The Colossus of Rhodes

[ChrisGibson]

Everything went well that first time. Ryan showed up a little before nine o’clock on Friday night, and the first place he took me was his house in College Heights. Everything went according to his plan except for when Jayson, who was thirteen then, burst out with, “Ryan’s had the hots for you for years!” And then Ryan forgot himself, and punched his brother in the shoulder. “Shut up, you!” he shouted, and instantly turned red. His parents did nothing.
“He’s such a creep,” Ryan said as we were driving away in his mother’s hatchback.
“He’s thirteen.”
“I hope I wasn’t like that at thirteen.”
“You were mean at thirteen,” I said frankly.
And then, as he was backing out of the driveway, he stopped and looked at me.
“That’s right,” he said. “That’s how I met you. Being mean.” He shrugged.
When we were on Aramy Street he said, “Do you want to go to the teen club on Route 6?”
“Not really.”
“Me neither,” he confessed. “But we should do something. We can’t just drive around all night and talk.”
“Why not?” I said
And then he looked at me and smiled brightly.

“You know you’re right?” Ryan said when we were sitting on a rock pile on the beach where it seemed the whole beach curved out from this point, and we were at the tip of a spearhead of water. It was early autumn, and the weather was still warm.
“Right about?”
“Me being a grade A jerk when I was thirteen.”
“I didn’t say all that.”
“But I was,” Ryan said. “I mean, I still am. But it doesn’t work in high school. I don’t think it’ll work later on either. Kids applaud you being mean when you’re younger. You know? Well, maybe you don’t. They egg it on. It’s okay to have a bad temper and be nasty. And then one day no one’s impressed, and it’s people as big as you, and as strong as you, and they’re looking at you like.... what an asshole! The way you were that day when you told me off. Ef stood by you. And I thought, ‘Efrem Walker is standing by her because this is his sister, and she’s standing by my cousin because that’s her best friend.’ And who would stand by me? And who would I stand by in the same situation? If someone was making me feel like shit?
“And then I didn’t get why I was trying to make someone... my own family... feel like that.”
Suddenly Ryan said, “Cecile, can I please smoke?”
I looked shocked. “I didn’t know you did it.”
“Sometimes,” Ryan allowed. “Not a lot. I can’t. Gotta keep the bod in shape.” He thumped his chest and laughed. It sounded solid, and I said, “You seem to be keeping it very well.”
He grinned, and even in the moonlight I could tell he was blushing.
He took out his cigarettes, and then he said, “You want one?”
“Oh, I don’t think I could ever smoke,” I told him, which tells you how much I knew at seventeen, and then he lit it, and began to take puffs, nervously at first, and then with a sort of luxury that I have always felt in awe of when he smokes, sitting there in his good clothes, knees to his chest, head tilted back to look at the moon, hair silver, face white, smoke like fog coming from his mouth and nostrils.
“I was an unhappy little kid,” he finally said. “A lot of kids are. If people let you be mean and complain all the time, then you’ll never be happy, and you’ll never know how not to complain. That’s the hardest thing. I’ve spent such a long time saying the nasty thing, it’s like having to learn a new language to say anything good sometimes. But now I’m going to stop talking about myself.”
He flicked the cigarette away and looked at me.
“Girls hate it when all a guy can do is talk about himself,” he said flatly.
I thought he looked so sweet, and then he asked all about me, and Efrem and how I’d met Jinny. And I told him about my father who had vanished long before Florida had, and then I told him about Larry and Greg and Tommy. The boy managed to get my short sexual history out of me. And shyly, he confessed his. And we talked about so much, about how we wanted to leave Rhodes, and how Whitman sucked but it was better than Catholic school.
“Do you think I’m a gentleman?” he said, surprising me.
“What?”
“Do you think I’m a gentleman?”
“Ryan, this is Rhodes, Ohio. Not Savannah. I don’t think there are any gentlemen here.”
“Still,” he said earnestly, “I’d like to be a gentleman when I’m with you.”
“Well then yes,” I told him. “You are. You are a real gentleman.”
It was a little after midnight when he dropped me back home on Melbourne Street. He walked me to the door, and under the porchlight asked if he could kiss me.
“That’s me being too forward, isn’t it?” he said.
“Kiss me, Ryan Laujinesse.”
He smiled, and started toward me, then reared back and I started. He reached into his pocket, and pulled out what I thought was cologne at first.
He sprayed his mouth.
“That’s better,” he assessed. “You didn’t want me all cigaretty.”
So he leaned down and kissed me. And his mouth tasted like iron, and mint, and he smelled like Camels and like Joop cologne, and Lake Erie and a touch of sweat. And when we parted he squeezed my hand and said, “Good night, Cecile.”
When I came in the door, Mama Walker was sitting on the couch, watching Jay Leno.
Looking up she said, “So?”

Ryan stopped by the O’Muils one afternoon. Outside, Jayson and Anne were playing one on one, still in their Saint Antonin’s uniforms. Ryan reached into the back of Catherine’s hatchback and pulled out his basketball. He shot it toward Cecile, who was leaving from visiting Jinny.
She caught it and said, “I know some Black girls can jump. But not this one.”
“Oh, well, then,” Ryan said. “I guess I’ll have to play with myself. By myself I mean,” he said, grinning.
“I know what you mean.”
“You don’t know anything about basketball, do you?” Ryan said.
“Or really even like it. Is that a shock?” Cecile teased him.
“No!” Ryan drew the word out. “It just means that the one thing I talk about all the time and eat, drink and breathe is what I’ll never talk about with you. And that’s cool,” he added before she could construe it as criticism. “It’s nice to be more than just Joe Basketball. I always think about inviting you to a game.”
“To watch you play?”
“Yeah,” Ryan turned a little red. “I guess. You know, before we go out. Instead of showing up after the game.”
“Well, then why don’t you?”
“You just said you don’t like basketball.”
“But I like you.” Then she added. “Dummy.

So for the rest of her junior year and the rest of his senior year, Cecile came to Ryan’s games. They made out a lot and Ryan told her about all the schools he’d chosen.
“I think Colorado’s gonna give me the best scholarship, so I’ll probably go there.”
“It’s so far,” Cecile said.
“It’s not that far.”
“Yes it is,” she disagreed. Then she said, “Are you going to be in the NBA?”
Ryan looked a little flabberghasted and said, “I doubt it.”
“But you’re good.”
“I’m not that good.”
“I think you are.”
“But you don’t know anything about basketball.”
And then he kissed her.

