#& maybe google a couple things like 'weather in boston'

[unnonexistence]

inspiration on that new silly one-shot fic ran out but luckily writing is still Going

[sailtoafarawayland]

Living a Life (1/2)

Summary: Sometimes the things we see ourselves in most clearly aren’t made from glass, and sometimes death is not the ending we think it is, but a pause of breath that gives life to a new beginning.   

Rating: T for now

AO3 - FF

Chapter 1

Emma didn't really know why she did it, why she stopped at all.

The sidewalks were an icy mess, like the city didn't even care that they were staring a lawsuit in the face, and the clean, shoveled pathway through the cemetery  was just too tempting to pass up. She was exhausted after a day spent at the precinct with her latest collar – some sort of mix up with the payment, or the filing, or whatever nonsense it was this time – and she just wanted to get home.

She didn't like the thought of using the cemetery as a shortcut, but the thought of being out of work for two weeks while she recovered from a sprained ankle was even worse.

Maybe it was because she walked past so many other gravestones that had been recently dusted of snow, the past few days of New England weather not accumulating on top of them, brushed away by the hands of loved ones. Maybe it was because she saw the wreaths leftover from Christmas dotting the quiet cemetery, bright orbs of red peeking through snow sprinkled like icing sugar across them.

But she stopped in front of a gravestone that seemed lonelier than the rest, slightly removed from the path and resting beneath one of the many bare trees, days of hardened snow and ice frozen to its surface.

Looking at it – neglected, ignored – she wondered if that's what her grave would look like when she died.

She should probably get cremated.

She should probably just leave. She had no business here, staring at some stranger's grave like the person lying below it cared about anything – cared that no one had stopped to sweep off the snow, but she didn't.

Instead, she stepped off the clean, salted path and crunched through layers of icy snow, deeper than she had thought. She could feel it crumbling over the tops of her low boots, icy pebbles melting and trickling down her heel. Well, she was stuck for it now.

She crouched down in front of the gravestone, and raising one gloved hand, she began brushing the frozen chunks of snow from its shoulders. Removing the dusting of windblown ice from the engraved front proved to be more work than she had anticipated, but after a few minutes she had most of it cleared, the rest would just have to melt on its own. Her hard work rewarded, she finally took the time to read the face of the stone.

She hadn't been to any funerals in her life, but she knew enough that the brevity of what she saw surprised her.

Liam Jones, 1977 – 2011

Her breath left her body, a chill wind stirring her hair and leaving her feeling somehow exposed, like she was doing something she shouldn't be - peering through the window of someone’s life only to find it was an empty house, abandoned. She had expected an old gravestone, someone with no family left to come sit by them and wipe away the snow.

She hadn't been expecting this.

He was young, not much older than her, and since it was only February, it hadn't even been that long since he'd passed. She glanced at the frozen ground she was squatting above and moved hastily to the side, wondering if there was some kind of graveyard etiquette. There must be. Don't stand in front of the graves where people are...resting, she guessed. She wasn't really sure. She'd never had a family, a grave to visit.

She probably should be thankful for that, less heartache.

Snow removed, job done, she stuck her hand back in her pocket and headed down the path. She wouldn't be back again. He wasn't her family, whoever she was, and she wanted to leave the nagging fear that one day that might be her in the cemetery where it belonged.

Weeks passed and she told herself when she headed down the cemetery path again that it was because another big storm had just blown through Boston, and for some reason known only to the city, they never cleared or salted the sidewalks in this neighborhood.    

But she didn't try to stop herself when she reached his grave again, this time the name Liam Jones clearly visible, a thick blanket of fresh snow cushioning the top. She walked between the first row of graves and to the side of his, taking care not to step where she assumes he's buried. It seemed like the right way to go about it, even if there aren't any rules. She probably should've googled it, but she hadn't planned on coming back.

She really hadn't.

Instead of questioning it too much, she brushed the snow away with her sleeve and tossed a few stray, fallen twigs back to the ground. It wasn't until after she'd thrown them that she thought to make sure she hadn't dropped them onto another resting place – littering on dead people was most definitely poor graveyard etiquette.

When she stopped in spring, she told herself it was just to enjoy the blossoms on the cherry trees that blanket that portion of the cemetery, knowing it was a lie. She knew because she'd bothered to look up cemetery etiquette online, and yes, it was a thing. She was also mildly curious to see if anyone had been to visit him now that the weather was nicer, if she would even be able to tell.  

There were a few graves she'd passed that had small flowers gracing their shoulders, and others with ornate vases built into the stone, colorful blooms filling them. She brushed a scattering of cherry blossoms from the top of Liam's grave and wondered again at the emptiness of it. He must not have had anyone, because if he had, surely they would have written something other than just the year of his birth and death.

Was he a father, a brother? Was he a son? Was he alone, as she was?

“Who were you?” she asked, but no one answered.

The next time she passed through, the cherry trees had long since lost their blooms, and she swept the sickly sweet smelling remains of them from his grave, bending down to tug out the stray clumps of tall grass where the granite sat, immovable. It seemed pretty obvious no one else was visiting, and that not even the groundskeeper had enough hours in the day to really keep everything neat.

They'd had enough dry days that she didn't have to crouch to visit, and found herself sitting back onto the grass between his gravestone and the next.

“Is this...weird?” she asked, glancing around to make sure no one was listening to her talk to a dead person she didn't even know. “I'm sorry no one comes here but me.”

Suddenly she felt self-conscious, the whole situation settling heavily around her, the overpowering perfume of dying flowers clinging to her skin. What the hell was wrong with her that the only connection she'd allow herself was with some stranger's gravestone? Angry with herself, she jumped up and hurried back down the path towards home. She was out of the cemetery and an entire block away when she finally remembered the daisies in her bag. Reaching in, she brushed the crumpled edges of the petals and sighed.

There was another visitor a few graves down when she returned, but they clearly knew enough to not eyeball her or say anything when she walked back over to Liam's grave – mildly flustered – and gently placed the rumpled cluster of flowers on the ledge in front of his name. She brushed her hands roughly on her leather sleeves and left as quickly as she came.

The next time it was a lot easier to talk to him, even if she knew he wasn't listening, and he certainly couldn't talk back. The daisies hadn't lasted very long, so she tossed them and said she'd bring more next time, although she realized she may need to leave something other than flowers. Work had been slow lately, and she wasn't stopping at the precinct all that often to drop off skips – and she couldn't just make a special trip once a week to refresh his flowers.

That would be crazy.

She didn't even know him.

So when her fingers ran across the smooth ridges of the seashell on her windowsill at home, she put it in her pocket.

Spring faded into the suffocating heat of summer, the grass parched and brittle beneath her feet as she crouched next to Liam's grave, brushing away the small ant hills that had formed in the sandy soil with a vengeance she didn't know she had in her for the tiny creatures.

“You know,” she said, and the words hurt before they even left her mouth, “you might be the only person I've got to talk to. How pathetic is that?”

She worked around the back of the grave, tugging up stray weeds she'd missed the last time.

“I brought you something other than flowers. Maybe you weren't even a flower guy, when you were around. I'm not much of a flower girl, I don't think. I've never really had anyone to buy them for me though. There was Neal...but he...well, let's just say he didn't leave me with any good memories, let alone flowers. Is there anyone who has good memories of you? I wish I knew some. It would be nice to know who you were, not just sit here guessing.”

The cemetery was empty, and that's when Emma felt most at ease, most like she could just say what was on her mind without having to worry about anyone listening, or whether they think she's crazy.

She laid the scraggly bunch of weeds at the side of the grave, reminding herself to take it out to the trash can when she leaves.

“Here,” she shrugged, pulling the seashell from her pocket and placing it on the ledge where she last left flowers.

It was a spiral shell, small, but perfect and white with a soft, amber colored center.

“I don't know if you really like seashells either, but...I picked that up a few years ago down at the beach. In the summer, it's always full of families and couples, so I don't go much, but sometimes when it's a little grey and stormy...it's just the most peaceful place to sit and think.”

She didn't say the rest of what she was thinking aloud – that seeing the happy couples and the parents with their kids just made her stomach clench, that all she could think of was how that was never something her mom wanted to go with her.

– was never something she got the chance to do.

That feels like too much to unload, even on a dead guy.

“It's pretty peaceful here too,” she sighed.

Summer relented and fall crept into the city, the once green leaves crisping and drifting to the ground. Despite getting a payday, she was leaving the precinct in a pretty shitty mood. Her skip had almost given her the slip, and she was going to be nursing a bruised shoulder from where she tumbled in an alley trying to keep up with him. By the time she stepped through the archway of the cemetery, the sun had already set, the streetlamps casting cold halos across the damp ground. She heard them before she saw them, and it took her a few seconds to realize they'd gathered just off the path next to Liam's grave.

“Hey!” she snapped, immediately angered by what she was seeing. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Christ, relax, lady,” one of the kids drawled, taking a swig from his beer and clinking it against the gravestone next to Liam's.

Emma didn't know who it belonged to, but it was always well cared for, and she was furious. There were four kids, teenagers, and they'd stomped all over the damp ground in front of the graves, clearly not caring that they were drinking and walking all over someone's remains.

“Look, kid, you and your buddies have about ten seconds to take your crap and get the hell out of here. I just left the precinct, and I've got Chief Humbert on speed dial – ” They didn't need to know how untrue that was, that, in fact, the guy gave her the creeps “ – so I suggest you take your party somewhere else.”

A few eye rolls and snarky comments later and they'd cleared out, leaving Emma feeling both pleased and worried for herself. She plopped down next to Liam's grave, wincing as her palm hit a piece of broken glass.

“Little shits,” she hissed, pulling the chunk of glass from her hand and setting it aside. It was too dark to find all the pieces. “What the hell am I doing?”

She leaned forward and straightened the seashell that was still resting on the stone, glad it had survived Boston's vagrant youths for this long. Wet leaves stuck to the front and sides of the grave, and she pulled off a few that hid his name.

“That's going to be me one day,” she muttered, eyeing the paltry engraving once more. “Emma Swan, time stamp. I'll be lucky if anyone comes to chase delinquents away from my grave.”

Everything was wet and cold, the smell of decomposing leaves rich in the air, and while fall made most people think of pumpkins and Thanksgiving, warm cups of coffee on cold walks – right now she could only think about how dark and cold and oppressively heavy it must be six feet under.

The next time she visited, she left a little fist-sized pumpkin she'd picked up at the bodega. She'd thought about carving it, what with Halloween around the corner, but that was never something she'd done before, and if she messed it up, she'd have nothing.

It didn't take long for the pumpkin to turn into a Thanksgiving feast for the city's squirrels, barely more than a rind left behind like something someone had tossed into the garbage, and she felt bad. She should have come back sooner.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, removing the half-frozen leftovers and pulling the few stray weeds with enough gumption to grow in later November. “Looks like you had quite a bit of furry company while I was gone. If I were a normal person, I'd be home sharing a Thanksgiving meal with my family, or friends – but I don't have either of those, so here I am, talking to you. Happy Thanksgiving, Liam.”

It wasn't long after the first snow hit Boston, and Emma was reminded of that first time she visited the cemetery and wondered who Liam Jones had been, why no one stopped to visit his grave. She could have googled him, but if she was being honest with herself – which she was really trying to be better about these days – she didn't really want to know if he had family that couldn't be bothered to visit. If she didn't know, she couldn't be angry with them for no reason, since she had no right to be.

She didn't know Liam Jones.

She had no right to bear a grudge for him.

As Christmas approached, Emma saw more people visiting, sometimes with family, and other times alone, leaving little battery powered tea lights and wreaths to warm the cold stone. When she saw the bouquet of poinsettias at the bodega, she didn't feel the least bit strange as she placed it on the counter. There aren't any Christmas decorations in her apartment, but she felt like Liam should have something to show that at least one person was thinking about him on the first Christmas he was missing.  

The air was bitter and cold as she made the trek though from her neighborhood to the cemetery, but she didn't mind. When she reached Liam's grave, there was a soft blanket of fresh snow atop it, and she brushed it gently to the ground.

“You know, I really should thank you,” she said quietly, glad for the peace and solitude that hung around her. It made it easier to say the words. “I felt like maybe I was doing something nice for you, remembering you in the way I would want someone to think about me, just so that I wasn't completely forgotten, but I feel like coming here...shit, it'll be a year in a couple months. I think I figured something out. I don't want to be alone, Liam. I know I can't guarantee that I won't be alone one day in the ground, with no one left to care, but...I don't want to feel that way now. I've always kept people at a distance, too afraid to get hurt again, but I'm tired of being alone. I want a life, I want to live it...”

There was no answer, but she hadn't been expecting one.

Instead she leaned down and brushed the snow off the little ledge that still held her seashell, frozen to the stone, and gently placed the poinsettias beside it. She reached out and traced her finger along the carved edge of his name before turning to leave, glancing up at the blue sky between the bare branches of the cherry tree.

“If you're, uh, listening anywhere, well, thanks for everything, Liam. Merry Christmas.”

~ * ~ * ~

When Killian woke, it felt like he was being dragged from the bottom of the sea, every force on earth weighing him down still not enough to keep his blissful, dark peace from being disturbed.

Once the light hit him, it wasn't like in the movies. He didn't wake up groggy, or wondering where he was, confused about the machines beeping around him and the tubes connected to his body.

No, he knew exactly where he was and what led him here, and he wanted nothing more than to sink back down to that darkness that was so complete and starving it devoured every thought before he could think it. He wanted to close his eyes and fall back into that oblivion that had been his only respite from the flashes of memory, the pull of voices.

He didn't want to have to remember the sound that steel makes when it cracks and groans, the way the dock shook beneath their feet as the freighter slid into the crane, the sheer force of it toppling the massive tower of heavy steel as easily as if it were nothing more than a house of cards. He wanted to forget running for his brother, watching the mass of cables and metal come down over them – screaming, screaming his name and trying to reach him, unable to move, unable to breathe...

“Can you hear me? My name is Dr. Whale.”

The voice was leaning over him, his mouth moving, more words floating around him. Killian didn't understand why they wouldn't just leave him alone – he tried to roll onto his side, ignoring the the objections from the doctor, and that's when he felt it – a pain that burned up his arm and into his brain, as if his hand had been crushed by his movement. He jerked his arm, trying to understand what he'd done, why it hurt so badly – and then he saw it.

The bandages, the stump, the strangely shortened arm that most definitely used to have a hand at the end of it – except now there was nothing, and it couldn't possibly be his arm he was looking at, his hand that was missing, because he could feel it. The agony was so real it eclipsed everything else – the pain in his ribs and elsewhere vanishing as he thrashed and tore out lines and catheters.

There were hands on him, holding him – voices shouting, someone screaming. He was screaming, but it was so far away, a sea of darkness rising between him and the place where his hand wasn't, cradling and dragging him back down to that deep oblivion where there was nothing.

Nothing at all.  

Tagging: @justanother-unluckysoul @kmom0f4 @the-darkdragonfly @teamhook @zaharadessert @xarandomdreamx @jrob64 @wefoundloveunderthelight @tiganasummertree @pirateprincessofpizza @lfh1226-linda @alexa-fangirl-forever @alifeofdreams @superchocovian @donteattheappleshook @hollyethecurious @caught-in-the-filter @snowbellewells @itsfabianadocarmo

[let-it-raines]

Prompt - David and Mary Margaret discover this great groupon deal for an autumn leaf changing tour and cabin rental in Vermont, but the catch, it's for 4 people. Enter in the reluctant best friends that can't stand each other. (And you know, the cabin only has 2 rooms)

🍁 found on ao3 | here | 🍁 

-/-

Here’s the thing about Killian Jones: Emma doesn’t hate him.

