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laurasfox-originals · 4 years

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Fix Me (Be The Father Of This Child! Side Story, Patreon Exclusive) by Laura S. Fox

Author’s note: I couldn’t leave the dads without their story, and this is it. It comes in the shape of a side story and it’s a Patreon Exclusive, but here is a little excerpt for anyone interested. In a nutshell, it is the how and why of Sid and Tom ending up together :) The story has 8 chapters in total, and the following text is part of the first chapter.

The link to all the chapters is this:

https://www.patreon.com/laurasfox/posts?filters%5Btag%5D=fix%20me

Start of excerpt:

Chapter One - A Little Bit Of Human Touch

Tom fought a stain on the countertop that seemed to have escaped the thorough cleaning he had overseed earlier that day. Hmm, it looked like it was part of the pattern and not an actual stain. The kids had done a pretty good job, after all.

Jett would make his hair go all grey before time. How could he be with a boy, after having a kid with his girlfriend?

You know how.

Tom pushed away the honest voice inside his head. Honesty, unfortunately, had no place there, in that situation. God knew he had made plenty of mistakes in his life, and that meant that he needed to keep his son from making his.

The worst part was that he understood what Jett saw in that boy with the hippy name. He was the kind of boy Tom would have liked for himself some twenty-five years ago. But he had chosen to be a husband and a father, regardless of particular inclinations that he didn’t want to think about. He had been in love with Jett’s mother; he had desired her completely, and losing her had left him hollow. Yet, to his shame, that hadn’t nullified his secret desires, to which he succumbed once in a while. That only appeared to keep the fire stoked, instead of putting it out.

For years, he had tried to rationalize it. While his wife had been alive, he had never cheated on her. The first time he had had a sexual encounter of the kind – of any kind, actually, it had been four years after her passing away, and it had still felt like cheating.

After that, things had gotten a little easier. Since they were nothing but fleeting experiences, he could dismiss them as nothing but a need for sexual release and nothing more. Also, he didn’t have time for them, so they weren’t a lifestyle or an important change in his life. Or, at least, that was what he told himself over and over again to assuage the guilt.

And now Jett, with the impetus of youth on his side, was just saying loud and clear that he wanted to be with a boy. Tom shook his head. How the times had changed. If it hadn’t been for the baby, maybe Tom would have been convinced, after a while, that Jett was making the right choice.

But no, there was a baby involved now, and Jett had to assume responsibility, whether he liked it or not.

A loud knock on the door startled him. He was getting too used to spending time in his head more often than not these days. Maybe he was growing old. And lonely.

“Who could be at this hour?” He mumbled under his breath as the knocking on the door repeated.

It looked like the kids didn’t think getting the door was their business. From the living room, some stupid TV show blared the fake laughter of an equally fake audience and the annoying voice of the moderator.

Tom pulled the door open so fast that it almost hit him in the face. He really needed to calm the fuck down a little.

“Yes?”

A man in his forties dressed casually in tan khaki pants, loafers, and a brown leather jacket stared at him from the door.

Tom’s first thought was how blue the man’s gaze was. The second one was more unsettling.

Attractive.

“Sid Summer,” the man introduced himself. He offered his hand, along with an honest look.

Tom hesitated for a moment, but he wasn’t one to leave a man hanging. He took Sid’s hand and shook it vigorously. Sid smiled even if Tom was sure his handshake wasn’t exactly friendly. “The boy’s dad?” he asked gruffly. There was no need for too many niceties.

Sid’s hand was firm and smooth. Tom frowned as their hands parted. That little bit of human touch wasn’t supposed to have any effect on him.

“I’m sorry to bother you so late, but do you think you have a minute?” Sid asked in a pleasant tone, his smile never fading.

It did occur to Tom that he didn’t introduce himself, as well, too busy with noticing Sid’s high cheekbones and beautifully drawn lips. That angered him a little. “I have a minute, and it’s already up.”

“Then, I’ll have to ask for one hour.” Sid didn’t appear bothered at all by his tone.

“One hour?”

“I was wondering if you could join me for a drink, Mr. Huntsman.”

“We could talk here.” It was annoying how much he wanted to say ‘yes’ to that invitation. His throat was parched, all of a sudden. But he didn’t need to let that show. If the boy’s dad was there, it had to be for a reason, and it didn’t look like that reason was Sid wanting to take his child home with him. Tom didn’t like it at all.

“Here, the children will have nothing better to do than to try to eavesdrop, as I bet they are doing right now.”

That was a good point. Without a word, for the sake of not letting Sid guess that he was eager to leave the house, Tom grabbed his denim jacket and almost jumped into his boots. He did everything with brusque moves just so that Sid would know, without one shadow of a doubt, that he didn’t like that idea at all.

All that remained was to put things in order before walking out the door. He marched into the living room, where the three misfits were pretending to be watching TV. “I will be out,” he said. “Don’t stay too late. Stop watching stupid shows on TV. That kid needs to be in bed already. You two, no mischief. I know you,” he pointed a finger at April, “have school tomorrow. Jett, you,” he added after a short moment of hesitation, “you have nothing to do, but you still need to wake up at six.”

That covered it. To make sure his words were taken at face value, he stared at the miscreants, one by one, for a few moments more. To his satisfaction, they all looked away. They probably hated him, but Tom wasn’t there to be liked. His role was to put an order in the chaos they had created. And it was all for their own good.

“Let’s go,” he said to Sid as he walked out the door.

“That’s my car,” Sid said as he pointed at his vehicle, a station wagon that must have seen better days.

Tom frowned. The guy had said they would go out for drinks. Did he intend to drive how, after that? “You’re not supposed to drink and drive.”

To his surprise, Sid laughed. “I’m not one of the kids, Mr. Huntsman. I know as much.”

“Tom.”

Shit. He was supposed to keep the distance between him and that blue-eyed man. There were people in the world who were simply attractive, and Sid was one of them. Mary, his late wife, had also been like that. Like a tiny ray of sun had been snatched at her birth and hidden in her eyes.

“Well, Tom, I haven’t drunken anything yet. Scout’s honor. But I’m seriously in need of a drink. I booked a room for the night at a local motel, and there’s a bar nearby. Is that okay?”

“Why did you book a room?” He climbed in front, next to Sid, who put the engine into gear.

“I have a feeling our conversation will be a long one. I also need a drink, as I told you, and I can always drive back to mine in the morning, after allowing the said drink to leave my system.”

“You have an answer to everything.” Tom didn’t want to sound as morose as his voice seemed to his own ears. Yet, the too pleasant feeling coiling in the pit of his stomach whenever he looked at Sid was making him wary.

“That’s exactly what my boy says, too. I suppose it’s annoying. But parents are bound to be annoying.”

Tom chuckled and shook his head. “You can say that again.”

Wait, he wasn’t supposed to feel at ease in the company of April’s dad. Because Sid was April’s dad and that meant that Tom had to keep that in mind, no matter how much he wanted to stare in those blue eyes and check them from up close.

“So, did my April give you any grief?”

Tom considered his next words carefully. On one side, he had little Jay and his best interest at heart. On the other, there was no need to insult Sid. “No. He’s well behaved.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Sid said as he navigated the streets that seemed already deserted at that hour.

Silence followed. Tom wanted the conversation to be over already, but Sid seemed serious about that drink. At the same time, he wanted to spend a little more time in Sid’s company.

“The boys,” he started, “they are young. They don’t know what they want.”

“Hmm. Don’t they?”

Tom felt a bit disconcerted by that question. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

A short chuckle followed. “I’m not your enemy, Tom. I’m sure we can find some common ground. But let’s not discuss such serious stuff without some drinks in front of us. What do you say?”

Tom shrugged. “Fine by me.” He was willing to indulge Sid if only because he wanted to be close to another person his age a little longer. Terrorizing a bunch of young people with their heads up in the clouds was hard work. For tonight, he would allow himself a breather. Plus, he could also hope for a resolution to the situation regarding April. He would do his best to convince Sid that Jett wasn’t a good choice for his son.

He shifted in his place. He couldn’t believe he was a tad nervous. To fill the silence, he reached for the radio, although it wasn’t his car, and it struck him too late that it was an impolite thing to do.

His fingers met Sid’s.

“Maybe some music --”

Tom withdrew his hand like it had been scalded in hot water.

Sid laughed. “Sorry about that. I just find long silences uncomfortable.”

“Well, you were the one to say that we should postpone talking until we have a drink in hand,” Tom replied, a bit irritated.

Sid threw him a sidelong glance. “Don’t tell me you also find long silences uncomfortable.”

Tom scoffed and pretended to look out the window. Not that there was anything interesting to see; only houses and houses again. He needed to avoid looking at Sid too much. There was no wonder April was so pretty; even if he didn’t look like his dad, as far as his facial features went, he was lean and tall like Sid. Tom could guess a slender body in perfect shape under the brown leather jacket and khaki pants. Why on earth was he thinking about how Sid looked without clothes on? He needed to stop and stop right now.

Music filled the car. It was some jazz tune, happy and sad at the same time.

“Is this all right? If you prefer something else --”

“It’s okay,” Tom said abruptly and stared stubbornly out the window.

At least, they were no longer riding in uncomfortable silence, and, in a way, it was worse. Now, Tom could focus on the smallest details, like the smell of Sid’s cologne, something like wood and earth that made him feel longing squeezing his chest

“How come your wife let you out of the house at this hour?” He found himself talking.

There was a short pause. “My wife passed away seven years ago.”

Talking about strange coincidences. “I see,” Tom replied. “Mine, as well.”

Sid didn’t add anything. None of them said ‘sorry’ or any other platitude, and it was better like this.

“We’re here.” Sid pulled the car in the motel’s parking lot.

Tom said nothing and climbed out of the car. He followed Sid as they walked toward the small bar that was located on the grounds. Tom could only hope they had a drink as stiff as he needed right now. His throat felt parched again.

#be the father of this child!#sid x tom #patreon exclusive #side story #mm romance

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tellerford13 · 7 years

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MO ASTOR- CHAPTER 25

We don’t own the bikes, brothers, or any “related” Sons of Anarchy, trust us, if we did we wouldn’t have the time to write. No money is being made from our stories. So, please don’t sue. It’d be a fruitless endeavor indeed. That being said, Harley, Journee, and any other newbies are ours, and we don’t share. :Whispers in creepy voice: “My precious.” The universe This reality is a mix of cannon, and our own ideas. We strive to keep the boys cannon, but since we will be shifting around some of the events, that will reflect in our writing and their personalities as well. It’s our goal to provide you with quality fiction, and solid, fleshed out OFC. We appreciate constructive criticism and love LOVE reviews, they are a writers life blood and definitely help encourage us and inspire us. We will be posting on our Tumblr where we’ll have fun pictures from time to time as well. http://tellerford13.tumblr.com We’ll also be taking requests for one shots, preferences or imagines for all things Sons at our other Tumblr, so check it out and send your thoughts!http://tellerford13oneshots.tumblr.com/ And just for fun, we’ve decided to start a Pinterest for the story! So if you want a glimpse at our girls and see into our world, check it out! https://www.pinterest.com/tellerford/

A/n: Thank you all for the incredible support you’ve showed us. Telford’s birthday rocked and she thanks you for the kinds words.

Mo Astor Chapter 25

Lee

My phone rings and “Thank you for being a friend” plays, making me squeal. She’s here!

I hit answer. “You’re home,” I breathe the words like a prayer. There’s so much I want to tell her, hear, and discuss. It’s been hell having her away while my worlds completed shifted.

“I am. Why aren’t you here?”

“Because you have a husband now. You two need time to settle in and continue your honeymoon over the weekend before its time to head back to the daily grind.”

She snickers. “You’d be the only one who thinks that. Jay ambushed me and talked me to death on the way down, and then Gemma demanded we show up at the family dinner. So, get your ass over here we need to talk.”

“What about Chibs?” I ask. The last thing I want to do is make him feel ignored or disrespected. Journee and I together, are a lot. We practically have our own language, and it leaves plenty of folks feeling left out. “He took pity on me and went to say hi to the boys at the club.”

“Say no more. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

I’m like a teenage girl on her way to her first slumber party as I stand from the couch, grab my purse off the table, and rush to my car. We’ve both had so much happening in our lives. It’s time to get caught up and reconnect. She’s as much my anchor as Charming, and the Sons are. There’s power in loyalty and familiarity.

