Page 16 of Replacing My Ex

I stole the first money I needed from my father’s stash. By that point, he was into gambling, but he wasn’t so far gone that he would sell his own mother to raise a pot that came later. I knew he had this money because he could never keep his mouth shut when he was drunk off his ass.

He'd won big at the casino. A couple grand. Now, here’s the thing: by then, I had a little pizza delivery job. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to allow me to buy my clothes for the school year with a little extra to fuck around with my friends, that’s if mom didn’t get into my stash and use all of it to get high.

She’d tried talking me into opening a bank account with her as the controller, but I just laughed in her face and went on my merry way. Now, before I started selling, I did my homework. While delivering pizza, I knew who was smoking from the smell when they opened the door.

That’s the first time I realized that rich people get high as fuck too. I tested the waters with this one family I delivered to a lot by accidentally dropping a bag while delivering their ten pizzas that Friday night. That was their standing order: ten pizzas every Friday.

I’d overheard the wife bitching once, so I knew that it was the dude’s poker night with friends, and he always made her fuck off somewhere else while he was doing his thing. “Oh, sorry about that.”

“No worries, young’un.” He grinned at me like we were in on the same secret. When he smelled the bag, I knew I had him.

“Whoa, where did you get this?”

“It’s my personal grow.” It wasn’t then, of course, I didn’t start growing my own shit for years to come, but that’s a different story for another time. But I knew enough to know that good weed is hard to come by, and if you can have that shit delivered with no risk to yourself from the asshole cops, then even better.

He was my first customer. I took a beating because Dad just knew that I was the one who took his money, but that first grand turned into five, and there was no looking back for me. I was door-dashing weed before it was a thing.

My clientele grew from that first poker party dude to his friends and their friends, and before you knew it, I was delivering weed to those offices under the pretense of making lunch deliveries. Then I’d go back to class like nothing happened.

I didn’t change anything about myself and never sold to anyone in my area. No one knew what the hell I was up to. If I had a new pair of shoes, I had a pizza delivery job so that’s how I could afford it. I bought the cheap shit, same as always. Meanwhile, I had stacks of cash buried in the backyard in the spot where I did my target shooting practice.

Neither of my parents paid too much mind to me at that point; they were just happy to have me out of their hair and I was happy to be left alone to do my own thing. That’s how I was able to start a grow back there without anyone knowing.

The area back there was government-owned land that nobody ever checked for whatever reason, and it was perfect. I know, these days I have a whole operation with nurseries and shit, but back then, I just let that shit grow in the wild.

I learned everything I needed to know about harvesting and curing weed because while those people I was delivering to in their cushy offices were making two grand a week, which was a lot back then, I was making that shit in a day.

By the time I started doing my own shit, I no longer needed my dealer, which he was not too pleased about, but I convinced him that I almost got caught and was scared, so he didn’t make too much fuss after that.

My folks thought I was doing woodwork back there in the little shed I’d bought and erected on the edge of the property, and since they were never in my shit, that worked out well. No one knew, no one. Not even my closest friends who all thought it was a hoot that I was spending every free moment delivering pizzas.

I claimed I was doing it to prepare for college; you need money for that shit. In two years, I don’t want to mention how much money I made, but it was enough to buy my parents a decent place in town. If I was so inclined, I was not.

The day after graduation, I headed out and never looked back. I went to college alright, but not for the reasons you might think. Back then, the internet wasn’t what it is today, but things were happening.

If you think businessmen smoke weed, then you haven’t met college kids fresh off the farm with daddy’s money burning a hole in their pocket. That shit was selling itself. I still went to class, though, just in case my luck ran out.

I’d never had any issues with the law or rival dealers because I kept my shit low level. The off-campus house I rented wasn’t anything to look at, but it suited my purposes. It was a little two-bedroom starter home with woods and shit in the back, and most importantly, it wasn’t close to the other homes on that street.

I never had company over because I wasn’t there to make friends. I wanted money. I wanted as far away from the poverty I’d grown up in as I could get, and to do that, I couldn’t be stupid. I never shit where I eat either, so I never partied with my buyers and never shared anything about myself.

Everyone thought I had a dealer and was just a low man on the totem pole. No one knew that I was growing, harvesting, and dealing all on my own. I didn’t get greedy and try to do too much; I was biding my time. For what? I have no clue, but I kept myself out of shit and kept my nose clean.

A few years after college, they made that shit legal in the Pacific Northwest and Colorado; I had to choose which one of those I wanted to live in, and Colorado won. I hate too much rain, but I love the fuck outta snow. There wasn’t much of that in the southeastern town I’d grown up in, so that’s where I headed.

I had a shit ton of money since I never really spent my money on anything more than clothes and food, so I had a good chunk of change to sink into my new operation. That shit took off in ways I couldn’t have predicted. Instead of making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, I was making millions; it almost seemed too good to be true.

I got into the biker scene out there as well. I obviously couldn’t handle that level of business on my own, so I needed reputable men and women to work for me, and once I found my tribe, most of them runaways that had never gone back to the fucked-up homes they'd fled, it just sort of happened.

Up until that point, I knew that home life could be hard since I’d endured it myself, but my life was a damn day at the carnival compared to some of the stories they told. The shit these people endured on the streets was damn near inhumane.

I fielded them out in the first year or so and played to their strengths. I had bunkhouses built where the nurseries were, so they had a place to live and space to move around when they weren’t working.

Since we were in the mountains, bikes were easier to navigate than cars and trucks, so that’s pretty much how we got into that shit, and then it became a thing. The next thing I knew, we were rescuing kids and getting involved in shit that didn’t concern me. But our reputation was solid, and that’s how we became the crew that people reached out to for help.

The way I found out I had a sister, though, was through one of my friends from back home. He’s about one of the only people I kept in contact with from back then, and by this point, it had been sixteen years since I’d been back. Our calls were down to holidays and birthdays, but I knew he was there and vice versa.

I’ll never forget that call. “Yo, dude, how are you out there saving other people’s kids, and your sister is missing?”

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