They went to prom that year. By April it was certain that Ryan was going to Colorado and this tinged everything with a sort of autumn sadness. At seventeen it was very difficult to think of the world as going on after Ryan left. Everything was so immediate and the immediate was everlasting. Before he had even left, in her mind, Ryan Laujinesse was gone. But her mind could not see toward vacations or summers or the end of school.
“He is leaving,” she thought. “He is leaving and I have known him since I was twelve years old and haven’t even loved him until just now.
It was natural that they went to Prom together. They triple dated. Jinny and Isaac were the ugly ducklings. Sara and Bobby were the couple most likely to win the crown.
It was the happiest of nights. Efrem shook his head and said, “Hope you have fun.”
“You could go too.”
“No,” Efrem insisted. “I could not.”
“But you're not going to Saint Jude’s prom either.”
“Exactly,” he told his sister. “I hate dances.”
Cecile wanted Efrem to go, and what’s more Mama Walker wanted him to go. She was concerned about his social life. For the mother of a teenager life moves just as slowly as it does for her child, and in her mind it seemed unlikely that Efrem would ever want to hang out with people, would ever be popular and fun. And to miss your own prom...
But Cecile did not miss the prom. She did not get the crown. Bobby and Sara did. But she had Ryan the whole night, and she had Jinny and Isaac. They went to Afterprom but stopped at After-After prom because by then it was about two in the morning and everyone had been danced and feasted and hot tubbed and bowling balled and fooseballed out. The six of them stopped at Wallace’s and ate a little something, and then Isaac drove Jinny back home and Sara and Bobby left as well.
She and Ryan got in the car.
“This has been the best night of my life,” he told her, as they drove down Route 6 and then hit Main.
“The best,” he said again. “Cecile, I’m so glad you came with me. I’m so excited about life.”
The two statements seemed to have no connection and so Cecile asked him what he meant and Ryan said, “Just that… anything can happen. Can’t it? Everything’s possible.”
They came down Aramy and then twisted into the streets of College Heights and parked in front of a little TV show house. They began making out and tasting each other and Cecile was surprised to realize she missed the smell of the cigarette because he hadn't smoked at all tonight.
They kept on with each other, hands in hair and mouths on eyes and throats and Ryan was murmuring, “I wanna be with you so bad… I wanna be with you so bad.”
And Cecile was surprised to find that she was opening to him. She had never really known what desire was before. She wasn't ready for the electric shock when he kissed the palms of her hands, the shock that went from those palms and shot down her spine and into her center.
“I wanna be with you so bad,” his voice was a half whisper and a half moan and then he stopped and said, “We’re not gonna do this in my backseat. Not with you.”
And he took Cecile by the hand and they came out of the car and went around the house and up the back steps and into his room and she began to undo his tie and he took off her shawl. And then she kissed his throat and unbuttoned his shirt. She freed him from it, both of them panting, and then she turned around for him to unzip her dress. The fluidity of the whole process was not interrupted by their kissing each others bodies until they stood naked in this bedroom, and all of Ryan’s large and naked body was there to be touched and stroked and adored. He ran his hands up and down the plains, hills and round, firm places of her flesh and then gently he pushed her to the bed and her legs opened and brought him in. She made free with her hands in the copper hair, and on the plains of his face, kissing his eyes, running her hands down his back to the small of it, to the firm hill of his ass.
He moved in and out, gently at first then with a harder thrusting, and the bed was creaking beneath them. Cecile was meeting him, filling up with him, gasping. Then she made him gasp. He buried his face in her shoulder saying over and over again, “I love you. I love you.” His voice muffled in her throat, his mouth wet, his body wet and warm and heavy.
“I love you. I love you…” His voice was strangled, growing fiercer, more desperate as he hissed, “I love you… I love you! I—”

The fierceness of his declaration grew with the fierceness of his fucking.


When it was over, Ryan lay on his side over Cecile and said, “You’re not mad at me, are you? You’re not sorry about it?”
She pulled him down into her arms, and then went to sleep.

MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a really sweet section about Ryan and Cecile! I hope we get to see a lot more of them together. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Oh, I thought I wasn't posting them tonight, but it looks like I said I was....

 

[ChrisGibson]

DRIVING THE FEW BLOCKS THROUGH College Park, up Amhurst, and onto Aramy, Ryan was glad to be back. He was glad Cecile was now truly, honestly with no questions in the air, his girlfriend and that he could admit that he was driving here, right now, to see his girlfriend.
Cecile was never at the Walker house. She was always here, upstairs over the bookstore. Even when there was presently no Jinny, Cecile was sitting in the kitchen scratching through newspapers. She looked up brightly and smiled at him.
“Baby,” she said and held out her arms to him.
Ryan never noticed what she wore. He noticed her smell of musk and perfume and the cononut oil in her hair, that caramel skin and the wide brown eyes and how she was just a very little shorter than him.
“I knew I’d find you here,” he told her, hugging her.
“I’m looking for something that might pass for a job.” She sat down. “I swear, maybe Isaac had the right idea going to City last year. Or maybe we should all just live here and work downstairs in the bookstore.”
“I’m sure Aaron would have us,” Ryan said, taking out his cigarettes and then putting them away. “My God, it’s a compulsion, and I won’t be able to afford it for long.”
“Not the way they jack cigarettes up these days, you won’t,” Cecile agreed.
Then she said, “To hell with this. I’m tired of the job search. If it comes it comes, and we’re not dying over on Melbourne Street.”
“What’s Ef doing?” Ryan said.
“Whatever the hell he wants, I gather.”
“He’s pretty wise for that.”
“Let’s go out,” Cecile said. “Should I get my jacket? You don’t look like it’s chilly.”
“It’s not. Not really.”
Cecile took in Ryan’s clothes and his shape. She always did, the cargo shorts, the tee shirt under the open dress shirt, the wide sloping shoulders, the red gold hair to his shoulders. He was wearing Birkenstocks.
“I need to go to Wallace’s,” Cecile said.

In the car, Cecile said to Ryan, “We will have to find jobs now that Jayson has laid out our life plan for us.”
“Hum?” said Ryan.
“Apparently we’re moving into an apartment together?”
“What? Oh,” Ryan was so taken aback he ran a red light heading west on Washington Avenue. “That brat!”
“What?” Cecile said.
“He never shuts up.” They zoomed up Washington. “I may have mentioned that sooner or later we might get a place.”
Cecile sat back in the passenger seat of the Cherokee and nodded. “It’s all good,” she said. “Just... next time check with me about my future too.”

