Chapter One - Barely Breathing in Beavercreek

CHAPTER ONE

Barely Breathing in Beavercreek

I’M JJ, JAMES Johnson, and I’m a kid from Dayton, Ohio.

When this all started, I was doing landscaping. I liked it, mostly. It was fun. I’d gotten the job after getting fired from my last one. Not for anything I did at work, just some outside drama that caught up with me. Long story.

I was making $19.25 an hour. Not bad. Sometimes more if we landed a prevailing wage job. I lived in a two-bedroom apartment with my boys, Zack and Dylan. They shared a room. I had my own. That part was nice. And on paper, things looked good. I was getting paid. I had a place. We were living the homie life.

But in real life?

It sucked.

It was late winter, November bleeding into December, and I was barely hanging on. This girl had just broken my heart in the dumbest, most embarrassing way imaginable. I wasn’t sleeping. I was down to maybe four or five hours a night, max. I had terrible habits. I was drowning in Coke Zero, slamming nicotine like it was gum, spending money on things I didn’t need, and convincing myself everything was fine.

Landscaping had stopped being fun. They treated me like trash, even though I could lowkey run circles around half the guys there. They’d throw me in an excavator with no training and I’d grin and ask where to dig. I did everything they needed, no complaints, but it never came with thanks, raises, or respect.

And then there was the snow.

We did snow and ice removal, which is just about as miserable as it sounds. One blizzard rolled in, and they worked us 17 hours straight. Then gave us a six-hour “break,” during which I, like a psychopath, went to the gym. And then threw us back in for another 12. I don’t even think I slept, not even a nap. Just plowing through frozen parking lots on zero energy and negative hydration.

And no, we didn’t get overtime that week.

They rewarded me by handing me my own apartment complex to manage. I was the crew leader. My first time out, we nailed it. We got everything done. I thought maybe this would be the turning point. Some kind of acknowledgment, at least.

Nope.

No raise. No thanks. Just more work.

I was scraping by. Paying bills and burning out. I had ambition, though. That part never left. Me and Zack even tried to start our own landscaping business on the side. We only ever got one job, but I crushed it. Planned the whole thing myself. It was legit.

I wanted more. I needed more.

And in the middle of being cold, broke, and exhausted, I made a bet with my boy David. I called it the Valentine’s Day Bet. I wanted to have abs by February 14. I’d already lost nearly a hundred pounds, and I was close. Close enough that it felt real. I was addicted to the gym. I was disciplined. Obsessed. Trying to prove to myself that I still had control over something.

So that’s where I was.

A worn-down kid from Dayton with a busted heart, a broke wallet, and just enough hope left to believe there had to be something better out there.

There had to be.