She really, really doesn’t. Hate is a strong word that she saves for people like Neal and the asshole who took her parking spot and made her lose her skip and her bigger paycheck last week. It’s not a word she uses to describe her opinion of Killian Jones. That would be better described as mistrust or slight animosity or dislike. In the nicest of terms, it could be described as nonchalance and uncaring, maybe a little bit of annoyance, but those are only true when she hasn’t seen him for awhile and has forgotten how annoying he can be.

Right now, annoyance is the exact word she would use to describe her relationship with him, mostly because his appearance was unexpected and unwelcome.

A month ago, Mary Margaret called Emma and told her that she and David won a trip to Vermont for a weekend of walking trails to see the leaves changing. It included free lodging, free dinners, tickets to a farm where you could pick your own apples and pumpkins and sit at their restaurant on the lake and drink the cider brewed at that very farm. It sounded nice, like the plot and setting of a Hallmark movie Emma only watches when she’s at Mary Margaret’s loft, and Emma told Mary Margaret that she hoped they had a good time.

Then Mary Margaret told her the trip was actually for four people, invited Emma and their mutual friend Ruby, and Emma figured why not? Her job has been stressing her out lately, and it’s a free vacation. Who passes up a free vacation?

Ruby Lucas apparently does in order to go to help her grandmother with the catering of a last-minute wedding, and Emma didn’t know about that until she got in the back of David’s truck and saw Killian Jones sitting in the spot that was supposed to be Ruby’s.

She feels cheated.

This was supposed to be relaxing even if it was going to be spent watching David and Mary Margaret be overly affectionate with each other, and now she has to deal with Killian for an entire weekend.

That’s two days and twelve hours too long if she includes today…which she definitely is.  

They’ve been in the truck for a little over three hours, which means they should be at the lodge soon, and Emma’s trying to focus on the scenery outside. It’s gorgeous, much more rural than what she’s used to living in the central part of Boston, and from what she’s heard of the lodge and the trails surrounding it, it’s only supposed to get better.

This is good. This can be a good weekend. Maybe she can go off on her own for most of it, and she won’t have to be with Killian or the lovebirds. They’ll be too busy getting lost in each other’s eyes, and he’ll be too busy flirting with every woman around. There’s definitely got to be opportunity for her to go off on her own.

If not, she might fling herself into a pile of leaves and never emerge for air.

And she’ll definitely blame it on Ruby for not telling Emma about her last-minute cancellation.

When they do eventually arrive at the lodge – after thirty minutes of Killian complaining about one of his coworkers – it turns out to look more like a small castle than anything else. It’s made of gray stone and covered in ivy and weeds while still being maintained. There’s a round fountain in front of the entryway, and behind the building, Emma can see the path that leads down to the lake and the hills that are full of trees behind it. Every tree is a different shade of red, orange, green, and yellow, and Emma has never wanted to take a picture of nature so much in her life. She’s about to live out the life of one of those girls on Instagram who only do things for the aesthetics, and for a weekend, she can’t say she minds.

What she does mind, however, is that when David hands her the key to her room, he hands Killian a key to the same room.

The same room as in her room.

Her. Room.

Hers.  

“No.”

“Why are you saying no?” David asks, tilting his head in question.

“No, as in no I will not share a room. I thought I was getting my own room.”

“It’s a couple’s weekend, Emma, and I bet you would have been fine sharing a room with Ruby.”

“Yeah, because Ruby’s…”

“Ruby’s not me,” Killian interjects, wrapping his arm around Emma’s shoulder. She tries to shrug it off, but it doesn’t move anywhere. It’s deadweight up there, and Killian has unfortunately turned so he can’t see her death stare. Not that it would have any effect on him. “You see, Dave, it’s just that Emma is wildly attracted to me, and she doesn’t think she’ll be able to contain herself knowing I’m only a few feet away from her, especially when she discovers I sleep in the nude.”

“Oh my God.” Emma moves from underneath Killian’s arm, her strength coming back to her, and moves toward her – their, ugh – door. She turns the key, which is for some reason the old fashioned kind and not a card. “Please stop talking, Jones. I am not wildly attracted to you, and I can handle sharing a room. I’m not a child.”

“See, I knew the lass could do it.”

He winks at her and does this ridiculous eyebrow thing at David, and Emma is seriously considering paying thousands of dollars (she googled this place when they walked inside, and it is not cheap) for her own room.

“We’ll meet you guys in the lobby in thirty minutes, okay? We’re going on a tour of the grounds with our guide and then dinner, so dress for both.”

“When is the hike?” Emma asks, lingering in the doorway.

“Not until tomorrow. I’ll get Mary Margaret to send you the itinerary.”

“She already has. I just haven’t looked at it.”

“I’m not telling her that,” David laughs. “See you soon.”

Emma waves, smiling at David, and turns into the room, dragging her luggage behind her. It doesn’t take long before she’s stopped in her tracks, her sneakers snagging in the carpet, as Killian runs into her back.

“Bloody hell, why’d you stop like that?”

She opens her arm to the bed – singular – in front of them, which would look cozy and soft and all of the good things if she had it all to herself. “If you didn’t bring clothes to sleep in, you’re sleeping in your fucking jeans,” she mumbles before turning toward the bathroom and closing the door behind her.

This is fine.

This is all fine. Emma has been through a hell of a lot worse, and maybe Killian won’t be an ass. Maybe he’ll be the gentleman he always claims to be.

She’s never believed him for a second when he’s said shit like that.

Emma changes out of her leggings and sweatshirt into a pair of jeans and a thick sweater, grabbing her red plaid jacket and a beanie and placing them to the side for when she leaves. She puts on some mascara, a swipe of lipstick, and brushes out her hair. This is as good as it’s going to get, and she doesn’t mind that. Mary Margaret will tell her that tomorrow or whenever they go to the nice dinner that she’ll have to dress up, and Emma is giving herself a break on the makeup until then.

She had to pile it on every night this week for work, and her skin is screaming for a break.

Killian knocks on the door, telling her to hurry up because he has to get ready too, so she takes five extra minutes…out of spite…because she knows it’s just petty enough for it to rub him the wrong way. She doesn’t feel bad about it either. Killian would do the same damn thing.

“You look nice,” Killian tells her when she opens the bathroom door and he’s standing on the wall opposite the bathroom, leg propped up and arms crossed over his chest. His eyes trail up and down her body, and Emma moves out of the doorway. A shiver runs down her spine, but she ignores it.

Definitely, definitely ignores it.

It’s cold up in Vermont, even colder than in Boston, and these old walls aren’t helping.

Killian takes approximately two minutes to get ready, all of which is probably spent getting into ridiculously tight jeans, and then they’re begrudgingly walking to the lobby where David and Mary Margaret are waiting for them already talking to the guide, a peppy woman named Anna who is like the redheaded version of Mary Margaret when Mary Margaret is in one of her “everything is a fairytale” moods.  

Anna takes them throughout the property, giving them the history of the place while offering up different amenities that are not included with the package they won but still accessible if they’re willing to pay. There’s a spa, a gym, three different hiking trails, an option to take row boats out on the lake if the weather is nice, and there are two different restaurants on the property. They also offer drivers to several places around town, including the grocery store and the farm they’ll be visiting tomorrow after their hike, and Emma is sure several other things are said. She zones out about halfway through, distracted by the view of the trees and how they’re reflected on the lake. Everything is in an orange glow right now, one that brings comfort to Emma.

She’s always liked sunsets. It’s cheesy and she’d never admit it out loud, but she likes the predictability of them. They don’t always look the same, but they happen every day, even if she can’t see it. She likes that, having that constant. It’s not something she has a lot of, constants that is, and she takes every one she can get.

Maybe this weekend won’t be so bad.

If she says that enough, she just might believe it.

-/-

Dinner is nice.

The food is good, the wine surprisingly good since she was pretty sure it was going to be some funky homemade stuff, and even more surprisingly, the company is great.

When she thinks that, she wonders if the alcohol content in the wine was higher than the server said it was.

All the good thoughts about Killian go away, however, when they’re back in their (still so awful to have to think) hotel room, and Emma is awkwardly sitting on the edge of the bed rubbing lotion on her arms. Killian, thank goodness, is in a pair of plaid pajama pants and a t-shirt, so he’s not even going to attempt to sleep naked.

She was 100% sure that he would try, and she’s honestly kind of sad she won’t get a chance to slap him.

On the cheek.

On his face.

She doesn’t want to slap him anywhere else.

Okay, that wine’s alcohol content was definitely higher than it should have been.

Killian plops down on the bed, the mattress shaking beneath him, and tugs the covers over him. His movements jostle her, and she grits her teeth as she finishes moisturizing. He turns on the TV, puts it on some show she has never heard of, and Emma tries to keep calm. She’s tired. She’s going to fall asleep quickly, and the TV won’t bother her. She falls asleep every night with the TV on, so this is nothing new.

Emma turns down the corner of the bed on her side and slides underneath before flipping the switch for the light. The room darkens except for the TV and the glow of the alarm clock, and Emma closes her eyes. They’ve got a lot to do tomorrow, and she doesn’t want to be walking around wishing she had an IV of coffee to keep her awake.

Slowly, sleep comes for her, tugging at the corners of her eyes, and just as she’s about to succumb to it, the comforter is tugged off of her, leaving her foot exposed to the cold air of the room.

What the hell?

Emma tugs it back, shifting her leg to have it covered, and for a moment, she’s warm. Warm and cozy and not even the too loud laugh track on the TV is disturbing her.

The fact that Killian pulls away the comforter again is, however, disturbing her.

Actually, it really freaking annoys her, so she pulls it back. Hard this time, and Killian grunts in response and rolls over. she feels his foot brush against her calf, and she kicks out, moving him back to his side. It’s only a queen-sized bed, so there’s not a lot of room for them to stay separate. She’s about three seconds away from finding pillows or their suitcases and putting them in between the two of them so he stops encroaching on her space.

And taking her comforter.

Because it’s definitely hers. Just like this room was supposed to be.

Killian wasn’t even supposed to be on this trip. It was supposed to be Ruby, who definitely would have stayed on her side of the bed. Better yet, she probably would have met someone and would be staying with them, and Emma would have this entire bed to herself.

It’s so comfortable that it’s a shame she has to share it. She’s not used to that anymore, and she likes to stretch out.

The comforter moves again, and Emma grips onto it, holding it where she is and tucking it underneath her ass to keep it as steady as possible. At this point, he has to be doing it to annoy her, and Emma is not going to lose this battle.

She’ll stay up all night if she has to.

“You know, Swan,” Killian mumbles, “normally I prefer to do more enjoyable activities with a woman on her back than fight over the covers.”

Emma groans and rolls over on her stomach, pointedly kicking out at him. “Shut up, Jones.”

“If that’s what the lady wishes.”

Emma mutters into her pillow, and for a few minutes, as the blanket stealing calms down and the TV quiets, Emma wonders if she could feasibly fake some sleeping disorder that has her punching Killian in the face all night.

She can be a pretty good actress sometimes. She could probably pull it off.

She doesn’t do that, though, because she eventually falls asleep, one foot sticking out into the cold air.

Damn you, Jones.

-/-

There’s a warm body nears hers.

That’s the first thought Emma has when she wakes up – after thinking of how annoying her alarm sound is. The body warm and solid and a little hairy, and it takes her two seconds to remember where she is and who she’s sharing a bed with. She knew she should have slept on the floor last night because in no world does she want to have her leg pressing up against Killian’s leg and her ass…

“Oh my God,” she murmurs, eyes blowing wide as she turns and moves her body as much as she can. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my Goooooooood.”

“What are you yelling about?” Killian groans, shifting behind her, which only makes it worse.

“I’m not yelling,” Emma hisses. She pushes away and sits up, and there’s no need to even adjust the comforter because none of it is on her. “What are you doing near me?”

He raises his brow, wrinkles on his forehead popping up. Getting a look at him now, she knows the ruffled look he sometimes does with his hair is natural, and for some reason, that really freaking annoys her.

“I was sleeping until you decided to have a conniption.”

“Yeah, well that’s because your dick…oh shit.”

Emma wasn’t going to say that. She really wasn’t, and from the way Killian’s brow is arching higher, she knows that she’s messed up. She’s given him the perfect set up for all of his innuendos, and knowing him, she’s never going to be allowed to live this down.

What a great start to her morning.

“Usually that’s not the reaction, but I understand your shock, love. You weren’t prepared, and it’s, well, a lot to take in.”

“Oh my God, shut up.” She takes the pillow from behind her and smacks him with it as he laughs. He’s getting far too much enjoyment out of this, and she’s wondering how long she would be in jail if she smothered him. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“Make it cold and bracing. I think you might need it.”

“Yeah, I’m not the one with morning wood, but you keep thinking that.” She gets off the mattress and reaches down for her bag. Killian may have unpacked his stuff, but she didn’t bother to do that, even if it means everything is wrinkled. “Please don’t take care of it while I’m showering. That’s just…we have to share the bed, Jones, and I’ve worked in hotels before. I know they don’t always change the sheets.”

He mock salutes, the cheekiest grin on his face, and this is really going to be a long day.

-/-

It’s a long day.

Before she can even get coffee in her, she’s dragged out to the hiking trail. The sun hasn’t fully risen, and they’re supposed to be watching the sunrise and how it matches up with all the changing trees. It’s beautiful. She knows it is, and she does manage to take some pictures that she’s sure capture about half of the beauty. The thing is that despite her best efforts, she didn’t sleep well, and she’s only running on adrenaline and annoyance.

Mostly at Killian.

He’s been staring at her all morning, a joke on the tip of his tongue about their morning, and he’s started to make them several times before Emma shoots him a look or elbows him in the stomach. Mary Margaret has given Emma several funny looks, and if she wasn’t so wrapped up in David and the romance of the changing leaves and the sunrise, she’d probably ask about it.

Mary Margaret is not one for subtlety or staying out of someone else’s business.

David guides them over the trail, which is somehow all uphill despite no discernible incline, and eventually the come to a perch with a few of the lake and the lodge, miles of trees surrounding it. Emma doesn’t think she’s ever seen anything quite like it, and now she can truly see why so many people travel here just to stare at some trees.

“It’s something isn’t it, Swan?” Killian asks as he walks up behind her, the heat of his body making the chill of the air fade for a moment.

“Yeah, it’s beautiful.”

“I didn’t think looking at trees would be your thing. I don’t take you as much of a nature person.”

Emma turns to face him and crosses her arms over her chest. “You don’t know me well enough to know if I’m a nature person or not.”

He steps closer, invading her space like he always does, and maybe she’s a bit of a liar when she says he doesn’t know her. “Just who are you then, Swan?”

Emma cocks her head and straightens her back, not letting him overwhelm her. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

He smiles and nods, lashes fluttering until his eyes are hooded. “Perhaps I would.”

“We better get moving if we want to make it to the apple orchard on time,” David tells them, making Emma jump away from Killian and smooth down her flannel over her stomach. “You okay? You look flushed.”

“Just the walk,” Emma lies. “I’m sure that’s all.”

-/-

“I will throw this apple at your head.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Emma groans, audibly, and plucks another apple from the tree and puts it in her basket. It’s getting a little heavy, and not in a million years could she eat all these apples before they spoil. They’re not for her, though. They’re for the farm and its cider and pies and tarts and all the other apple goods they make. She must admit that it’s a brilliant business plan, having people pick the apples for you and then make them pay for it and the food and drinks.

She can’t believe people actually pay to do this. The hike, she gets, foraging for your own food, not so much.

Emma picks an apple out of her basket, one that kind of looks gross and a little squished, and she tosses it at the back of Killian’s head. It hits, just barely, and she stops as he reaches up to touch his hair.

“What is wrong with you?” he hisses, turning around to glare at her.

“You’re the one who has spent the last ten minutes being invasive to my personal life, so what’s wrong with you?”