I crank the engine and all but peel out the driveway. I whip into her driveway and pause. It’s no longer her house. It’s their house. My best friend is a married woman. Mrs. Journee Telford. It’s funny…I can remember her writing that name in an elegant font in notebooks and on a countless number of loose leaf pages when we were teens. Who would’ve thought we’d end up here one day?

From the minute they admitted their feelings they’d moved at hyper speed. It’d be too much for anyone else, but with these two it made perfect sense. Why beat around the bush when you’d been putting in all the work for years.

The only thing that had kept them from being an official item before was labels. There had been many nights when I saw Chibs leave her room in boxers and a t-shirt, and the look in their eyes never screamed just friends. I’m over the moon for both of them, but it’s a dynamic change I’m still feeling my way around. I’ve never had much reason to spend a ton of time around Chibs, and I’m waiting to see what kind of husband he’ll be.

Some men like to keep a woman mostly to themselves. I wouldn’t blame him if he did. They have a lot of time to make up for. Still, the thought of losing my best friend in any way sends me into a slow panic. I push the door open and climb out walking toward the door as I try to outrun my fears. I’ve been left alone so many times in my life, I’ve almost come to expect the relationships that mean the most to me to eventually end.

The door opens, and we hug. Her scent is familiar, and her embrace is tight. My anxiety eases back. This is Journee. She’s never let anyone come between us. Why would now be any different? Because he’s her dream come true. She pulls back, frames my face and brushes our lips together. I hum.

“Well, hello to you too, beautiful.”

She smiles. “Those pretty blue eyes are looking stormy. Come in and talk to your Journee.”

“Are you still mine? I think your husband might disagree,” I say playfully.

She studies me in that scary calm, still, way that makes one feel like she’s peering into your soul.

“Me belonging to him now doesn’t and never will make me any less yours. After all, we’ve been through together, the bond we have is unbreakable. If you’re worried about things changing, don’t. I talked to Daddy about this early on.”

“You did?” I whisper humbled by the actions she’d taken on my behalf.

“Yes, babe. So stop worrying.” She frowns. “You don’t seem like yourself.” She wraps an arm around my waist, and we head inside. She closes the door, pauses to enter the alarm and leads us to the couch. We sink onto the cushions and curve into one another.

“Spill, babe.”

“You’re supposed to be telling me all about Scotland.”

“And I will, right after you tell me what’s got you so antsy.”

“There’s a lot of changes happening, and we both know I’m a creature of habit,” I say glumly.

‘Uh huh. And this has nothing to do with the little head to head with Wendy.”

“Ugh, Of course, he told you.”

“Yeah. I heard his side. Now I want to hear yours. Are you okay?”

I sigh and glance up at the ceiling. “She’s right. I mean, no we weren’t fucking around behind her back, but if I was her, I’d be pissed. We’ve been so busy with our own happiness. We didn’t give a second thought to hers.”

“Ugh, Stupid bitch is still fucking shit up.”

“Down Mama Telford. I know she made the mistake of touching your man, but she’s also knocked up with Jax’s kid. We have to tread lightly—.”

“No, you need to set boundaries and figure things out before this kid comes and she runs or does something else equally stupid. J was all she had. When you came out at the wedding, the last of her hope was stripped away. That puts her in a dangerous place.”

“Shit no wonder she came out breathing fire.”

“That girl slept, ate, and lived, Jax. Even I can admit he was wrong for doing her the way he did. He had a loyal woman. Just because she let him walk all over her didn’t mean he should have. But that was the old Jax.”

Her words hit home as they line up with the same things swirling in my brain. “You see the change too?”

“Yes, thanks to you. You’ve always challenged him and forced him to be a better person. A man who thinks shit through and remembers his humility. Now that you’re together that effect increased tenfold.”

I sit up and lick my dry lips. “I see someone I know, but then don’t when I look at him these days. I was worried maybe I was projecting.”

“Oh, no, you got that boy sprung.”

“What?” I chuckle.

“Oh come on, he makes cow eyes at you.” She blinks slowly and widens her eyes making me giggle. “He does not.”

“Oh, My God Are you kidding me? He thinks you’re sexy, he wants to date you, he wants to marry you,” she sings.

“Thank you Miss Congeniality,” I say already feeling lighter.

“Look, I’m just calling it how I see it.”

“Right.” I shake my head as I wipe away a tear.

“Feeling better?”

“Much.”

“Want to tell me what had you uptight?”

“How fast this is all going. I don’t let people in like this, but he was already behind my walls, and now he’s infiltrating...” I trail off unable to speak the words out loud.

“Your heart?” She says.

I nod my head.

“Trust me, babe. When it’s meant to be, and you’re with the right person, it won’t matter how much time goes by. This isn’t a bad thing.”

“Yet,” I say quietly.

“Honey he’s not like any man you’ve ever been with. So, stop comparing him. He’s always been there. Why would he not be more committed now?”

“Because this shit never ends up well for me.”

“Do you remember Kyle and the various men who came before him?” she asks.

“That’s different.”

“Why?”

I shake my head unable to answer her.

“We both deserve to be happy. We have our wounds. They’ll lead to doubts, and us picking ourselves apart until we don’t know which way is up and which is down. But we’re lucky because we have something most people don’t.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?” I ask

“Each other. I’m here to tell you I refuse to let your past ruin your future. Search your heart and your memories. Would Jax even start this with you if he couldn’t see it through?”

I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”

“You know he wouldn’t. My brother is many things, but being reckless with his girls isn’t one of them, and I’m not talking about the warm bodies who’ve played placeholder in the role of girlfriend. I’m talking about You, Gemma, and me.”

I sigh. “It sounds good logically. But.,,” I shake my head.

“We’re far too used to pain and disappointment, but this is our time to be happy. In no universe would I find everything I ever wanted and you not have the same thing. Our worlds are connected.”

“I’m so fucking scared. He could break me. I always hold back with men. I can’t with Jax, and that terrifies me.”

“That’s how you know he’s the one,” Journee says as she squeezes my hand.

“After everything happened with Wendy, he left. I know he needs space sometimes, but it scared me.”

“You know I won’t share his thoughts. That’s his job. But I can say this. You’re not the only one who’s scared. This is new to him, and he’s trying his best to rise to the occasion and be what you need. It’s a learning curve, for both of you.”

“Why the fuck do you make it seem so easy.”

“Cause I’m outside of it, not in it, and I know you both.”

“What the hell am I going to do?”

‘Sit back and enjoy him slaying the dragon for his lady fair.”

I huff.

“When the time is right you guys will find your comfortable spot. Both of you are complex people. It takes time to get through all those layers and wade through those crowded heads on your shoulders.”

“Fuck you’re already old, married, and wise.”

She shoves me, and I laugh as I chew on what she said.

“Seriously, though. I appreciate your input. I’m going to… quell my stinking thinking.”

She smiles. It was an old phrase we’d both adopted from my Gran.

“Good. Did I help some at least?”

“You helped immensely. Thank you for helping me walk through it. Enough about me. I want to hear all about your trip.”

“Fact number one, Filip is a fucking beast in bed. That wedding night was no one off.”

I can’t help the squeal that leaves me lips. “Are you serious?”

“Me and my Kitty are dead serious. I can’t even walk right.”

“Wait. You’re serious.”

“Umm. Yes.”

“Well, now I just have to see it for myself.”

“Lee,” she whines.

“Nu uh. Get your ass up and walk for me.”

“So demanding,” she says with a wink as she eases into a standing position.

The pronounced hitch in her giddy up has me giggling on my back on the couch.

“No sympathy!” She flings a pillow at me, and I clutch my stomach.

“I’m sorry. It’s too good.”

She rolls her eyes and I sprawl out on the couch and blow her a kiss.

“Since you’re here, you can help me with this slide show I have to put together for Ma.”

I shake my head. “She couldn’t wait to get all her children together again.”

“Typical Gemma. Tell, don’t ask.”

“Hope your old man knows what a crazy family he married into.”

“He has one of his own.” I listen as she launches into her tale about his nephew Padric and his mother, Chibs’s sister, Greer. I tear up when she tells me had a chance to speak with his daughter and how they’ll keep in touch now.

I wonder if she realizes she’s given the man everything he could’ve wanted.

#sons of anarchy #sons of anarchy fanfiction #Jax Teller #chibs telford #Mo Astor

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ozma914 · 5 years

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Chapter One of Coming Attractions

Ever since we got Coming Attractions up on the website (www.markrhunter.com), I've been meaning to share the entire first chapter, which introduces both main characters and, I think, gives a taste of what's to come. You can also see chapter one on various booksellers' websites, but I thought it was worthwhile to have it right here, where people can check it out if they choose. This is exactly as it appears in print, including the opening materials.

After this I plan to go back to a semi-regular post about writing, such as creating characters, inspiration, setting, and such, starting with how they relate to the creation of Coming Attractions itself. Hey, I was bored. (Kidding! I've got a lot of issues, but boredom is not one of them.)

Remember, whenever you don't read a first chapter, the second chapter doesn't get its pages. (I think that's the line from It's a Wonderful Life. Something like that.)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Coming Attractions

Mark R. Hunter

Other titles by Mark R. Hunter

Non-fiction:

Images of America: Albion and Noble County

Smoky Days and Sleepless Nights: A Century or So With the Albion Fire Department

Slightly Off the Mark

Hoosier Hysterical: How the West Became the Midwest Without Moving At All

Fiction:

Storm Chaser

Storm Chaser Shorts

The Notorious Ian Grant

The No-Campfire Girls

Radio Red

Edited by Emily Hunter

Cover by Emily Hunter

This book is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, and events in this book are either are products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. No popcorn was harmed in the making of this novel.

For book extras and additional books by the author, please visit: www.MarkRHunter.com

In loving memory of

Linda Taylor

Jean Coonts Stroud

Special thanks to the Auburn-Garrett Drive-In;

The drive-in movie theaters still upholding the tradition;

And all the drive-ins of our youth: especially, for me, the High-Vue of Kendallville, Indiana

Coming Attractions

Mark R. Hunter

CHAPTER ONE

Maddie saw trouble ahead as soon as she stepped off the company airplane.

The kid standing in the terminal held a slab of cardboard before him like a shield, with her name plastered in red across its surface. Maybe he was attempting to hide the fact that, beneath the wrinkled black suit coat, he wore a white T-shirt that should have been washed at least two meals ago. More likely he feared missing her, since a quick study of the shaggy haired young man told her he held little stock in appearances.

"Madison McKinley?" He gave her an equally appraising scan.

Stopping before him, she deliberately looked right and left. The closest other people stood at least two hundred feet away, gathered around the airport's gift shop. "Maddie."

Taking that as encouragement, he smiled. "Tupper. Welcome to Fort Wayne!" He still held the sign up.

"Tupper?"

"That's my name—well, my middle name, and that's what I go by. My mother sold Tupperware, and she's pretty hardcore. I don’t know if they still hold Tupperware parties, but if you want her to set one up—"

"I doubt I'll be here that long." Maddie tried not to judge people by appearances, but Tupper looked for all the world like Shaggy from the Scooby Doo cartoon series—without the goatee. Under other circumstances she might have been tempted to smile. "Tupper, were you expecting a company plane?"

"Oh, sure. I've been with the company over a week now."

"And did anyone get off the plane besides me?"

His brow knitted in concentration. "Nope."

"Then do you really believe the sign is necessary?"

Face reddening, Tupper dropped the cardboard. "Sorry."

“Trash can, Tupper—let's keep our planet clean." She blushed a little, herself—it wasn’t fair to take her mood out on him.

When Tupper turned to throw the sign away, Maddie realized he wore a fairly nice pair of navy slacks—and white sneakers. "Are you, by chance, related to one of the partners?"

"I'm Mr. Quincy's great-nephew—how did you know?"

"Family resemblance." Maddie despised lying, but saw no reason to hurt someone's feelings. Nepotism could be a powerful force—why else would this kid be hired by the stuffiest law firm in Boston? "You were to bring a car?"

"This way." Tupper turned, paused, then whirled around. "Did you have luggage?"

"I'm a woman, Tupper." This time she did smile.

He frowned.

"That means yes. Two bags."

After retrieving her luggage, Tupper led the way into the warmth of a sunny June midafternoon. "You'll love Fort Wayne. They have an orchestra, a zoo, a mall, three rivers ..." He trailed off, thinking.

