Page 24 of Letters From Avery
Chapter Seven
James
“So, he just randomly sent you a bunch of letters?”
“Yeah. I just got mail from him one day, so I answered it. It just kinda went from there.”
“How many did he send?” Jack almost finished asking the entire question before stuffing his ham and cheese sandwich onto his mouth and biting off half of it.
I shrugged and took a swig from my can of Coke. “Two or three a month.”
Jack’s eyes widened. “Fuck that’s more than I wrote toyou.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Yeah, I know.”
Jack stared at me for a moment while he chewed. “I just can’t believe it.”
“What?” I grunted before stuffing a few barbecue chips into my mouth.
“Of all the things in the world, it never crossed my mind that you would be into dudes. Were you always…”
“No, Jack, it must have been all the hot prison twinks in the showers that did it. And I'm not really intodudes.Not in the way you're thinking, anyway. I like little twinks. Like Avery.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“I wasn’t ready to tell anybody. And, by the time I was ready, I was behind bars so it didn’t really matter.”
“That’s so crazy.”
“I mean, I guess,” I replied, tipping the empty chip bag up to let the crumbs in the bottom flow into my mouth. “At least I don’t have to worry about knocking my girlfriend up.”
“So funny,” Jack deadpanned.
I crinkled the empty bag up into a ball and tossed it overhand into the bin across the room.
“Nice shot.”
Jack and I both turned to see a police officer standing at the entranceway of the open garage.
We exchanged a glance and then Jack spoke. “The front entrance is around the building. If you check in with the desk they can get you taken care of.”
“I’m not here for car maintenance, but thank you,” the cop replied. His tone was anything but thankful. “I’m just wondering why my fiancé was here for nearly two hours last night.”
Jack glanced over at me again. “Are you sure he was here? How do you know?”
The guy pulled his phone out of his pocket and turned it over to show us the screen, which displayed an app called Life360. “I always know where he is. It said he was here from a little after six to nearly seven-thirty.”
Fiancé? Six o’clock? There’s no way he was talking about…
“What’s your fiancé’s name?”
“Avery Thompson.”
I instantly felt like my blood had turned into frozen sludge and my heart was having a hell of a time keeping up.
“Yeah, a guy named Avery came in last night for an oil change. He was my last customer of the day.”
“Well, if he comes back, you just let him know I’ll be taking care of his car from now on. No need to trouble you fine gentleman,” he said.