“Asking if you were still seeing Graham Humbert is not invasive.”

“It is definitely invasive.”

Killian’s shoulders shrug, and he steps closer to her. Really close, actually. He does this obnoxious thing where he’s always encroaching on her space when he speaks, swaying closer and dipping his head down until their eyes are level. He’s doing that now, obnoxious, downright cocky grin gracing his lips, and Emma backs away, dodging some low-hanging apples, until her back is against the tree and she’s putting her basket on the ground. She really hopes there aren’t ants crawling all over her, but at this point, she’s too distracted to care.

For every inch that she moved, Killian matched her. And now, he’s more in her space than ever, the heat of his body warming her more than her jacket. How is he that damn hot?

Only in the temperature sense…not in the other way. She is obviously still a little tipsy from the wine last night that she still maintains had a higher alcohol content than usual.

He chuckles, and his eyes look at her before glancing down at her lips. It’s not even a quick glance. It’s pointed, and Emma knows she was meant to notice it.

“Please,” Emma huffs, “you couldn’t handle it.”

He doesn’t even flinch. “Perhaps you’re the one who couldn’t handle it.”

She wants to say something back, some smart, snide remark that will make him frustrated, but she also wants to prove him wrong. Emma doesn’t care what anyone else has to say, and she’s heard all the rumors. Kissing Killian Jones is not going to have an effect on her.

So she grabs the lapels of his coat and pulls him forward until his mouth is on hers and Emma’s head is pressing into the back of the tree. The bark scratching the back of her neck would be uncomfortable if she wasn’t so focused on Killian. He’s not kissing her back, his lips rigid against her, and she’s just about to pull back and give him shit over being a horrible kisser when he moves. His hand comes to her hair, yanking on the strands as he tilts her head the way he wants it, and his prosthetic rests at her waist. Every thought she had about him being stiff was wrong.

She’s never felt anyone move like this.

She’s also had some pretty damn good kisses in her life, but she can’t remember the last time one took her breath away and made heat curl over her skin as soft lips moved over her and slightly rough stubble scratched against her skin, likely leaving her red.

Emma can’t remember the last time she was kissed well, and damn, what a shame that is.

She could get used to that.

But she knows that’s a dangerous thought, and this is a dangerous game she’s playing. If she’s bringing cards to the table to play, she has to be open to the possibility that she can lose her hand.

Emma isn’t open to that right now.

So, she pulls back, just barely though, and tries to catch her breath as Killian does the same. He’s panting, and in any other circumstance, the sound would be like heaven to her, a strong indication of what’s to come next. Not in this one, though, and when Killian moves in, she pulls away.

“That was,” he begins, seemingly trailing off in a search for the words to describe what just happened.

She doesn’t know either, but it doesn’t take her long to figure out what she wants to say.

“A one-time thing,” she finishes, knowing she has to say it as she looks at him and the flush of his cheeks. “I’m going to find David and Mary Margaret. Don’t follow me. Wait five minutes and...” she glances down toward his jeans “…calm down.”

He mockingly bows, same smug smile she’s used to back on his lips. She knows how they feel now, and that feels wrong.

“As you wish, milady.”

-/-

The late afternoon lunch (or is it early dinner considering the time?) is awkward as hell. They’re sitting at a small, supposedly cozy table in the midst of the most romantic patio ever created (think of all the string lights in the world and then double it) with wine and cider in their glasses and good food on the table in front of them.

Emma wants to run away.

She can’t.

It really freaking sucks.

And it doesn’t help that Killian keeps looking at her with these big blue eyes that she doesn’t normally see. He looks earnest almost, and she doesn’t think Killian Jones has been earnest a day in his life.

Then again, how much does she know?

“Oh, this is so romantic,” Mary Margaret sighs. “I’m so glad we won this trip.”

“Does romance include two of your mates sitting at the table with you?” Killian asks. “Dave was playing footsy with me earlier we’re so cramped in here.”

“Was that you?” David hisses, cheeks going red, and Emma starts to laugh. That’s the best thing she’s heard all day.

“Yes, it is romantic even with you and Emma here. And with David somehow mistaking your leg with mine.”

“In my defense, Killian’s calves are only a little bigger than yours, sweetheart.”

“I’m not sure whether to be flattered or insulted.”

“Flattered, of course,” Killian says. “I have bloody fantastic legs. Ask Swan here. She felt them up last night.”

Emma kicks out her foot at Killian under the table, not one hundred percent sure she’s actually hitting his leg, but then she sees the slight wince. Gotcha.

“So, what are we doing after this?” Emma asks to change the subject. “Another hike? More apple picking? Second dinner?”

Mary Margaret sighs, “a carriage ride back to the hotel, but they’re going to take us the scenic route.”

“Of course they are,” Emma mutters, stabbing her food and stuffing it into her mouth. She’s going to need more wine.

-/-

The carriage ride is worse than the dinner. For one, the horses smell horrible, much worse than the food, and the carriage is somehow smaller than their table. She’s pressed completely up against Killian, their sides aligned, and he has his arm over her shoulder while they share a blanket. She tried to refuse, but it’s gotten really cold. Her nose and her fingers are going to fall off soon, and she’s as zipped up as she can be.

David and Mary Margaret practically make out across from them, and even though Emma knows more about their sex life than she would ever want to know, sitting his close to it as a horse drags them along the road is not something she’s comfortable with.

“Make it stop,” she murmurs into Killian’s shoulder, half to keep her from having to look at David and Mary Margaret but mostly to keep her nose warm.

“I’m afraid we have to ride this one out, love. If you want, we could share our own kiss…again.”

She hits his thigh underneath the blanket. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Whatever helps you sleep through the night.”

-/-

She doesn’t sleep through the night.

She’s too aware of her surroundings, of the warm body a few inches from her own.

It’s all too much, even if he didn’t try to steal the covers tonight, and if she wasn’t so damn stubborn, she’d sleep on the floor. She told herself she would do that tonight, but now it feels like admitting defeat.

Emma doesn’t like to admit defeat.

-/-

They go for another hike the next morning, their last morning in Vermont.

Emma sticks next to David the entire time, asking him mundane questions she doesn’t care about just to keep the conversation flowing and to keep Killian from making any jokes she doesn’t want him to make. It works, mostly, and Emma is even able to enjoy herself and the view for a lot of it. Boston can be gorgeous, but she’s going to miss a lot of this.

It’s the picture perfect dream, but Emma knows perfection doesn’t exist. And in pictures, it’s almost always photoshopped.

Doesn’t make it any less stunning as she stares out at it all, and it doesn’t make her want the picture perfect dream any less. The one where she isn’t so scared of getting hurt again and where she lets herself have fun, lets herself feel safe.

Lets her heart in on the decision making with her head.

-/-

Emma sleeps on most of the car ride back to Boston, and when she wakes up, it’s with a sore neck and tired eyes. It’s also in front of her apartment. She thanks the Nolans for the weekend, and very slowly, it dawns on her that Killian is no longer in the car. They must have dropped him off first, and she doesn’t know why, but it stings a bit that she doesn’t get to say goodbye to him as well.

That’s the lack of sleep talking, obviously.

Emma would never miss saying goodbye to Killian because that would mean she was going to miss his presence. She wouldn’t do that, though. Of course not. Because she didn’t have a good time when he was around. He didn’t make her smile at all this weekend.

He never makes her smile at all.

If Emma was using her own superpower to detect lies, there would be a blaring red light over her head with a little bell blaring in her ears.

She is ignoring it in favor of stuffing everything about this weekend in her bag and not looking into it. It was pretty. Nice pictures were taken, good food was had, and nothing else happened.

(Ding, ding, ding.)

-/-

Life returns to normal. She goes to work, goes to the gym, is occasionally dragged out to bars and clubs with her friends on the nights she isn’t working.

(She does finally get that guy from two weeks ago, and the paycheck is worth the struggle.)

Killian is around a lot more than he usually is. He’s in school getting his degree in software engineering on some scholarship he got from his service in the Navy, and he usually bartends at night. That job fizzled out, though, so when they all have pizza night or go out or meet up for lunch, he’s usually there.

Emma finds it odd, but she doesn’t mind.

She doesn’t pay much attention to him because she’s making a conscious effort specifically not to pay attention to him, not until he misses a fantastic opportunity to make an innuendo, and she realizes he hasn’t been making a lot of those lately. They’re there, sure, but not in as high of a quantity as they usually are.

It’s weird, but the weirdest thing about it all is how much she misses them.

Huh.

When did that happen?

When did the flirting stop annoying her and start making her laugh? When did she start liking it?

Liking him?

The thought comes to her without true warning and without permission. It’s wiggled its way out of the deep caverns of her mind and made it to the surface, gasping for air so it can live out in the open. She has a physical reaction to it, her hands coming to cover her mouth as she inhales a deep breath that has everyone looking away from the TV to look at her.

“You alright?” Ruby asks from her spot on David and Mary Margaret’s couch.

“I’m fine,” Emma lies, knowing her friends won’t push her further. They’ve known her long enough to know not to do that too often. “Just need some water.”

She gets up from her chair and walks toward the kitchen, her mind running faster than Usain Bolt, and she tries to focus on pouring herself a glass of water and on the football game that’s on. She doesn’t even really like football, but it’s kind of a fall tradition around here. She just has to go with it.

Everything is fine. This is fine.

This is…this is crazy. It’s even crazier that she can’t tell if her body is experience fear, joy, or some insane mixture of both bottled up with all of the adrenaline it can muster.

“You sure you’re alright, love?” Killian asks as he walks into the kitchen puts his plate in the sink. Of course he followed her in here. He, unlike Ruby, Mary Margaret, and David, has no qualms about bothering her. “You look a bit flushed. You’ve gone red around your cheeks.”

“Fine,” she lies again. “I’m fine.”

If she says that word enough, it’ll be true.

“Are you certain because I – ”

“Why don’t you flirt with me anymore?” she blurts before she can stop herself. She must be going crazy because this is insane. Who has taken over her body, and can she get it back please? Preferably before she does something stupid like kissing him again.

Then again, that wasn’t all stupid. It felt pretty damn good.

Killian arches his brow, his forehead wrinkling, and she knows she’s about to get some dumbass answer. He scratches behind his ear with his prosthetic. “Because if I’m to win your heart Emma, as I’d like to, I’d like to do it in a way that doesn’t piss you off, as much as I do love that. It’s quite entertaining for me, especially when you go red as you are now. It’s a becoming color on you, but I realize my methods of getting your attention were a bit childish.”

Well, okay then. Maybe not a dumbass answer.

This is a weird, weird few minutes.

“Are you trying to tell me you’ve been doing the adult equivalent of pulling pigtails on a playground?’

He shrugs. “Aye, I guess.”

Emma, once more, doesn’t know what to do or say, so she lets instinct drive her. She steps forward and places her hand on his shoulder, looking him dead in the eye. They’re ridiculously blue, and it’s just not fair. “Asking me to dinner would have worked much better than that. Food has always been the way to my heart, especially if it’s cheap, greasy, and will make my stomach hurt afterward.”

She leaves the ball in his court (or in his possession on the field since they’re watching football and her sports metaphors should make sense, and she’s 82% sure that’s a correct metaphor), and walks away before being pulled back by her wrist until she’s looking at him again.

Once more, he’s earnest, and she’s still getting used to that.

And those blue eyes. Those too. They don’t have to be all devilish all the time.

“Would you like to go to dinner with me, love?” Killian asks, hopeful, kind smile on his face.

Genuine. He’s genuine, and she feels that little flutter that she hasn’t felt in awhile, not since she kissed him against the apple tree to prove a point to herself that she wouldn’t be affected by kissing him.

Emma really is a bad liar, especially when she’s lying to herself.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

[douchebagbrainwaves]

A WAY TO BE SILICON VALLEY

But boy did things seem different. Empirically it seems to be that the most important quality would be intelligence. It was supposed to be what Google turned out to be important, because a startup will put your friendship through a stress test. You'd understand your users well if you were using the software for them.1 Startup founders tend to be better at running their companies than investors. I was very excited at first.2 So it took me quite a while to realize I just wasn't like the people there. They never explain what the deal is with money. Maybe the increasing cheapness of startups will mean they'll be able to modify your dreams on the fly. Palo Alto in the evening, you see nothing but the blue glow of TVs. Overlooked problems are by definition problems that most people think don't matter. We're so different from VCs that we're really a different kind of animal that has moved into it.

Who knows how many bullets were in the gun they were playing Russian roulette with? Of course, you don't have a house or much stuff, but also because you're less likely to have serious relationships. You also lose less control. So I'm telling you in advance: raising money is so painful, why do we tell people not to?3 And that doesn't seem a wise move. If you're not a genius, just start a startup with someone you like, because a startup will put your friendship through a stress test.4 That makes judging startups harder than most other things one judges. If by the next time you need to fix. Joel Spolsky recently spoke at Y Combinator is as different from what happens in a series A round if you do, and since most founders are under 30, their living expenses are low. To survive it you need a set of techniques mostly orthogonal to the ones used in convincing investors, just as volume and surface area do. Raising $20,000 from a first-time angel investor can be as much work as raising $2 million from a VC fund.5 It's too early to say yet whether Y Combinator will turn out like Viaweb, but judging from the number of startups founded by people who know the subject from experience, but for doing things other people want.

A round you have to assume there was someone born in Milan with as much natural ability as Leonardo couldn't beat the force of environment, do you suppose you can? Sam Altman has it. No; all great cities inspire some sort of job, because everyone asks what you're going to start with what goes wrong and try to trace it back to the root causes. But I tried living in Florence when I was in college. In addition to the programming you do for your classes, why not undergrads? And the cost of dealing with them, but because progress in technology has made it much easier to start a startup just one year later, after I went to work at Yahoo. It's an exciting place. Now I see there's more to it than that. I'm not sure even Larry and Sergey, you can choose your pain: either the short, sharp pain of raising money—that they'll cruise through all the initial steps, but when investors in an angel round first.6 Even now I'm suspicious when startups choose SF over the Valley.7

Does it seem plausible that the people who write software are particularly harmed by checks. I said Oh, ok. However, startups usually have a fairly informal atmosphere, and there's always a lot that needs to have good software. More often than not the company comes to a standstill for months. As of this writing, Cambridge seems to be hard to start a startup, you get to compare how they all perform on identical tasks; and everyone's life is pretty fluid. So by caring more about money and less about power than Silicon Valley, New York, I was very excited at first. It's a knack for understanding users and figuring out how to give them what they want till the last moment.8 And when we're talking about startups we think are likely to succeed, what we find ourselves saying is things like Oh, those guys can take care of themselves. Within about three minutes of meeting him, I remember thinking Ah, so this answer works out to be. He said that in most companies software costing up to about $1000 could be bought by individual managers without any additional approvals.9 Even if you only have to imagine what would happen if they diverged to see the underlying reality. But if you look at a company like Google, it's hard not to be had for the asking.10

Within about three minutes of meeting him, I remember thinking Ah, so this answer works out to be the best supplier, but falls just short of the threshold for solvency—which will of course have been set on the high side, since there is no recovery. When we first started Y Combinator we have some kind of answer for, but not about observing proprieties. Plus in college you don't yet have to face the hardest kind of work—discovering new problems to solve. New York, and Boston. Otherwise their desire to lead you on will combine with your own desire to be led on to produce completely inaccurate impressions. Their expertise is mostly in business—as it should be, because that's the kind of single-minded, almost obnoxiously elitist focus on hiring the smartest people are, even if that means living in an expensive, grubby place with bad weather.11 How much is that extra attention worth?12 Because super-angels were initially angels of the classic type.13 But even if we could somehow magically save people from moving, we wouldn't.14 It will vary enormously from one partner to another.15 Instead of building stuff to throw away, you tend to want every line of code to go toward that final goal of showing you did a lot of development over the past couple decades.16

Not at all. VCs have been getting a lot faster. If you know your peers are going to be when you grow up. What do they have to be a 2 week interruption turns into a 4 month interruption. You'd understand your users well if you were using the software for them.17 There is a danger of having VCs in an angel round: the so-called signalling risk. If accelerating variation in productivity is accelerating. Does that mean you can't start a startup, is probably a startup. Brandeis said We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few thousand people seems big enough.18 If they think your startup is lame, aren't they probably right?