"It seemed a bit small from the air." The poor guy might hurt himself if his brain doesn’t cool down.

"Well, it's the second largest city in Indiana."

As they walked across the crowded parking lot a breeze swirled the folds of Maddie's skirt and blew blonde strands of hair across her face. "Large by Indiana standards? Not a telling argument."

"But you come from Boston. Indiana's a lot bigger than Massachusetts."

"In square miles, maybe," Maddie murmured under her breath. She almost ran into Tupper when he skidded to a halt. "Where's the car?"

"Right here." He pointed to a deep purple Chrysler van.

She stared, trying to fend off a wave of nostalgia for her Porsche. "I asked for a sedan."

"Yeah, you traded up—isn't that great?" He produced a key ring from his pocket and pushed the unlock button. "It's got a digital audio system, sliding doors on both sides, an environmental readout, and you gotta love the color. It's a real love machine."

Such a statement could only come from a member of the Scooby Gang. Maddie stared at him, hands on hips, but held her temper—after all, her temper got her here to begin with. "I realize you've been by yourself here, but since you arrived with just two jobs—to get me a hotel room and a car—could it be that difficult?"

"I didn't actually arrive—I grew up west of here, in New Haven." He noticed her expression, and stumbled backward. "Um, there's a car show at the Memorial Coliseum—by the way, we have a Memorial Coliseum—and Jay Leno's going to be there and all the rental cars were taken and this is the only—"

"Tupper, Calm down." Maddie took him by the shoulder, which made the younger man flinch. "Maybe this is for the best. Don't people going to drive-in movies often take vans?"

He blinked at her. "Yeah, sure. I like to back my truck in, when I'm not working. Why?"

Oh, dear—He didn't know why she'd been sent. "Because I've never visited one, and I might have some free time while I'm here."

Tupper brightened instantly. "The best one in Indiana is about an hour north of Fort Wayne—you'll love it."

She very much doubted that. "Tupper, do you know why I'm here?"

"Um—" He paused, trying to focus. "To expand the agency's influence into business dealings in the Midwest."

"Which means?"

"Got me." He shrugged. "This is my first assignment since I visited Uncle Quincy, but he said it was real important, so I figure I'm on the fast track."

Uncle Quincy? What an image—like Luciano Pavarotti breakdancing. "You are, indeed." Maddie decided she liked the kid, after all. She couldn't help thinking of him as a kid, although he couldn't be more than five years younger than her, and he seemed sincere in his desire to help. Besides, in his own way he was exiled here, just like her. "Do you have transportation?"

“My truck—oh, you mean here?” He gestured to a yellow Volkswagen Beetle parked beside the van. Inside, a girl with spiked green hair waved, then went back to studying her eyebrow ring in the rear view mirror. How entirely appropriate.

"Tupper, you've obviously been working hard. Why don't you take a day or two off? Visit with your family, take a short break, and contact me at the hotel later."

"Really? Wow, thanks! I needed to take off for my part time job soon, anyway." He started to hop into the Beetle, but paused when she called his name.

"It might be helpful to have the information packet your great-uncle promised me. Not to mention the van keys."

"Oh!" Tupper handed her the keys and gestured toward the van. "There's a folder on the passenger seat with maps, directions, your reservation, and a really big book about John Adams. He's my ancestor, you know. I think he was governor, or something."

"Possibly the genes have thinned out since then." Ignoring his puzzled expression, she climbed into the van.

"Well, if you like to go to the drive-in you'll probably see me there. Take it easy!" The Bug roared away.

After a moment Maddie got back out, opened the rear door, and threw in the luggage Tupper had abandoned on the pavement. Sincere he may be, competent he may not.

Maddie spent some time reading the directions and comparing them to the maps. Smiling despite herself, she also leafed through the biography of John Adams. Inside the front cover she found a short inscription: "John Adams called himself obnoxious and unpopular—but he got the job done. Quincy."

Adam Quincy had been named for the second President, and according to rumor was a distant relative. Maddie considered John Adams a role model for his courage and perseverance, but that, and their occupation, was all she and Quincy had in common. Leave it to the law firm's founder to turn a gift into a subtle reminder of who was in charge.

She spotted some brochures in the folder. Tupper apparently thought her job involved sightseeing: He’d enclosed something about every tourist destination in northeast Indiana, from zoos and state parks to an Old Jail Museum. And a drive-in movie theater.

The colorful advertisement declared this to be the 50th anniversary of the High View Drive-In. Two features for the whole family every night, all summer long, plus weekend showings in the spring and fall. Photos showed happy families who munched on popcorn and other snacks while watching the latest flick from the comfort of their automobiles.

Maddie studied every detail, every letter, and then determined the hotel would not, after all, be her next destination. It was getting close to dusk. She had a van, and other than being a bit overdressed for the movies she should go unnoticed.

Yes, a visit to the drive-in was clearly in order. After all, she well remembered one of the first rules from law school: Know your enemy.

Despite her black mood on the airplane, the weather and the masses of greenery Maddie passed during her drive north cheered her a bit. She’d believed as a child that a field was a dirt lot for baseball, and the biggest patch of plant life no more than a Boston city park. Her preteen mind couldn’t have imagined these expanses of woods, or unlimited stretches of young corn and wheat.

It was cool enough to shut down the air conditioner and crack the windows, an act that would horrify her hairstylist. Considering the obscene amounts of money she paid the man, by now he should have come up with a wave that would last through a tornado.

She missed him. She missed her Porsche mechanic, her personal assistant, the doorman, and all the partners with their custom tailored suits, ten dollar cigars, and condescending attitudes. No matter how important this assignment, everyone knew it was punishment. She must prove herself all over again if she ever expected a corner office and her pick of cases.

A few miles after turning onto a two lane highway she spotted the sign, a gaudy red and yellow monstrosity guaranteed to attract attention. The top formed an arrow pointing toward the metal framework of the movie screen, and below the arrow stood a sign advertising a Pixar animated movie and a teen comedy.

To Maddie's surprise half a dozen cars already lined the drive. A van similar to hers waited first behind the closed gate to the ticket booth, with the adult occupants of the other vehicles gathered around it. They looked like they were having a conference, or maybe a tailgate party. A dozen young people, from teens to toddlers, played in a grassy area between the drive and a red fence that surrounded the property.

Maddie stopped behind the last vehicle, wincing at the crunch of gravel beneath her wheels. Clearly, Indiana needed to invest in more asphalt. After the dust cleared, she opened her windows all the way to admit the scent of freshly mowed grass and a far off barbecue, then shut off the engine. Country music played from the pickup in front of her, but it was the sound of kids screaming that made her stiffen.

She scanned around the lawn until certain they were screams of glee, not pain. Why didn’t these parents pay closer attention to their children? Wouldn't it be safer to keep them in their cars, instead of wandering around where they could get hit, or fall, or be bitten by snakes or rabid bunnies or something? Not to mention all the strangers.

Well, she must be the only stranger here, considering everyone else still gathered around the one vehicle. The scene would make someone nostalgic, if that someone held memories of going to the movies. Maddie remembered only a few trips to a more traditional theater.

She’d been led to believe little local support remained for the drive-in, making a buyout easy. Except for one lonely old house along the drive-in property, the surrounding land consisted of farm fields and small tracts of woods, most optioned by the development company her firm represented.

The drive-in's owner remained the holdout, and by bad luck his property made up the bull’s-eye in the tract of land the developer needed. The better his business, the harder her job—and here people already waited, on a weeknight, no less.

Perhaps this made up the hardcore locals with nothing better to do. You couldn't make profit margin with six customers a day.

That optimistic thought faded when an old station wagon pulled up behind her van, pumping rock and roll into the air, as a full house gyrated inside.

With a sigh, Maddie examined the customers. Their dress consisted of shorts or blue jeans, and tank tops or printed tees. She glanced down at her silk print dress, and determined not to leave the van under any circumstances. The average person might not know the difference between her expensive outfit and something from an outlet store, but she would still stand out.

Soon adults began to saunter back toward their own vehicles, while the kids ran, jumping and shouting, to join them. She held her breath until she was sure none of the children would trip or get hit by a car door, then turned to see a woman move the gate aside and climb into the ticket booth. Maddie switched the engine on and wondered if kid movies had changed much since "The Little Mermaid".

Soon Maddie caught sight of the ticket price, painted on the whitewashed side of the ticket booth, and took a sharp breath. It was a third of what she’d expect to pay in downtown Boston. How in the world could this man stay in business, with prices so low? The popcorn must be a dollar a kernel.

The ticket taker held an animated conversation with everyone in line, but managed to keep customers moving until Maddie stopped before her. Then the woman, who wore a white T-shirt proclaiming "The High View—50 years and counting,” did a double take and leaned in for a closer look.

"You're a little overdressed for the movies, ain't ya, hon?"

"The philharmonic was sold out." Maddie gritted her teeth, although she’d expected this reaction.

Now the woman leaned closer, to take in the clean, empty interior of the van. "Just you?"

"Is that all right?"

The woman arched an eyebrow. "Okay by me, just kinda unusual. Why go see a movie by yourself?"

"My boyfriend plays in the philharmonic."

"Well ..." With a shake of her head, the woman handed Maddie a ticket stub, then rattled off an FM radio frequency. "Enjoy the show. Oh! I almost forgot." She gave Maddie a bumper sticker.

Beneath a red, white and blue drawing of the movie screen, colorful letters spelled out: "Save the High View! Half a Century and Counting."

The woman leaned forward and hissed, "Some big company out east wants to turn it into an airport!"

"Oh, my."

"Don't worry, we'll fight 'em and win. You have a good time now, hon."

"Thank you," Maddie answered automatically. As she drove through the lot, she saw similar stickers on all the parked vehicles. The other van, she noted, differed from hers in only two ways: It was black instead of deep purple, and sported stickers on the back and side windows. As she passed it she saw a pair of bright hazel eyes regard her curiously through the rear view mirror, and wondered whether it was because of the twin transportation, or because she drove the only auto in the lot without a show of support pasted on every surface.

Where to park? In the middle of the lot sat a low concrete block structure painted white, with two doors on each side: one for a restroom and another for an entrance to the snack area. Maddie had no intention of abandoning her nutrition plan. Still, she could imagine a need for the restroom if, for some reason, she decided to stay through both movies.

Of course she would stay. She needed to know as much as possible about this business, in order to get it shut down. The best place for her would be at the corner closest to the women's restroom, but, ironically, the other purple van had already staked it out. Maddie settled for a spot at the other front corner.

All the old concrete speaker posts stood empty. Didn’t the ticket taker say something about a radio frequency? Dialing it in produced a crooning Norah Jones, but Maddie assumed she had the right place, left it on, and began watching the incoming traffic.

She made some quick calculations, based on the ticket price, the average number of people per car, and the cost of electricity, payroll, and other overhead. She factored in snacks, then cut food profit in half when she noticed many of the moviegoers brought their own. Despite that, by the time the sun disappeared behind a low, distant cloud bank, the place had already broken even. When the first preview for upcoming movies appeared, it was turning a profit.

On a weeknight. Not good at all.

Maddie sat back, paying little attention to the ads. She leaned forward again when a group of teens walked by, loaded down with nachos, popcorn, and soda. Her stomach began a low, rumbling litany of complaints. When did she last eat? Not dinner. Not lunch, come to think of it, except for a bag of peanuts on the plane.

So much for staying in the car. So much for her diet, unless the snack bar featured something no one she saw had purchased. But it was now too dark for anyone to notice her style of dress, and this could be the perfect opportunity to investigate the operation further. After all, she was here on a job, and if she wanted to erase her black marks with the company she needed to perform it well.

That determination lasted until she reached the door to the snack bar, and realized her miscalculation. Of course it was too dark to see her dress, and the expensive style of her blonde tresses, and the opal necklace and charm bracelet—outside. Inside, fluorescent light made it bright as day.

But with the movie starting, nobody stood before the long counter with its popcorn machine, soda fountain, and snack rack. At least, nobody until she came in one way while, at the same moment, a man burst through the opposite door.

They both froze, regarding each other. She recognized the twinkling hazel eyes and the sandy, disheveled hair at once, although he looked taller when out from behind the wheel. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt with the all too familiar drive-in logo on it, along with the words "Drive-Ins are for Cars, not Planes". Admirably muscled arms clutched an empty popcorn bucket.

