Chapter 6
Tex
T he moment I walk through the front door, my son’s expression brightens. “Whatever’s in the bag smells amazing. I didn’t think we were gonna order out anymore this week.”
I set the bag down on the table and began to unpack the contents, realizing she made man-sized portions for both of us, plus bread. I handed Levi his container of food and murmured, “I’m gonna wash my hands and get us some flatware.”
I wash up in the kitchen sink and bring back flatware, two glasses and a pitcher of iced tea out of the fridge.
Levi takes the flatware from my hand and enthuses, “This seems like a luxury meal. If you didn’t order out, where did you get it?”
“I traded work on our neighbor’s car, and she agreed to make us dinner. When she said she was a good cook, I wasn’t expecting much.”
Levi cuts off a large piece of the chicken and stuffs it into his mouth. “She wasn’t lying. You’ve got to taste this.”
I chuckle, pleased to see him eating something he enjoys so much. To say neither of us are particularly good cooks would be an understatement. That’s what made her food such a treat for us. I’m not one of those men that thinks a woman’s place is in the home—and if I don’t cook then we don’t eat—but nothing compares to having a meal made for you. I quickly pour us a tall, sweet tea and hand one to Levi before sitting down and tearing the lid off my container. The aroma that rises to my nostrils is beyond delectable. I twirl my fork around the noodles and bring a bite to my mouth. The flavor hits all the right places.
“See,” Levi says gleefully. “It’s good eatin’, ain’t it, Dad?”
I nod enthusiastically. “You ain’t joking about that, son.”
Our conversation kind of trails off because we spend most of our time forking food into our mouths and chewing. I decide to cut my boy some slack and talk to him about skipping school in the morning. Why spoil this nice thing that landed in our lap tonight. We end the day on a good note when Levi wanders upstairs, and I carefully clean up our neighbor’s dishes and set them aside to return tomorrow or the next time I see her.
***
I go up to my bedroom to take a shower because I’m all sweaty from working on her vehicle. Once I’m in the shower, with the water running over my sore muscles, all I can think of his Clara with her fiery red hair, her plump pink lips, and the tiny smattering of freckles across nose. I like the way she jokes around with me, that woman can give as good as she can take. I’d never paid her much notice before, firstly because she was a married woman, then secondly because she was a recently separated woman. Also I don’t know why, but I’d always thought she was much younger than me. Okay, ten years is ten years, but once you’re an adult, age is just a number. My hand is on my cock stroking away as my mind fills with images of her curvy body and her plump ass, and the way her breasts jiggle when she walks, especially when she walks away angry like she did that night her car alarm kept going off. Dammit, that night even though I was pissed, I couldn’t help but see the way her hard nipples showed through the thin fabric of her pajamas.
As I get close to coming, I feel guilty for stroking my cock to her curves. Even if she’s not technically off limits, I can tell she doesn’t even like me, not really. I’m just another dirty old man, doing what dirty old men do. The difference between me and them is I’ll never touch her. I know that I’m all wrong for her.
A stray thought moves forward from the dark recesses of my mind. What if she wanted me, maybe just for the experience of being with an older man? Her husband was her age, and he was an asshole, maybe she needs someone who can take care of her properly? My mind runs away with images of her coming to me, all sweet and innocent, asking to share my bed because she’s scared. I stroke away with one hand, soaping up my cock as I grip just below the head. Fuck, I’m so close to coming just thinking about her. Would she want to put her soft hands on me, stroke me, suck my cock. The look on her face when I said that things were bigger in Texas, fills my mind. She was flirting, right? Oh fuck, the thought that this pretty young thing would want someone like me, has my cock throbbing like no one’s business. Just the thought of her wanting to put her mouth on me makes me come like the thunder. I come so hard that it takes me a minute to catch my breath. And just like that, I become the very thing I despise most in life, a dirty old man perving on a young woman.
Disgusted with myself, I rinse both myself and the shower off before getting out and slipping on my pajama pants. I walk to my bed and sit on the edge, wondering how I ended up like this. Maybe my club brothers are right, I need to have some one-on-one time with a club girl before I’m totally corrupted with thoughts of my neighbor.