So have we just shown, by reductio ad absurdum, that it's false that economic inequality should be decreased, I shouldn't be helping founders. And indeed, that might be a good idea for a company, and his friend says, Yeah, that is a near certainty. Often they are, the more likely this is to happen. This was why they were trying to get people to start calling them portals instead of search engines. It would make sense for super-angels. I mentioned, a pretty bad judge of startups. He always seems to land on his feet.19 The other thing you get from work experience is an understanding of what work is, and part of the confusion is grammatical. In these the best practitioners aren't conveniently collected in a few big successes. Does it seem plausible that the people who write software are particularly harmed by checks.

But when Bill Clerico starts calling you, you may find you get surprising results.20 We get all the paperwork set up properly so there are no external checks at all.21 New York.22 Raising a traditional series A round is from a mezzanine financing. They know they want to do. But increasingly it means the ability to get things done, with no excuses. The new breed are themselves those people. When they'd been independent, they could release changes instantly. Investors like it when they can help a startup, is probably a startup. At YC we use the phrase ramen profitable to describe the situation where you're making just enough to pay your living expenses.

Notes

This essay was written before Firefox.

The hardest kind of people who want to save money, you won't be trivial. Not even being Genghis Khan is probably 99% cooperation. Investors are fine with funding nerds.

But their founders, because any story that makes curators and dealers use neutral-sounding language. They did turn out to be naive in: Life seemed so much a great thing in itself deserving.

But it isn't a quid pro quo. Japanese. I'm not saying, incidentally, that probably doesn't make A more accurate metaphor would be vulnerable both to attack the A P successfully defended itself by allowing the unionization of its completion in 1969 the largest of their hands thus tended to make you feel that you're not consciously aware of it.

Part of the next three years, it might be 20 or 30 times as much income. Programming in Common Lisp, which has been decreasing globally.

The New Industrial State to trying to deliver these sentences as if they'd been pretty clever by getting such a statement would merely be eccentric. The problem is that it's bad. As the art business? Add water as specified on rice cooker.

Our founder meant a photograph of a lumbar disc herniation as juicy except literally.

This of course.

One father told me about a form that asks for your work.

Sometimes founders know it's a harder problem than Hall realizes. I hadn't had much success in doing a small seed investment in you, they only like the difference between surgeons and internists fleas: I once explained this to some founders who'd taken series A in the US is the extent we see incumbents suppressing competitors via regulations or patent suits, we could just expand into casinos than software, we don't have to track ratios by time of day, thirty years later Jim Ryun ran a 3:59 mile as a percentage of statements. I've said into something that doesn't seem to be careful here, because by definition if the sender happens to compensate for another. Several people have historically done to their returns.

A variant is that in fact had its own. 54 million, and yet managed to screw up twice at the mercy of circumstances: court decisions striking down state anti-recommendation. FreeBSD 1. Managers are presumably wondering, how much of the potential series A from a few stellar exceptions the textbooks are not more.

It would have seemed to someone still implicitly operating on the other cheek skirts the issue; the defining test is whether you want to save money, then you're being starved, not because it's a book or movie or desktop application in this respect.

You'll be lucky if fundraising feels pleasant enough to answer the first type to go away, and Reddit is Delicious/popular is driven mostly by people trying to work your way up. Other highly recommended books: What is Mathematics? Sullivan actually said form ever follows function, but those specific abuses. More generally, it may seem to have figured out how to succeed at all is a constant multiple of usage, so presumably will the rate of change in how Stripe felt.

Economically, the technology business.

Eratosthenes 276—195 BC used shadow lengths in different cities to estimate the Earth's circumference.

The philosophers whose works they cover would be far from the other direction. I'm using these names as we use have a cover price and yet in both Greece and China, Yale University Press, 2005. So if they miss just a few hours of advice from your neighbor's fifteen year old son, you'll have to spend all your time on a wall is art.

Often as not the shape of the next one will be better for explaining software than English.

There need to.

Internally most companies are also much cheaper when bought in bulk. It also set off an extensive biography, and credit card debt is a significant startup hub. What we call metaphysics Aristotle called first philosophy.

So how do you know about this trick, and their flakiness is indistinguishable from dishonesty by the Robinson-Patman Act of 1982, which are a handful of ways to get all you know about a startup to engage with slow-moving organizations is to write every component yourself, if your true calling is gaming the system, which is as blind as the average startup.

So you can probably write a new version from which a few of the company really cared about doing search well at a discount to whatever the valuation a bit misleading to treat macros as a definition of property without affecting and probably also encourage companies to build their sites.

It wouldn't pay. VCs should be clear. But a couple years. The shares set aside a chunk of stock the VCs should be working to help the company really cared about users they'd just advise them to private schools that in practice is that they consisted of 50 pairs that each summed to 101 100 1,2003.

[michaelandy101-blog]

How to Master Website Personalization

New Post has been published on http://tiptopreview.com/how-to-master-website-personalization/

How to Master Website Personalization

In the summer, there’s so many things I enjoy: The sun, the temperature, chilled drinks, BBC’s Pride and Prejudice miniseries, but most of all … my summer subscription box.

The seasonal subscription box I’m subscribed to gives me a little something extra to look forward to every couple of months, and the company has a knack for making me feel like a valued customer.

In my opinion, it starts with the website. Every time I log on, the homepage is configured to my account, browsing history, and activity:

The dashboard greets me by name and gives me an update about my next box, like when it’ll be shipped. Next to that, I can look at order history and manage account settings. Underneath, I can look at what I received the previous season with the option to purchase something I really love.

Websites that are designed to adapt based on previous behavior make me feel like a valued customer. Every time I visit FabFitFun, I know I won’t have to follow multiple links for updated shipping information because it’s displayed at the top of the page. This tells me that the company thought of a question I might have and solved for it beforehand.

If you’re one of the 63% of marketers ready to update their website, let’s talk about an essential: personalization. Personalized websites deliver a customized experience to visitors. They configure based on a visitor’s behavior on the website, demographics, and interests.

88% of marketers believe that customers expect a personalized website experience when they visit. Static, generic websites are becoming a thing of the past. Given these figures, a multi-channel personalization strategy should be among your top priorities.

However, only 12% of marketers are satisfied with their personalization efforts. Personalization helps with traffic, customer retention, and sales. But if you aren’t experiencing that with yours, it can be easy to think you’re doing something wrong.

Maybe there’s something you can be doing better. Let’s look at examples of personalized websites that are doing it right, and tools that’ll help you deliver the best visit possible to customers.

How does website personalization work?

When I visit Disney+ or Hulu after a long day of work, I don’t feel like searching for new things to watch; Instead, I’d rather jump right back into The Bachelor. Hulu tracks which shows I’m currently watching and my homepage configures accordingly — so I can quickly play them without having to go to the search bar. When I do want to browse my options, though, the recommendations based on my interests have me covered.

Hulu’s team thought about the intentions I might have for streaming, like to unwind after a long day, and streamlined the process of catching up on shows by offering them on my homepage. This makes me feel like a valued customer, and knowing I can easily jump back in makes me want to stay a customer. And, when I’m browsing my options, I spend a lot of time going through my recommendations, increasing my time spent on the service.

My challenges are solved before I identify them, making me an advocate for the service. This is how website personalization adds to the customer experience — by making the consumer’s life easier.

Website personalization

Website personalization uses data collected from webpage visitors about their interests, location, and demographics to create a customized experience. It helps with customer retention and lead conversion.

You can use website personalization to give customers recommendations based on what they like, and offer premium content to repeat visitors. Ultimately, it tailors content based on your buyer personas to delight your audience.

Website personalization happens with data. Data that’s collected by the website is then used to add unique features to homepages, enhancing the browsing experience for the visitor. For example, you may be recommended products on an ecommerce website based on your past browsing history the next time you visit.

Customers want their website visit to be individualized because it makes them feel valued. Having the security of knowing that I can easily repeat an order on Amazon makes me feel as if they know what I want — it’s the joy of being a “regular,” just online.

Personalization can happen in a variety of ways; It’s not just regulated to a fancy homepage. Having CTAs that are relevant to a specific audience is personalization. Product recommendations and location-based copy are also examples.

Even though subscription services and streaming platforms are probably the most prominent examples of website personalization, nearly every company can benefit from having it on their website. Let’s look at some ways B2Bs, ecommerce, and software websites are using it to engage audiences.

Website Personalization Examples

English Tea Store

HubSpot Academy

Accuweather

Google News

Topshop

1. English Tea Store

I’m a huge loose leaf tea fan. Unfortunately, new flavors are hard to find — so I decided to get international with my next purchase. That’s how I found English Tea Store, which offers a variety of teas, tea accessories, and sweets.

Today, I visited the website for the first time, and I explored how the ecommerce experience was personalized for leads. When I found a tea I liked, I was brought to a page that was full of customized options:

Teas I might like based were displayed to the right, catching my attention. Additionally, I was given a special offer as a lead: I could sign up for the website and use the special code for a percentage off of my first order. A completed form is one way websites collect data to improve future visits.

I appreciated having a discount offer right off the bat; it gave me an incentive to complete that form. The recommendations streamlined browsing the products on the website. Instead of becoming overwhelmed with the many offerings, I was able to navigate through a smaller set of recommendations.

If your business has a large array of products like English Tea Company, use personalization to offer recommendations based on the products viewers are exploring. To gain leads, consider adding a special offer to first-time visitors like a discount — give them an incentive to fill out the form.

2. HubSpot Academy

Every quarter, I challenge myself to learn something new. Online courses like HubSpot Academy make that easy for me with personalized homepages.

When I log into the Academy homepage, this is what I see:

The page greets me by name and lists the courses in progress. Unlike the first example, I’ve been using Academy for a while, so every time I come back, I can quickly jump right back in where I left off.

Personalization doesn’t have to be overly complicated. If you’re a B2B marketer that prefers minimalist design, think about simple elements that will still give you the results you need. Greeting the user by name and showing previous interactions are great ways to make the customer feel valued.

3. AccuWeather

Every morning, I check the weather so I can dress accordingly. Even though I work from home, I like to match my wardrobe with Boston’s unpredictable forecasts. On AccuWeather, I don’t have to type a thing to find what I need.

AccuWeather’s website uses location data to automatically generate the current forecast in that area. This is a great example of how a company guessed what visitors would want to know, then used personalization to cater to them.

If location-based data is huge for your company’s offerings, like Zipcar or Airbnb, offer visitors suggestions based on where they are in the world. It’ll make them feel like you’re an expert in offerings that only locals know.

4. Google News

If I’m on a website I visit frequently, I instantly go to the section marked “For you.” Google News is no exception. This app looks at my browsing history on Google and pulls relevant, recent news articles that I may like in the “For you” section.

For instance, I’ve been really into searching for sci-fi movies and pasta recipes lately, so I had quite an interesting mix of articles for today:

Google pulls from different sources, including websites I visit, to give a range of options for me to read. Remember, personalization doesn’t have to be limited to one goal. You can use the data you have from customers to think of new content to offer them.

5. Topshop

Online shopping for clothing is tough sometimes. Often, it’s hard to know what you’re looking for with so many options. Especially if you don’t know your sizes. That’s why I really like Topshop’s personalization.

The website has a quiz that gives visitors an entire edit, wardrobe, and outfit recommendations based on the answers. The quiz asked me to choose clothes I liked, what I wanted suggested, and my budget. For sizes, I go to choose from competitors I frequent, like Forever 21 and H&M, and use their sizing details to inform Topshop of mine.

After taking the quiz, this is the screen I saw (Not before creating an account, so the website could store my data):

I loved that my wardrobe had a name. Plus, I liked the organization — I could choose recommendations by piece, season, occasion, or outfit. It was also cool to see what closet staples to have and avoid.

Topshop’s team thought about the worries I have about online shopping and solved it with a quiz that personalized my visit. Offer a quiz or chatbot that answers questions and uncertainties first-time visitors might face. Use them to create a page just for that visitor or lead them to the one they need.

We’ve seen how personalization can look when it’s done well. So next, let’s talk about some best practices to keep in mind when you’re setting up personalization on your website.

Personalization Best Practices

When website personalization works, it can account for a delightful, interactive website visit for visitors. But what about when things don’t work so perfectly?

For example, what if a repeat customer visited your website and got an offer for leads? Or, what if your website gives inaccurate recommendations to audience segments? Websites that are personalized, but done poorly, may result in a loss of leads or customers.

To make sure your website aces personalization, let’s look at some best practices.

1. Solve for your buyer personas.

Buyer personas are fictionalized accounts of your ideal customer. They help you identify challenges, interests, and demographic information about your audience. Figuring these things out helps you improve the effectiveness of marketing messaging.

Use personalization to create content that will be valuable to your personas. To illustrate, let’s say you’re part of a computer company and you have two buyer personas: The university student and the professional.

The university student is looking for an affordable, functional laptop that’ll allow them to complete assignments without hassle, while the professional is looking for a sleek computer with all the bells and whistles.

To personalize your website for those personas, you can create two content offers for each; One that advertises an upcoming webinar, “Choosing Your College Computer,” and one that promotes an ebook for the best professional laptops by industry. That way, when these personas visit your website, they’ll see special offers that are specific to their needs.

When you personalize according to the challenges, or needs, of your personas, they’ll feel like a valued advocate for your company.

2. Make the design simple.

Poor personalization can be a result of too many moving parts at once. Would you want a first-time visitor to access your homepage and be bombarded with content offers, their name plastered across the banner, and product recommendations from every section of your website?

All of these functions, while helpful, can be overwhelming when working together — and lower the load time of the webpage. To avoid a busy webpage, keep your personalization simple. Choose one or two elements that will be the most useful for your company and audience.

Think of Amazon or a streaming service. The personalization tool, recommendations, used on homepages are usually separated into minimal, relevant categories. Keep categories based on genres or audience preference — Like “Horror movies” or “Based on your last purchase.”

3. Keep your goals in mind.

Identify the reasons why you’re personalizing your website. In addition to thinking of your customers, keep those goals at the forefront of personalization decisions.

Let’s say one of your goals is to increase customer retention. How can you keep customers coming back, outside of retargeted ads and emails? Design webpages for returners that feel familiar to them and are easy to navigate.

Save login information, make the homepage greet a customer by name, and display recommendations based on their recent purchases. That way, when customers return to your site, they’ll find it easy to navigate and repurchase. In addition, they’ll recognize that your company wants its audience to feel catered to directly, even online.

The ease and delight of your website will keep customers coming back for quick purchases. Because you made personalization choices based on your goals, you were able to delight your customer and accomplish your company’s objectives.  

4. Make sure your data is quality.

We know by now that website personalization is powered by data. This data needs to be accurate to make an impact. When you make forms, add fields that will give you the right information for personalization.

One way to do this easily, especially if you have an ecommerce website, is to use chatbots or quizzes. Think back to the style quiz from Topshop and how the questions were related to products and preferences. Use chatbots to answer FAQs leads might have.

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These tactics will give you the data you need to make accurate personalization choices. If you don’t know about your audience’s interests, it can be hard to know which strategies you should implement with your design.

The right data helps your audience do what you want them to, and nurture them along in their buyer’s journey. You’ll have those insights about what they want and how you can help.

