Snippets of overheard conversation inspired this short fiction piece. I have no idea if it will lead to anything else.

Preacher Man took a long pull off of his drink and set it down on the table. He looked Billy square in the eye.

“She’s right, you know.”

“How was I supposed to know she was going to get pissed off of me for shotgunning four Miller Lites and then driving over to her place?”

“Kayla’s a good girl. You better start treating her right. And not just because she’s my cousin.”

“Shit, man,” Billy said. Preacher Man had no idea whether that meant Billy agreed with him or that Kayla would be at his place again crying about how Billy won’t listen to her. An engine roared loudly in the distance.

“Here comes Flip,” Preacher Man said. “She threw Gordo out again, did you hear?”

“He called me up moaning about it the other night.” Billy lit another cigarette. “I just said ‘yeah, you’re right’ a lot until he got tired of talking and hung up. He wanted to FaceTime, but I didn’t want to see his sad face again.”

Flip pulled into the driveway and revved the motor three times before cutting the ignition. As she stepped out of the driver’s side, Preacher Man pointed the tip of his hard lemonade bottle toward the truck. He always drank hard lemonade. No one made fun of him for it anymore.

“He’s back with her already. See him taking his time before he gets out of that other side? She must have turned him out real good before taking him back.”

They made an odd pair as they walked toward their friends. She with toned arms, and him with his slight frame. She started flipping houses right out of high school and could fix any problem she encountered. He still suffered the disappointment of the injuries that kept him from a promising wrestling career in college.

He wrestled the lightest weight, often beating up on freshman and sophomores during his senior year. But he had a talent you could not deny. You could also not deny the diagnosis the doctors gave him when his shoulder gave out. The college coaches stopped calling, and he fell into a funk. Flip was the only thing that could pull him out of it. That is, when she felt like dealing with his mood swings.

“Your uncle owns a place like this, and all he could offer us to do his yard work was pizza and beer?” Flip yelled loud enough for half the neighborhood to hear.

“Shit,” Billy said. “That’s all I asked for.”

Preacher Man’s jaw dropped before he spoke.

“You mean I could be making some money if it weren’t for your dumb ass?”

“Nah, we’ll get paid. He always does it at the end. Problem is,  if I asked him to pay us, my Mom would lose her shit over how much he gave us because he don’t can’t control himself. He thinks because we didn’t go to college that we can’t take care of ourselves. So I’d have to argue with her and then she’d argue with him and then she’d give him some of her own money because she thinks he paid us too much so I’d have to slip some of my own money into her purse to make up for it,”

“You talk too fast, Bill,” Gordo said before opening his first beer.

“Only way I can get all these words outta my brain, man. Anyway, he slips me money at the end and tells me not to tell my Mom. She just thinks I get pizza and beer and is OK with that.”

“So she is good with him getting her 19-year-old drunk, but not good with him giving her 19-year-old money?”

Flip had her head cocked to the side when she asked the question on everyone’s mind. Billy just finished off his beer and tossed the can into the recycling bucket.

“It’s a bad day to be a Miller Lite around here.”