Chapter Two
Ryatt
I sat on the edge of my bed, pressed two fingers to each of my temples, and tried to massage away the pain piercing my brain. Living in a halfway house sucked, but living in a six by nine would suck more.
I glanced around my small room. Sadly, I had lived in worse.
I could’ve done something to the plain white walls, but I didn’t want to be comfortable.
Good thing because the mattress on the bed was marginally better than sleeping on plywood.
I’d know. When I was a kid, I’d spent six months in a group home sleeping on a wooden pallet. At least here, I had my own bathroom.
Jail would only be slightly worse. I’d traded one system for another. From the foster care system to the prison system. Neither situation was my fault.
“You’re fucking lying,” the woman living in the room next to me screeched. I think her name was Fawnya. I avoided knowing anything else about her or any of my other housemates. Laying low was my priority. My three months in hell was about over. “I haven’t done shit!” she continued to scream.
A door slammed followed by banging. Fawnya struggled with the limitations of sober living. I was surprised she hadn’t fallen or jumped out of her second-floor window.
She was a tweaker. I never touched that shit.
Strictly recreational sales and use. I popped a few scripts and smoked weed.
My situation wasn’t even because I’d sold to an undercover.
Someone had given Santa’s naughty list of names to the cops.
Dominos started dropping. My dealer got five years, and his supplier was found dead in a bathtub.
My court appointed attorney told me to take the deal, and he claimed I was getting off lucky with eighteen months of probation instead of five years in state lockup.
For three of those months, I would have to be monitored, hence the halfway house, while I completed ninety days of drug treatment.
So here I was, halfway house living, and pissing in a cup for my perverted probation officer.
And I was late for my weekly. I grabbed my helmet off the scratched and dinged dresser and snatched my bike keys.
Treena, the house mom, stood in the hall with her arms crossed. She was the last person I wanted to piss off. She wouldn’t think twice about cleaning house if I gave her a reason to bounce me back to my probation officer.
A cop knocked on Fawnya’s door, and another stayed a step back with a direct line of sight into the room if Fawnya decided to let them in. “Ma’am. Open the door.”
“You tested dirty,” Treena hollered. “You’re going back to jail.”
“I took cold medicine,” she pleaded from inside her room. Fawnya wasn’t skating on this one. Anyone could tell she’d been tweaking, and she should’ve known Treena would find out. Treena was a dog with a bone once she suspected someone was using.
The second cop nodded, and Treena used her master keys to unlock the door.
Another reason not to leave anything in my room.
Treena had her good points, but staying out of people’s stuff when they weren’t home wasn’t one of them.
Those keys were her infinity stones, clutched in her hand, they gave her all the power.
I guess you had to be crazy to live with crazy. If I had anywhere else to go, I would. I locked my door and smiled at Treena as I slipped past and made my way outside.
My Yamaha YZF R1 was my baby. I snapped the strap of my helmet, lifted my leg over the bike, and hit the start button. The purr of her engine was music to my ears. I could give up weed, but not speed, the kind of high that flying down the interstate over a hundred miles per hour could give.
I’d sell my soul before I gave up riding. The two-hundred dollar a month payment wasn’t a problem when I was parting out eighths. But funds were tight now that I had rent, restitution, and a record. I didn’t need to be good at math to count to zero.
I guess I proved the naysayers right. I hadn’t amounted to much. But I hadn’t followed in my old man’s footsteps. I’d never hit a woman, and I’d never kill anyone.
I weaved in and out of cars, changed lanes, and broke a few speed and traffic laws I probably shouldn’t have before pulling into the parking lot of my PO’s office. The professional building was down the street from the courthouse. I locked the handlebars, lifted off my helmet, and headed inside.
Following the routine, I signed in and sat in one of the hard plastic chairs in the open area.
His receptionist—I couldn’t remember her name—slid open the bulletproof glass window separating her desk from the waiting area. Ted clearly had a high-class caliber of convicts visiting him. “Hi, Ryatt. Ted is on a call. He’ll be right out.”
“Thanks,” I said. After setting my helmet on the chair next to me, I pulled out my phone, checked my socials, then logged into my delivery apps.
Unfortunately, my recent acquiring of a criminal record was going to affect my prospects for a better job.
In the meantime, I delivered fast food. Lunchtime was my best time of day.