In Wallace’s, when Trisha put down their food and Cecile and Ryan stopped talking to thank her, she said, “Well, if you really want a job, you can have mine. I’m quitting in two weeks.”
When Trisha left there was a bright gleam in Cecile’s eye, and then Ryan cocked his head and said, “She wasn’t serious.”
“Why wasn’t she?” Cecile demanded.
“You can’t work at Wallace’s!”
“And apparently I can’t work anywhere else, either,” Cecile looked around the not so busy restaurant at midday. Over Ryan’s shoulders the cars went up and down Route 6. “It wouldn’t be so bad. Hell, it might not be bad at all.”

That night, in the basement of the Laujinesse house, Ryan and Cecile did not make love, they fought.
“Why are we fighting?” Ryan suddenly said in the midst of them arguing about jobs and living arrangements.
Cecile suddenly stopped with a delighted smile and said: “Because we can. That’s why.”


WHEN TWO PEOPLE ARE not commited there is no fighting. When two people are in a love relationship, but with no promises, not even intended promises, everything has to be pretty. It’s almost a relief to look at Ryan who is so beautiful to me with his copper hair, little boy face, green eyes and ivory skin, and shout at him, and then have him shout at me. And then we stop and laugh or we stop and stomp our feet. It’s a relief to know we can let go within the bounds of love and still love each other. That we don’t always have to be pretty.
In those first days after prom all the way up until his graduation and that last summer before he moved to Colorado there was the pressure to be pretty, and I never felt it until it was all over. There were so many words never ever out of my mouth, so many disagreements that never went beyond my brain. Maybe if they would have, maybe if I hadn’t made Ryan ever beautiful and completely perfect, I could have saved our relationship from a lot of unnecessary trouble and I could have saved him from unnecessary pain.
Now that I love him, now that I love anybody I begin to understand what love is. It is a lie that love makes you do strange things. No, there are a hundred thousand things attached to us thar pollute our love and make us do strange things. Need, the greed to be desired and counted beautiful, the need to hold onto someone, the obsession with being obsessed over, the fear that the other will go away, all of these have nothing at all to do with love and they are what ruin everything. Sometimes they ruin things in a big way: Romeo and Juliet plunging daggers into their hearts, Medea killing her kids and flying away on a dragon. But sometimes it’s just the little things, imperceptible things. Words not said, lack of courage to be who you need to be, who the other needs you to be. Either way it will kill a relationship, passively or aggressively.
I savor telling Ryan, “You’re a damn fool! I’m taking the job at Wallace’s.”
I remember how both of us confessed the people in our past, wishing we had waited a little longer for sex. I remember how we both talked about the fact that we’d only experienced what we were experiencing now with each other, how helpless and strange the lovemaking was between us, so totally powerful and almost beyond out control, how strange the connection between us. We were in the first stages of love, mistaking them for the last. It was good to let someone hold you and be unguarded, to be held by a man, and want to hold him to you.
And then he was in Colorado and, hell I might as well have been a dried up virgin. I called and wrote and he called and wrote back, and then he only called and he wasn’t saying much of anything, but “I’m really busy, Cile, I gotta go.”
When Ryan came back for Thanksgiving everything was strained and the sex was really bad and he knew it. And when he came back for Christmas things were terrible just because they were bland and static.
When he was going back to Colorado after New Year I came to his house and just said, flatly, “It’s over, isn’t?”
He looked at me like he wanted to say something. His mouth was a little open. In that moment I was almost sure he was cheating on me and had been for some time. Of course he would. He was out there in Colorado and I was at Whitman High School in Rhodes, Ohio.
I think he did say something, but I don’t remember. I remember leaving the house and it being over and me anesthetizing my heart because it felt so bad. I didn’t say anything to Efrem because he would make me be real, just because of who he was. And if I didn’t become real, I couldn’t cry.
Ryan Jonathan Laujinesse, I love you so much, and that was so long ago, and when I think about it I can see your face looking shocked that New Year. You’re standing at the door hearing me tell you what you don’t have the heart to tell me. And I’m so angry at you. It’s in the past but I’m mad as hell with you.

It is this anger I put into the argument tonight. We’re done. Ryan gets up in his boxers and changes the CD. Then he climbs into the pallet and wraps his arms around me. The banjo starts strumming. Ryan loves Bluegrass and country and yes, the shit has rubbed off onto me too over the years. Allison Krauss is singing:

I know I’ll be lonesome
that brings about a little fear
I’ll be sad and I’ll be blue
I have given the best of me
When I forgot to say to you
What you forgot to say to me

So long! So wrong!

Suddenly the past is bright in my mind and I struggle out of Ryan’s grip and slug him in his bicep.
“Ow! Shit!” he shouts. “What was that...?”
Then his eyes narrow and he looks like an injured dog as he burrows back into the covers.
“You’re remembering something that happened a long time ago… I guess I deserved it.”
He rubs his arm.


TOMORROW NIGHT WE WRAP UP THIS SECTION OF COLOSSUS OF RHODES

 

[CharmedFan28]

Ryan and Cecile are a good match I think. I hope they can stay together. I don't have much else to say other then I really enjoyed this section and I look forward to the wrap up tomorrow! I hope you are having a nice week!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I am having a very nice week, and tomorrow we will wrap up our lovers and sort of see how they end up, but of course there is plenty more to come.

 

[ChrisGibson]

THE CONCLUSION OF GHOST STORIES: CECILE TURNER

JINNY IS ON ONE SIDE OF ME and Sara is on the other.
“Did you hear what he just said?” Trisha says to us.
I nod.
We have been following her around. They call it shadowing, which makes me feel like a ghost. This is part of my ghost story.
Trish asks me: “What did he order?”
I try to rattle it off, Trisha reviews the pad and shakes her head.
“Not even close.”
“Well, damnit, I’ll have the notepad to write it down.” I say.
Trisha nods.
“Sara, follow me,” she tells her.
We are, depending upon how you define fortune, fortunate because they are hiring, Trisha is leaving just as they need more waitresses. Sara wants a little money in her pocket and Jinny—out of guilt I guess—decides she’s going to be a waitress too.
What we see is Sara with a notepad trying to write down what the men at the booth we usually sit at are saying and she comes back looking like hell.
“It’s no big deal,” Trisha says. “Just have to work on your shorthand.”
“I don’t know shit about shorthand.”
“That could be a problem,” Jinny notes.
“You can make it up,” Trisha says. “For yourself. You just have to make it so the cooks know what it is. And don’t forget to smile.”
“I thought this was going to be so easy,” Jinny murmured.
“It ain’t bad,” Trisha says, “but it might not be something you’d want to keep for a lifetime. Jinny, go over there and work with the homos who just came in.”
“How do you know?” Jinny starts.
Trisha says, knowingly, “I know. Go take their order. They’ll either be really sweet or really bitchy. And Cile, come this way—”
As Jinny is going to her first assignment Trisha is interrupted by the entrance of Efrem.
“What are you—” he starts and then looks at Jinny taking orders. “What are either of you doing here?”
“Working,” I say.
Jinny comes back excited it. Sara infuriated.
“As stereotype would have it the gays are in the know about theatre and there are auditions on Monday for Camelot.”
“What? Do we get paid?”
“Um hum,” Jinny says. “Oh, Cile, I love theatre, but not for free.”
“Good God.”
Trisha notes: “It beats Wallace’s.”
“Saved in the nick of time,” Efrem murmurs to me.
“I’m not saying we won’t work here,” Jinny says. “I’m just saying we might not have to stay.”
Trisha shakes her head before speaking:
“No one should stay at Wallace’s.”
“Trish, what are you gon do after you quit?” I ask her.
“Honey,” she says, “I don’t know, and to tell you truth, I don’t give a damn.”