5. Pick the right tools.

Behind every great personalized website is fantastic software. Choosing the right software is important — it’s what powers those beautiful web pages. A CRM and a CMS work together to make this happen.

Customer relationship management (CRM) software is what you’ll use to manage and organize customers, leads, and your relationships with them. It’s what will store that quality data you need.

This data can range from completed forms and chatbot conversations to lead tracking. Look at the pages your visitors are returning to often and the time spent on pages to personalize offers.

Then, your content management system (CMS) will allow you to implement what you’ve gathered on your website. It will change based on the data it has about specific customers. Data, like location and returning visitors, can be logged by a CMS.

Next, let’s talk about some software options you can use to build your website.

Website Personalization Tools

For ease, look for software that has a CRM and CMS rolled into one, like HubSpot. Software should be simple to operate and its tools should be useful to your customers and business goals.

1. HubSpot

Price: $300/mo. For CMS Hub Professional

HubSpot’s CMS allows you to build and manage a stunning, personalized website. You can also leverage forms and chatbots to enhance the options you give customers to customize their experience with the software.

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The drag and drop editor in HubSpot’s software makes it easy to add smart rules or personalized features. Using the CMS, you’ll collect data about the behavior of website visitors and use those insights to enhance your website.

You can also test different web pages to find out which options are the most valuable for customers. This can help you decide on a final personalization design that’s exciting and functional. If you’re looking for an all-in-one software package that’s easy to use and scalable, check out HubSpot.

2. Barilliance

Price: Contact for pricing

Ecommerce platform Barilliance offers tools to personalize online storefronts. Options, like relevant recommendations, can help reduce shopping cart abandonment and close more sales. With Barilliance, you can optimize and customize shopping trips for every visitor.

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Pushys website was created using Barilliance. In the image above, notice how you can add relevant product recommendations to fit the visitor’s interests. There are two categories that show off the expansive catalog of Pushys’ health products.

If you have an ecommerce website that you want to tailor to every visitor, consider using Barilliance’s campaign and website features to make that a breeze.

3. Qubit

Price: Contact for pricing

Personalization using Qubit is just as unique as the websites you can create with the software. Offerings are categorized into three parts: Start, Grow, and Pro. These categories target company goals and are separated by experience level.

Qubit Start is for those who just want personalization foundational tools, like chatbots or recommendations. Grow is meant for solving more specific goals — for instance, integrating customer data across platforms. Pro, on the other hand, offers different packages for you to choose.

Every Qubit category comes equipped with the same base features: tests, integrations, recommendations, and omnichannel personalization. If you’re looking for software that has tools fit for your skill level and business size, look into Qubit.

4. SiteSpect

Price: Contact for pricing

If user behavior is one of your biggest goals, SiteSpect is a great option. Its tools offer personalization that is based on user data, like previous visits, sessions, and omnichannel behavior.

This data is collected by SiteSpect, which you can analyze and use to customize web pages for audience segments. When you create segments with the software, choose from an array of factors that will enhance the impact of your site, like location and device type.

Home decor company, Temple & Webster, uses SiteSpect. The “Room ideas” tab offers tons of different rooms styled using the company’s products. As you scroll down the page, you can see similar ideas based on the one you chose initially.

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This website’s personalization features are very interactive and cover a range of decor styles, so it’s easy to find furniture attuned to your interests.

SiteSpect can help you build a website like Temple & Webster’s — and track their effectiveness among your visitors. When you analyze campaign performance, you can know what’s working and what’s not, to better configure your design for customers.

5. Hyperise

Price: Starts at $29/mo.

If your company is a B2B, Hyperise was created just for you. With it, you can use hyper-personalization (using data to recommend products) to boost conversions, all without coding experience.

You’ll be able to use tools that nurture leads such as IP lookup and form completion. For company branding, you can add your logo, profile images, and dynamic text. Additionally, you can create multiple, custom, CTAs to engage your audience.

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This software lets you pull data from your CRM and upload it into Hyperise, so the platform is highly integratable. Hyperise also offers an extension you can download to make it easy to continue on website building.

Maybe you’re in search of a personalization tool that will integrate with your HubSpot, Salesforce, Shopify, or Google Sheets account. For that, Hyperise could be the solution.

When you visit sites that give you an amazing personalization experience, what about it makes it great? Pull influence from your favorite brands if you find yourself stuck. But ultimately, personalization allows you to take a decent website to one that behaves like customers expect it to, every time.

My subscription box order shipped today, and I can see when it will arrive from my homepage. While I excitedly await its arrival, I can’t wait to see what you come up with for your shiny, new, personalized website.

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[foslad]

Almost Too Good (A Chris Evans Story): Part 15 - 2/2

A/N: Continued on from 1/2 :)

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It always seemed that the days you look forward to the most, more often than not, take the longest to arrive.

And Thursday happened to be one of those days.

At some point in the year/century/millennium that was this week, Chris had texted me to let me know that he’d made reservations at his “favorite restaurant” to show off what LA had to offer; as he was more than aware of the fact that I liked “good food”.

I had smiled so widely upon receiving it and texted back a “If it isn’t up to scratch, I’ll hold you accountable Evans.’ He’d replied with “I’d expect nothing less.”

I had relentlessly debated with myself about calling him “Evans” still, but we were ‘buds’, right?

When the day finally arrived, I despaired on the inside when shooting ran late and as the clock ticked on, I realized pretty quickly that I wasn’t going to have time to go home and change before dinner.

After seeking permission, I looked at and judged some of the pieces that Wardrobe had to offer. To my delight, I saw that they had a few nice summer dresses that never got used during filming last week.

The weather here had been incredible since I arrived, so I decided a dress wouldn’t go amiss; especially when one was seeing an ex of sorts.

A nice brown and white floral patterned summer dress that reached my mid-thigh and had three buttons at the top that helped accentuate a person’s cleavage was to be the chosen one. The whole vibe of it was trendy casual, which I liked, and it matched well with the pair of tan, heeled Chelsea boots and the grey button up sweater that I’d worn to work myself, just in case.

Slinging my bag over my shoulder, I took one last glance in the full length mirror situated at the end of the costume trailer and decided that I was content with the final product.

As I said my goodbyes and exited the studios, my shine quickly began to diminish at the sight of some pretty dreary looking rain clouds. What? I thought it never rained in LA?

Google had told me that the restaurant was about a twenty minute walk from the set, and having been a city girl for quite some time now, and well able to tell a rain cloud from a warning cloud, I decided that I could just walk it without the fear of getting wet.

-

From the outside, the restaurant seemed very nice; a trendy, almost hipster looking venue. Situated on the corner of a high street, the bushes outside had fairy lights that all shone brightly against the now setting sun (that was slowly being drowned in darkening clouds) and a concierge in jeans and a tie waited at the entrance to seat you.

Fixing my hair and tightly gripping the cardigan I was carrying in my hands, I walked up and inquired about a reservation under Evans.

A smile, a nod and a brief walk later, I could see the back of a head that still to this day caused me feel like a sweating mess.

As I came into view and he looked up from the menu, his smile disarmed me almost instantly. Effective immediately, I had no armor. No padding. I was merely rendered into pure goo.

He greeted me with a warming, one armed hug and all my mind could do was delight in his scent once again. Still. So. Fresh.

‘See what you did?’ He began to chide as we took our seats. ‘Just haaaad to bring your damn city weather with you.’

I smiled and raised an eyebrow in response, my eyes trying to subtly pore over his appearance. His hair was a little longer and likewise his beard. He looked so manly and rugged this time around, not that I was complaining.  

Naturally things began a little awkwardly but knowing where my priorities stood, I picked up the menu and eagerly perused what was on offer. All kinds of steaks, seafood’s and soups popped out at me and I could feel my excitement rising at the thought of trying something new.

Ordering Pan Seared Salmon with Avocado Remoulade and a side salad, I shot Chris a skeptical look as he ordered a simple salad on its own.

He held his hands up in defense. ‘Cap training beckons.’

As the waitress came over to give us some water, Chris decided to be the one to break the awkwardness in terms of conversation. ‘How are you liking LA?’

I shrugged as I picked up my glass of freshly poured water. ‘..It’s okay.’

Now it was his turn to throw a skeptical look. ‘”Okay”?’

‘I mean, it’s no New York…’

‘You’re kidding me right? You’d really pick New York City over LA?’ He asked in mock astonishment.

‘You’d really pick LA over New York City?’ I retaliated.

‘I mean, realistically, I’d pick Boston over either of them but given the fact I’ve lived in both places, yes, LA would win.’

I shook my head and feigned disappointment at the thought of him preferring flashiness over reality.

Our food quickly arrived and with each bite I took I had to admit, it was actually very good; I had to give him credit for that. As I looked around at the actual place itself, hoping to pick flaws in which to jokingly compare to New York City eateries, I noticed that a couple sat across kept directing their attention towards us.

It occurred to me then that probably one of the biggest reasons I didn’t like LA was now glaring me in the face.

‘I think we’ve been rumbled Mister Hollywood.’ I whispered before glancing out of the window to try and distract myself from the self-conscious sensation starting to arise at the thought of people staring at me so openly.

‘Hmm?’

I flicked my eyes towards the general direction of the couple and watched as he subtly turned around for a brief second to inspect.

He quickly turned back around and simply shrugged. ‘You get used to it.’

‘Should you have to?’ I wondered aloud.

‘You can’t expect to have the good without the trivial Adrian. Show business doesn’t work like that out here.’ He countered.

‘Another reason not to want to live here.’

‘If you wanna be in Justice League it doesn’t matter where you live.’ He stated matter of factly.

‘I’m not going to be in Justice League. It’s just…’ I circled my hands as I struggled to find the right words, ‘a, nice thought, I guess.’

He sat up straight and observed me closely. ‘Okay, so say you do get the part. Or a different part along the same lines. You think you can just exist under a rock?’

I could feel a tension begin to arise between us. It wasn’t necessarily a nasty one, but we were challenging each other in a way I wasn’t expecting tonight.

Without waiting for an answer, he continued on as he looked down and played with his food. ‘What you give to the world is what it keeps of you. The less “open” you are, the more they’ll crave you. If you just give them what you want them to know, then it makes life a hell of a lot easier, trust me.’

‘If only TMZ would take that into consideration when they undoubtedly run their story about us later.’ I still felt calm despite the tension.

‘So? We’re just two friends having dinner, it’s no big deal.’ He wiped his mouth with his napkin and took a sip of water. ‘The important thing is that we got away with it when it mattered.’

I could feel myself nodding in agreement, but a little pit began to grow in my stomach as he continued talking. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought this dinner was our way of, maybe, checking things out and seeing if there was any room for another go.

With the arrival of the bill, which Chris insisted upon paying, the end was nigh.

-

Despite our slightly awkward dinner, Chris was adamant on giving me a ride back to my apartment and it only took a couple of minutes for him to address the elephant in the car.

‘I’m sorry if I came across harsh back there.’ He let out in a tone that sounded as though he’d been keeping that statement in for a hot minute.

I lifted my head to look at him as I stopped searching in my bag for a second, a task I had started in a bid to pass the time and awkward silence.

‘I just wanna make sure you’re prepared for the shit storm that is “mainstream” production.’ He advised softly as he pulled out of the parking lot. ‘I know you’re not a newcomer to this whole thing, but I think you’ve been enviably fortunate up to this point to have only experienced the kind of movie making that actually ends with the word “cut”.’

Genuinely intrigued, I asked him what he meant by that.

‘Well, it’s like this. You do your movie. You wait. You promote your movie. That finishes. You go about your business for a while. You do your next movie.’ Even though he kept his eyes on the road the whole time he was talking, I could tell he was beginning to get passionate about what he was saying. ‘I mean, sure you’ll get pictures taken of you here and there, but once you hit the big time? Oh man, it’s a completely different ball game.’

He sighed before catching himself and taking his hands off of the wheel for a split second. ‘And that’s not me trying to put you off! I think it’s just me trying to protect you, because when I started to get more mainstream roles, I wish to God someone had sat me down and told me about the crazy shit that comes all wrapped up in a bow with it.’

As he finished speaking, it coincided with a red stop light and taking advantage of the brief pause, I quickly undid my seat belt and leant across to softly kiss him on the cheek before half joking, half seriously stating ‘thank you for your concern.’

He returned my gesture with a shameless yet small smirk and he watched as I settled myself back into my seat and redid my belt up. We sat there in a content silence for a few seconds, absorbing in what he had said, before both of our attention was caught by the arrival of little splatters on the windscreen; ones that proceeded to get faster as each second passed.

‘Well would’ya look at that. It actually decided to start raining.’ I gave a slight laugh, ‘It’s starting to feel like home after all.’

‘Fuck.’ Chris stated as he watched each drop hit the glass.

‘What? Are you so LA now that you don’t like the rain?’ I teased.

‘No,’ His eyes glanced at me quickly, letting me know he’d registered that light dig, ‘I didn’t know how long we’d be so I left the back door open so that Dodger could go out and in as pleased.’ He pulled his bottom lip into his mouth as he shut his eyes and sighed. ‘And if I know that little…’ He began to trail off, no doubt imagining a 101 different scenarios in his head.

‘You brought him back to LA?’ I asked, but Chris’ mind was elsewhere, not even hearing me.

‘Fuck, fuck, he’s gonna catch a cold again.’ He muttered under his breath and I could tell the thought was distressing him.

‘Did you want to go and check on him?’

He did hear me that time and I could see his eyes light up at my solution as he looked over expectantly. ‘Is that cool? It’ll only take a second, I swear.’

‘Sure, of course! I don’t have to be home right this second.’

-

He pulled into his driveway with as much ease as his haste would allow. Although a short drive, the rain had increased significantly in the time it had taken to get here.

‘Did you want me to stay here?’ I asked as he pulled his keys out of the ignition.

‘No, you may as well come in. I don’t know if i’m gonna need to dry him off or something.’

I nodded and braced myself as I slowly opened the car door, pulling my sweater over my head in a bid to stay dry as I made the little run towards Chris’ front door.

Upon entering and with only a quick inspection, a brown and white fluff ball, all curled up on the couch, toasty and dry, was plain to see and I could see the relief wash over Chris’ face.

It didn’t take long for the dog to notice our presence and jump up in excitement. As he padded along the floor in happiness to see us, Chris’ quickly greeted his little pal before making his way over to the back clear glass door, the one people were entering in and out of at his housewarming party, to shut it.

What happened next will be a memory I’ll treasure forever.

Just as Dodger was about to greet me in his usual friendly manner, his head cocked to see what Chris was doing. It was almost as though he had only just noticed it was raining outside, and that his window of opportunity was about to be closed. As quick as a flash, he set off in pursuit of sweet freedom and with one ‘DODGER NO!’ the pup was outside, basking in the rare LA downpour and quickly getting very wet.

My eyes DRANK in the image of Chris chasing his dog around and around and around his fancy garden and pool area as the disobedient mutt ran free.

After about three or four minutes, the dog was eventually scooped up by a completely unimpressed and dripping wet owner who huffed in frustration as he closed the back door with a bang whilst the dog simply gave a satisfied shake of his fur before trotting over to the faux fireplace Chris had left on to get warm again.

Chris stood still for a second, drops falling off of him as he placed his forehead against the glass.

I wanted to burst. I had just had front row seats to Captain America himself being outsmarted by a dog.

Slowly turning around, an embarrassed look on his face, he declined to lock eyes with me for a second.

That is, until he heard me trying to suppress a bout of laughter that threatened to escape at any second…

Looking up at me, he declared ‘Ohhh you think that’s funny, huh?’

I bit my tongue as a way of holding it together and shook my head in a feeble “no” action.

His eyes dripping in mischief, and his mouth without another word, he began to advance towards me.

Instinctively, I stepped backwards.

