The Windshield Incident Pt. 1

Sometimes procrastination is the mother of productivity. Tucker Jones was born when I was in the middle of The Worst Days. The vitriolic pair in the My Neighbor series moved in between Bunny chapters 1 and 2. Most recently, as I struggle[d] to a) write the last part of the Strange Bedfellows collection that the aforementioned neighbor series became, and b) connect the plot points for Watching Him Back Ch. Billion I had a stroke of inspiration.


Screw Andy and his hot neighbor. Kiss my ass, Crispin. I pounded out about half of what will be four 3,500-word stories about a small-town kid who, through one major mishap, gets mixed up with the baddest of the local bad boys. Then I slapped together another barely legible cover and uploaded the first section to Smashwords because I was just so damn into it.

Fun fact: The majority of my writing falls into two basic categories.
1) The "real" motivations for characters in stereotypical scenarios (e.g. jock/nerd, boss/secretary, roommates, Master/slave)
2) Characters with few outstanding qualities in unlikely situations.

While the first category attracts more readers, I usually prefer the second. It means that unpredictable shit can keep happening to the characters. Grant, the main character of The Windshield Incident, is completely ordinary. Suffice to say that shit happens him.

Here's a preview of some shit.

The Windshield Incident, Pt. 1

“Is there any other way I can pay you back?”

As soon as the words left my mouth I regretted them. Ryder Vance wasn’t known for his scruples, and certainly not for his mercy. One time he had made this freshman slash Principal Houghman’s tires—the kid got expelled, and even though everyone knew Ryder had put him up to it, the poor kid never ratted him out. I don’t know what the freshman did to deserve that kind of task, but he probably hadn’t put a baseball through Ryder’s windshield. Now I was regretting having told everyone else to go home while I owned up to my mistake.

Ryder didn’t blink. “Sure, give me three hundred dollars.”

The dread roiling in the pit of my stomach threatened to boil into tears. “I don’t have that kind of money.” Not that I could give him, anyway, not if I wanted to ever leave this town. Then again, Ryder was rumored to have broken more than a few bones when he got a little riled up, so maybe community college could wait another year. “Could you give me a couple of days?”

“No.” He just stood there, arms folded, leaning back against the hood, looking just so…so…cool. There wasn’t really another good way to describe him. Leather jacket, widow’s peak, pulling off the kind of long hair that just wasn’t in fashion anymore, totally ripped—some people got all the luck.

I can’t believe he had first asked me for insurance, though. Where does he think I’m from? At least his parents have jobs.

“Seriously, I am so, so sorry,” I said again. “Can, I—I don’t know—help you fix it?”

Ryder glanced back at the busted windshield. “Do you know anything about cars?”

I wanted to kick myself. Again. Sure, offer car help to the mechanic’s kid. I shook my head.

“Then suck my dick.”

I stepped toward him, trying to sound like I wasn’t just thinking about the beating I would get if my dad found out. “Geez, I said I’m sorry, and I’m willing to work something out—”

“Then suck my dick,” Ryder repeated.

That stopped me in my tracks. Wait, so that wasn’t just a figure of speech? Not like, “piss off,” suck-my-dick but “I have a penis: put your mouth on it” suck-my-dick? My brain couldn't seem to process this request, because my mouth said, “Uh, what?”

One side of his mouth pulled up a little. “Would you rather give me the money?”

“I don’t have it.” I sounded like a robot. Request To Suck Dick Does Not Compute. There Is No Money. Error. Error.

Ryder cocked his head, and if he had been leaning against a classic muscle car instead of a beat-up Oldsmobile he’d look like something out of a movie. “What’s your name?”

“Grant.”

Taking a drag off his cigarette, he said, “Okay, Grant, you have two choices. Either you give me three hundred bucks, right now, or you get down on your knees and give me a fucking blowjob.”


If you're not an idiot you can guess what happens next, but if you want to know all of it then go here.