“SO WHAT’S UP?” EFREM DEMANDED after allowing his sister into his room.
“The play,” she said. “At the Rhodes Civic. I thought you might try out too. If you’re not showed out. I know you don’t get the bug like we do.”
“I’m usually only good for one show a year,” Efrem began. “But this time… Yes. I’ll do it.”
“What?”
“I said yes.”
“You never say yes!” she exclaimed.
“Today I say yes. At graduation all of us got our asses tossed out into the world, scrambling for some occupation and if this is the first one to come along… I think we’re all extremely lucky.”
Cecile kissed him quickly and said, “That’s good. That’s real good. If you’d said no… I would have gone on. Yes… But… it’s so much better you said yes!”
“I think so,” Efrem agreed. “Now listen, sis. I reckon if we don’t sell out, don’t give up, and do what we love it’ll all be okay. But money’s gonna be a little tight for a little while, and we might not have everything we want all the time. Right away. I think we’re lucky really, most people just drift and do whatever. Drifting and whatevering is something neither one of us is able to do.
“We really only need what we need. If that makes sense. I mean, I need what pays my way and gets me the expenses I want—which isn’t much. Isaac’s got Weavers. Jinny does too. I spend about fifty dollars a month. Fancy that, only needing to make fifty dollars a month. Frees the hell out of a man, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, Ef.”
“There’s you, though. You don’t spend like water, but you spend. And then if you get a place with Ryan—”
“What!”
“I have ears.”
“But everybody seems to know about this but me. And I don’t know if I want to keep house with Ryan Laujinesse.”
“Well, you’ve been fucking him for years.” Efrem went on calmly. “You got a cigarette?”
Mrs. Walker stopped at the open door as Cecile was reaching into her purse and said, “Efrem will you—?”
“Already did, Mama.”
“But did you—?”
“Yesterday evening, like you asked me to.”
“Well as long as—”
“I will.” he said, and then she nodded and was gone.
“Amazing,” Cecile said. “Mind reader.”
“It’s not magic,” Efrem told his sister as she handed him a cigarette. “Mama’s just Mama. Shut the door, Cile.”
Cecile did and she lit Efrem’s cigarette first.
They sat on the edge of the bed together, smoking, and then she said, “Oh Efrem, you’re my oldest friend. I forget that sometimes because...”
“I’m also your brother.”
“Yes. I forget that you know me better than anyone else.”
“And you know me back.”
Cecile gave her brother a look, looked at his brown eyes through his brass rimmed glasses.
“Sometimes I wonder about that,” she said. “I get scared. Of everything. I am terrified of what I know has to happen. I’m terrified of change. I’m scared as hell that things will change so much they won’t even be what they are, and everything that’s even a little beautiful will go.”
Efrem sat and smoked and sat and smoked until the cigarette was gone and then he threw an arm over Cecile’s shoulder saying, “Rivers and clouds and trees even... are all beautiful, ten times more beautiful than paintings of ‘em. Cause they change. Friendship’s beautiful. Think of when I first knew you and when we first knew everybody and how nothing is the same. But everything is exactly how it is. So don’t you be afraid. You go on and be a river and you flow where you have to, into the brooks and crags and to the sea even if you have to. Don’t worry. The river’s still the river.
“I know it sounds like some Zen bullshit,” he acknowledged. “But it’s still true.”
“Efrem, nothing scares you,” Cecile told him.
He gave her a winning look that, for a moment, reminded Cecile that he was incredibly handsome.
“I thought you said you knew me. Why, I think I may even be a little afraid right now.”
But he was smiling.

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great conclusion to this part of the story! Efrem has always been one of my favourite Rhodes characters and this portion has reinforced that. Excellent writing and I look forward to revisiting this world whenever you decide to go back to it!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Ah, yes. We will return to this world soon enough. But there are a few other things we will have to do first. Rest assured, we will certainly return to Efrem and everyone else in due time.

 

[ChrisGibson]

INTERLUDE​

RYAN

It is so seldom a guy gets asked about his first time. Even if he wants to talk about it. There are no words to describe the situation. Not accurately. You spin and spin around the subject without ever getting there. I remember Jenny Mack, and how I always thought that was a dumb name. She hadn’t gone to Saint Antonin’s with us, but she hung out with Amanda and all of them, cheerleading when we were all Freshmen.

I wasn’t dating her, not exactly. We were over at her house, fooling around watching something.
And then we started making out. It wasn’t gentle. It was rough and fumbling, and I think I knew I was going to get laid today. I was just really sure that it should happen, that there wasn’t any reason it shouldn’t happen right here and right now with Jenny Mack. In my mind she still has the Little Flower uniform on, the green plaid skirt, white shirt. But maybe I’m making that up. I know I had my uniform on and there were sharp fast movements, and then I was pulling my pants down and she was helping and it’s just now that I realize as I’m writing this that I wasn’t her first. She kind of knew what she was doing.
We went to the bathroom. There she guided me. I put her up on the sink. She opened for me. I smelled something. It was like iron. It was like milk, old milk. Not sour milk, just room temperature milk, and I planted my legs apart and shrugged off my jacket, the blue blazer and my underwear fell till it stopped in the middle of my thighs. The pants went to my calves. Then she pulled me in. She pulled me in and I was surprised by how real it was. Not like doing it to yourself. Not fingers and a hand pumping on you. I’d been sucked off once. I remember it now. I was fast. It was eighth grade recess, the coatroom. She was saying, “Quick, don’t tell anyone.”
And then she was sucking my dick.

It wasn’t even quite like that, being inside of this place, real and living and then there was the noise she made when I came in.
And then we were doing it. I was slow at first, afraid.
She said, “Quick, before my mom comes home.”