I close my eyes and just before darkness claims me, I already know my dreams are gonna be filled with sadness and never-ending grief. Memories of nursing my sick wife haunts my dream world. She survived less than seven months after getting diagnosed with ovarian cancer. By the time we discovered it, the disease has spread and metastasized throughout her body. She went from barely sick to extremely sick inside of five months. We tried everything, but nothing worked. The last couple of months she fought hard and lingered. I know it was because she didn’t want to leave us.
I must have fallen asleep, because halfway through a dream I hear something that sounds like a banshee wailing. My eyes pop open and I instinctively know it’s my neighbor’s vehicle.
I bolt upright out of a dead sleep. Goddamn it to hell! Just one night’s sleep, that’s all I fucking ask for.
I slide my feet into my slippers and stalk downstairs. Glancing out the window I see Clara standing at her door, with the key fob in her hand. She presses the button, and the annoying sound stops.
I open my front door, all thoughts of playing nicely gone from my head and snarl, “I should have disconnected your damn security alarm. That’s what I should have done. Did y’all find the second key fob?”
She nods, looking dispirited. “Yeah, it’s tucked away in my safe. Someone must be putting their hands on my vehicle to trigger the alarm.
I reach down and snag the flashlight out of her hand and turn towards her vehicle. “I’m gonna track these fuckers down once and for all. Then I’m gonna deal with them one after another until there’s only blissful silence reigning supreme in this neighborhood.”
“Sounds good to me,” she responds as she steps out to search with me.
I should have told her to stand back but for some reason, I wanted her with me. “Stay behind me and keep up,” I say in an irritated tone.
She does exactly as I ask, falling into line behind me, close enough to be my shadow.
I creep around her vehicle, shining the light under the car, behind it and off into the bushes to the left and right. I hear some laughter in the distance and start moving forward, seeking it out.
“It’s the neighborhood kids. I’m sure of it,” Clara whispers.
“Quiet,” I hiss. The goal is to sneak up on them so we can catch them by surprise.
We move forward and find them hanging out in the street in front of a house with all the lights off. One of the teens has a car parked on the street with all the doors open and music playing. The trunk is open and they’re drinking beer from a cooler filled with ice.
I catch them unawares. “Freeze. I want to have a word with y’all.”
One wearing jeans and a t-shirt sporting an alien, shoots back, “Calm the fuck down cowboy. We don’t have anything to say to you, so scoot on back home.”
I walk up, slap the bottle of beer from his hand as he was bringing it to his lips. “I’m with the police, so yeah, y’all are gonna talk to me alright.”
The teen looks way older than my son. He steps back and a look of disgust settles onto his face. “What does with the police even mean? Are you the receptionist?”
His friends all started laughing. I just start shooting questions at them. “Have y’all been setting off car alarms tonight? Or over the last few weeks? Do y’all live in this neighborhood?”
The ringleader replies, “No, no, and yes. Now get the hell out of our faces before I call my dad.”
“Call him. Tell him to meet y’all at the police station,” I say, getting tired of their attitude.
“What the fuck crawled up your ass and died, old man?”
“Nothing. I’m fucking tired of getting woken up by a car alarm every fucking night.”
Another of the boys speaks up, “We’ve been hearing it too. Thought someone was probably breaking into cars. That’s the reason we stayed the fuck away from that block.”
Clara tells them, “It’s my car and the car is never broken into, so I thought it might have been you guys just playing around.”
“Do we look like little kids?”
The first one adds, “Yeah, that’s some grade school shit, we wouldn’t waste our time on it stupid shit like that.”
I chime in, “So y’all are into new and more exciting crime. Is that what I’m hearing you say?”
“We’re standing here in front of my house having a cold beer and listening to music. My old man approves and the last time I checked it wasn’t a crime to listen to fucking music in public.”
“You’re disturbing the peace,” I tell them.
Their little leader is smart though, he responds in a reasonable tone, “We’re not even close to disturbing the peace. You’re just making shit up like the dirty cop you are.”
Finally, Clara stepped out from behind me. “Look, regardless of what it looks like we’re trying to find out who keeps setting off my car alarm. Can you help us? Have you seen anything suspicious? Please.”
“There’s been a car we don’t recognize lurking around. It was here earlier. Now it’s gone.”
