maverick
All right, here we go…” Levi Jackson typed on his keyboard for several minutes while I sat and waited.And kept on fucking waiting.The man typed slower than anyone I knew. It took everything I had not to sigh in frustration. From the gray hair and wrinkles, he had to be at least sixty or seventy years old. Clearly, technology wasn’t his friend. “Last day of parole. How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” I muttered. He stopped everything to just stare at me. Levi took his job way too seriously compared to some of the other parole officers I’d heard about. One-word answers were a fat no with him. I sighed and shifted uncomfortably in the small office chair. “I’m fine. Just want to be done with all of this.”
There. That was honest.
After four and a half years in prison, I’d been granted early release with eighteen months of parole. Unfortunately, it left me stuck in Wilde Bay with Levi as my parole officer. Every month, I had to go to his office for an appointment to check in, and every three months, he made a surprise visit to my home to see how I was doing. It forced me to settle down and try to build a life here.
But planting roots, as he called it, was hard here. I couldn’t go back to the trailer park because Aidan was still there. The rest of the town was hard to navigate financially. Everything was too expensive, and I had nothing but the clothes on my back. Homelessness wasn’t an option with parole. Not to mention the Fox name was tainted as fuck around here. Very few people wanted anything to do with me.I couldn’t blame them for that.
I’d been lucky that Frank was willing to take a chance on me again. He let me live in the crappy room above his shop. It wasn’t much—not even a full apartment—but I could use the shop’s waiting room microwave to warm food up to make up for the lack of a kitchen. I’d expected to have to work for him for free to pay for the space, but Frank was kind enough to pay me to work as a mechanic in his shop.
I also picked up a million-and-one shifts working on the home repair side of his business.Yeah, Frank did too much.I was a quick learner and willing to do whatever to put as much money as possible in my pocket. My big financial goal was to get out of that room, and I was getting there.
“I got a house,” I admitted quietly. That stopped Levi, and he gave me his entire attention. I knew the look—the you’re-in-over-your-head look—and I steeled myself for the blowback.
“Owning a house is a big stressor.”
“I know.”
“Tell me about the house.” It wasn’t a question. It was an order.
“It’s a fixer-upper by the beach.” That was a lie. The thing was barely livable at this point, but it had potential. At least, that’s what the real estate lady had said. To be honest, I was pretty sure I got it for such a steal because the owner desperately wanted to get rid of it. The house had been unoccupied and decaying since I was in high school. “I figure it’ll keep me busy in my downtime.”
“Again, the stress of that,” Levi began, and I sighed loudly.
“Life is fucking stressful,” I retorted. “There’s no way I can have a stress-free life.”
Not at the rate I was going.
“I understand that,” he replied, “but this is about setting yourself up for failure. The financial investment in owning a house is high, and you’re currently living above an auto shop. That’s a big leap. Why not start with something smaller, like a real apartment? One with a kitchen?”
“The mortgage on this is significantly cheaper than any apartment in town,” I said. It was about the only thing I could afford anyway. “I can fix it up when I can, and I don’t have stupid neighbors.”
That last part was a big perk. While I was appreciative of the room to stay in, the bar next to the shop kept me up at all hours of the night. It wasn’t the most frequented bar in Wilde Bay, but that didn’t make the drunks any less noisy throughout the night.
“All right, if you think you can handle it,” Levi relented. “Still going to A.A.?”
“Every other week,” I said. After six years sober, I didn’t feel I needed a meeting every week, but I still dragged my ass there often enough to keep me in check. The truth was, I hadn’t craved a drink or even thought about drinking in a long time.
Admittedly, life wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t good either. I was just stuck in the middle of what Levi calledprogress. Fuck progress. To me, it felt like a monotonous routine with a promise of a better future that wasn’t guaranteed at all.
“How’s work?”Like I said, Levi took his job with all his questions seriously.
“It’s fine.” I shrugged. “I work a lot.”
“Do you have a social life?”
“I didn’t have a social life before I got locked up.”
“Maverick.” Again with that stare. “We’ve talked about building healthy habits.”
“I know,” I replied. He brought the topic up every single check-in. I was so goddamn close to lying because I found him irritating.
“Then you know that a good support network is important to making this transition successful for you,” Levi reminded me.
“I think I’m doing just fine on my own.”And I was.I avoided Aidan and his crew. I kept my head down and did my job. I wasn’t drinking. I ate kind of decently. I wasn’t smoking. Hell, I even went to bed at a decent hour. So what if I didn’t have friends? I just didn’t trust people enough for that.Not anymore.