I’d hit a meeting, eat some cookies with my sober sisters, Georgia and Kiss, two girls that had become important to me.
Especially Kiss because she’d brought Mike back into my life.
Mike and I had lived in the same foster house for a while. It was rough. Too many foster kids, not enough to eat, and locks on the fridge and cupboards. But we had each other. Then one day, he was gone. I’d lost my best friend, the only kid who’d ever felt like a brother to me.
I smiled thinking about him. We’d both changed. He had his own kid now, and he’d become part of a motorcycle club. They called him Romeo. A couple of weeks ago, he’d had me over to his house. His own sweet place, with a girlfriend, and he owned his own business.
And I was sitting here waiting to pee in a cup to prove I wasn’t using. I checked the clock again. Ted needed to hurry up because I needed to get to the community center.
I stood, slid my phone into my pocket, and approached the window. “Could you see how long he’s going to be? I have an NA meeting in twenty. I doubt Ted would want me to miss it.”
“Sure.” She disappeared into his office beyond the door separating the waiting room from the rest of the office. She returned less than a minute later. “Come on back.”
The metal handle clicked, and she popped open the door.
“How have you been?”
“Same.” I held my helmet in one hand and followed her to the office at the end of the hall.
“Hi Ryatt,” Ted said as he entered the room, and she stepped out, closing us in. Let the ass kissing commence. Ted was a bruiser. Six feet, two hundred and fifty pounds of beer gut and, I assumed beneath the stock and barrel, there were muscles that could pop my head off like a tick.
“Hey.” I set my helmet on the ground and sat in the chair across from him.
Ted’s chair groaned as he settled into it, and he exhaled a sigh as he flipped open my file. “Are you still at Treena’s?”
“Yep.”
“And your drug program? Are you still attending meetings?”
“Yep.” Same shit. Same day. “I’m still doing deliveries on my bike.” I pulled out my phone, opened my deliveries app, and slid it across his desk for him to verify. He made a couple notes in my file, then pushed my phone back toward me.
I checked the time before I stuffed it into the front pouch of my hoodie.
“I need a UA.” He opened his desk drawer, grabbed a collection cup, and slid it over to me.
I sighed, reached forward, and grabbed it off the desk.
“This is like the tenth time I’ve done this, and I’ve never tested dirty.
” It had been more than ten, but I didn’t want to point out his obsession with UAs.
He was still my warden. And anyways, whether it was ten or a hundred, I figured I had at least two or three more weeks of check-ins, but ultimately this asshole had my escape clause in the folder.
He had to sign off for me to get out from under my charges.
He pushed away from his desk. “You know why that is, Donovan?”
He used my last name like we were bros. “Because I don’t have a drug problem.”
“That’s what everyone says.” He pointed to the bathroom attached to the office. “You don’t have a drug problem because you’re pissing in a cup for me.”
I rolled my eyes and pushed open the door to the bathroom. The overhead lights buzzed as they flickered on.
“You know the drill,” he said.
The bathroom wasn’t small, but it wasn’t large enough to give me the cushion of space I needed between me and the guy staring at my reflection in the mirror.
Mirrors that revealed everything. I stepped up to the sink and washed my hands with the antibacterial soap.
Coming into his office, I’d touched door handles, chairs, and Ted’s desk.
I wasn’t taking a chance of picking up some residue from the guy before me and getting a dirty result.
I didn’t even know if it was possible to cross-contaminate, but it would be my luck to prove it true.
I lifted my hoodie, exposed my belt, and released the forked prongs.
My hands always shook. I shouldn’t be worried.
I hadn’t touched weed or alcohol. Not because I didn’t miss it.
A late-night blunt and a warm pussy made for a good time.
I hadn’t had either. I didn’t want to fuck up my probation, but it was easy to stay clean because the people I’d become close to needed sober friends.
I flared my nostrils and sniffed. The whir of my zipper lowering echoed in the open room. With a cup in my hand, I stood at the urinal, with my dick out, in front of a mirror that gave my pervert probation officer an unobstructed view of my junk, and I pissed into the cup.
I kept my head down, focused on the task at hand, otherwise I’d lose my mind. What kind of kink was watching guys take a piss? The low grunts coming from him hit like punches. I wasn’t going down on assault charges because he was enjoying his job.