The man smiled, flashing teeth so perfect it brought back memories of the thousands of dollars Maddie sunk into her orthodonture, and walked toward her. Of their own volition Maddie's legs also moved, until they met in front of the cash register.

"Are you lost?" His baritone voice sent a jolt up her spine, and suddenly exile in Indiana didn't seem so bad.

"I'm ... um ..." She glanced around to remind herself where she was. "I’m looking for healthy food."

"You are lost." He smiled again. "I meant you don't look like the drive-in type."

If you're the drive-in type, Maddie thought, get me a season ticket. "It was spur of the moment." True enough.

"I've been there." He held a hand out. "Logan. Logan Chandler."

She felt her hand enveloped in his warmth. His touch, firm but gentle, made her catch her breath. She tried to stutter out her name, and found she couldn't remember.

"Maddie!" someone else called.

The idea of anyone in Indiana knowing her came as such a shock that Maddie pulled her hand away and turned, almost backing into the wall. Behind the counter, swathed in an apron that didn't completely cover the drive-in emblem on his white T-shirt, a wild haired young man grinned at her.

"Tupper?"

"I told you we'd meet again if you came to the drive-in. This is my part time job."

Uh oh. Maddie glanced at Logan, who turned from her to Tupper with a raised eyebrow. While Tupper didn't know everything about her mission, it would be easy to put two and two together.

"I guess I assumed you’re not from around here at all," Logan said, eyeing her dress.

"Tupper and I just met today." Good, the truth. But Maddie couldn't grasp where to go from there. "It's a long story, and the movie's started."

"But you know each other?"

"Absolutely." Again, true enough.

Tupper pitched in, "We're like old friends, dude."

"Okay." Smiling again, Logan grandly gestured Maddie forward. "I just need to replace some spilled popcorn. After you."

What? Oh. She turned to Tupper, determined to get out of there before he gave her away. Logan might be a lost Greek god, but she couldn't afford to get involved with him, especially after the last fiasco in her love life. "Perrier?"

"Huh?" Tupper stared at her, open mouthed. "I don't know Spanish."

Behind her, Logan chuckled, making her even more aware of his presence.

"Do you serve any bottled water?" In truth, Maddie craved some decent coffee, but she had a feeling her definition of “decent” wouldn’t fit here.

"Oh!" Tupper grabbed a bottle of water with a brand name she didn't recognize. "This is local. It comes out of a spring well right by a church."

"And a cemetery," Logan offered. She looked back to find him grinning wickedly. "Imagine that."

She did, but took the bottle anyway. "Is there anything to eat that doesn't involve large amounts of sugar or carbohydrates?"

"Uh—" Tupper glanced around wildly. "No."

"Get her some of the world famous popcorn, Tupper," Logan said. "On me."

"Popcorn on you." For some reason Tupper found that amusing, and chuckled as he scooped the white kernels up.

“No salt or butter, please." Maddie felt a touch on her arm, and turned to see Logan smiling yet again.

"No salt or butter? That's cardboard."

Could she make herself look any more out of place? "I'm twenty-nine years old.” When he gave her a questioning look, she added, “I can’t eat whatever I want, not anymore." As if she ever could.

He raked his gaze over Maddie, making her gulp and shiver. "You don't have an ounce of fat on you."

That was a compliment, she assumed. Maddie didn’t have an ounce of fat, not even on her chest—or at least, that had been her ex-fiancé’s biting comment. "I plan to keep it that way. How do you—" Now it was her turn to look him over, from broad chest to white Reeboks, and she gulped again. "—um, stay in such good shape?"

"Hey, I don't eat this way all the time—it's a treat. If you don't treat yourself, how do you know what you're missing?"

"A look at the nutrition label tells me what I'm missing." Desperate to get away—she was much too attracted to this man, no doubt a rebound effect—she grabbed a bag of chocolate covered peanuts from the rack and slapped it down next to the water. "There. Four hundred calories."

"I'm humbled," Logan told her. "You might try sprinkling them on the popcorn."

"Thank you." She shoved a fifty into Tupper's hands and told him to keep the change, which made his eyes pop. "I'll remember you on my next trip to the scales."

"Wait—" Logan held his hand out, but became distracted when Tupper called his name.

"Say, that's a great idea. Chocolate covered popcorn, M&M popcorn, popcorn with nougats—it could be the next taste sensation."

Logan held out his empty popcorn tub. "Remember that one time when I told you to use your imagination? I take it back."

Maddie took the opportunity to sneak out the door, and hurried into the blackness before Logan could catch her. If he said anything remotely connected to getting to know her better, she would melt like the hot butter he kept talking about, and the whole nightmare of dating someone connected to her work would start all over again.

Shivering, she dropped the water and candy into her purse. Balancing the popcorn in one hand, she pulled open the van's door. What a relief to be away from that man—she'd never been so instantly affected by the opposite sex before, not even her ex-fiancé. With considerable relief, she sank into the driver's seat.

Or, more accurately, she sank onto the small body that occupied the driver's seat.

Two high voices shrieked. Maddie also gave a yell and leaped out, ready to run as her imagination conjured Munchkin muggers. But her purse caught on the empty speaker post, and she managed only to spin around.

In the hazy darkness, broken by the flickering reflection from the big screen, Maddie made out two small, round sets of eyes peering at her from inside the van. In the instant that followed, she realized this was not her van and that somehow, miraculously, she still held the popcorn without a single kernel spilled.

Then a much larger body plowed into her. She slammed down onto the hard turf, while someone else fell heavily on top of her.

In addition to the website, there's a list of where our books are available here:

https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/2018/12/coming-attractions-is-e-booking-all.html

#coming attractions #writing #romantic comedy #chapter 1 #preview #fiction #novels

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lostboywords · 6 years

Text

Sample: Wild, Free, Lost

Original character. 9,000 words or so. Trigger warning across the board. Read at your own discretion. Read more with this character here. I’ve written roughly 16,000 words about this boy.

DECEMBERS IN MINNESOTA WERE as cold as you’d expect for the midwest. Only eight inches of snow had fallen since July but you’d think the ground was covered with it if you had to walk outside in seventeen degree air – while being nothing less than fit-to-burst with your second son.

“When is he gonna come out?” seven-year-old Jai asked behind his waddling mother.

“When he’s ready.”

“Is dad still in surgeries?”

Jasmit laughed in amusement at her own son. “Mmhm.”

“Can I see him come out?”

Another laugh – this one almost cackled, but still so sweet from a loving mother.

“No, no. Only Nānī will see. You can see him after.”

“Let me –” The sprightly and increasingly lanky boy ran in front of her to open the car door, little hands out like he was sure he could stop her if she lost her balance. “Dad said you shouldn’t drive, you know.”

“Dad doesn’t know anything except what’s between your ears. I drove when you were coming.”

“He says it’s dangerous.”

“Do you want to wait here?” she posed mischievously as he buckled himself into his seat.

“No.”

Of course he didn’t. He was going to be a big brother.

THE NOVELTY OF HAVING an infant brother wore off quickly after Jai had gotten his share of sleepy holds. He thought he was cute after his swelling had gone down, and he became cuter as his features became more defined. Sharing attention was difficult but Jai had always been an understanding boy. In fact, on the nights when Ravinder would cry, and cry, and cry, Jai would step sleepily throughout the hallway and tell his mother, “Maybe something is wrong. Maybe you should take him to the doctor.”

And mom would say, “Your parents are doctors, silly,” while on the verge of tears herself.

But that was different, he’d tell her, because they weren’t baby doctors.

“Check his heart.”

“His heart is fine, Jai.”

“There’s a staple in it!”

She laughed – softly over her crying baby – and looked at him in the doorway. “That means it’s fixed, Jai-Jai. Babies cry. You did, too.”

“Not this bad.”

“You’re right. You cried worse.”

And Jai would scuff his feet back down the hallway, feeling slightly insulted the way only eight-year-olds can be.

BEING A LITTLE BROTHER was often as bitter as it was sweet. In Jai, Ravinder found safety and protection – and he was very good at being a role model. He was stronger than most of the other boys. Taller than them all, too – and so Ravinder’s childhood bullies were few and far between. He was fast enough to win all the races he was dared to and brave enough to jump from the stupidest places. He was so kind he never killed a bug; he took them outside to make homes where they were more welcomed.

Ravinder knew that he would never be as strong, as tall, as brave, or as kind as Jai. That’s what made it so bitter. But he aspired to be that and Jai taught him – just in little lessons, like how to fold an airplane out of paper or how to climb a rope quickly.

Or how to build a fire.

“What if you can’t find… this stuff?” Ravi tapped on the edge of the little nest of dry grass and leaves. He was nine years old, curious about the world, and had the biggest eyes for the teenaged Jai.

“Where the hell would you be where you can’t find some leaves?”

“I don’t know… the desert.”

He laughed, and so did Ravi, even though his cheeks went red. “Then you probably won’t need a fire.”

Jai showed him how to spin the stick and then let his smaller hands take over. He told him to keep going even when he protested – it’s taking forever, it’s not working, shouldn’t it be on fire by now? I don’t think I’m doing it right.

But then it worked, and Ravinder was so amused that his mother had to bandage his blisters from spinning so many sticks that summer.

LIFE UNTIL JAI LEFT was so innocent and carefree that when he would look back on it years later, it would seem surreal. Fires were made in the heat of summer, tents were pitched in the cold of winter, burns were treated with tomatoes and olive oil and cuts were covered with the stickiest band-aids because they always had a tendency to come off.

Dad worked and was never terribly interested in the sun, or the snow, or the beach, or the outdoors. He worked long, odd hours and sometimes was heading to bed when his sons were off to school. He would always unwind with a spicy kind of wine that Jai and Ravi would steal sips from. Dad never noticed; he was always too buried in scans and x-rays and books with pictures of brains to pay attention to how much he’d been drinking.

Mom was much of the same way, but her hours were more regular and she preferred pictures of hearts over brains. Oftentimes the boys could tell if she’d had a bad day at work, because she became easily flustered with something as simple as not being able to close the door with her foot on the first try.

They would fight, when dad was home for dinner but didn’t want to come out of his study and mom had had a late appointment, or had to give bad news, or learned that one of her patients had had another heart attack.

It was Jai entertaining his little brother because the two had much more important things to do - helping him with his homework, which was always so confusing explained from a doctor’s mouth - teaching him how to ride a bike because dad would stumble every time he tried. They went to the skatepark or got lost on hiking trails or nearly drowned in the rough lake. They walked to school together and Jai always waited that extra hour after high school ended to bring his little brother home. And sometimes they wouldn’t go home at all – sometimes they’d stay out until mom got home in the evenings, jumping off swings or climbing trees and more than once breaking a few bones in the process of either.

Jai was always there for Ravi’s soccer games, sporting ridiculous face paint and screaming ridiculous cheers from the sidelines. Life was full of Jai’s favorite music or tough taunts from a little brother while they played video games or barking dogs when a new friend would come over. And laughter. There was always laughter. Every night Ravi went to sleep his cheeks hurt and his lungs ached. Life was busy and full and so loud.

They talked about trips they were going to take, how they were going to see the world - Italy, China, Iceland.

And then one day Jai was riding his bike behind his little brother on the sidewalk, and he told him, “I think I’m gonna join the military.”

There was only a month ‘til he graduated and ten-year-old Ravi was swept up in panic all at once.

“Why don’t you just go to college?”

“I will… afterwards.”

“I thought we were gonna go places together.”

He laughed. “Of course we will. But you’re only ten. We got seven or eight years ‘til you’re done with school. We’ll travel.”

But they never would.

Life became quiet.

SOMETIMES RAVI WOULD SLEEP in Jai’s bed while he was away. He was gone for months at a time, and would only come back for a couple weeks if they were lucky. He had been seventeen when he went away. Mom and dad had signed a form to give their permission, and they sent him off proudly, while Ravi had fought back tears when he’d been given that last hug. He remembered that day: he’d woken up early to say goodbye to find his brother writing him a letter because he didn’t want to wake him up.

Now Jai was twenty and their gap had never felt wider. Jai would Skype as often as he could but it was never like it used to be. There was no laughter anymore. They never had time for jokes.

He had been staring out into the dark of the window, his head on Jai’s pillow, as close to the fresh air as he could get himself.

‘I’m depressed,’ he texted his brother. It was blunt, and perhaps worrying, but they still knew each other well enough to trust that Ravi could send something like that and he would know that Jai wouldn’t respond right away.