And then we were doing it quick and hard and I was afraid because she made a noise like she was hurt everytime I hit her, and then she twisted around on my dick in a way that made my breath catch, and we were both doing it and doing it hard and before she shouted I got surprised the way I always did, too quick, and I lifted off the balls of my feet and felt it shooting and shooting out of me.

“Pull out!” she said, desperately. But I couldn’t. My arms were gripped tight around her, and it’s like as I was coming I couldn’t get out of her. I was still humping her while I came and she whimpered.
That was it, the first time. I was weak and had a hard time staying on my feet when it was over.

“You better not have gotten me pregnant, Ryan Laujinesse,” she was saying as I pulled my pants back up.
I don’t know what I said back to her.
I didn’t tell anyone about it right then. I think I told Kevin a little while later, but even then I didn’t talk about it much. It hadn’t been what it was supposed to be.
I hadn’t thought of it much, but what sex was supposed to be was this thing that lifted you up and changed you. It was the deepest, most important thing you could do. It made a guy a guy. But with me it took a shorter time for it to happen than it did for me to write about it, and I wasn’t in control or powerful. I felt like I was being swept up into something that caught you by surprise.

I felt a little cheated.
But I kept this to myself too.



THIS IS THE END OF PART ONE OF COLOSSUS OF RHODES. BUT COLOSSUS OF RHODES WILL RETURN

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a very interesting interlude! I am enjoying getting to know Ryan better and I look forward to whenever Rhodes returns.

 

[ChrisGibson]

PART

TWO



What Friends Do

Ryan Laujinesse​

Maybe I should have been a writer, but I never even thought it was a possibility until now. That was Jayson’s thing, his gift. Even when he was just a little kid, I was in awe of it. So I didn’t do it even when I was an English major, even when my professors said I was good at turning a phrase. And now I do it to put my mind in order. It feels so good. I remember the few times I did drugs. Fun, but scary. I remember the folks that were always getting high, who needed it, who shot stuff up, and there were lots of them. That’s how it feels for me right now when I’m scratching out words in my journal or clicking away at the keyboard. I feel like I can just write and write, even if it’s not about anything important. And I’ve got this faith that it’ll all turn into something important before I’m done.

I don’t know what the fuck happened.
I know what I was supposed to be. But only vaguely. I know what my options were. My parents told me. Then my teachers and everyone around me. I never really thought about it. The story of Ryan Laujinesse: I liked sports a lot, but it appeared that I was going to be good at two things: football and basketball. All guys like sports, or think they do or think they should. But everyone isn’t good. Everyone isn’t good enough to get a scholarship. Everyone isn’t good enough to be a basketball star. And so I knew I was that. I knew I was real good. Really good. And then I knew I was smart. My first two years at Saint Jude you had to be smart . It wasn’t enough just to be an athlete. I was on honor roll, and not second honors, but first. So I knew I was going to go to a good school. I knew a lot of things about where I would go after high school. It was all paved out. Everything happened right on time. Total smooth sailing. Sure, there were a few bumps along the way, but nothing real.
Not until now. I am coming through my first bump.
“Do you want to talk to me?” Cile asks.
I tell her no. She doesn’t understand. She’s doing the whole shrug thing, the ‘Suit yourself,’ expression. She’s so Blacker than thou sometimes. But I know her and Efrem now. They may be the only two Black people I know, but I know them and she’s upset when I won’t talk to her. She thinks I’m keeping something back. We fight.
“Goddamn it, I give you everything. Almost everything. If I keep something to myself is there anything wrong with that?”
I don’t mean to shout, and she doesn’t shout back. I hate that. It’s the worst when Cecile won’t shout back. I hate yelling. I hate saying mean things. I hate when I don’t know how I feel. Like, sometimes I am constricted and frightened by how close I feel to her. All around me, can’t get away from her. Not that she’s cloying. No, but we are cloying. I mean we are so close. It’s the closeness I’ve always wanted, the closeness I’ve felt with her and maybe two other people. It’s like nothing separates us sometimes. It makes me panic. I didn’t know it was possible to feel that way.
So many things fly through my head, and I want to tell a story. I want to tell my story. The only way I know how to tell it is in order, but order won’t come. I feel like if I don’t tell it, if I can’t tell where I’ve been I won’t have any fucking clue where I’m going.



I am looking for the happy time in my life but there doesn’t seem to have been one.
It took me five years to graduate from the University of Colorado. That was more than enough time to get my degree in English and Engineering—what the fuck? Right?—and decide what I wanted from the world. Now it is a few days to the Big Day, and I am terrified. Fucking terrified.
I am not a writer. I have never been a writer. I like other people's writings, and I was late to that. I was in college, a sophomore before I realized I liked books. I was reading Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory and that did it for me for some reason. I don’t know why.
Then it was the other books. All the Thomas Mann and Herman Hesse and shit I could never read again, probably. Here I was with all these fucking feelings and here someone had found a way to speak exactly what was going on in me. I felt like a bottle had been opened. I mean a Coke bottle, or a champagne bottle. Even though I don’t really like champagne.
Anyway…
So I guess that was the happy time.
Not at parties, not so much at clubs, not messing with girls. Basketball used to be the happy time. I won’t lie; a basketball scholarship was a happy time. Being popular was a happy time. Being liked was a happy time. But… there must be something else I’m talking about, something deeper than happy.
I think when I’m talking about a happy time I’m thinking of something that, when I feel bad, when I am afraid, I can take it out and look at it and remembering it, feeling it, I’ll know that everything will be alright, that it all counts for something. That’s the deep happiness, and that happiness only came when I was reading.
I need that happiness now, and something told me the way to… not get it back, but to make up for it, to compensate, was to write, and not read this time around.

I am a twenty-three year old graduate. I feel like twenty-three years was certainly long enough to come out with a game plan, and I’ve got no plan.

I feel a little bit like a failure.
I feel old.

I grow old
I grow old
I shall wear my trousers rolled

Gotta love the Prufrock.


If… If…
If I had thought about this when I first got scared, when the first grain of fear was in me. First kernel. See, I don’t know if it’s a grain or a kernel, and I’m turning into a self conscious writer, someone who says, “the sky was grey, pewter, steely. It was stormy.”

But last year, when I lay in my own bed, back home in Ohio with someone sleeping beside me, I did feel alone. And I did feel a kernel of something...
I knew I was meant for finer things than the NBA. Or maybe I knew I couldn’t make the NBA. Or maybe I just didn’t want to. I don’t know. But I knew from early on that I would just be playing to get myself through school. And then I didn’t even play past my junior year Keep in mind I stayed in school for five years. I really got into my studies. And then I think I just got afraid of what came next. Everything had been prepared for me. I’d had the best from kindergarten—before that we had luxury preschool—all the way through K-8 at Saint Antonin’s and then Saint Jude.

