A Wrong Turn Towards Love by Pepper Pace Read Free Book Online Page A

me to Richmond. I want to go back to the bus station, cash in my ticket and buy another one back to Chicago! Where’s my purse?!” She found it on the floor and searched it for her ticket. “I hate this stupid-ass place!” she muttered and then stared out the window with tears welling up in her eyes.
    Bodie drove back to town silently, peeking at her often but seeing nothing but rage on her face.
    He pulled up to the bus station in the exact same spot where they had fought off the Klan the day before.
    Shaun barely waited for the truck to come to a full stop before she climbed out of it. She hurried to the entrance of the bus station and before pushing the door open she glanced over her shoulder at him one last time. Then she disappeared.
    Bodie silently fumed. He ripped open the glove box and retrieved his pack of cigarettes. He smoked it trying to calm his anger. When it was down to the butt he threw it out the window and then peeled out of the parking lot still angry.
     
     

Chapter 7
    Bodie was working on the engine of Toady Allen’s car. Toady was forever buying junkers for two and three hundred bucks and then expecting Bodie to work miracles. Rebuilding the carburetor wasn’t going to do it. Nothing short of a new engine was going to keep this thing running.
    He slammed the hood and fished a rag out of the back pocket of his coveralls and wiped his hands.
    It was after nine and he had already sent Pete and Bobby home. He locked up his garage and got into his new car, which was actually older than him. It was a black 1968 Dodge Charger that he had rebuilt over the course of the last six months.
    He’d gotten rid of his truck. Somehow his tastes had changed.
    At home he took a bath and had a couple of sandwiches then he decided to head over to Stubby’s to unwind. He turned the radio where it was set to a classic R&B channel and grooved to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On.
    The bootleg joint had the same old crowd that was always there each night and they made room for Bodie. Laura came over to stand beside him. He hid a grimace when she tried picking up on him.
    To her credit she was what all the good ol’ boys wanted, but Bodie’s flavor had changed.
    Over the months, all he could seem to think about were full brown breasts and a certain someone’s succulent lips. None of the girls that had ever interested him before could do so much as to cause him to raise an eyebrow anymore.
    Weeks after Shaun’s unceremonious departure from the mountain a half angry Bodie had gone down to Richmond and bought a porno; Black chicks that love white dicks. He watched it until his balls were chaffed. A month later he had charged into the Sherriff’s office and demanded that Lloyd run Shaun’s plates to find out where she lived. He’d sat on the information that came back for another month before he finally tried contacting her.
    He wrote a letter and it was the first time that he had ever told any woman that he dreamed of her constantly…
    The letter was returned; Undeliverable. No forwarding address found. Yeah, maybe that was a good thing. You don’t write in a letter that you were scared…You don’t admit to a sheet of paper that you had fucked up because it had been so long since you had felt anything…
    “Bodie?” Laura called. “Earth to Bodie?”
    “Huh?” He looked at the pretty redhead with the striking green eyes that generally captivated any man that she set them on. “I’m sorry. My mind must have wandered.”
    She gave him an incredulous look. “Most men don’t say that when I’m around.”
    He didn’t have a polite come back to that so he just stayed quiet and after a moment Laura stormed away. Bodie ordered another beer and contemplated the nature of his life on this mountain.
    “Well will you look at that…”Merle said from his place behind the bar. JD turned in his stool to look at what had Merle so dumbfounded.
    “Fuck me with a stick.” JD said in shock. Then he looked at Bodie. As