June Bug by Jess Lourey Read Free Book Online

that it didn’t pay, what with the cost of insurance. I knew the couple from around town, mostly from their frequent trips to the library to check out books on building your own greenhouse, making your own paper, growing your own organic vegetables, creating your own compost pile, et cetera. I also knew their twenty-two-year-old son, Jedediah. He had tried to sell me pot on several occasions, and every time, he was genuinely astonished that I declined. The beauty of having a brain-atrophying drug habit is that the world is born anew for you every day.
    When I pulled my brown 1984 Toyota Corolla into the circle drive that marked the front of the Last Resort, it was Jed who limped out to greet me. “Hello, you! What can I do for you?”
    I smiled at his excitement as I pulled myself out of the car. “What happened to your leg?”
    Jed grinned sweetly, stretching the bong-shaped ring of acne around his mouth. “I twisted my ankle unloading a boat yesterday. I am so cool though, Mira. It’s a beautiful day!” He waved his hands expansively in the June air, the sun shining down on his curly light-brown hair and through the spindly Fu Manchu mustache he was trying to grow. He hugged me spontaneously, and I let him.
    When he stepped back, grinning, I returned his smile. He certainly made cluelessness look appealing. “Say, you wouldn’t have any scuba equipment left to rent, would you?”
    Jed actually scratched his head. “You know, weirdest thing. Everyone and her brother suddenly wants to rent our stuff. We’re out.”
    My heart sank. I should have known. To be honest, I liked the idea of breaking this diamond story wide open, but the real reason I was going to so much trouble is I wanted the five thousand bucks for finding it. Since I didn’t have any house payments and my electric bill was currently low, my only major expense was student loans—$276 every month. However, my part-time reporting job and now full-time library job paid only a frog’s hair above minimum wage, which didn’t leave a lot of spare cash lying around. It would be nice to add to the $20 in my savings account.
    “Well, ’cept for my stuff and my ma and pa’s. You could borrow that, if you like. We haven’t been diving in a while.”
    “Jed!” I said happily. I was back on. “That would be great!”
    He nodded his head like a happy Muppet and grabbed my hand. “Let’s go back and check it out. It’s all stored off the front office.”
    When we walked past the row of cabins and close to the store, I saw the Swenson’s Landscaping truck around the side of the Heikes’ house, which was done in the same chipping white and green as the cabins. My heart took a little electric leap. “Swenson’s here doing some landscaping?”
    “Yup.”
    “Who’s doing the work?”
    “Johnny.”
    My electric leap turned into a full-blown charge. I had had a crush the size of a Mack truck on Johnny Leeson ever since I had bought a flat of annuals from him a few weeks earlier. He was not tall, maybe five-eleven, in his early to mid twenties, and he had thick, longish blonde hair. The Scandinavian-exchange-student look wasn’t normally my physical type, but he was strong and lean, he had even white teeth, and he knew everything there was to know about gardening: when to plant your peas, how much water to give your corn, where to bury your tulip bulbs, how to fertilize your roses—if it could grow in dirt, Johnny could advise.
    For me, there was something very erotic about a man with a green thumb. If he could coax blueberries to grow in low-alkaline soil, what could he do with a prematurely jaded woman on a Sealy Pillow-Top? Plus, he always smelled like fresh-cut grass, and his eyes were the color of a blue raspberry slushie. I was pretty sure he didn’t know I had these lusty organic thoughts about him. He just saw me as the chick who bought a few seed packets every week. My crush felt safe and exciting at the same time, in a crazy-lady sort of way.