Before I could even turn around to run, he’d reached me in a heartbeat and I playfully squealed as two strong arms engulfed my legs and in one swift motion, I was thrown over his shoulder; my head now level with the small of his back.

‘What are you doing?!’

Silence.

As I was led down one of the hallways of his home I hadn’t entered yet, I tried my hardest to figure out what the hell was going on.

Without warning, he took a sharp left and a black tiled flooring came into my view.

‘Is this the bathroom!?’ I screeched, still trying and failing to loosen myself free.

He didn’t respond. Instead he silently took one hand off of me and began doing something out of my field of vision with it.

Within no time at all, I was landed back down onto the tiled floor next to what looked to be a large glass front shower. I quickly tried to move my hair out of my face to get a better look but I hadn’t been quick enough to see a muscly arm gently but firmly grip my hip.

The next couple of seconds were almost a blur.

I turned my attention from my hips to behind me as Chris reached forward and ignited the rumblings of what sounded like a waterfall. A second hand found its way to my other hip and in unison they pushed me back into a flowing cascade.

I yelped in surprise as a blast of freezing cold water descended upon my head and began to soak my hair, my clothes, my boots, everything. Literally every single particle of my existence was being rained upon right now.

‘CHRIS!’ I scolded loudly as the cold quickly began to stunt my senses.

I strained to open my eyes, only to see him watching me with the biggest shit eating grin I’d ever seen, pulling his hand up to his mouth to hide the laugh that was dying to break free. Between the droplets that washed over my face and started to ruin the hours of hair and makeup I’d sat through that day and the look on his face, I decided there was no going back now.

Without a second thought, I moved forward and grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked with all my might.

And just like that, it was my turn to grin as I watched his face contort in horror as he experienced the clear liquid engulf him. ‘AWH SHIT THAT’S COLD!’

‘YOU THINK!?’ I yelled back, trying my best to be heard over the sound of the gushing water.

He quickly leant his arm forward and adjusted the temperature of the water and within seconds, our freezing nightmare melted into a warm and welcoming flow.

‘Just turn it off why don’t you? I think I got the message!’ I stuttered through my laughter, only imagining what kind of wet, sloppy, mess I must’ve looked like at that very moment.

‘Where’s the fun in that?’ He decreed as he reached his hands behind my head and pulled my face forward so that it was directly under the rush of a spirt of water. I closed my eyes and mouth in a bid to stop it entering, spluttering slightly as I did so, doing my best not to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Even though I couldn’t see it, I could practically feel his smugness.

After a couple more seconds, he loosened his grip but kept his hand in place at the back of my head. I pulled back slightly and realised some makeup had gotten into my eyes. Attempting to help my now blurred vision by bringing my hands up and rubbing my eyes, it was quickly brought to my attention that this was probably a bad choice to have made.

‘Ya okay?’ He chuckled.

‘If okay means I literally can’t see anything, then I’m peachy Evans!’ I stated, still rubbing and just hoping for the best.

Before I knew it, soft fabric caressed my face as he wiped my eyes with a towel he’d magically acquired in my temporary blindness.

As he and everything else came back into view, I winced as I saw the stains of mascara on his now dripping wet towel. ‘I bet I look so awful with makeup all down my face, huh?’

As soon as I closed my mouth in ugly defeat, a pair of soft, wet lips hit mine at full force and my body froze for a different reason.

It took me all of about one second to realize what was happening and respond accordingly; eagerly. I reached one hand up to his face and the other gripped his shoulder as I leaned into him. Either it was the cold from earlier or the feeling of kissing Chris after all this time or even a combination of the two, but my legs had suddenly been rendered into shivering messes.

The kiss deepened as our hands scrambled for any way in which we could possibly get our bodies any closer to one another.

My heart began to pound in anticipation as Chris moved his hands down to the small of my back, only to then go lower and rest them on my behind.

It was like my head was about to pop off when I felt his tongue slide along my bottom lip.

I felt like I couldn’t breathe with the shock of it all.

Despite not ever wanting the moment to end, I pulled my head away, only slightly and gazed at him.

Our noses were still touching, droplets rolling down each of our bridges and meeting in the middle. My voice escaped me. The feeling in my stomach was reminiscent of when you get off a rollercoaster that has plunged you down at a rapid speed.

I couldn’t believe it. Completely caught in the moment, all I could muster was a low whisper.

‘That… wasn’t… very friendly.’

With one cup of my backside, he hoisted me up and my legs found themselves guided around his waist.

‘Right now? Fuck being friends.’ He declared and like that, our lips found each other again.

-

I felt like I was intoxicated. I had no idea how or when we had flopped onto Chris’ bed but all I knew was that I was there now, with my damp dress sticking to me like glue as Chris’ lips worshiped my neck like it was the air he needed to breath. His hands wandered the length of my exposed outer thighs, from where my dress had ridden up, stopping every so often to gently squeeze the skin as his lips would surface to meet mine again.

I had never noticed that he wore a silver link chain around his neck until the cold metal danced along my skin, having freed itself from underneath his shirt.

As he continued to bend down and kiss along my collar bone, I realized I wanted to let him know just how much I had craved this moment of intimacy with him. Placing my hands on both sides of his face and pulling up, I brought our lips back together for another brief kiss. Then, without breaking our gaze, I reached my still shivering fingers up to slowly undo the three buttons at the top of my soaked through dress. One by one, the fabric peeled away and I revealed the top half of a lace bra. A red, lace, bra. I felt delighted as I recalled our moment in my bedroom all those weeks ago and how much he’d adored the red set he’d seen.

His eyes had drank in every second of my teasing before slowly glancing back up to my own eyes with an approving grin.

Wanting more, I reached up and gently hooked my index finger around the delicate chain and pulled him down to meet my lips once more. Not that he remained there long. His fingers tentatively stroked up and down my dress, as though it was his way of asking permission. Still wanting more, I picked up the hand that he wasn’t balancing his weight on and placed it onto my lace covered breast and ground myself closer to him in the process. Each and every time his lips touched my skin, my body would tremor like a bolt of electricity was shocking me.

Despite the heat radiating off of us, I began to shiver underneath him and there was nothing I could do to stop my body from shaking like it was on vibrate mode.

More than anything I didn’t want to break this long yearned after contact with Chris, but even he had to admit defeat in the end. Rising his head from my neck, his bottom lip quivering from the chill, he bent down and gave me one last hard kiss before admitting that ‘a’right, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I’m too fucking cold for anything to work right now.’

I nodded weakly, still breathless and speechless.

He used both hands to push himself off of me to go wander out of the room. As his weight lifted off of the bed, I could feel myself already mourning the loss of contact. Play-time was over.

Doing my best to regain any form of actual human brain functionality, I took the time to gaze around at his bedroom. His huge leather back bed was leant against one of only two painted walls in the room; the other two were floor to ceiling windows that stretched across with light grey blinds, to presumably match the dark grey paint on the walls. The blinds obscured what I’m sure is a beautiful view, even on a grey night like this.

It surprised me that Chris lived in such an open household, he struck me as being all too private most of the time.

After a few brief minutes, he came back into the room dressed in an entirely different outfit. Casual, comfy sweat pants replaced his jeans and he bore a black t-shirt now.

‘How do you handle that?’ I asked as I knelt up on the bed.

‘Handle what?’ He didn’t look up as he made his way over to me, doing his best to juggle the different fabrics he had in his hands.

‘Those windows! Don’t you think they’re really… invasive? Especially when the blinds are up?’ I ran my hands up and down along my arms, hoping to warm up.

He humoured me and looked at them, squinting his eyes as he studied them.

‘Not really. It’s private property, so the only life form that gets to see my tush is the cat from next door who likes to drop by occasionally to fuck with Dodger through the glass.’ He grinned. ‘If I was afraid of anyone getting in, I wouldn’t just go around leaving doors open.’

Nodding, I looked up at him expectantly, still shivering as my warming technique failed miserably.

He handed me a towel, a t-shirt of his and a pair of shorts that he said his sister leaves here in case she fancies a change when she visits. He still had one more towel in his hand and informed me he was off to dry Dodger off properly whilst I changed.

-

I decided to change in the bathroom so as to address the problem that was my smeared face. I took some tissue and some water and soap and gently began to wipe off anything that had withstood the test of the elements.

‘Do you want some coffee?’ A voice called through the door.

‘No thank you.’ I replied, remembering my caffeine ban.

‘Do you want something stronger?’

‘No, I’m good.’ I had a heavy day of shooting tomorrow.

I walked over and opened the door to reveal him leaning against the frame with his arms folded and a smirk glued to his face.

‘Do you wanna stay the night?’ His voice was smooth like butter but admittedly there wasn’t a trace of pressure or presumption in sight.

I smiled and shook my head, moving forward so that I was close enough to hook my arms up around his neck. ‘Some of us still have to work for a living Evans.’

He nodded understandingly and with a quick peck on the lips and a fond look, he offered to drive me back to my apartment.

-

I threw my keys down onto the coffee table and went about with my nightly ritual of closing all the blinds, one by one. I made my way around the apartment as though I were drifting on a cloud, a dreamy smile refusing to leave.

Reaching the last blind, I looked over at the piercing blue eyes that I had stared into for real not long ago and bit my lip.

I guess I’m back on the wagon boyssss.

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

A/N: I tease. I know. But teasing is the best kind of a build up, no? ;)

[brooks-jared-archive-blog]

Diner Date || Miles & Jared

Who: Miles Monahan & Jared Brooks

When: Monday, February 20th

Where: Le Diner

Notes: French Fries, Nicknames, Baseball & Innuendo  

@hopespringsmilesmonahan

Jared made his way to the diner just a bit earlier than 7:00, intending on grabbing a booth and waiting for the younger man to join him. He felt for anyone that moved to a new town. He'd moved all the way from Boston to California for school and as great as it had turned out, it hadn't been easy at first. He smiled at the server as she came over and ordered a coke, scrolling through his email as he waited for Miles to arrive.

Miles made sure the door to the record store was locked up tight before he left. The last thing he wanted was for his boss to get angry at him this early in his employment, and he took being trusted with the keys to the store very seriously. Satisfied everything was as it should be, the submissive stretched and headed towards the diner. The weather was nice, but a bit brisk, so he zipped up his hoodie as he continued to walk. It only took him a few minutes to get there. Miles checked to see if Jared was waiting for him outside, but when he didn't see the man, he went inside. Craning his neck slightly, he found the man sitting at a booth, looking at his phone. "Isn't there some sort of social rule about phone use at restaurants?" he mused with a small grin as he sat opposite.

Jared looked up at the voice, tucking his phone back into his pocket. "If there is, apparently, we live in a city full of rebels," he said, gesturing around the room to the scores of other people using their phones. "However, it is put away and now you have my full attention whether you want it or not." A smirk played at Jared's lips as he grabbed a menu from the back of the table and handed it to the younger man. "You found it with no problems, then?"

Miles rolled his eyes a bit at the sight of nearly half the other diners poking away at their phones. "I could understand it if they were alone, but most of them are with people," he groused. "Though, then again, maybe they're Googling something to support an argument?" he offered as an alternative to his view. "Thank you," he said in response to Jared putting his phone away, and in being giving the menu. "No problems at all. Once I saw the lit up 'diner' sign, I just walked towards it," he admitted with a laugh. "The record store I work at is just a few streets down."

Jared chuckled at the comment. "You are giving them far more credit than I would," he said, leaning back in his seat and taking a sip of his coke. He already knew what he wanted so he didn't need to peruse the menu. He ate here a couple times a week usually. "I suppose a giant neon sign is a good indicator of where to go, yes. It's been awhile since I was there but I've always been fond of that store. Are you enjoying working there so far?"

Miles shrugged and flipped the menu over in his hands a couple of times. "I like to give people the benefit of the doubt when I can," he admitted, finally settling on a section of the menu to focus on. The waitress stopped over to take his drink order, and he smiled at her, asking for a root beer. "You've been to the record store before?" he wondered. "So far, yeah! I get to jam out to whatever music I want the whole day. I could be working at far worse places," he said brightly. "What is it you do for a living?" he asked, making conversation.

Jared watched the submissive flip the menu and wondered if he ever sat still. Somehow, he doubted it. "I have," he said. "It's a great store." Miles' enthusiasm for his job brought a smile to his face. "Ah, what I wouldn't give to be able to jam out to whatever I wanted at work. It would make the day fly by I'm sure." He took another sip of his drink before answering. "I work for a non-profit children's charity. We support community centers, scholarships, and technology for children living in poverty." He didn't add that he was the CEO and that it was a charity named after his own family. That made it sound like an obligation when it was something that he really did have a passion for. "It's rewarding."

Miles smiled again when the waitress brought over his drink. She left to give him a few more minutes to decide on what he wanted. "Is it okay if I let the owner know your opinion on the store?" he asked. "It certainly does," he agreed. He took a moment to pick out exactly what he wanted, finally picking something no one could get wrong. When he heard what Jared did for a living, he couldn't help the pleased 'aww' that left him. "It's sweet that you're willing to do that kind of work," he said. "I can imagine it's rewarding, but do you honestly enjoy it, is the real question?" he prodded.

Jared "Sure, glad to let the owner know what I think," he shrugged. He chuckled at the pleased reaction at his job. This is why he didn't say off the bat it was his family's charity. "I do. It is...a very good reason to get up in the morning." He hesitated only for a moment before spilling the truth. "I can honestly say, that I would do it even if it wasn't named after my family." The server saved him from further comment. He gestured to Miles to give his order before he gave his own.

Miles gave a little drum riff with his hands on the table when he was given permission to tell his boss. While the man didn't smile a lot, he had a feeling he'd get a little kick at hearing how good of a reputation his store had. He raised his brows a bit at learning it was Jared's family's charity. "That's even cooler! That your family has that kind of willingness to help," he commented. "Sorry," he said to the waitress, not having realized she was there just then. "Just a simply cheese burger with bacon, and healthy heap of fries please," he said, shooing her a grin.

Jared truly hadn't expected that reaction. He smiled at Miles, for once grateful that someone didn't question his commitment to his job. "Thank you, darling. I am quite proud of it and them." He waited for Miles to order before adding his own. "I'll have the same and add a chocolate malt as well." He smiled and tucked the menus back in their place. "So, what's your gut telling you about Hope Springs so far?"

Miles had no reason to think Jared wasn't dedicated to his work. It wasn't exactly an easy job in the first place, even if he was doing it purely out of self-interest. Watching his mother coordinate some of her gigs with the charities she liked, he'd learned that that type of thing could be a struggle at the best of times. He preened, not minding the nickname. "You're welcome," he answered back. "Damn! There are malts here too?" he asked. The submissive hummed a little as he considered his answer. "It's telling me there are a lot of decent people in it. And that I should stay a while. Pretty much what my gut was telling me before."

Jared chuckled at the exclamation. "They are delicious. You should get one." He twirled the straw in his drink. "It sounds like your gut is very well-informed. I'm not sure we discussed and if we have my apologies, but where are you from?" He was curious about the younger man and what brought him here.

Miles just shrugged. "Maybe next time," he decided. The submissive had to be careful about his spending for a little while longer. The generous amount of cash his parents had given him for his cross-country trip was running thin, and he only got paid every other week. "It's hard to pick a specific city I'm from really. I usually just go with New York since that's where my mom recorded all her albums," he said. "But we've stayed... in Nashville, Miami, LA, Seattle for a little, Dallas. Dad finally convinced Mom to settle in a tiny little town in upstate New York, but I went a bit crazy there."

Jared "Miles, I invited you to dinner, I hope you don't think you will actually be paying for your own meal. I'm a tad old-fashioned that way." Also, he could afford it and moving across country on your own was costly. "Ah, you have a famous parent then? I can relate, somewhat. Though mine is a different kind of famous. My Dad is a US senator...I'm from Boston, originally," he explained. "I traveled a lot with him for political things but I'm sure it didn't compare to actually living different places." It was strange how easy it was to find things in common with people when you started to get to know them. "But now I know where you get your love of music. I fortunately didn't pick up my father's love of politics."

