight.”

He glanced at me and nodded with a huge smile on his face.

“Me too. Let’s go eat.”

Cole shook his head.

“No? Why not?”

As he drove with one hand, he grabbed some papers he’d printed out at the library and handed them to me.

I flipped on the tiny light overhead to read them.

The one on top was the weather report. They’re expecting six inches of snow, and the temperatures to drop into single digits. Fuck me. We’d freeze to death.

I looked at the other piece of paper, which showed there was a non-profit organization that drove around portable showers and bathrooms for those in need.

Nice. It also showed the schedule and location.

Thank god for organizations like that. It made me feel better knowing that we could get clean.

I was fucking tired of wearing my work on my skin and clothes.

I read in a book somewhere, or was it online, that our government could end homelessness if it chose to.

It wouldn’t be as expensive as they claimed.

All they had to do was cut a fraction of what they spent on our military to fix things.

Instead, people like Cole and me had to rely on the kindness of others when we should’ve been able to live just fine on our own.

Instead, the cost of living was so high that we had to live in my fucking car.

But fuck, we’d both been emotionally struggling when we lost our parents, making college so far out of reach.

The next paper showed our bank statement.

We had just over six hundred bucks in there, from two paychecks.

I suppose with no high expenses, we could save money, and hopefully enough to put down on another place, if they’d even rent to us again.

That eviction took a bite out of my credit rating, I was sure.

Who knew how long it would be on my record?

Fuck, why did life have to be so hard, just for you to fucking die at the end of it? I never understood the point of all that work for nothing .

And all I wanted to do was just kiss him. If I could have one single moment with Cole, that would be it. That would make it all worth it. I’d die happy.

No, that was a lie.

If I got a kiss, I would want so much more. Even if Cole weren’t my stepbrother, I couldn’t provide for him. I was absolutely useless. Ever since our parents died, it’d been one failure after another. It never fucking ended.