Saint Jude... I remember one day when I was fifteen the priests had a conference in one of the classrooms. A bunch of us filled the room while Father O’Neill drew up some charts on the chalk board that amounted to this: even the dumbest fuckers in this classroom were in the top thirty percent of the students in the city, and we would all go on to great colleges.
But what comes after the great college? What is the world we inherit? What’s it for? In the end the great college exists to get us into a job I don’t want.
I’ve arrived at the end of a fucked up little roller coaster Gus and Catherine Laujinesse put me on twenty years ago. I’ve come to the end of the ride and I am so afraid. I don’t know what to do.

I feel myself breaking down.

I hear her now because I know her now. She doesn’t say anything, but it’s all through her head as we ride to the beach and then walk across the sand. Out of all the men in the world, out of all the boys I’ve know, why this moody white boy? Are all men this difficult? Could I get inside a different one? Why won’t he stop moping?
Girls don’t mope. Or women. That’s one thing. They just sort of do what they have to do. It’s like they always know, and they never cry over spilled milk. Hell, women never even spill the milk. Guys? We spill it and then smile like we didn’t and grin all nervous and shit. We are coming to the rock where I kissed her for the first time. It was night then. It is bright day now. I think I was eighteen. In my mind I was eighteen which would make her seventeen. I was so afraid to kiss her.
“I’m scared.”
“What?” Cecile turns to me.
“I am scared,” I repeat. “I... I don’t know what the fuck to do, Cile. I don’t know how to move on. I don’t...”
I must look really lost. I feel lost, like I’m blacking out, not looking at anything. I can feel her hands over mine, but it’s like there’s something between me, the real me and my body. I’m removed from all of this.
“I’ve never known you to be afraid of anything... Well, now that’s not true,” she says, suddenly. “I’ve never known you to confess to being afraid of anything.”
“I’m afraid everyday. I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t.”
“Last time since you came home from school?”
“Last time ever.”

I live with fear. That’s a good place to begin. I hadn’t thought of it until recently. I remember when I was real little, before Jayson was born I used to sleep in my room and I would see shadows crawling all along the walls. When I shut my eyes, sometimes I can still see them like whales or sea monsters swimming. I can even see them blinking at me. Just like I could back then. Everything was alive in that room, the desk lamps, the pointed peaks of chairs, the umbrellas left by my parents. Everything was alive and everything hated me.
But I never cried about it. I never told anyone. It was like I knew I couldn’t. I knew my mom wasn’t enough. For some reason I knew, or thought I knew, that Dad wouldn’t care. So I just tensed up everything before I went to bed, and all night I would lie there just waiting for the monsters to get me. I thought if I was still and really quiet then they would forget. I remember I went to sleep about three times before bed because I just knew that if I crawled out of bed in the night the monsters would get me. Once I forgot to go to the bathroom before I went to sleep, and my bladder hurt so bad when I woke in the middle of the night I just lay there in pain holding it in until early morning when I peed all through the sheets. Silently, Mom took the sheets off the bed and Dad said, “Pissing the bed’s for sissies, Ry.”

When I was ten, in my mean phase, and did as much stuff as I could get away with doing to a five year old, I remember waking up to hear Jayson scream in his new room. He’d just been moved out of my room where he’d slept since he was a baby, and when I got to the room mom was cradling him and shushing him
Dad was saying, “Jayson, knock this stuff off. There’s no monster. Be a man. Don’t be a pussy.”
I was ten years old and standing there in my pajamas. I filed that away. I was so glad I’d never said anything to him. I went back to my room and sat on my bed, listening for my parents’ footsteps, waiting to hear that they’d left my brother’s room. When they had I pushed open the door and whispered to him.
“Jay!”
I clicked on the light and sat by the bed. He looked so scared and I felt so bad. I knew that I was part of what scared him.
“I heard you saw a monster.”
“Dad said—”
I’d had enough of what Dad said.
“Did you know that I used to see monsters when I was five? I was so scared they were gonna get me that I used to not go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. But they went away.”
“Whaddid you do?”
I hadn’t thought this out.
“I...” Aunt Maureen had given me a crucifix for my first Communion, and while I didn’t want to wear Jesus, I discovered he slipped off and you could put other things on the chain. Suzie Colhan was my girlfriend in the fourth grade, and she gave me her mood ring. I wore it until it turned permanently grey, and then put it on the necklace. Now I slid it off and said:
“This is a magic ring—”
“How’d you get it?”
“A wizard gave it to me.”
“Really?”
Thank God Jay wasn’t much of a skeptic at that age.
“Really,” I told him.
“And if you wear it, it will make all the bad monsters go away. See?”
I put it around Jay’s neck, and then said, “Okay now. I’m going to go outside the door, alright? I’ll be right outside the door. You cross the room and come to me.”
Jayson looked at me, doubtful.
‘I promise,” I told him.
I went out of the room waiting on the other side of the door. It seemed like he would never come. And then I heard my brother’s hand on the doorknob, and I opened it and he was smiling.
“It works!”
“See,” I told him, coming back into the darkness of his room.
Jayson was quiet.
“What, Sport?”
“I believe you,” Jayson said. “But... do you think you could stay with me. Just tonight.”
I sighed again. I thought we were both going to grow up when we got our own rooms, and here my five year old baby brother wanted me to come and sleep in his bed. But then I wanted to. There wasn’t a lot of tenderness in my heart when I was ten, but suddenly it was there for Jay. I played with his hair and said, “I’ll be right back.”
I felt really good that night. Proud too. I went into my room. I didn’t need magic rings or wizards. I had gotten rid of all the monsters and the shadows here. I got pillows and a blanket and then returned to Jayson, settling in the bed beside him, and he was asleep in two minutes. Then I was alone and he was snoring, and I felt something... Not right. I couldn’t understand.
I was afraid.
I didn’t know why back then.
I do now.
I hadn’t gotten rid of the monsters. I’d just learned to live with them. And now they weren’t just in my room.
They were in my life.

A WEEKEND PORTION TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an interesting portion from Ryan's point of view. I hope he can find some happiness in some way soon. He seems to be on a bit of a self destructive path at the moment. Great writing and I look forward to the weekend portion!

 

[ChrisGibson]

We will see what happens with Ryan, but just wait my dear friend, there is plenty more self destruction to come. Or, I will put this question to you" is it self destruction? How? Is there a better word for what is happening to him? Think on it and get back to me.

 

[CharmedFan28]

Maybe self discovery? He seems to be figuring out who he is.