But this time he did.

He called him, but Ravi didn’t feel like talking.

‘Answer.’

‘I don’t wanna talk.’

He called again, and Ravi answered this time. He wouldn’t say no to his brother twice.

And they talked. It was terribly early in Afganistan, and Jai hadn’t been able to sleep.

“Must be like we’re twins,” he joked.

They talked for hours – about how mom and dad were fighting more, about how boring life was now, about how he had no friends and he was worried he’d end up alone.

“You’re thirteen,” Jai told him. “Life sucks, but there’s time.”

They talked about those trips they’d take. Italy, China, Iceland.

“I’ve already been to ‘Parris’,” Jai joked.

“Marine camp doesn’t count,” Ravi objected. “Do you think we actually will?”

Jai assured him, “Yeah. We will when you graduate. Promise. It’ll be just you and me.”

THE DOGS BARKED AT everything. They barked at the mailman, they barked at anyone walking by, they bark birds, they barked at nothing.

Ravi was at the dining room table with his mother when they started. They were both frustrated: Ravi’s math homework was just challenging enough to need help, but Jasmit knew such complicated math that she had a tendency to explain it in complicated ways. It was nearing the end of the school-year and she would be glad to have the summer off of trying to tutor him.

“I’ll get it,” she announced, frankly glad to get away for a moment.

There was some muttering he couldn’t really hear through the walls and wasn’t listening to anyway, until he heard the sounds of his mother’s ragged breaths and sudden sobbing. Ravi did not hear that often. When she fought with dad, she yelled.

With a surge of adrenaline he bounded from the table and dragged a hand down the hallway wall. He stood in the doorway to the living room and looked on with dilating vision.

There stood two men, both older and ragged, jaws tightened. They were in full dress – the kind of uniform they saw Jai in sometimes, only when he went to ceremonies or parties. His heart was in his throat.

“Mom?” he squeaked out.

She turned to him, tears streaming, tanned hands pulling at black hair. She did that when she was nervous.

“Oh, Ravi.”

His lower lip quivered. “What is it? Is it him?”

“Oh, Ravi,” she repeated, voice breaking into sobs, soon crossing the space between them to take him into her arms.

Yes. It was.

Life was quieter. Silent.

JAI WAS BURIED LIKE a soldier, like he wanted to be. He’d told their parents that, at some point between going overseas and the last time they’d talked two weeks prior. He wondered what else they had talked about - what things were only for Jai and mom and dad.

His parents stopped fighting for a while. Dad stopped drinking for a while. Mom stopped getting flustered for a while.

A week after Jai died Ravinder slid a broken piece of glass across his skin. He graduated to using a stolen razor blade from his father’s tools.

Slow weeks later, Ravi was fourteen and it was summer. School would start again in two months. He had no one to text ‘I’m depressed’ to. Jai was gone, and the only friends he had were the kind that wouldn’t spend three-quarters of a dollar on you for a convenience store soda.

There was anger within Ravinder but it was the kind that made you cry first and pull your hair out second. Something had been building up inside him, something that made it hard to breathe and to swallow and to fall asleep at night.

He was fourteen, it was summer, it was dark and the air was chilled. He had gotten back from the park because he thought the clearest there, in the same swing where Jai would sit because it was the tallest, and they were fighting again. He hadn’t heard them fighting all summer.

They always fought in Punjabi. Ravi thought that was so anyone eavesdropping wouldn’t know what they were fighting about. But Ravi knew.

“I want a divorce, I want a divorce,” his mother repeated. He didn’t hear much after he closed the bathroom door.

Tonight was different. He was crying, as he usually was, his rusting blade uncovered. He sat on the edge of the toilet seat and held his wrist over the sink. Three little cuts of hesitation were made, but then he started something bigger – red leaked down into the drain and he ran the water to help it along. He cut deeply and over the same cut so much that the white of his tendon was exposed. It didn’t hurt - not really. And he thought of nothing – he wasn’t thinking about death, or suicide, or how much blood he was losing.

He was only feeling sad, and upset, and like the dam within him had finally broken and out spilled this red sea. That was all: he didn’t have anyone to text ‘I’m depressed’ to.

With his right hand, Ravi cleaned up the blood that had gathered along the edge of the sink. That was a mess he didn’t want anyone else to clean up.

He wrapped his wrist with a bright green towel and went out into the kitchen. Mom was drinking some of dad’s spicy wine and looked up to see her only living son disheveled, trembling, with eyes heavy from tears. She only had a moment to change her expression to confused concern.

He had no words, so he pulled his arm from the towel and showed her. She spilled her wine when she bolted up.

“Oh, Ravi,” Jasmit cooed in her way. She called ‘Danvir, Danvir’ and there was enough concern in her voice for dad to race out.

Ravi was fourteen, it was summer, and he had thirty stitches put into his wrist.

“YOU COULD BE A surgeon,” was the greeting the nurse had given. Ravi would look back on that and laugh. Imagine if such an event had been his call into medicine?

“Why did you do that, honey?” was another.

“Why do you think?” was his answer.

The doctor who gave him stitches was a friend of his father’s and not very good with English. In fact, his only reaction to the wound was a surprised, “Ooh,” when blood had leaked onto the bed.

“Your lip is trembling,” mom had whispered into his ear and he bit it. He hadn’t noticed.

He was being sutured (and that numbing shot was damn painful for what it was for) at his wrist and having blood taken from the other hand, dressed in nothing but a hospital gown. It was embarrassing and desperately he wanted to go home.

But he wouldn’t go home for another week.

Ravi was sent off to a behavioral hospital. They gave him pills and had him speak in group therapy. He discovered he liked art, even though he was very terrible at it. The adults complimented him anyway. The worst part had been at the beginning, when he’d had to strip naked so they could make sure he had no other wounds.

At fourteen, well – he would’ve rather died.

On Zoloft for depression, Adderall for his attention, Clonazepam for anxiety, and Seroquel for sleep (later to be changed by his second psychiatrist – Seroquel was an antipsychotic, he’d say, not for sleep) life somehow got easier.

BUT SCHOOL DID NOT. He was the product of two intelligent doctors and had once cried when he missed a single question on his spelling test. Prior to his freshman year he was in advanced placement classes. Now he was relieved when he received ‘D’s. And it was all made harder that he was torn between Ohio one year and Minnesota the next.

After they divorced, mom had moved to work at the Cleveland Clinic, best for cardiology, and dad stayed at the Mayo Clinic, best for neurology. Up until then mom had sacrificed a better job for him.

“But I won’t sacrifice anymore,” she had told her son, and he knew she meant more than just where she worked.

Jai and Ravi had been sent to private schools all their life but public school in Ohio became easier for the transition. It wasn’t terribly different, and Ravi liked especially that he didn’t need to wear a uniform.

Freshman year was spent in Ohio with his mother. She voiced her concerns for his grades but soon became just as appreciative when he just ‘passed’. She knew he’d had a tough time (she was reminded of it whenever she noticed his wrist) and worked less than she might’ve if she hadn’t regarded him.

She took him out to Lake Erie, even though she couldn’t swim and both her brothers had drowned years ago. She took him camping for entire weekends, even though she couldn’t stand to be without a shower for a single day. She took him hiking, even after she’d been on her feet already for fourteen hours. Ravi was reminded of how much he loved the outdoors and he was reminded of Jai.

Sophomore year was spent in Minnesota with his father.

But that was different.

He’d started drinking again.

“YOU ARE SO GROWN,” Danvir greeted his son with a hug at the airport. He couldn’t say ‘tall’, Ravi figured, because his peak height would only be five feet and seven inches.

“So are you,” joked Ravinder, noticing immediately the smell of spiced wine.

He led him to the car outside with a protective, fatherly hand at his shoulder. But that was a novelty; come two weeks, his son would wear out his welcome.

Danvir had always been the type to openly slap his sons if he felt so inclined. He had hit his ex-wife a few times but she’d hit him right back and then there would be this standoff of him not wanting to escalate it and her completely ready to let him have it.

Two weeks in, and one until school started, dad was flipping over the couches and pushing papers off the table in an angry hurry. Ravi had come in from swimming in dad’s new pond and was dripping water all over the carpet.

“Get out of here,” dad shouted, shooing him with some papers.

“What’re you looking for?”

“My keys. I am late for work.”

“They’re in the silverware drawer. You were drunk so I put them there.”

He looked up. “I wasn’t drunk.”

“Yes, you were. You’ve been drunk every night.”

“What, so I am not allowed to have a drink? You sound just like your mother.”

As dad passed him, Ravi was hit so hard in the back of his head that his vision went black for a moment. He blinked, stunned, listening as the front door opened and closed. For the next two days he had a headache and felt like something behind his eye had been broken.

THAT WAS DAD’S REFLEX for everything. Either he had changed in a year or Ravi never really knew him at all. For a while he was always surprised. Growing up, dad had never hit them so often, because Jai was a good boy and Ravi was simply too young. But every day now he was being slapped in the back of his head, or punched in his leg in the car, or shoved into walls when dad was full-on drunk. His only solace was found in the boarding school his dad thought would set him straight.

The abuse was followed by apologies eventually. That’s how Ravinder came to acquire new hiking boots, his first iPhone, a two-thousand dollar watch he never wore (he climbed trees too often to trust himself not to break it), and his first car.

He never said anything to his mother – not because he was materialistic, but because he loved his father. He could tell the stupidest jokes and make Ravi laugh. He was kind when he wanted to be. He was insanely intelligent and was constantly telling him facts about the littlest of things. He was still his dad, regardless of the expensive watches or the bruises or terrible headaches he gave him. His injuries were never too bad.

…until they were.

Grades were something Ravi was good at keeping to himself. Dad would ask how school was going when he'd come home on holidays, he would say ‘fine,’ and he’d do the most barren amount of homework in front of him to reiterate that.

His mother had warned him that his father would not be so accepting of his failures. Unfortunately for Ravi, it was pretty damn hard to forge a doctor’s signature.

“What is this?” Danvir snapped, his tan face gone noticeably red.

“You just have to sign it.”

“You are failing? My son is failing?”

“Only one class. It’s an elective – it doesn’t even matter.”

Ravi must’ve been hit then, but he would never be able to recall the raise of his father’s hand.

He woke up on the floor, his wrist held in his father’s grip and those dark eyes staring at his own watch. Tracking his pulse. Just like a doctor. He’d tried to lift his head but it fell back to the floor with a painful thud.

“I wanna go home.”

“This is your home, too,” dad said, some kind of concern threaded throughout his voice – like he could be hurt that his son would dare think about leaving. “Your pulse is normal.”

“I’m gonna call mom.”

“Let’s just wait, okay? How about we go out for pizza?”

Tears welled up in brown eyes and slowly he let his father help him back up. He didn’t want to cry in front of him. Here he was, being picked up off the ground after being hit into the wall so hard he’d have to patch the drywall, but still Ravinder did not want to feel weak.

“Okay,” he nodded. It hurt to do that.

It was not so much the promise of his favorite food but the gesture of it; dad hated pizza more than he hated being disrespected by his wife, or American teenager’s fashion, or the way Ravi said Jai’s name in casual conversation.

The drive there was spent with his eyes closed, leaning against the door, struggling with a powerful nausea until he had his dad pull over so he could get violently sick on the side of the road.

They wouldn’t go for pizza, then. Danvir turned around to drive to the hospital.

“What do you want to tell them?” he would ask his son.

Like he had a choice. Danvir knew it would make him feel better if he felt like he was deciding it.

“I fell out of a tree.”

And so Ravinder had a head scan that revealed nothing notable, but they still kept him overnight – the sophomore telling this well-imagined story of how he’d slipped from a branch and saw his life flash before his eyes to every nurse who came in curious.

The next night he set up a tent in the backyard, claiming he just wanted to be out under the stars, but he didn’t return to the house until it was time for him to pack up and go back to that private school.

Even that did not stop his father completely. Ravi became smitten with a boy in school who had more witty comebacks than either of them did friends and soon he was inspired to pierce this and that, with River at his side every time. His father would threaten to rip them out whenever he saw them, so Ravi stopped coming around the house so often. He’d had his first kiss with that boy – and a ‘first’ few other things, too.