Miles winced at being found out so easily. "I didn't want to assume..." he mumbled. He liked that the Dominant was 'a tad old-fashioned' though. But the last thing he wanted to do was take advantage of that. "Still. Next time?" he offered again, not wanting to appear greedy. "She was famous for a while, I suppose. Her music's considered a bit old these days though," he said with a chuckle. "Really? You're not a Red Sox fan, are you?" he asked with teasingly narrowed eye. He sipped on his soda as he listened. "Politics sounds like a pain."

Jared didn't want Miles to be uncomfortable in the least, so he acquiesced. "Next time," he nodded, realizing belatedly what Miles had indicated. "Good to know there will be a next time," he said, smirking. He couldn't resist the tease. "Old isn't necessarily a bad thing. What's old today may indeed be new again tomorrow." He grinned at the mention of his favorite team. "Why? Is that going to prohibit a next time? Because I very much am. It's probably the one thing I miss about Boston, aside from my sister." He chuckled and sipped his soda again. "Politics are a pain and yet a necessary evil at times. My father is one of the good ones. I'm thankful for that. But it's definitely not my calling. Is music yours? Do you see yourself doing something in the industry or are you a musician as well?"

Miles gave the man a thankful smile. His smile shifted into a grin. "You've been nice to me so far. Why wouldn't there be a next time?" he said, shooting back a little tease of his own. The skeptical look he had as Jared answered his question about the sports team deepened into a playful frown. "How dare you be a Red Sox fan. It's totally a deal breaker," he said, trying and failing to appear serious over the matter. "Well, at least I know we'll be arguing about baseball once the season starts," he added with a laugh. Miles' expression softened when he heard the man was missing his sister. "You have sister?" he asked, wanting to know more. He hummed as he tried to muse over how to answer. "I do play a couple of instruments, but it's more of a hobby than anything. Something to keep my hands occupied, you know? I'm more of a behind the scenes guy when it comes to music. If a piece of equipment breaks, I can probably fix it."

Jared couldn't help letting his smirk widen, he shrugged at Miles' response. "Time will tell. You never know, my niceness may be hiding a nefarious side." He chuckled at the playful frown. "Please tell, darling. Not the Yankees? Anyone but the Yankees." He suddenly was looking forward to Baseball season beginning. "I do. Her name is Melinda and she is nearly exactly 11 months younger than me. My parents wasted no time." He smiled fondly at the thought of his sister. Not really a baby sister. They were more like twins. "Someday I will convince her to join me out here." He nodded at the explanation. "So, a technical wizard. Impressive. Are you in school?"

Miles raised his brows in surprise. "A nefarious side, huh? Now I'm all curious," he said with a chuckle. His jaw dropped at the insinuation he was a Yankees fan. "How dare you!" he exclaimed, teasingly playing as if he was horribly offended. "I, good sir, am a proud Mets fan," he finally declared. He burst out laughing after wards. "Melinda's a nice name. Is she a Dom like you?" he asked. He winced a little at the question about school. "No. School and I didn't agree with each other. I barely got my GED," he explained, though he wasn't all that proud of how difficult doing that had been.

Jared gave the submissive a devilish smirk. "Indeed." He let the comment hang in the air. He couldn't help but laugh at the incredulous expression on Miles' face. "Oh well, then you are forgiven. If you were a Yankee's fan, I would have had to end our association immediately." Miles' laughter was infectious. It would be extremely difficult to be in a bad mood around the young man. "No, Melinda is a submissive," he said. His expression turned more serious as the subject changed and he caught Miles' wince at the question. "I see, well school isn't for everyone. I do agree with that. Though, I will say, it is different when you are learning something you are passionate about instead of the things you are forced to remember in high school."

Miles knowingly chuckled in return. He exaggerated his relieved sigh, given in response to Jared not wanting to dissolve their acquaintanceship just yet. "I wouldn't be caught dead in Yankee stripes," he assured. It was fun to find out they had baseball in common. At the very least, they disliked the same team. "You two are close?" he asked. Then smiled at the waitress as she brought their food. Politely, he waited for the Dominant to start eating first before he began on his fries. "True. I'm just terrible at learning anything from books or lectures. I'm a hands-on kind of guy," he said, wiggling his fingers to emphasize his words.

Jared "Good man," he nodded solemnly at Miles' comment about not being caught dead, grin still hovering at his lips. "Melinda and I are very close. Like twins, really." While still smiling, it was a bit bittersweet. He wished they lived in the same city still. His attention turn to their food and he noted that Miles waited for him to eat first. Such a respectful gesture. "Hands-on, hmm? I tend to prefer hands on myself." His grin betrayed the other meaning behind his words. "I think most people learn best from doing, wouldn't you agree?"

Miles smiled when Jared began to eat. "Do you two get to see each other very often?" he wondered, popping a french fry into his mouth. He could hear the wistfulness in the other man's tone when he talked about his sister. It wouldn't make sense in Miles' world if the two didn't talk as often as possible. As the subject shifted into something more flirtatious, the submissive tried to hide a knowing smile of his own by raising his brows. "I don't know about most people. I just know what works best for me," he said.

Jared "Not as often as I would like. Mostly holidays and the occasional visit and mostly if I go back to Boston. She rarely comes out here." He wasn't sure why, really. Except that she was still heavily involved with their father's political career. "But we talk several times a week. So, that's good." Jared would eventually talk his sister into moving away from their parents and out to the west coast. "Fair enough," he said, his own flirtatious smile firmly in place. "So besides working on equipment. What else do you enjoy doing with your hands?"

Miles cocked his head to one side as the Dominant explained. "Does she not like Hope Springs or... is she just busy and not able to get away often?" he asked as gently as he could. He knew family could be a sensitive topic for a lot of people, after all. The last thing he wanted to do was upset Jared during their date. To shift things away from a potentially heavy subject, Miles asked, "How's your food?" At Jared's suggestive question, he could feel a flush creep up the back of his neck and up to his ears. And he couldn't help but to laugh. "Do you want me to go into detail, sir?" he asked, his own tone low and nearly salacious.

Jared "She is just very close to our parents and spends a lot of time working with our Father. Especially when it comes campaign time." He didn't mind the question. He understood why Melinda loved Boston and didn't begrudge her that at all. He was grateful for the shift in conversation, though. If only because he didn't want to dwell on heavier topics while getting to know someone. "It's perfect as always. Are you enjoying." He couldn't help but let his smirk return to his face at the last response. "Hmm. I'm tempted to ask for as many details as you'd like to give. But we are in public. I wouldn't turn down highlights, however."

Miles gave an understanding hum, but left it at that. "Is it campaign time for him?" he asked, trying to keep things vague even though he was curious. "Of course!" he said brightly in answer to Jared's question. To emphasize his words, he grinned right before he took a big bite of his burger. "So good!" he moaned out, chuckling at the end. He quirked a brow. "The highlights, huh? Well... I'm a pretty tactile guy, and I've been told a time or two that I give good back massages," he said.

Jared "It's always campaign time," Jared said a bit ruefully. "But no, the actual mid-term elections aren't until 2018." The grin Miles sported lit up his face. Jared had to admit it would be hard to see this boy sad after seeing how buoyant he was normally. "I'm glad you like. See, the diner is amazing." He took another sip of his coke. "A time or two? Do you have references, darling? Some way for me to verify the veracity of your words?"

Miles sent Jared a sympathetic look. He could only imagine what being apart from a sibling could feel like. Especially if they were as close as the Dominant said they were. The mood lightened considerably at his antics. "Yeah, it's pretty good," he agreed. "I'll have to try something other than the burgers when I come next time. Variety is the spice of life after all, right?" he said happily. Miles bit his lip to hide a grin. "No references on the west coast unfortunately," he admitted. "I could always just give you a massage sometimes to prove myself," he offered with a playful shrug.

Jared was glad that the submissive understood; the sympathetic look told him that. "Definitely the spice of life and I can honestly say that I've never had anything hear that I didn't love." When Miles bit his lip, he had the distinct urge to do so himself. "I may have to take you on that, darling. If only to give you a west coast reference."

Miles munched on his burger for a while longer as Jared spoke. Before finishing, he pulled one of the pieces of bacon out and laid it aside on his plate. The submissive couldn't help the grin, and he felt that flush climb up the back of his neck again at the nickname. "You've called me that a couple of times now. Why?" he asked out of pure curiosity. "And if you really want one, all you need to do is ask," he said with a pleased smile.

Jared couldn't help but grin a little at the question. It seemed odd that he'd be asked. "Why?" he smiled. "Probably because I want to. It just suits some people. Do you not like it?" He had a habit of using affectionate terms with likable people. It tended to make them more comfortable not less. "I think I just may at that."

Miles wiped his mouth after popping the last ketchup slathered French fry in his mouth. After, he pushed his plate to the side and leaned his chin in the palm of his hand as he waited for Jared's answer. "I like it," he assured the other with a fond smile. "I just wanted to know why you used it for me. Do you use the same nickname for everyone? Or are they tailored?" he wondered. As he asked his question, he swirled his straw in his drink, unable to keep his hands still, like always. His smile turned mischievous at Jared's declaration. "Now, I suppose the question is when? Do you want one now? Or next time?"

Jared "I suppose I used it for other people as well. It varies. Once I get to know someone better I get more creative," he said, grin still playing at his lips. "To ensure there is a next time, I'm going to say next time. Sound good?"

Miles gave a nod. "So, if we keep getting along so well, you'll give me one that's more geared towards me?" he wondered, just needing a crystal-clear explanation. He reminded himself not to look forward to that moment just to be on the safe side. But part of him still did. The submissive smiled happily at the guarantee. "Sounds fantastic to me, sir," he said, emphasizing the statement by liking that remaining salt off of his finger. After a moment's pause, he asked, "Is there where we say our goodbyes until that next time?"

Jared nodded. "Exactly." Given Miles' personality it would be amusing to find a nickname to suit the young man. He gave the submissive a brilliant smile at the enthusiastic reply. He would definitely be looking forward to a next time. He wondered if Miles knew exactly what he was doing when he licked his finger. "No goodbyes, just a see you later."

Miles was oddly happy to hear that. Nicknames were an intimacy he wasn't quite used to, but he did want to experience how one felt. The submissive gave the man another smile. "That works for me," he said, grinning. Finishing with his food completely, he set his plate on the edge of the table to make it easier for the waitress or busboy to pick it up.

Jared returned the submissive's grin, happy that he'd asked him out and that it seemed to have turned out even better than expected. He placed his plate to the side as well and sipped the rest of his milkshake. "Good, then it is definitely a see you later." Jared received the bill for their meal and rose to pay for it. "Walk you out?"

Miles shot a friendly smile at the waitress again when she dropped off the check. And gave Jared and appreciative one for picking it up, before standing to follow. He nodded, "I'd like that." He waited by the door as the Dominant paid, waving his goodbyes to the staff who'd helped them. When Jared came over, he held the door and gestured for the other man to head out first. "Thank you for this," he said again. "I had a really good time."

Jared smiled when Miles held the door for him, stepping out into the cool night air with a smile. "You're quite welcome," he said. "I had a good time as well, darling. I intend to take you up on that massage offer very soon." Moving closer, he leaned in and kissed the younger man on the cheek. Maybe a tad old fashioned but that was who he was. "Remember, not goodbye."

[robertpatrick8]

The 10 Most Weather Confused Cities

What’s the first thing you hear when you turn on a radio or television newscast?  Unless there’s some disastrous event taking place, it’s the changing weather forecast.  Often the weather forecast is the catastrophic event. Even if we’re not expecting a hurricane or blizzard, the weather forecast in most cities is high on the list of Google searches.  Maybe that’s because it’s so unpredictable.

To find out which cities have the most fickle forecasts, we combed through Google Trends data to see where people searched most often in 2018 for the term “weather forecast.”

Top Cities for Unpredictable Weather Forecasts: Philadelphia, PA

You may not want to plan an outdoor wedding or a significant event in the city of brotherly love-unless you enjoy taking risks on what could go wrong. It’s no surprise we see Philadelphia ranks as number one on the list when it comes to internet users searching for the term “weather forecast.” Their mercury surpassed the 90-degree mark 21 times last summer. The city also documented record lows and precipitation, with more than 30 inches of snow for the 2017-2018 season. 2019 looks to be just as volatile, with a lot more snow in the forecast.

Philadelphia isn’t the only city seeing drastic climate changes. Omaha, Nebraska is ranked as number two on the list of Google Trends data when it comes to searches for the term “weather forecast.”  Not surprising, since agriculture is one of the state’s top five industries. Higher temperatures and less rainfall could take a toll on Nebraska’s corn crops and cattle production. Portland, Oregon sees a lot more rain with 39.14 inches a year. With an average of only 144 sunny days a year, the city ranks third on the Google Trends search meter. No doubt from residents eager to find out when the sun will return. The weather changes quickly, so it’s not unusual to hear the old cliche: “waiting for the weather to change?  Wait five minutes.” That joke often told in all the top ten most weather confused cities. Interesting enough, three cities in big-ole Texas make this list based on the 2018 Google Trends searches. Here are the top ten cities that seem to be the most confused about the weather.

1. Philadelphia, PA

Google Trends score 100

2. Omaha, NE

Google Trends score 97

3. Portland, OR

Google Trends score 97

4. Austin, TX

Google Trends score 90

5. Denver, CO

Google Trends score 87

6. Boston, MA

Google Trends score 77

7. New York, NY

Google Trends score 76

8. Charlotte, NC

Google Trends score 71

9. Houston, TX

Google Trends score 71

10. Plano, TX

Google Trends score 70

It’s not that the weather is terrible in any of these cities, it just tends to change drastically, making it tough for gardeners, wedding planners, and farmers. An unexpected change in the forecast is not only inconvenient, but it’s also costly. Cities like Denver have to dig deep into their reserve budget to pay for extra snow removal and road maintenance. Taxpayers in Philadelphia will fork out more than a million dollars for frozen and broken water-mains in 2018.  An early or late snowfall can cost you on added heating bills and lost plants and tree limbs.

The Most Predictable Cities

It’s no surprise many young couples choose Honolulu as a destination wedding site or that the flowers are plentiful and the people are happy. The average temperature there is 77-degrees and fluctuates only about 6-degrees. As for the rest of us battling extreme heat and frigid temperatures?  Maybe we should bring our plants in and leave them in year round.

Need additional help with your yard when the weather confuses you? Visit our lawn care page for more info!

The post The 10 Most Weather Confused Cities appeared first on Lawnstarter.

from Gardening Resource https://www.lawnstarter.com/blog/city-rankings/10-most-weather-confused-cities/

[ilumunnate-blog]

Pre-pre-flight jitters

Throw a stone at a calm river, a ripple start. Throw a rock at a calm sea, you might just create a tsunami. Each has its own beauty.

Was never the type to sit around and wait. Was naturally curious and fascinated by everything. Nature, people, the wonder of life and how all that we know goes on a preordained path. Didn’t know back then; nor do I know, what it means to be and feel alive. Being alive and feeling alive is subjective and I firmly believe it to be different. One has emotion, and the other is just what it is.

For a long time, I just wanted to explore. Woke up without agenda, went about my days and when the time came to sleep, just went to sleep. Though, not knowing what the next day would bring forth can make it difficult to fall asleep. Uhh...the wondrous mind. I was Intoxicated by the mystery; like an overdosed drug addict. Curiosity was my dear friend, and consequences were my enemy. We embraced the warmth, laughed at everything on our path while decoding the mysteriousness life brought.