 

[ChrisGibson]

I think so too, but there may be a little self destruction involved.

 

[ChrisGibson]

“OKAY,” SAID JINNY. “THERE are those three engineering companies hiring, and I think Uncle Gus can get you in with one. And then there is the place Uncle Gus is at. They’ll take you.”
“I don’t want to work at an engineering company.”
“Well, then you could probably teach at Saint Antonin’s come September.”
“I don’t want to teach.”
“Well, then there’s grad school. I think it’s too late to apply to Mc.Cleiss, but City of Rhodes probably takes applications till—”
“Stop it!” Ryan shouted. “Stop it. Just knock it off already. You sound just like Mom.”
They were looking at him. In the Weaver’s apartment, he was banging his fists on the kitchen table.
“I don’t want to do any of that. I don’t want it, I don’t want it.”
Cecile looked at him, waiting for him to continue. Jinny thought of reaching out to touch him, and then thought better of it.
Jinny said quietly. “Well, then what do you want to do, Ryan?”
“Do?” he looked at her, pained. “Do. I have been doing all my life. I have been doing since I was four years old. All I’ve done is do. I look around and everyone is doing and doing and doing and it makes me feel like I’m going to throw up. I wake up every morning... terrified, because even at six a.m. I feel like... I haven’t done anything. I’m not doing enough. It’s not enough. I’m sick of doing. I don’t want to do anything. I just want to stop. I’m sick of doing.”

_______________


All day Ryan can tell that Isaac wants to say something. After knowing someone for a decade, you can tell things. So finally, when they’re at the Red Owl and Cecile and Jinny have gone to the restroom, and when Efrem has gone to order food, Ryan says, “What’s up?” and instantly realizes Efrem didn’t go to order food at all. He got up to leave them alone.
Isaac looks unsure, and the one thing Isaac Weaver has never been unsure.
He says at last, “What you said... earlier?’
“Yeah?”
“Well,” Isaac scratches his chin, trying to go on. “My mom, she... Got tired of doing. She didn’t want to do anything either. She said all of that stuff, and--”
“Oh, shit, Isaac. No,” Ryan reaches across and grabs his friend’s shoulder. “No, that’s not what... I’m not going to kill myself.”
Isaac looks visibly, but not completely relieved.
“I don’t want to die,” Ryan insists. “I promise. You believe in God, right?”
“Well, yeah,” Isaac says, as if it’s a matter of course.
Ryan nods.
“A few months before last Thanksgiving there was this party, right?”
“Did you see God?”
“There was so much shit floating around that party I’m sure several people saw God. But not me. It went on all night like a lot of parties. But this time I kind of distanced myself. I do that sometimes. I just can’t get into it. When the night is more than half over I feel like none of it’s real.
“So I left the party. I thought about driving, but then I thought I’d better not. I just walked. I needed to walk, and I kept walking and walking until I realized it wasn’t night anymore. So I sat down.
“I was sitting on this rock under this evergreen awhile and then, suddenly, the sun burst over the mountains. The whole world was filled with light, Isaac, and I realized that I’d never seen any of it. I had never looked at the world before and suddenly I was looking at it and the sky was so clear and the mountains were so beautiful. And.… I felt like none of it meant anything. None of my life, I mean. Those parties and school and all the stuff I thought I was supposed to do It’s like it didn’t mean anything. And God was somewhere in that. In the sunrise, in what I was seeing for the first time, what I’d never seen before.
“I think,” Ryan said, “God must not be like Catholic school God or any God you hear about. You know? A God that’s concerned with you being a Republican or you being Born Again, or with bombing buildings or getting promised lands. But something real, something true was with me that morning. It touched me, Isaac, and this was the first time it had ever touched me. Or that I ever let it.
“All of my life I have gone from thing to thing just doing stuff to fill the time, and now everybody wants me to keep on doing it. But I’m sick of just doing stuff, Isaac. I feel like I’ve been dead my whole life.
“No, Isaac… I don’t want to die.”
Isaac said: “You want to live.”
“Yes. Only… I don’t know how. I need to know.”


“JAY, COME HERE A SECOND.”
“I can’t I’m going to see Scooter.”
“Just a sec.”
Jayson sighs loudly, and turns around to come into the kitchen where Ryan is smoking.
“What?”
Ryan raises his eyebrow and then says, “Nevermind.”
Jayson opens his mouth to say something, turns around and walks out of the kitchen, and then he comes back and says, “I’m sorry, Ry. What?”
“I was just thinking about... Remember when you were five and you were afraid of the monsters in your room?”
“No,” Jayson says, immediately hostile again. And then: “Wait… I do remember that.”
He is quiet for a second. He smiles across the room at his brother.
“And you stayed with me that night. You gave me that ring and told me it was magic. I remember that. Hey, hold on.”
Ryan cocks his head. “Alright.”
Jayson runs upstairs and a few minutes later comes back with the necklace dangling from his hands.
“It’s smaller than I remember,” Jayson says, playing with the old, grey mood ring, the silver chain.
“Yeah, me too.”
“I wish I had a wizard or a magic ring to get me through life now.”
Ryan took the ring and the necklace from his brother’s hands, turning the chain through his fingers, watching the sun on it.
“When did we stop believing something like this was magic?”
“When we stopped believing in monsters,” Jayson said. “Only, I still believe in the monsters. They’re on the news everyday. So I guess around the same time I stopped believing in God. Only, I don’t think I ever believed in God.”
“Never?”
His little brother has never seen him shocked.
“I guess I just never really thought about it. Him. You know?”
Ryan nodded.
“You do?”
Ryan nods.
“Not religious like,” he elaborated. “Just… I guess I do.”
Neither one of them says anything. Ryan hands the necklace back to his brother, who surprises him by slipping it around his neck.
“I think,” Jayson pulling the necklace into his eyeview, looking at the ring as best he can, because it scarcely stretches out past his neck, “that there is still a little magic in here after all.”
“Go to Scooters.”
“Oh, yeah,” Jayson says softly. He has forgotten he was going anywhere. He heads out the door.
“Ey, Ryan, you gonna be around tonight?”
“Um, I guess.”
“Alright,” Jayson says, and closes the door behind him.



TOMORROW NIGHT, MORE COLOSSUS....

 

[CharmedFan28]

I am sad Ryan doesn't know how he is going to live and what he is going to do in life but I am also very glad that he isn't going to kill or hurt himself physically. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow night! I hope you are having a nice night.

