Neighbor Boy (BoyxBoy)

Part 12

>< Frank’s Point of View ><

I stood dumbfounded in front of the house, my mouth hanging open as I stared in shock. My Uncle Joe’s house. Burned to the ground. Just like that. I squeezed my eyes shut as I felt Aaron’s hand had found mine. I gripped his hand tight, and tighter still. I’m not sure why, I just felt like it was the best thing to do at the moment.

That is, until I heard a noise behind us. I whirled around on my heels as fast as humanly possible and wrenched my hand away from Aaron’s to see who it was. I picked up the phone and shined its flashlight towards where I had heard the noise. There was nothing.

There was another noise to my right. I pivoted to face it and shined the light on a dark silhouette, brightening everything but their face. I could see that they wore boots – brown leather boots that were mostly covered by a pair of faded blue jeans with slightly blackened knees and thighs. It was most likely from the soot of the fire.

I tried to angle the phone in such a way that their face would be illuminated, but I wasn’t so lucky. I heard a click, and noticed that they held a shotgun in their hand. He had rough hands, as if they had been working in construction for a while. Their fingernails were chipped.

It’s strange what someone noticed when they were about to get shot. It’s strange what one could process in the climax of the moment when they were about to die, when they were on the last legs of their life. How I figured it was probably Tayler to get revenge once and for all, how if I could make one last wish, I would bring Aaron’s mother back to life for him, or end the case sooner so that so many innocent people didn’t die.

Then I heard a familiar laugh and the shotgun clicked again. For a fraction of a second, I envisioned the flash of the gun as the round slammed into my body and knocked me down. I would be dead in less than ten seconds. Aaron would probably be wounded by the shell going through me or around me.

That’s when the shotgun was lowered and the figure stepped forward. I heard them laugh again, and my flashlight craned up to see that it was Uncle Joe in the flesh. My eyes widened and then relaxed as I realized it was really him and he hadn’t died in the fire. I almost cried before he slapped my face. Not hard, but not soft, either.

“Frank, damnit. Why couldn’t you have been here sooner? Fuckin’ girl burned down the whole damn house. Piece of shit bitch…” He growled, trailing off to look at his house.

I could see from the glow of the light that Aaron was looking at me like I should give Joe some smart ass retort, but I didn’t want to set him off when he was in one of his moods. Last time I did that I got slapped in the face with the barrel of his shotgun. It wasn’t a happy moment.

“I’m sorry.” Was all I could manage to get out of my mouth before sighing, and letting myself sink to the ground in self pity and frustration. It was almost as if bad luck was passing from Aaron to Uncle Joe. Soon it would bounce to me. I could almost see it.

“Don’t beat yourself up over it, Frank.” Uncle Joe said, chuckling. “I had already moved most of the files to your house so that you could read them yourself. I suppose I have damn good timing.” He looked down at me and smiled.

I couldn’t help but smile back. “So then should we go there now? You could stay with us for a couple of days or something.” I offered, standing back up to grab my keys that I had dropped before.

“Nah,” He said. “I don’t want to intrude on your guys’ life. I’ll just rent an apartment or something.” He looked away as he said that, and I narrowed my eyes in suspicion. It was almost like he knew that Aaron and I had a secret… thing. Even though it wasn’t really a thing.