“What kind of car? Did y’all get a look at the driver?” I ask in rapid succession.
“It was an older model Subaru, looked like it was being held together by dirt. The dude had long dark hair and a messy beard.”
I jerk my chin at their leader. “Did y’all happen to get a license number?”
“What do we look like, the neighborhood watch?”
Clara asks excitedly, “We have a neighborhood watch?”
The teen rolls his eyes. “Not that I know of lady.”
She steps back, clearly disappointed. I move forward and tell him, “I want to see ID on all of y’all.”
“The fuck man. What’s this about? We ain’t underage.”
I lie, “Just want to make a note that we talked, that y’all weren’t doing anything wrong, and y’all reported the presence of a suspicious vehicle in the vicinity. Just regular paperwork.”
The teens take my words at face value and began digging out their IDs. I take Clara’s phone out of her hand and snap photos of each one, send them to myself and then delete them from her phone.
“Is that all, cop,” their leader asks.
I nod, “Yeah, if anything else suspicious comes up, call the police and alert them immediately. It could be matter of life and death.”
The teen rolls his eyes, “Whatever you say dude.”
As we head back to Clara’s place, she asks, “Did you notice the alarm didn’t go off a second time?”
“Yeah, I did. Unfortunately, the verdict’s still out on why that is.”
When we were standing in front of her front door, her hand comes up to rest on my arm, making my cock jerk in my pants. “Want to come in and brainstorm what could be going on?”
I pull my arm away from her touch, not because I particularly want to, but because it was the right thing to do. “No. It’s late. I’m gonna run background checks on the teens tomorrow. I’ll let y’all know if anything interesting comes up.”
She sticks her hand into her pocket and gazes up at me.” Does this mean you’ve agreed to help find out what’s going on?”
“Yeah, if I’m gonna get any sleep it looks like I’m gonna have to,” I tell her gruffly.
A smile curves up the corners of her mouth as she gazes up at me. “Thanks, Tex. I appreciate it. Does this mean I owe you more food?”
Before I can answer, she steps closer. “You know, we could probably trade all kinds of neighborly things. What do you think of that?”
I didn’t know if this pretty young thing was flirting with me or if it was my overactive imagination, but I decided the best thing was probably to nip it in the bud. “No need to trade. I’m doing this for myself, so I can get some sleep. This is more of a collaboration than us doing favors for each other.”
The smile and expression of interest drops off her face at the speed of light. “Oh, I guess I must have misread this situation.”
The disappointment in her tone makes me remember how I just fantasized about her coming on to me and wanting to suck my cock. Even now, my dick is showing all kinds of interest. I bring one hand down inconspicuously to adjust myself, so my overt interest is less noticeable, which in my thin pajama pants would be clear as day.
“Look, neither of us are thinking clearly. It’s late and we’re both sleep deprived.”
Both her hands come up with her palms out. “Sorry, didn’t mean to overstep.”
I take a step back. “I’ll let y’all know if anything turns up in those background checks. I also plan to see if anyone living near here has a car that matches the one the teens reported.”
“That’s great. I hope we can find out who’s doing this because I’m long overdue for a good night’s sleep.”
“Me too,” I say before heading back to my place. Tonight has been a royal pain in the ass. However, I’ve dedicated myself to figuring out who is harassing Clara, so that means the evening wasn’t a total waste.
***
I come down the next morning to find my son completely dressed and ready to go. Normally I have to practically force him to get changed for school. Then I remember it’s Saturday, the day we always do something together.
I go for my coffee, mumbling, “Y’all look like you’re raring to go.”
Without having to ask, he tells me, “I want to learn how to play chess.”
“Really, I thought y’all would have the rule book memorized by now. Chess isn’t like a sport where y’all have to train your muscles. Once y’all know all the rules y’all just play the game.”
“No. I have to learn from a master, that’s why I wanna go back to the park,” my son insists.
“Y’all sure about that?” I ask mildly as I sip my coffee.
“Absolutely certain,” he replies with a determined look in his eyes.
My phone rings, still before I’ve had my first sip of coffee, and it’s Clara. It’s too early for this shit, so I let it ring a few times while I get as much coffee down me as possible.