Peer pressure had something to do with some of the stupid, stupid things that I have had done with my friend, but it was worth it. It was, nice! Technology didn’t catch up to my neck of the woods. Found ways to be and do things that made no sense to adults. None of the “smart” things had kept my mind occupied. My friends and I invented fun thing things to fill our time. We thought our youth was endless. Mundane was never in question. Well, if anyone had asked us what was mundane, we would have had a question or two for what it meant.

In the blink of an eye, each one of us seemed to become a "grown-up." I thought it was a disease. Friends whom I had run around became adult all of a sudden with tremendous responsibilities and little to no time to hang out us "young-lings."

Why am I reminiscing my past all of a sudden?

Flew through the Logan airport security. Didn't sleep at all. Contemplated and took extra time to pack. It had to be "just what I needed" kind of thing. And if I had forgotten something, which it wouldn't be, I made sure to squeeze into my carry-on and my backpack. I had answered every question before I left my house.

What I can bring, and it would fit in my bag and Carry-On?

Which Gadgets are coming along? Staying? Might be useful?

Which toiletries do I need? Day and Night time?

Before I went insane and hail mary everything in a backpack and a carry, I asked my family to buy me buy packing cubes. If science says it is the best way to pack, by heavens, it will have to be for me as well!

Every time I packed, I did a quick google search of the places I would be staying. I made sure that I am well prepared and over prepared for the weather. I am freaking going to POLAND! Excitement and fear, all meshed into one!

Excited for visiting a country for as long as I have planned. Feared of the endless possibilities. I mean, each of the Taken movies showed the ugly, ugly truth of traveling abroad. If only I had Liam Neeson as my dad! I would be okay knowing my dad would kick their ass.

The fear of traveling alone to a place that I never been had made me pause and rethink many times. I found myself getting lost in the process each time I thought of all the things I would do and wouldn't do. Part of me wished to befriend the inner kid in me and did his best. He was stupidly smart, made decisions without expectations, and chose fun and excitement without hesitations. It would have made the entire worry process, less.

As an “adult,” I have unwanted responsibilities. I have a sense of self that feeds on emotions and brings unwanted instant gratification. I oppose and detest “instant gratification.” I compare it to a lightning strike. Instantly it appears and disappears.

As I sit here, outside my gate to board my longest flight, I am thinking of the outcome. I do not know what the result of this trip will be for me. If I seek out an outcome, I will have to create a path, a goal to get me there. I want it to, happen. Just like when I wake up every morning with the purpose to see what the rest of the day will bring.

Never visited, had a layover, or "right off the bat" know where Poland is on a map. Poland remained a mystery to me. Aside from the weather prediction of the two locations that I will be staying, I didn't research about the country. I lied. Back in history class, movies and what people had told me, that's all I know. Bad things, horrible things had happened to that country in the past. Can't seem to get rid of the qualm of my sudden urge and curiosity.

Like everyone, my tourist persona took over me after I booked the flight. I craved and wanted to research what everyone goes to see and experience. It was searching for some rational explanation to find a reason why I booked it in the first place. If I did research and know, then my mind would be at ease. Then I wondered why I wanted to see and experience it in the first place. A lot of conflicting emotion had risen since the day I booked to this point. I came up with multiple conclusion but one stuck out the most. Simply put, I want to find, me.

Ted Talks, books and wise people have told me not to seek out, but to seek within. I know why I am anxious and afraid of what I will find, but I am excited. In few words, I can't explain or grasp the emotions that are inside of me right now. Physically, my stomach turns when I think of the notion to travel. Even more, alone.

A few years ago, I had to travel back to the States by myself. I didn't like one bit. I had a terrible time flying solo. Every second, my mind was occupied with the thought of not getting lost or in any trouble. I had strict procedures. I was to board the scheduled flight, stay by my gate and not F**k things up. But this is this different. I chose to be in a country for 10 days by myself. Everything is up to me.

If I were to play the game “Never Have I ever,” this would be it.

My flight was as followed: Boston -> Amsterdam -> Krakow. One layover, in Amsterdam, for an hour. Same as coming back. I could have chosen other flights with a more extended delay, but I didn't want to complicate things. Again, I faced my adult self and made it as simple. I just wanted to plow through my jet lag or whatever problem I was going to meet all in one go. Besides, an hour is ample amount of time to go from one terminal to the next. All I have to worry about is the flight from Boston to Amsterdam. Having a dark mindset, I remembered to bid my farewell to everyone in a subtle way. If anything were to happen, at least it would happen to me en route to Poland.

"No REGERTS!" Right? Stupid Twix commercial! I would love to have the left Twix right about now.

Slowly, the seats are filling up. Time couldn't be any slower. Hour left till boarding. I decided to sit near the door, hoping to enter before everyone. I haven’t traveled via plane for a while. Whatever conventional process I was supposed to follow, the heck with it! I am going based on what I think. Each passing moment, anxious-meter is reaching its peak. Time was trickling down ever so slowly. Announcers kept announcing to board other terminals...Yes, I knew what time I was supposed to board. My mind, my body...I just wanted to board the plane and fall asleep.

I left early not to have any traffic jams yet just in the nick of time to board the aircraft. Sure enough, no traffic jams just to face this nightmare! What to do...what to do. Figure out something to do to pass the time. Maybe talking to fellow travelers would give me an insight. Who should I talk to and not make it awkward?

Aha...A game show host where I have to pick the mystery box...

AND Now...

First choice...Her fashion sense and inspiration comes from "All Black everything!" She is wearing headphones and hoodie. Could be heading to a remote location to initiate a cult. Introducing, the Emo-Girl!

Second choice…She could be a fairy princess or a model. Tall, blonde wearing mini skirt. Ohhh…she has a ring on her finger. Introducing, the married blondie!

Third choice…this old fella has probably seen and done everything. Tall, wrinkly, enough hair on top of his head, possibly sleep on you in the middle of his stories. Introducing, “Who else but grandpa!”

Fourth choice…this old couple…Ohh what the heck…

“Where are you guys heading to?” I asked.

“England. To see football games. You seem nervous. Where are you heading to?” They replied.

“To Poland. My first time traveling to a country that I never been. Heading to unfamiliar territory.” Ha-ha..(they could smell my nervous ticks). I replied.

They seem to be busy trying to get a hold of their teenage daughter on the phone. Putting their foot down early before she starts throwing parties. (Mental **HIGH FIVE** to the teenager)

Right across from me, another couple was ruffling through their purse and bags. They seem to be nervous as I was. Finally, the woman took out a book. Before she opened it

“And where are you guys heading to?” I asked.

“We are going to Tanzania! Bunch of our friends has invited us to a safari!” they replied.

“That sounds like a blast! I hope to do that someday, but first I must make this trip successful!” I replied.

“Sounds fun! At least you didn’t have to take all the shots, go to doctors, and make sure your visa is approved. You will be fine!” they reassured me.

Boarding call...

I immediately got up just to realize that they are announcing the seating arrangement based on priority and "special" customers.

The heck and the line seemed long! Casually, I sat down. I am going to pretend that I did it on purpose, just stretching my legs.

[creacode]

Data Scraping with Node.js

I’m trying something completely different. I’m not going to create a bot, just try to see if I can somehow or other use live data to change what mood ring picture emerges. Looking into web scraping tools.

Trying Octoparse first.

Seemed OK until I got to loop on these instructions, and then nothing appeared.

I need to try something EVEN simpler.

I’m trying installing a weather thingy using the instructions here: https://codeburst.io/build-a-simple-weather-app-with-node-js-in-just-16-lines-of-code-32261690901d

I’ve actually managed to install a json package, at least.

Then I get to this bit:

As I said, request is pretty easy to use. We just need to pass in our target url, and request returns a callback function. Our starter code looks like this:

const request = require('request');

request(url, function (err, response, body) {

if(err){

  console.log('error:', error);

} else {

  console.log('body:', body);

}

});

And I’m stuck because I don’t know what “pass in our target url” means (Google doesn’t enlighten me) and I don’t know where to put this code. It doesn’t go in command prompt by the looks of it. Maybe in index.js?

Then I had to use cd in the command prompt to go down to the desktop, then the node-weather folder, and only THEN could I put in the command node index.js

And it WORKED!

OMG! It’s working a bit!

Yes, it really does output something saying what the weather in London is!

Now I need to turn that info into one of my images.

I’ve copied all the mood ring files into the node-weather folder.

Now I think I need to, at minimum, do an if function for the temperature. If this works I can add others for words like cloudy and sunny later. Or possibly go straight to the description - let’s see what the options there are.

The clouds section has a percentage, and 0% is bright whereas 100% is completely overcast, and London can go from one to the other easily. If weather.main.temp is the temperature than weather.main.clouds must be the cloud cover. No, took a couple of goes and it turns out it’s weather.clouds.all

This works.

C:\Users\Sam\Desktop\node-weather>node index.js

It's 92 in London!

(What showed up in command prompt)

But I need that to turn out an image, and not just one image, but one of several based on variable cloud cover levels.

I’ve experimented with the yargs thing, and, as instructed, used it to create a variable for any city. That works. For example:

C:\Users\Sam\Desktop\node-weather>node index.js -c Boston

It's 90 percent cloudy in Boston!

C:\Users\Sam\Desktop\node-weather>

I’ve been playing around and I can get it to say various things about the weather:

C:\Users\Sam\Desktop\node-weather>node index.js

It's 92 percent cloudy, 71 percent humid, and 9.12 degrees in London!

C:\Users\Sam\Desktop\node-weather>

But I still can’t work out how to get those numbers to show different results.

After another few hours (hah) I’ve discovered that I simply can’t use this node.js script via a website, only on my command line. But I also can’t view images via my command line. So how do I use “translate data from input into visual element?”)

I’m trying to install browserify to sort of convert my node.js into javascript that can be used in a browser. Has it worked?

No. The resulting bundle.js appears to have nothing whatsoever to do with the file I created.

Ideas: If I got this to work in javascript instead, I could also do it with the brightness of the image coming from the cloudiness and saturation coming from the temperature. Perhaps make a different picture, like a sky, in pixelart and use that as a reference for css coding. I could add time of day via a separate command and use that for hue. Could add sound for rain, wind, sunny day etc.

I could include the parameters for sunrise and sunset and simulate the sky further.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WRITE LIKE YOU LIKE

The best I can think to myself If someone with a technical background and some vision of what they create, give them the actual market value? And God help you if you stay where you are, the more heat they get if they screw up—or even seem to screw up. I realize I might seem to the average person today. Whereas Pittsburgh has the opposite problem: plenty of nerds, but no startups came out. So these, I think, is which 52% they are. At this year's Boston Demo Day, I told the fearsome Professor Conway that I was being paid for programming. Some said I was just telling people what they wanted to do things only the wrong people, and it surfaces in situations like this. But there's a way to capture more of the market Segway hoped to reach: make a version that doesn't look so easy for the rider. I asked.

And of course Euclid. So I'd like to conclude with a joint message from me and your parents. When starting a startup just doesn't seem real. And at least in the short term. But I suspect the filter is set a little too high. If you make something and people complain that it doesn't work, then go work for an existing company for a couple years, but the pool allowed to write on general topics was about eight people who went to the right parties in New York when Giuliani introduced the reforms that made the broken windows theory applies to community sites as well. And there is a name for the phenomenon, Greenspun's Tenth Rule: Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. This is especially necessary with links whose titles are rallying cries, because otherwise they become implicit vote up if you believe such-and-such posts, which are Lisp data structures. It would be like mathematicians running Vogue—or at least log n more rewarding.

Everyone values safety too much, Twitter feels to everyone like previous protocols. As you've probably noticed, they have a fair amount of data to go on. But I think there's more going on than this. And it is completely non-discriminatory. Now everyone can, and we feel bad if we don't. It has fabulous weather, which makes it significantly better than the soul-crushing suburban sprawl. And finally, there are sometimes multiple answers. The ones who keep going are driven by the random factors that have caused startup culture to spread thus far. The winds of change originate in the unconscious minds of domain experts. But while you don't literally need math for most kinds of hacking, in the long run, of the forces underlying open source and blogging show us things don't have to pay a lot for it.

When I get asked in interviews to predict the future, and the various departments created recently in response to political pressures. And once they had the luxury of curiosity, one of McCarthy's grad students, so they know who might be sitting across that conference table from them. It would also be helpful if the styling was in the same way a gene pool does. I suspect the filter is set a little too high. A button that looks like it will make a machine stop should make it stop, not speed up. For example, you need two ingredients: you need a degree? Seattle, and the transformation was equally dramatic. You can't expect employers to have some kind of paternal responsibility toward employees without putting employees in the position of children. So I'm supposed to finish college, then go to grad school. And yes, while it is probably true that you'll learn some valuable things by going to work for them long before they went public. Suddenly, in a hits-driven business, is that if you don't find it.

And finally, there are other ways to arrange that relationship. Startups are undergoing the same transformation that technology does when it becomes cheaper. The New York Times. How much you should worry about being an outsider. The big advantage of investment over employment, as the examples of open source and blogs are done for free, but before the Web it was harder to reach an audience or collaborate on projects. In the other languages mentioned in this talk—Fortran, C, C, C, Java, Perl, Python, you notice this pattern if you are a Lisp hacker. Did it alarm some potential acquirers that we used Lisp? I didn't say so, but I'm sure many employees could find eight hours worth of stuff they could do might be to create a named function to return. At least, you notice this pattern if you are a Lisp hacker.

Maybe the Internet will change things further. But its bulk and celebrity would make it a tragedy. They had to build actual factories. It will probably involve writing some software, but fortunately we can do that. For example, I stumbled on a good idea. If people are expected to behave well, they tend to peter out. Symbols are effectively pointers. The list of what you can't ask in job interviews is now so long that for convenience I assume it's infinite.

Now the only threshold is courage. But I wouldn't bet on it. When finally completed twelve years later, Kleiner Perkins funded Google, and Microsoft. I'm not claiming companies can get smarter, just that it's demoralizing, but that was enough to tell what I said that upset him: that startups would do better if they moved to Silicon Valley and raised money there. One change will be in your favor: instead of painstakingly discovering things for ourselves, we could have monotonically increasing confidence in our beliefs. In startups, developers are often forced to talk directly to users, whether they want to. Most American cities have been turned inside out.

In theory a liberal education is not supposed to supply job training. There's something interesting happening right now. Whereas the who else is going to be working hard enough. Many employees would like to build great things, it helps to have everything in one head. And when I read, say, the Quicksort algorithm, which was dictated largely by the hardware available in the late twentieth century it seems to matter more than that. What counts as property depends on what the characters said and did the subtler clues, the better. The term dark ages is presently out of fashion as too judgemental the period wasn't dark; it was just different, but if this label didn't already exist, it would seem an inspired metaphor.

Notes

As the name of a safe environment, and large bribes by Spain to make the police in the message. The point of a smooth one. So it may seem to have funded Reddit, for example, to drive the old one was nothing special.

Enterprise software—and to run on the x axis and returns on the partner you talk to, so it may seem to be delivering results.

It's suspiciously neat. But if they ultimately choose not to: if you agree prep schools, because it doesn't seem to have too few customers even if they ultimately choose not to make the kind that prevents you from starving.

When I was once trying to describe the word wealth. Startups are businesses; the trend in scientific progress matches the population curve. Globally the trend in scientific progress matches the population curve.

There can be surprisingly indecisive about acquisitions, and many of the world of the most, it's not obvious you'd be surprised if VCs' tendency to push founders to have to solve a lot, or that an idea where there were, they'd have taken one of those things that's not relevant to an audience of investors started offering investment automatically to every startup we had high hopes for doesn't do well, but that's the main reason kids lie to them. But when you graduate, regardless of how hard it is still a leading cause of accidents.