He was inching increasingly deeper into teenagedom and had the mouth to prove it, despite his father trying to fix it with the back of his hand. It wasn’t so bad, Ravi would tell himself, until a week before he was due to go back to Ohio. That night was a blur, but it involved the buckle of his dad’s belt, blood smeared all over the bathroom, and sleeping on his stomach for the entire next week. That night was something he would always keep to himself. The next day his father was in tears as he had to stitch his own son’s back at home, both too ashamed to go to the hospital.

He must be sorry, Ravi told himself, because he’d never seen his father cry.

Their goodbyes were full of unspoken words and relief mostly on the younger Mian’s part. Yet still, he loved him. Still, he was his father. No matter what scars or bruises he gave him.

He had promised he wouldn’t tell Jasmit about the head scan, either, but he didn’t have to.

“WHY DID YOU HAVE a CT?” she screeched, flustered from a bad day at work and the unexpected news.

“A what?”

“Why did you have a scan of your brain in Minnesota?”

Ravi nearly dropped the orange out of his mouth. Instead he moved it to his cheek. “How did you know that?”

“I looked at your records. I forgot when you last had an eye appointment. Why did you have a CT?”

“Is that legal?”

“I’m your mother.”

“That’s not a yes.” Ravinder wasn’t the most intelligent boy, but he was very good at being ‘smart’.

He looked at her, licked the juice from an orange slice, and answered, “I had a concussion.”

“From what?”

“I fell out of a tree.”

“What tree?”

Ravi grinned. “It didn’t have a name.”

She was furious and had no time for his games. “Are you lying to me?”

“No. I definitely fell out of a tree at dad’s.” That wasn’t a lie. It just wasn’t the truth she was asking for.

“Why would you not tell me? Is this why you’ve been having migraines?”

“I didn’t think about it. I dunno, I’m not a doctor.”

She scolded him for it for a while, but then Mark came home and she forgot all her troubles in the world.

MUCH HAD CHANGED IN the year since he’d seen his mother. They had talked on the phone a few times a week, and she’d told him whatever she had to tell him – including about Marcus Delaney.

Marcus Delaney was a cardiologist on even playing field with his mother. He was nothing like Danvir Mian – he was blonde, blue-eyed, only as tall as her and had skin mom had described dreamily on the phone as ‘white as pearls’. They had been dating for only eight months before they got engaged, then married, with Ravinder giving his mother away in a very Christian ceremony.

She didn’t have time to go to the beach, or take him camping, or go hiking with him. And so Ravinder began to do these things by himself, and learned to like them that way – just he and the whistling birds, or the swaying trees, or a flooding stream.

Ravi didn’t like Mark. Not because he was an intruding father figure, or because he was jealous of his mother’s constant affection – but because he had asked the wrong question at dinner one night.

“What would you like to do when you get older?” had been his attempt at conversation in their first week of knowing each other.

Ravi didn’t bother to stop eating to answer his question. “I don’t know.”

“Well, do you know where you want to go to college?”

“No.” In truth, he had no idea what he was going to do in life.

Mark was all pearl-white smiles and pearl-white skin and Ravi just wanted to go drown himself in Lake Erie.

“Think you might like medicine?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, haven’t you ever thought about it?”

“I was gonna travel with my brother,” he said, standing and picking up his plate, “but then he got blown up.”

And he left he and his mother there in a silence, feeling both smart in the way a teenager could feel and aching at the truth of it: with his brother died all his hopes.

Junior year was less eventful than his last -- mom let him go to that public school he went to in freshman year, where kids liked to whisper the word ‘terrorist’ at him like a witch’s curse. He’d had a few more first kisses and fooled around carelessly. His mouth was getting him in trouble in more ways than one and by the time summer came around, Jasmit could not hide her relief that he’d be leaving for his father’s again soon. Days were spent skipping class, and nights were spent on the phone with River.

Ravi had stopped taking his anxiety medication that year, suffering through it daily because he knew he’d want those pills next year if dad was still drinking. He started lifting weights. What he lacked in height, he thought, he could make up for in strength. That, too, was in preparation for if his father was still drinking.

And he was. Of course he was.

SENIOR YEAR WAS BITTERSWEET. He hadn’t taken a plane this time; instead he’d driven the car his father had bought for him from Cleveland to Rochester, taking his time and stopping at gas stations or rest stops or pretty views. It took him a week to drive seven hundred miles but that was the best week he could remember having since he was ten.

On the porch of the house he’d grown up in sat two buckets full of empty bottles. Wine and beer and whiskey. He kicked one as he opened the door. Ravinder slowly stepped through the familiar house until he found his dad half-asleep on the couch.

“Hey,” he slurred.

“Hey,” Ravi replied and sat down by his feet.

They hadn’t talked much beyond a few phone calls since he’d left. He’d changed. If his dad had noticed his many new piercings and unconsulted tattoos, he didn’t say anything. Not yet, anyway. In the year to come he’d tell him how much of an ‘American punk’ he was, how he was ashamed of him, how any father would be ashamed of him.

Dad had changed, too. The only time he ever looked put-together was when he was at the hospital. The only time Ravi ever saw him there was when he broke a bone doing something stupid with his friends or needed stitches if dad’s belt hit him the wrong way. And he had taken a liking to using that, after the first few times he’d raised his hand and Ravi would dare raise one back.

Mom stopped asking what all his hospital trips were for. He was just being rebellious, she must’ve thought. And that was true: more often that not, dad would only hit him after he’d said something disrespectful, and Ravi could always find the words that cut the deepest.

Ravi never slept a night in his dad’s house. For an entire year that tent was in his backyard – although Ravi was rarely in it, because that was the year he found love.

HE DIDN’T WANT TO date anymore. He had gotten his fill of that in Cleveland – girls (and a few boys) came and went at the drop of a hat because in all honesty, he was not a good boyfriend. He needed his space to go off into the woods (building fires until he got blisters again) alone and he needed a lot of it. That was a hard thing to put up with, and he never asked them to stay.

And so he became a novelty – a punk kid who seemed off in his world so much that he was failing private school miserably and came back with new tattoo work every other week. His toning may not have deterred his father from giving him new scars but that attracted all sorts, too. He kept his friends as close as he could handle and he could party with the most reckless of them – but those nervous and sometimes awkward kisses never amounted to anything more than fleeting teenage lust that was driven mostly by whatever pills he’d taken. And he found he liked pills.

River was always different. ‘Determined’ would be a better word. He sought after him even after he turned him down a hundred times, fearful of venturing past their brand of complicated friendship -- after all, he’d lost his virginity to him sophomore year. All River needed, though, was a hundred-and-one tries.

River was sweet around him, witty around others, and had a steady stream of money from two caring parents. He was sure he would be nothing more than something-to-make-mom-and-dad-mad – but he was eighteen. ‘Life sucks,’ Jai had said once, ‘but you have time.’ And so he went for it.

It was as toxic as teenage love could be. They loved intensely and sporadically. Nights were either filled with bodies slippery with hot sweat underneath open windows or tears and empty, aching arms. As much as his own father disliked him, River’s parents disliked him more. They grew more and more protective of River, despite protests from their rebellious son, until they contacted that money-hungry private school and made them separate the boys at every turn. No longer were they roommates or even in any of the same classes. Ravi only saw River in passing once a week -- if he was lucky.

That was just the first domino.

SUMMER WAS COMING AGAIN but Ravinder could not find any excitement to return to his mother’s. He’d stopped taking Zoloft and Adderall and his sleeping pills and he’d long since run out of anxiety medication. He’d been taking four, five, six of those at a time. He stopped going to therapy. The school-year was winding down and with it came the excitement of all the other seniors: graduation was coming.

Again came questions: What do you want to do when you get older? Where are you going to college? You think you’d be a doctor like your parents?

His answers were always the same: I don’t know.

He’d been talking to his mother less and less, because he never called her and she would often forget to call him. With impeccable timing she did – and it would be the last time they talked for a very long while.

“Mark and I were talking, and–” she took a breath, and so did Ravi, staring up at the ceiling of the tent that still had River’s name scribbled on it, “–we think you should look into the University of Minnesota. What if you went to Mayo Medical School?”

He said nothing for so long she asked, “Are you there?”

“Yeah.”

“Well?”

“I don’t have the grades for medical school.”

“We have friends,” she assured right away. “You’re a smart boy. You could get good grades there if you just applied yourself.”

“What if I wanted to come back to Cleveland?”

There was silence. And that’s when his mother told him that she and Mark were having a baby. A girl, she said, and he might be happier to stay in Minnesota so he wouldn’t hear a baby crying all the time.

“I’m gonna be a big brother, too,” he whispered to the ‘River’ written on the ceiling, blinking tears away after he hung up the phone.

LIFE WITH JAI WAS so far away.

He left school a month before graduation. Every hallway was filled with whispers of college excitement. All his nights were spent awake wondering how life had gotten so complicated.

He remembered camping in the backyard, learning how to make a fire with nearly just his hands, bike rides around the block a hundred times, jumping off swings and landing hard on his knees. He wondered if Jai had ever been in love or had his heart broken. If he had, he never told his little brother. There were a lot of things about Jai he would never know.

It was only during that time that he realized what he wanted to do with his life. He didn’t want to go to college. Didn’t see a point in having a job. Certainly didn’t want to stay here, in Minnesota, with dad and River (who was now completely apart from him, and probably just as broken up about it). Couldn’t go home to mom and Mark and the new baby. I’ll travel, he thought to himself in the dead of night, when he couldn’t sleep because he had no pills left. I’ll travel, just like I was gonna with Jai.

He had no plan, but he wouldn’t have to make one.

Dad didn’t notice for a couple weeks that he’d dropped out. There was no exchange of words once he did. He was greeted instead by dad’s belt across his face the next time he walked into the house. It cut his cheek and sent him down out of shock, and dad had raised it again but the man was drunk and it was easy to kick his feet out from under him. Ravinder hurried off to pack his bag in haste, listening all the while to slurred threats and insults.

“The only son I have left is a disgrace,” was the last thing Danvir said to him to this very day.

Ravinder knew that. The moment he stepped out of that house for the last time, he made peace with it.

THERE WAS NOWHERE FOR him to go. He had no plan, but that was okay. He hadn’t said goodbye to anyone, but that was okay, too. There was this aching feeling in him to go call his mother or arrive without warning to River’s house. He thought he might beg his mother to come home, tell her he’d be a good kid and he’d be a good brother. He thought he might try to get a reunion with River, give him a goodbye, and hold him one last time. But when he was nineteen Ravinder was rash and did none of those things.

He wouldn’t do them now, either, but he wouldn’t be crying as he thought about it.

“That’s legal?” Rav had asked his brother once.

“Yeah, man. You just can’t block the road. Most hitchhikers don’t kill people. People do it all the time. I mean, less, nowadays, but it was really popular back in mom and dad’s time.”

“Where do they go?”

“Wherever they want. Big cities… wherever they have family… maybe out to California to chase those star-dreams,” Jai had answered. “I’d like to do that someday. Not California. Just… go everywhere in the States. Cheap. People backpack through Europe, too.”

“You just stick your thumb out?”

“Yeah. You just stick your thumb out.”

And Ravi just stuck his thumb out.

THE HARDEST PART ABOUT it, at first, was the people. He learned he couldn’t take it to heart when they sped past him or honked or yelled something out their windows. He learned he had to look as unintimidating as possible. He learned to wear bright colors and make sure to keep wiping his face and to flash a friendly smile whenever he could. And he learned that people tended to pick you up more if you were eating a banana. That was strange, but it seemed true.

The first couple weeks were surreal, full of anxiety attacks and stretching his money as far as it could go on gas station food. He learned to accept absolutely any handout he could, even if it was just a couple quarters from someone’s dashboard.

Sleeping outside was never hard. He could easily find safe places. He’d lived in a tent and the woods for the last year and not even bugs bothered him.

He settled into this rhythm of walking and hitching and he was almost comfortable with it. He was already in St. Louis now, and it took no time at all for him to get someone to stop.

“Where ya headed?”

“Wherever you wanna take me,” he jested, and perhaps that was his first mistake. The driver, an older man with streaks of grey in his well-groomed beard, reached over to open the door, smiling the whole time.

“Hop in, kid.”

“Thanks, man.”

And so began the array of usual questions: What’s your name? Where you from? Why’d you leave? Where do you wanna end up?

He’d been lying since the beginning about everything except his name. Rav, he’d tell them. I’m from Maine. Just wanted to see the world. I think I’d like to end up in Alaska some day. That last part usually got a laugh.

