This Strange Addiction, Julie Steimle [little readers txt] 📗

got a stalker ex and—” Audry put a hand over her mouth, realizing that she had just exposed a secret no one had given her permission to share.

“No kidding?” Hogan laughed, amused. He luckily did not catch the scandal attached to the story. Audry had caught it in time. All three of them had stalker exes after all. That was not scandalous. However, Daisy’s brief pregnancy was.

Audry nodded. “Yeah. I met her once. A super jealous woman.”

Hogan nodded. Then he looked into the parking lot. “Speaking of super jealous, there she is.”

Shuddering, Audry cringed. This was the part she hated about dating Hogan. Charlene Olson. Audry had first seen her three weeks ago. A face like Nefertiti, bronze skin and fashionable, she always kept her distance, but she glared like she would murder Audry if she saw her kissing Hogan. According to Hogan, when Charlene and Hogan had broken up it was because she was just too controlling. And the woman had a meltdown. Hogan had tried to get a court order taken out on her when she started to stalk his other girlfriends, ending those relationships, but he was not as successful as Audry had been in getting a court order against Harlin. The political climate at the time had become toxically femanazi, he said, claiming a woman could not possibly be a dangerous stalker… as if women were naturally saints and men were inherently devils. The very concept was sexist, but the powers that be were not able to see how. So they had to endure the predatory watching of Isis, Hogan’s most dangerous ‘goddess’.

“Why didn’t you vet her out—” Audry murmured.

“I was in love, or thought I was,” Hogan whispered back, trying not to look Charlene’s way.

There was another crowd in the parking lot, not far from Charlene. They were a group of men who had started a trashcan fire, and were drinking. They were the source of ruckus Audry had heard. Several of their group skirted around them, though one from her group—a guy Audry knew as Jake—shouted back something that upset those partiers.

“They’re gonna make a mess of the parking lot,” Jandra Washington muttered, climbing up the hill to her friend’s car.

“Glass on the tires…” her friend moaned. “After all that work.”

Bobo marched up right after them, watching intently. He glanced at Audry and nodded to Hogan. Then he walked toward the noisy group.

“What’s he gonna do?” Hogan asked.

“We should call the police,” Audry said, feeling into her pocket for her phone. Then she realized that she had left it in the car to charge. She headed to her car.

“You actually think the cops are going to come here for a few vandals?” Hogan shook his head.

Audry shrugged, fishing for her keys. “You never know.”

Jandra huffed. “The cops help nobody.”

Shooting her a dirty look, Audry said, “Not true. I know some very good police officers.”

But then they saw Bobo just talk to the drinking partiers. His soft voice barely carried. The sea was louder. Leaving her car, Audry inched in closer to hear, crossing the parking lot toward him.

“…here. Now we’re all tired from cleanin’ up. If ya’ll be so kind and take your party elsewhere. We’d much appreciate it.”

One of the drinkers spat out a graphic expletive. It was socially approved expletive, though. Not one to make him look like a racist or anything, but a grotesque word describing an aggressive act of sex. Audry bristled, as she never saw any point for a respectable human being to talk like that, as it gave the wrong impression and painted an ugly mental picture.

Bobo remained sanguine. He merely sighed and repeated again, “Y’all don’ seem to get it. Y’all are making a lotta noise, and causin’ damage to a place we jus’ cleaned up. Now I’m askin’ you nicely before I am forced to call my good friend who is a police officer—”

One of the drunks swung the bottle in his hand down onto Bobo’s head. The glass shattered. Bobo hunched from the blow. But the man who had swung it immediately began to bleed from his scalp. The blood came straight out of the crown of his head, almost exactly where he had struck Bobo’s own skull. Everyone nearby from the beach rushed up to help Bobo.

And yet, Bobo stood upright, perfectly fine—while the trash fire party group crowded around their friend who was bleeding profusely, trying to staunch the blood with his hands. Another of the partiers shouted, “What the f—!” and swung a punch at Bobo as if it were his fault their friend got hurt.

His fist met with Bobo’s jaw. They saw Bobo wearily lean back as if he had merely been nudged. But the man who had punched him dropped right to the ground as if Bobo had returned the punch with equal force, though none of them saw Bobo’s arms raise in self-defense. The man’s mouth was bleeding, jaw at a funny angle.

“Is his head made out of stone?” someone out of the dark surrounding that trash can fire shouted. “What happened to Sam?”

Two other men grabbed and pulled Bobo back—but in that next second they jerked away from him as if their arms had been squeezed by some invisible force. Both of them yowled in excruciating pain. Bobo took another step back from them, sort of swaying there as though merely dazed.

Audry ran up to him. “Are you ok?”

“Stay back,” Bobo said in a dry voice, extending a hand to block her. “I don’ want you to get hurt.”

Hogan jogged up to her side, pulling her away from the drunken partiers.

A weird feeling swept through her, one Audry could not explain. It was like bouncy, rubber kind of sensation—as if whatever she did toward Bobo might bounce back and hit her, like that childish chant I am rubber, you are glue, everything you say bounces off me and sticks to you.

