This was not the first trip I had made to south-east Florida. Hell, since I had been transferred here from California, I was making it every week because the company was rapidly expanding in the region. I didn't mind the drive from Tampa. It was a few hours but it gave me time to think and I knew it by heart anyway. As usual, the sun was shining and the sky...
*Author's note: Main characters are 18+. This is a standalone story that features characters from 'Bait a Hook' and 'Plotting a Course.' I hope that you enjoy it. Please comment and let me know. Thanks for reading!* ***** Prologue I grumbled as I rolled over to silence the annoying, shrill sound that escaped the alarm clock. The screen flashed 5:33 AM a...
I was sitting at a small table in the corner of the cocktail lounge trying to relax and analyze what I had just heard and figure out what I was going to do for an income now that I was unemployed. I was angry and mystified. I had spent the last 2 days, in a hotel conference room, listening to hostile strangers tell me they had just bought the defense contr...
Sometimes I wonder what the rest of my life might have been like if a road crew hadn't been tearing up a Central City street on that morning in June several years ago. Because of the project, I was detoured around a block of a residential subdivision I hadn't been in for many years. That's when I saw the intersection of Mayflower Street with Pilgrim Road. M...
[Parts 01 and 02 should be read first] Chapter XXIV Arturo's monthly dinner One day a few weeks later, Arturo came into Tom's lab. "Tom," he said, "with regard to next week's dinner, in addition to Alberto, I have invited Giovanni Estravini, the man from the academic office. He has split up with his boyfriend Angelo, who was getting too demanding in terms...
Part Three of what looks like will be five or six total posted here. This story was originally written as a serial on my blog, and I've compressed numerous chapters into each particular installment. While you read it, please keep in mind that it was originally meant to be read either in bite-sized chunks or in one fell swoop, but with over 90k words I couldn...
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Thor and Stephen Thor seemed uncharacteristically quiet one night. No real conversation over dinner and a cursory goodbye when he returned to the gym for a few hours. Even when he returned, he barely spoke before getting into bed. Once in bed, Tommy felt a distance from Thor, his touch returned with little attention. "Something troubling y...
Chad seemed totally different from the guy I'd known before. He'd always been the frat boy brimming with confidence, if not downright cockiness; or at least that was how I'd always seen him. Now he was stumbling over his words, with a scared-shitless look on his face. I didn't know if I'd ever seen a grown man so vulnerable. He didn't want to talk in public...
Journal entry: July 5th, 1979 How has it come to this? I always thought I knew what I was capable of. And yet here I am planning this. Have I gone slightly mad and no one thought to tell me? Why have none of my friends clued me in? Freddie, Brian, Roger, John ... where were you guys when this insanity began to take hold of me? Why did not one of you tell me...
I want to thank Oldnakeddad for taking the time to edit this story. Any errors are likely the product of my need to tweak. Also, I wanna shout out to the Finer Things Club: Mfa607, MrTimTam009, Soft Sighs, AC, Belligerent Bok Choy, Alice, Allen, AwayThrow, Candace, Erin, Laura, MFA607, MKFanatic, Vanessa, SoftSighs, Nina, John, and Nash. Y'all are the best...