But this was different. He thought nothing of it at the time but he kept glancing at him, eyes lingering until the last possible moment he ought to look at the road. The driver’s idle hand had been resting in the middle of the console and in one swift motion he’d slid it across Ravinder’s thigh and gripped the inside of it so hard it hurt. Immediately he became dizzy with nerves and swallowed. Rav tried to push it away as casually as possible but it only tightened. There was nowhere to go when you were in a car on the highway.

That wasn’t all to say Rav wasn’t open to sleeping with someone he met on the road – but only by his own decision. He had never been gripped like this. The aggression of it all made him worry about what his reaction might be to rejection. So he wouldn’t reject.

“Think you could do with a shower. What d’you think?”

There’s nowhere to go, he told himself. So go with it. “Yeah, I probably could.”

He glanced at him, willed his own smile to not look nervous and brushed his arm against that hand. He didn’t know what he was thinking – maybe that he’d ease off a bit, but he only squeezed harder and made Rav shift in his seat with pain.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-one,” he lied, but only by over a year. “You?”

Out came a burly laugh. “Much older than that. Think you could do for a place to stay, too?”

“Sure.” Nowhere to go, so go with it, he repeated silently.

“And a little money? What would you do for that?”

Nothing, he thought. “How much?” he asked.

“Depends on what you’re willing to do. Or what you’re willing to let me do to you.”

Rav had no answers in this situation – was he to lead him along, or would that lead to something worse than this?

He settled for something in the middle. “Well… I mean… everyone’s got a price, don’t they?”

“A thousand?”

His mouth was dry and he cleared his throat. “For a thousand? All the normal stuff. Ah, got water in here somewhere…” he trailed off, leaned down and opened his bag. A moment later he exclaimed, “Goddammit, man.” And held up a wet hand. His shirt was wet, too. “You got napkins?”

Finally that hand was taken away from his aching thigh.“In the compartment. You spill somethin’?”

“Yeah. God, dammit. Is there a gas station coming up? I wanna rinse off.”

“Gonna rise off water with water?”

That was a good point.

“It’s juice,” he lied. “Gotta keep my energy up.”

A breathy sort of laugh exhaled the driver. “For me, you will.”

A few light-hearted jokes later, another grip on Rav’s thigh, and they were pulling into a gas station.

And it was there Rav got casually out of the car, held his wet bag out like he didn’t want to touch it… and then darted ‘round the corner the moment he realized he was being followed to the bathrooms. He ran for a while, self-sabotaged backpack making his back wet.

“Gotta keep my energy up,” he panted and shook his head, grinning at his own expense. Rav gripped Jai’s dog tags through his damp shirt. “Sounded pretty ridiculous, eh?”

“DO YOU GOT ANYTHING in your pockets I need to know about?”

“No,” Rav lied. What else was he supposed to say?

“No weapons or anything that might hurt me?”

“Nah, man,” he told the cop as he was patted down. He knew he’d find it, but he couldn’t bring himself to own up.

A large hand dove into his pockets and pulled out a clear bag with white powder. “And what’s this?” he asked, rather rhetorically, because he had to know what it was. Rav didn’t answer so he repeated. “You wanna tell me what this is?”

“Dope, man.”

“How old are you?”

“Just turned twenty.” He didn’t lie, this time.

“What’s a twenty-year-old doin’ with dope? How long you been using?”

“Couple months.”

Drifters had a way of finding each other and Rav had been only slightly surprised that so many were addicted to something. He’d met a few, been offered pills like they were candy, then met plenty more who would ask if he ever tried anything harder. Two months ago he did, and for two months he’d been hooked.

And it was by chance that the old building they’d all chosen to sleep in was raided the first day Ravi had gotten to Pittsburgh.

There was some pity for him from the officer, but perhaps only because he was so young and had not yet developed any of the more obvious signs of addiction.

And there was more pity from the judge, who looked down upon him as the son of two doctors, as the brother of a war veteran, as a first-time offender and a young, lost boy trying to find a home.

At least, that’s what she told him when her sentence was community service and house arrest.

He could imagine no worse punishment than house arrest. But at least he got to meet his baby sister.

SHE LOOKED LIKE MARK. Terribly so. She was the cutest baby he’d ever seen, but he hadn’t seen very many babies and this was, after all, his own sister. She had the brightest blue eyes and fine, curly hair that was always unkempt, even when mom sat there trying to fix it for twenty minutes. She looked like one of those dolls you buy for some little girls, freckles and all.

Last time he had talked to his mother (before he was in jail, anyway) she’d told him to stay in Minnesota. He wasn’t upset about that anymore, but she seemed to be. He didn’t dislike Mark anymore, either. He was an alright guy, if a little overbearingly cheerful sometimes.

For them it was uneasy at first. They knew him as a smart little teenager, but he came back to them smiling - helping with dinner - saying ‘thanks, man’ (‘like a hippy’ Mark would joke) for little things like it was a reflex.

But he’d been arrested with heroin. That wasn’t something you could be comfortable with, even if it was your own son, if you had a baby in the house.“

I don’t know if I want you to invite any friends over,” mom had said after his first week back in Cleveland, her in the doorway of his bedroom and his fingers digging under his ankle bracelet.

“I don’t have any friends here, mom.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Well, I’m just saying. If you do.”

“Alright. How far does this span out, again?” he asked, tapping the device on his ankle.

Mom looked uneasy. “Almost to the property lines. Why?”

“Wanted to put a tent in the yard.”

Uneasy, still. She shifted her feet. “Why?”

He shrugged. “Just wanna be outside. Used to live in a tent at dad’s place.” And then there was more questioning, because Ravi had never told her what he was like. He still wouldn’t. “The tent just reminded me of Jai,” he half-lied and it stifled all her other questions. “How is dad, by the way?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him since you… well, since I went to pick you up. He hung up on me. And before that I never talked to him about anything except you… he wouldn’t tell me where you were.”

“Sorry. He didn’t really know. Shoulda said goodbye.”

He set up the tent in the yard, did his community service quickly and enthusiastically, eventually got his bracelet off – and then left again. His goodbye this time was in the form of a note on the refrigerator: ‘On the road again. Picked up your milk first, though. Thank you for taking me in. - R.’

“I’LL BE HEADIN’ NORTH from here. You might wanna find someone else to take ya along,” Richard, the forty-year-old Southerner (who was traveling a thousand miles to pick up his kids from his ex-wife for the summer) had told him when they pulled up to a gas station.

“I’ll probably walk a bit from here. You sure you don’t want any money for the gas?” a sunburnt, well-weathered and dark-haired boy asked as he opened the door and slid from the passenger seat.

Rich laughed. “Nah, brother. Your stories were enough. You sure you don’t want any money? Maybe get ya some shoes?”

He was already digging into his wallet before he could protest.

“Nah, no shoes. Makes me feel free. Might get me a sandwich, though.” That was a lie; he’d use it for drugs. But he smiled politely as he took the two twenty dollar bills and an unexpected card from a hairy hand. “Thanks, man.”

“My card’s in there, if you’re ever down near Houston lookin’ for some construction work. Pay’s under the table for you.”

“Yeah. For sure. Thanks again.”

They shook hands through the window and he turned to walk away.

“You be careful, kid. And good luck on your soul-searchin’ journey,” Rich called after him.

“I told you I don’t believe in souls,” was shouted back in jest behind him before leaving the man in his car to meet the ground of Wichita, Kansas – almost where he’d been dropped off after his first couple rides.

He’d gone from Rochester to Des Moines, to Kansas City, to St. Louis, down to Nashville, then up to Louisville, then to Columbus (he almost thought about swinging by Cleveland to say hi to mom), on up to Pittsburgh (then back home for a while) and to the heart of New York City. He had his fun there and started back down: to Philadelphia, to Washington, to Richmond and Charlotte and Atlanta. Eventually he met Richard in Dallas, just starting on his journey to get his kids.

He would walk as long as he could until he could find a ride toward the direction of Colorado. He’d been traveling west for the last two years, staying in a place for a week or a month or two, working odd jobs, then finding a ride to the next place.

The worst thing he’d encountered so far was that man who seemed very interested in trailing a very firm hand up his thigh – and left him with a deep bruise – but he’d gotten far away from that. He’d never been robbed or raped or shot or stabbed or killed or anything people expected.

Sometimes he met someone he wanted to stay with for a few days. Sometimes that person was River. He simply felt for him in the dark and held him for a few days, and then he would be on his way to somewhere - someone - anywhere else.

Sometimes he’d spend days in the woods with nothing but two sticks, some leaves, and enough heroin to kill an elephant. He’d walk out with those blisters on his hands and track marks on his arms.

He always came back to the road eventually. Wichita and Rochester were only six hundred miles apart. He’d traveled far more than that, always zig-zagging all over the place, but within the last month he’d made a mission to go west. His goal was Phoenix, though he thought he might like to hike around Colorado first.

What was in Phoenix? Well, nothing in particular. Just heat and people, and Ravinder Mian had grown to like them both.

Hours of steady walking later and he stuck his thumb out, turned around to smile at the cars, banana in his hand. Worked every time. Soon he was being picked up and he leaned down into the window.

“Hey. Headed anywhere west, if you can take me. Name’s Phoenix.”

He belonged here.

He belonged only here.

#sample

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outofofficedefined-blog · 7 years

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Has it really been 3 months...?

Well, it certainly has been awhile since I checked in with a post other than photos to let everyone know what has been going on in our lives! Amazing, how fast time goes by, as I always say the days are long and the months are short. I arrived home about two weeks early from my South Pacific adventure, getting into Boston, MA, just one day shy of Thanksgiving.

Jay and I raise turkeys in the summer, specifically to enjoy at Thanksgiving, and in all honesty, I didn’t want to miss out on eating our farm raised turkey. That is only half of the reason, though, once I arrived in Sydney, Australia, it just felt like it was time to go home, and so I did. I did not tell anyone that I was coming home and needless to say, it was the big surprise and shock that I was hoping for, and took Jay completely off guard. He was over the moon with happiness to have me back home.

December passed very quickly with the usual preparations for Christmas, I spent a week at our cabin in NH, followed by a small road trip to North Carolina to visit my brother and sister-in-law for the Christmas Holiday. We returned before the New Year to spend New Year’s Eve at our cabin, and enjoy the fresh ice that had arrived for the season.

Shortly after New Years, I started to get the travel bug again, and although I traveled many places, I realized that I had never actually been to London. I have what one would describe as an obsession with the history of the English monarchy, so I thought why not make a trip across the pond to visit all the sites that have always read about and dreamed about seeing one day.

I spent 4 days in London, and randomly decided to visit Prague, which is now my favorite city on the planet, so far. I absolutely fell head over heels in love with the architecture, people, and genuine eastern European culture. I took the train from Prague to Berlin, I did however pause for a moment and considered heading east to Budapest instead of Berlin, however, with only a few days remaining in my short 10 day English holiday, I thought it best to continue west. Berlin was interesting, another place that I had always dreamed of visiting. I was disappointed in the militaristic feel of the architecture, very cold and uninviting, however the food was delicious!

I had only had 10 days for a trip, as I had been anxiously awaiting the NH NOFA Winter Conference, I was going to finally see, in person, a role model that I have looked to for sustainable farming practices. Joel Salatin was scheduled to be the key note speaker and I wasn’t going to miss it. We were not disappointed, a great day had by all, we met so many interesting people who share the passion for growing, selling, and eating local.

We joined the MWV Ice Fest 2017 the first weekend of February with the Meetup Mountaineers, it was great to see everyone and to have such great ice conditions this season. We climbed hard the whole the weekend, with the bruises to prove it, only took one fall about 10 feet, however the column that got in my way on the swing down caused most of the problem.

Here we are now, the first day of March 2017. The weather here in New England has been unusually warm, you can almost smell Spring in the air. Farm fever is starting, as Jay and I make plans for the vegetable garden, start incubating eggs, prune the apple trees, and tap the maples. A few big decisions are ahead of us this year, we are looking forward to change, learning, personal growth, and as always many new adventures!