 

[ChrisGibson]

RYAN


Sara is leaving the Walkers as I’m coming in.
“How are you?”
“Good,” I say.
“That’s good. School’s all finished?”
‘Yeah, it took long enough.”
“I know. I just started at City. I thought I’d be so excited, but... I can’t wait till it’s done. I want Christopher to see his mother do more than work at Mc.Donalds.”
“Yeah,” then I add, because I’ve already said, yeah, “That’ll be good. I heard somewhere about this attorney general and she had her first baby when she was sixteen. She had dropped out of school, right? But she went back then onto college and got her doctorate and everything. Now she’s important.”
“Where is she?”
I shrug, “I don’t really know. I just heard about her on the news.”
“Well, right now I just want to get my associates, and we can worry about the bachelors and doctorate later. I don’t even know how long it takes to get a doctorate.”
“About five years.”
Sara’s eyes fly wide open. She’s cute just like she was when we were little kids back at Saint Antonin’s.
“I just talked to Kevin the other day.”
“Nelson?”
“Yeah,” Sara says. “I told him you were back in town.”
“I haven’t talked to him in like... over a year.”
“You guys used to be best friends.”
“Yeah.”
“He said give him a ring or something.”
“You have his number?”
“No,” Sara says. This irks me a little and reminds me why we didn’t stay together. “But,” she continues, “he’s working at the Kroger up on Route 6.”
“Really?”
“Um hum.”
We are quiet now. There have been a series of awkward pauses since I came back here.
“Well,” she says, “I gotta go. Mom’s got Christopher. She has to go to work.”
“Yeah,” I say, and smile. “Nice to see you Sara.”

And it was nice, but it wasn’t great. Or easy. In fact, as I come into the house I think that I could have happily avoided it. But I can’t avoid seeing Sara because she is one of Cecile’s best friends. And I grew up with her. Me and Cile and Jinny, and Ef. To some extent Isaac and Kevin, we all grew up together, and as much as I feel uncomfortable around Sara I’d feel even worse if she wasn’t around at all. Does that make any sense? There are some people who, even if you would never call them up on the phone or hang out with them, you just want them around. Even if their being around is a little uncomfortable, they’re a part of you. A professor I had once said it’s just because we like the scenery, but I think that’s cynical. I think there’s something more to it.
Sara was my girlfriend. Not for long, just long enough for us to have sex a few times. Even if it’s just once that never makes relations with a person any easier. Everytime I see her in the back of my head I have the idea that she’s thinking about those nights. I can still remember. There is a lot about that time I still remember.
“Cile, did you know Kevin Nelson was working at Kroger?”
She crosses her legs over the table and says, “Did you know that if I don’t hear from these people at the theatre and get hired, I will be too?”
“Sara said he wanted me to call, but he didn’t give a number.”
“Well, if you know he’s at Kroger why don’t you just drop in and see him?”
“I can’t just do that?”
“Why not?”
“You just don’t drop into someone’s place of employment, Cile, and say, ‘Hey, remember me, I was your best friend, but we fell out of contact a year and a half ago.’ ”
“Efrem would.”
“No doubt, but I’m not Efrem.”
“You make it sound like you’re going down to some important office or something,” she said.
“You don’t know that he doesn’t have an office.”
“I do know that he’s a bag boy.”
“How?”
“Sara told me.”

Apropos to nothing, I wonder if they both talk about what I’m like in bed.

“You’re a real freak, you know that? You’re just like a girl? Did you check your nails before we left?” Jay says.
“How about I reach over and push you the fuck out of this vehicle and onto the road?” I say as we hang a left turn onto Route 6 and Jayson grips the backseat, shouting, “If you’re trying to kill me, just use a gun next time.”
“You took me off of my concentration!”
We swerve into the parking lot.
Jayson rolls his eyes and mutters, “You’ve got a license while I don’t?”
“And you never will if you keep this up, cause I’ll never let you borrow my car for the exam.”
“La la la la,” he impersonates me in a high, nasty voice.
“You’re such a little bitch!”
“Ouch,” he rubs his arm. “That hurt.”
“It was supposed to.”
We park in a space marked Expectant Mother with a stork flying across a little blue sign.
“You’re not an expectant mother,” Jayson says.
“Who says I’m not?”
“You’re an expectant motherfucker.”
I punch him again.
He hits me back this time in the shoulder. I stare at him.
“That fucking hurt.”
“It was supposed to,” he mimics back.
I’m seriously debating slapping him in the back of the head, but my bicep hurts so bad right now that I’m a little proud of his punch.
“I didn’t know you had it in you. That’s a powerful punch.”
“Yeah, well,” my shorter, thinner brother says, hopping onto the curb and into the store, “You’re still a bitch.”
The Kroger is larger than I remember. It’s crowded and I look up and down the aisles and am surprised to see Kevin bagging groceries. Immediately I’m more nervous than I should be.
At my side Jayson says, “All joking aside, I’d be nervous too if I hadn’t talked to one of my friends in almost two years.”
And then he says, “But, all joking aside again, neither one of us has that many friends, so you should probably go up and say something.”
I do. I take a deep breath and pull some testosterone up from my balls. I sort of march up to his aisle as if this is the most natural thing in the world and say in a big voice:
“Kevin Nelson!”
He turns around.
Kevin is one of the few guys as tall as me. We played basketball together in high school, but he didn’t go onto college. His face lights up and I am relieved.
“Ryan! Shit!”
And then he puts a hand over his mouth and keeps on bagging. He has one finger lifted to tell me, “Wait,” and he’s bagging this old man’s groceries. He says, “Would you like a drive up?” And when the old man says, no, Kevin says have a good day, and waits for the food to come down the conveyer belt from the next customer.
“Sara told me you were here,” I say.
His face changes. It’s even happier.
“So you came to see me?”
“Yeah, man. I was wondering where you were.”
This is half true. I really did have no idea where he was, but that’s only been in the last six months. In the year and a half before that I knew exactly where he was.
“I’m living out in Dennis,” Kevin says.
Cutting to the chase as usual he adds, “I get off of work at six. What’s shaking with you?”
“Nothing much.”
“Red Owl still open?”
‘Still open, still the worst drinks in town.”
“Alright then, I’ll see you at about six-thirty. No—six-forty five. I want to get out of these clothes.”
He’s wearing khakis, a white shirt and a blue apron, the standard Kroger uniform. He turns to the new woman whose groceries he’s just bagged and says: “Would you like a drive up? No, ma’am? Alright. Have a good day. Thank you for shopping at Kroger.”
He winks at me. “See you at six-forty-five, Lojjie!”

WE WILL CONTINUE WITH THESE FRIENDS ON MONDAY

 

[CharmedFan28]

It was interesting to read about some of the characters at their work. I am enjoying this story. Great writing and I look forward to more in a few days! Have a great Sunday!