why he hated me. Especially after Sandy, the girl he’d spent a whole year chasing, had ended up in my room at one of our parties. And I was the one who ate her cherry. That said, the animosity wasn’t just about us as horny teenagers chasing pussy though. It had begun from the moment I walked into that family aged five. Justin, who was my age, did everything he could to terrorize me. Horrible fucking pranks like placing dog shit in my bed, or he’d make a mess and then point the finger at me. But I kept my mouth shut because the thought of returning to that stinking dump that had been my home before Justin’s dad adopted me scared the shit out of me.
But now that we were adults, the game had changed. This was serious. Justin had to pay big time for shitting on my reputation. All that bullshit about being innocent. He was the only person who could have stashed the drugs in my backpack because I’d seen him with the bag of white powder earlier that night.
Sleeping with his girl was one thing, but I needed more than that. My ultimate goal was for Justin to go through what I’d been through. Being a pretty boy, he’d have a hell of a time fending off the cocksuckers in jail. Despite possessing a big mouth that fired missiles of hot air, Justin couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag. The hungry fuckers in there would know how to put that big mouth to good use, and it didn’t involve sucking lollipops either. My kickboxing youth had come in handy. After I bruised one asshole’s cock with my knee, they all kept away. The cash my art and furniture generated also helped, in that the prison officers made sure I was left alone.
I stared out the window, which had become a favorite pastime of mine since being released. The view was not pretty, though, from that fourth-floor shithole I’d recently moved into. My eyes rested on the other equally sad buildings facing a seedy alleyway that probably had enough DNA stuck on its grimy path to fill a prison.
I had to visit Harry, my old boss, later that morning. He’d promised me a job on one of his building sites. Having done time when he was young and foolish, Harry was more of a buddy than anything else.
Moving away from the window, I lowered my body to the ground and pumped out a hundred pushups, followed by stretches that I’d picked up while in prison. Becoming an exercise junkie had been the only good thing about being in prison for a year. I liked how it made me feel. And along with drawing and woodwork, it was the only thing that kept me sane.
I wiped my face with a towel, after which I decided to go for a run.
When I got to the ground floor, I exited the cracked glass doors and, as always, stepped over spilled garbage. The alley smelled of shit, as it always did. Watching my step, I noticed soiled, torn panties, which only added to the alley’s grunginess.
As with every morning, the park, which was close to my place, wasn’t exactly a picture of beauty either. Empty bottles and cartons lay strewn all over the grass, suggesting a big night for those sleeping rough.
I clutched my arms. The air was sharp. Just as I was about to start jogging, I stopped when I discovered there were bodies scattered about, in what was a sad sight. As a cold hand gripped at my soul, I raked through my hair, wondering if that could have been me had I not been saved by Elliot Lockhart, my late adoptive father.
How my life had changed. Two years earlier, on my way to carving out a better life, I’d started an architecture degree at Columbia. And then that fucking party, from where I left handcuffed while being pushed and shoved by cops as I pleaded innocence until my throat became raw.
A dog scrounging for food looked up at me with big, sad eyes. I opened my arms. “I haven’t got anything, buddy.”
I headed for the pavement and ran my heart out. That was my way of dealing with shit. Exercise. It had started with playing football. I became addicted to the high it delivered, which was better than any drug I’d ever taken. Not that I’d taken many; only weed on occasion. And then there