#beengonetoolong #daysturnintoweeksturnintomonths #prague #london #berlin #thanksgiving #christmas #northcarolina #newyearseve #outofofficedefined #NOFA

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powtaatwo-blog · 7 years

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My Body Is Not A Wonderland

Some might say he was selfish and inconsiderate of others. Especially to the one he seemed to be closest with, since the earliest moment when Jay established AOMG and appointed his other half and beloved hyung as a co-CEO. They had gone through the ups and downs of an independent label and company amidst other famous labels and had survived nonetheless, but this time the fight he had with Simon was not the same as before. It was as big as a war. A world war even. It was when Gray suffered from severe headache due to overworking and being stuffed up in the studio -new albums awaiting and concerts upcoming-, but remained silent about his worsened condition, plus shooing away his crew and colleague including Simon. And you know how Simon was trying to be considerate and caring towards Gray but being roughly and rudely shooed away left a scar on his pride. Just by remembering the moment made Gray cringe in disgust of what he had done towards the older, what did he do wrong? He was just trying to take good care of him yet he shut him away. But Gray was not a big fan of pain, heck everyone was not, and now he was perplexed of how he could make it up to the older. And now he was sitting in his studio GRAYGROUND, eating the leftover delivery food he had from his lunch while facing his computer. His alarm suddenly blared, making him jolt his body upwards in shock and throw a look at his clock at the upper corner of the table. 0530 Sighing, Gray brought his finger to massage his temples. The sudden blare made his blood pressure elevate rapidly and suddenly, thus resulted in headache. Again. He had been getting headaches at least five times tonight, due to staying up and sleep deprivation. A bottle of acetaminophen was on the couch behind his chair, nearly half of the bottle had been consumed since he got his first trigger of headache a few days ago. Considering his condition, he could not afford to drive to the nearest hospital or clinic, afraid of accidents for his lack of alertness. He could not contact any of his colleagues and crews, they were probably celebrating Thanksgiving with their families. The thought brought Gray to crack a small smile, he could not go back unless he had finished his project. He could not burden his family due to his sickness, so he would rather stay here and endure the pain himself. He knew he needed rest, but the thing was that he made Simon misunderstood his current situation. Gray was not the one who loves to tell people his concerns and problems, so having a headache was a thing he thought would be settled down in the matter of a few days. While he was suffering, he was also working for Simon's new single, but the headache slowed his progress and that made the artist curious about what was up to the producer. The rough and rude way he shooed Simon away while working on the latter's new single made Simon misunderstood the gesture as something burdensome to Gray. "Then stop working on my album! I can ask Chase to produce the thing!" "Hyung just go!" "The fuck is with you Lee Sunghwa?!" "Go away! Leave me alone!" And the moment Simon stormed out of his studio, he was not in a situation to notice the tears dropping out from Gray's eyes. The pain, the guilt all contributed to somewhat a ticking bomb in his head. So he tried to make it up to Simon by just continue working on his single, maybe produce a beat or two as surprise? He earlier had messaged ChaCha to let him continue working on the project, and the latter just agreed as he too had to go back to Seattle and probably would have to postpone the release of Simon's single, if he was to take the job earlier. The sudden regurgitation made Gray stumble to get up and sloppily run to the toilet to let the food he consumed just now out from his body. The headache just got worse, bringing nausea and vomiting together. Throwing up made his body ran out of energy, and eating back would just trigger his stomach to pour everything out again. The cycle went around for a while. Gray coming out from the bathroom to collapse on the couch in his studio, only to run back again to the bathroom to vomit. Until when he was in the bathroom for the nth time that he heard a click on the lock of the company's main door. -- Simon could not help but to go back to his company, as he left his book behind. Spending Thanksgiving alone since his parents were on a vacation with his younger brother at China, he planned to spend his time reading books, including the one he left there. The book was a gift from Gray when they celebrated his birthday last year. Reminiscing the moment back brought a smile to his face, remembering how cute and childish Gray could be when they spent their time together. Speaking of the latter, ironically both of them had not been able to spend time together since the last few days. Gray had been acting weird, all fussy and grumpy especially when he came in his studio to pay a visit. All AOMG noticed Gray's changes but no one could blame him, he was the one with the most workload to be done. Maybe he should give up on doing my project? Chase told him a while ago that Gray would finish up what he started. But why all the fuss if completing my project was just a burden to him? After thanking his driver, Simon got out from the car and made his step towards the building's main door. He entered the password, and a click sound was heard. To his surprise, the lamps are all switched on and air conditioners are functional. Who would be here on Thanksgiving? The question cued in Simon's head as he strolled around every nook and cranny of the building, searching for any sign of a person here. And that hit him. The purple hue from GRAYGROUND peeked through a slight opening from the door, signalling that the studio was being occupied just now. His feet automatically made their way into the dim studio, eyes roaming around to search for anything that could be a hint. His gaze dropped onto the bottle of acetaminophen, a bunch of emptied water bottles on the couch, energy bar wrappers, a ruffled blanket and Gray's jacket loosely hanging from his chair. Simon furrowed his eyebrows. What the heck is this kid up to? -- Gray breathed heavily, leaning onto the door while clutching onto his stomach. He had been trying to hold his vomit back, afraid of making a sound that could cue the person of his whereabouts. An encounter with Simon was the last thing he wanted, he just could not afford looking at the older's eyes the same anymore. Simon might just hate him after what he had said to him. But on the other side he was grateful that someone had come, unofficially being his knight in shining armour. But how could he react if the person underneath the shining mask happened to be Simon? -- After paddling around and cleaning the younger's studio, Simon took a seat on Gray's couch, and reached for the bottle of acetaminophen. So Gray was sick this whole time? No wonder he became all moody like he was on his period. Simon chuckled. Knowing Gray, the latter would be freaking out and hide from him out of embarrasment and guilt. And that was probably his situation, best to explain his absence. Simon stood up as an idea cued in his head. Toilet. -- Gray just could not hold it back anymore. He stumbled onto the sink and started vomiting again, this time just liquid and air. He was drained out of energy, headache starting to take over his head. He wet his hands and brought them to his head, massaging them slowly. The continuous zaps and jolts in his head finally led a groan to escape his lips. He just could not stand it anymore. Gray made his way -wall as his guide- to open the bathroom door. And the final, strong zap in his head knocked him out, unconscious as he collapsed onto someone's arms. His eyelids fluttered open but he immediately brought his hands to cover his face; his headache made him overly sensitive to lights even when Simon set the light intensity to the lowest. Gray groaned in pain, his head felt like it had been pounding continuously like crazy. He curled his body into a ball, deeper into the blanket when he heard the door clicked. Footsteps approached and Gray peeked from the blanket's edge to see who played the role of his knight. Simon. Simon sat at the edge of the bed where Gray was lying before cautiously putting his hand on presumably Gray's stomach, since the latter had curled himself like a ball. Gray shuddered under the touch, but Simon calmed him down by stroking his hair gently. "Do you feel like throwing up some more?" Simon asked. Gray just shook his head, weak. The intensity of his headache had decreased a bit, and his throat was very dry that he squeaked at Simon to ask for a glass of water. The older understood the gesture and he reached for a water bottle on the bedside table, before holding Gray to help him into a sitting position. The younger leaned into Simon's hold, his surrounding felt like moving so rapid and fast he did not like it a bit. He closed his eyes firm and bit his lower lip, enduring the pain before leaning his back on the older's torso. Simon wrapped his left arm around Gray's waist while his right hand offered the water bottle to the younger. "Take a sip or two. Your lips are too dry." Gray had to force himself to gulp the water and he leaned back to Simon's backhug, head resting on the older's collarbone with his eyes closed. Simon carefully set the bottle back to its original position before climbing onto the bed, gently moving Gray's body on his way before he settled down. He put Gray slowly into a lying position, facing upwards while he laid down, left elbow supporting his head on his hand while his right hand stroking the younger's hair gently. The younger was about to drift off again to sleep, but his nose sensed Simon's cologne, the one he loved to put on when he wanted to go out casually and hang out especially with Gray. He realized that he had not apologize to the older yet. Guilt bit his heart and he forced himself to peek at Simon who was staring blankly at the window behind him, hand still stroking his hair. The thing he loved a lot about his hyung was that his touch was the one that could make him feel comfortable, even just the slightest gesture. Did Simon figure out about his condition beforehand? How did he react when he fell into his arms? Did he feel like he was such a burden? Questions lingered around Gray's mind until Simon caught him staring. "What? Does looking at me make you feel better?" Gray snapped from his absentminded stare before mentally facepalming himself. He just shook his head and shuffled closer to Simon's chest, hiding his face. And he felt like he was on cloud nine when the older's laughter vibrated through his chest where he leaned onto. So he was not mad at me anymore? His cocky question and that hearty laugh said so. But Gray thought he still owed his hyung an apology for his rudeness and blatant response. Gray was about to open his mouth to apology before another thunderclap occured in his head. He squeaked and immediately brought his hands to press his temples, sudden pain brought tears to his eye. Simon drew his body closer to the younger, hands rubbing his back to soothe him down while he positioned Gray's head to lean onto his chest. He later took an ice pack he prepared earlier on the bedside table and pressed the pack onto the boy's neck. A few minutes passed and Gray exhaled heavily, headache slowly faded away before he lifted his head off Simon's chest to rub his face and eyes, only to realize he had been crying a bit during the onset. His sniffs alerted Simon as he drift his body further from the boy to look at his face. Gray covered his face with his palms. "Don't look." "It's not like it's your first time crying on me." "Hyung.." Simon laughed. And that somehow brought a smile to Gray's face as he removed his hands from his puffy eyes and cheeks. Simon took the chance to place kisses on the younger's eyes, gently wiping away the remaining tears. "You're strong enough, you did good." Simon's words and actions made Gray's heart sank even more. How could he assure me despite my cocky attitude towards him a few days ago? He threw his puppy eyes at Simon as the older stared back at him. "Hyung, I'm sorry." "You know I won't be able to resist when you stare at me like that." "Hyung." Frustrated, he threw a weak punch at Simon's chest before the older laughed again, this time pulling him into his embrace while ruffling his hair. "Sorry for what?" "You know.." He stopped before continuing, eyeing Simon's reaction. "I was not in my best state to do work so I was a bit cocky -well I guess I am very cocky- but I don't know, I cannot go back home and be a burden to my parents since my headache wouldn't go away until now and it made me stressed and depressed and eventually made me act up rude and cocky and selfish especially to you since I was working on your single so I'm sorry hyung I don't know I never intended to be rude to you and say harsh things to you but -" "Hey, you're rambling," Simon chuckled before hugging the boy even tighter, his chin rested on his head while his hand rubbed Gray's back to soothe him down. "It's okay, I understand." "You do?" "Not really." "Hyunggg~!" Simon laughed. Gray failed to hold his smile, so he just shook his head in defeat and shuffled his body closer. Simon's warmth comforted him even more. "Why did you come?" Gray asked. "My damsel was in distress." "Why would I be your damsel?" "I'm not saying you as my damsel." Simon smirked. "I want to take my book and bring it home. Seems like this lost damsel also wants to tag along." "This hyung-" "Hey, at least be grateful to me that I came at the right time. Who knew you would fall straight away after you swung the door open?" Gray stayed silent. "See, I lifted you up to the bed and changed your clothes too. Oh and take a look at your lair I have been cleaning up since I got here." Silence. Simon lowered his head on par with the suddenly-fell-silent Gray. Oh, my poor boy. He cried again. "Hey, why do you cry? Did the headache come again?" "No." "Then?" "I don't know how to make it up to you.." "What are you talking about?" Gray sighed. "Stop pretending not to know, idiot." "But I really don't know." Simon laughed. he tightened his hug around Gray. "You are cute when you become frustrated." "You are the only one who can make me feel guilty and frustrated at the same time to the same person." "Hey, you know I would do things like this for you. Why would you suddenly feel all guilty and ashamed of yourself?" "Why would you burden yourself hyung.." "Because," he paused before stealing a peck on Gray's forehead. "You are my fluffy ball in distress, and I'm your knight in shining armour with your favourite cologne." "Why the sudden confession with the self-brag as well?" Gray laughed. Simon just shrugged his shoulder with his famous seductive smirk plastered on his face. He looked down to look at Gray before ruffling his head. "Just tell me you like it. Sleep well, fluff ball." "Are we going to spend our Thanksgiving like this?" "Then what do I get in return as a thanks from you?" "Turn around." As Simon turned around, Gray pushed himself to be on the same level with Simon's cheek before placing a kiss, and shuffled back onto the older's chest, a smile bloomed on his face with Simon's laugh. "Love you, fluff ball." "Love you too, Busan knight." -second attempt lol

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