The partiers retreated, running into their cars and drunkenly getting out of that parking lot with their bleeding men. Whatever kind of jujitsu Bobo must have done to defend himself, it was way too fast for any of them to see. Audry had not seen it. It was amazing.

“What are you?” Jandra asked, gazing at Bobo as if she had not been working near him all day. “Dr. Strange?”

Bobo laughed, turning to look at her.

“You’d be a brilliant bodyguard,” Audry said, impressed.

And Bobo smirked at her, nodding.

On the other side of the parking lot, Audry noticed Charlene slip off. She got the message also. Audry was protected.

Facing the Past

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Four

 

 

The cleanup did not take as long as Audry had initially assumed. With the help of the Deacon Enterprises’ trucks and the various clubs that came and went—and there were many—they finished about four days along. The shoreline was beautiful and natural once more, and they were now working on the parking lots, making sure the workers themselves did not leave a mess.

During that last day, Audry had confessed to Hogan that Rick had sent Bobo to make sure she was safe, as Rick was still traumatized over the death of his friend in Germany and he was afraid for her. And since that revelation, Bobo was invited to work alongside them.

Hogan asked Bobo questions, mostly about Rick Deacon. Audry could tell Hogan was a little jealous, since clearly the woman he loved had history with a handsome multi-billionaire.

“So… how did you meet him?” Hogan asked. “Is he your boss?”

Bobo chuckled, shaking his head. “Nope. Not exactly. Rick is an old classmate. I met ‘im at Guilinger High.”

That impressed Hogan. He nodded to Audry. “I see. So, is that why you want to be his bodyguard?”

“He needs a bodyguard,” Bobo said earnestly as they swept up broken glass and cigarette butts off the asphalt with an old battered straw broom into a rusty dustpan. He looked to Audry. “We tried to tell ‘im he needed a bodyguard more than you did.”

“We?” Audry wondered who had been talking about her. She was holding the bag for the garbage.

Nodding, Bobo said, “Yeah. Matt and I. But all of his friends are worried about ‘im.”

That was true, and Audry nodded to herself, thinking on that. Rick had to be an emotional wreck with serious PTSD.

“So, is he a good employer?” Hogan asked.

Laughing, Bobo answered, heaving up the metal dustpan into the bag, “Uh, yeah. I guess. I’m still on probation, really. I’m trying to convince ‘im by taking care of her that I’m good for ‘im. But I think he gets it all backwards, not caring about his own safety at all.”

That startled Audry. But it also sounded like Rick.

“No,” Hogan laughed, shaking his head. “I mean does he pay you well? The benefits.”

Angling his head, Bobo shrugged. “I s’pose they’re fine. But I’d work for him for free.”

Hogan and Audry both stared. “You’re kidding.”

Bobo smirked, amused at their response in unison. “Nope. Rick was great friend in school. He cares about people. Watches out for ‘em. And me, man… He gave me a chance. No one wanted to get near me ‘sept him.”

Shivers ran down Audry’s arms.

“Kids have always been scared of me growin’ up,” Bobo said shaking his head as his own memories passed through him. He looked sad and lonely again. “But Rick, he always included me. He always treated me fair. Nobody else was like ‘im. Nobody.”

“Really?” Audry stared at him, taking in Bobo, his stature and all that. He wasn’t scary at all. He wasn’t even all that buff. Rather, he was lanky… kind of in the way Will Smith was, with stick out-ears to boot. It was cute. And being soft-spoken and dignified, one would not think of him in a negative way. He dressed neatly. His clothes were not rich, and his pants were hanging on his waist and not sagging down in the current trend. His hair was trim, and he had no piercings or tattoos. He was the stark opposite of a gangster rapper—almost a Huxtable. Perhaps he had been more of a gangster type when he was a kid and reformed.

“Yeah,” Bobo nodded. “The guy is fearless.” He then stared off toward the sea as if thinking about that.

Audry was amazed. She never really thought of Rick as fearless. The wealthy heir was allergic to so much—honey, garlic, various plants, and even silver. And though he was not a vegan, he held to a strict diet. And he kept epinephrine pens on hand, just in case. But Audry could see Rick really did hate having bodyguards around him. She knew he would go out in public alone more often than not. Was that fearlessness? Or foolishness?

“Can I ask,” Bobo said to them both. “Rumor has it among your friends that you two might get married.”

Both Hogan and Audry blushed. They exchanged furtive looks, grinning.

“If that’s happenin’,” Bobo said, reading their looks, “Would you mind sendin’ Rick an invitation to the weddin’? I think he’d appreciate it….”

Audry’s mouth opened in appalled shock.

“And he’d get y’all a really great gift.”

Hogan laughed, nodding. “Ok. When that happens, we’ll do that.”

Bobo nodded to him, smiling.

Audry could tell from this that Hogan no longer saw Bobo as a threat. It was kind of cute her boyfriend got jealous, yet at the same