Homewrecker (Prologue)
Rex Collier ambled through the drunken crowd and honking horns outskirts of Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill as the Tar Heels beat the Demon Deacons 34-31 in a dramatic last-second field goal. The fifty-four degrees crisped through the cool October air.
The football game wasn’t on his mind, though. A postgame party threw down on 322 McCauley Street where a one-bedroom yellow cottage stood with a covered porch built sometime in the 1930’s.
He treaded on a gravel drive and passed a bohemian couple making out in the darkness, while Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” blasted from the backyard. It was his favorite band on the faded T-shirt he attired.
After a jock ran past him to barf, there was Francine Louis.
He stopped to behold her beauty. That dark espresso hair flapped in the wind. Her raucous laughing blended with various jokes. A longneck Bud Light bottle cradled in her hand. Even her brown eyes reflected in the bonfire where some people threw bean bags towards a cornhole.
Three short breaths, he took, before walking towards her.
“Hi, Francine,” he said.
“Hey.”
“Can I talk to you?”
“Sure, what?”
He pulled her alongside a decayed shed, located next to someone’s truck.
“There’s something I need to get off my chest. I know we have been friends the last two years, but my heart can’t let go of what I feel about you,” he rambled.
“What are you talking about?”
“I am falling for you Francine!”
He watched her take a sip. Then he heard her giggle.
“What’s so funny?” He asked.
“I’m sorry for finding this hilarious, but I only think of you like a little brother I never had. Let’s not complicate the way things are and keep it you know…platonic?”
“It’s not that complicated being more than friends.”
An overall-wearing redneck man named Bo Crawford turned around and blabbed, “Maybe she’s just not into you!” Rex tilted his head backwards and wrinkled his nose.
“Uh, buddy I don’t know you from Adam, but this is an ‘a’ and ‘b’ situation, so ‘c’ your way out of it,” Rex expressed.
“Grunge punks like you don’t go out with a sweet petite thing like her.”
“I didn’t know I was taking love advice from a hillbilly cupid!”
“Oh, you’re giving me a wisecrack. I’ll show you!”
Rex put up his fists to protect his face but received Bo’s punch in the gut. He bent over and coughed. It took so much of his breath away, he had to kneel.
“You don’t get it do you?” Bo asked. “You best be gone or you’re gonna get hurt twice as worse!
Rex tried to get up, but almost tripped on a bottle.
Bo shouted, “I won’t tell you again! Get the hell—”
All of a sudden, he picked it up and whacked it over Bo’s head!
He saw Bo reeled backwards and knocked over someone holding a bourbon flask and the liquid spewed into the fire. It whooshed everywhere! Everybody ran for their lives!
Finally, Rex got up and merged with the rushing crowd, he turned back to see Francine. She was nowhere in sight. Then he ran off as sirens bellowed into the night.