#also her being like I’m late because my bike broke & I had to walk miles (or whatever blatantly false excuse she used) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

tempesthound · 3 years ago

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I tilt my body to the side as I move my motorcycle between the dead cars on the highway; the wind hits the top half of my face, making my eyes water a little. I have to slow my bike to a stop as I got to the highest point on this stretch of road. I could see just what I had come to: a traffic jam. Pulling my hood off my head, I take a drink from my canteen, swishing the stale water around in my mouth before swallowing. It had been a month tops since humanity’s extinction event, and looking around, you would think it had been years. I look inside the car beside me; a corpse laid forward, its head on the steering wheel. It had smashed into the front end of the vehicle. I guessed this lady must have broken her neck upon impact. Pulling my scarf over my nose, I grab my hunting knife and open the door, dragging the lady out. I gagged a little as I searched her body, then the inside of the car. A box of pop tarts under the driver’s seat bless whoever is listening. Popping the trunk, I find a knitted blanket, some chapstick, a backpack with some girl products, which is always an excellent find. I check a few more cars and find a few things before I siphon some gas into my bike. It gave me a few minutes to think about it before.

“Ali, be careful. I heard about some strange attacks happening lately; why don’t you extend your brake a little, tell these attacks to cool down,” Sam says as she touches my arm with a concerned look in her eyes. I sigh, and roll my eyes as I lean on the hood of my car. “I will be fine. My dad didn’t spend years and hours training me just for me to fail at stopping some attacker. Also, I worked too hard to get into this college not to go; I’ll be fine, and it’s just four days from here. If it gets crazy, I’ll come back out to this middle of Nowhere town.”

I should have stayed looking back now; it wasn’t even three weeks later that the world went to hell; I had been making my way back to my hometown. My entire life, I had made jokes about being ‘Zombie apocalypse ready,’ so when I saw the signs, I emptied my bank account on supplies. Water purifiers, battery packs, a few MRE rations, first aid kits, things like that. Then I got in my car and drove, staying off the highways. I headed for the backwoods, but first, I had to go through Missouri. There I lost my car but gained my bike, which I hated for the exposure but loved the gas I saved using it. I heard about the safe zone in Atlanta. Did I believe in it? No. Shaking my head, I cap off my small gas can and strap it down in the saddlebag that I had on the side of my bike, putting everything else in my bag. I get on my bike and start it up. I look around before I take off-putting in one headphone. I start my music, something I had because of several battery packs that were my veritable treasures to keep my phone working for as long as possible.

I slowly drove up to what looks like it was once a camping zone. I parked my bike against a tree. I cover it in the tattered blanket. Then I climbed the tree, wrapping a rope around myself to keep myself from falling out. “Best place to sleep for tonight,” I say as I bunker down, wrapping my arms around myself along with a heavy hoodie for warmth.

Nights like this always made me think back to the good times, times before the dead were ripping into every living creature.

I turn on the news it was, talking about violent attacks worldwide for the past few days. The attacks didn’t sound like they were going to let up soon.

As the news on the riots ended, I shake my head; this was like the start of a cliché horror movie. People broke into Walmarts, riots in food stores, people stalking up on guns and the needed ammo.

“Uncle Jhonny is laughing in his grave now,” I say to my mom, who is humming away in the kitchen, my youngest brother Luke, on her hip like the monkey he was. “Alice!” my mother lightly scolds me. “He called it; he said we would kill ourselves before anything else” I look at the photo of a fiery red-haired male with a smile stretched cheek to cheek as he holds a golden-haired girl with matching green eyes. That was one of the good days when cancer hadn’t eaten away at his bones and taken his mind. “You remind me of him; all his crazy theories filled your head, Rabit” I turn to face the angelic voice of my mother, her little monkey fast asleep in her arms, a smile on her face as she called me that.

Looking back now, it was days like this that I would miss the simple days, days at home with Luke and Mom. Days when my only trouble was school and work; Now I had to worry about walkers and, worst of all, those who survived.

I lean my head back against the tree; I ignore the tears running down my dirty face. Once clean, pale, freckled skin now always smeared with dirt and sweat. The golden blonde hair my mother loved a greasy mess. No, I knew tonight the demons in my mind would keep me awake.

Faster move, don’t stop, don’t look back, when someone is chasing you, you never look back, it raises the risk of you tripping over something in front of you. The words of my trained military father fill my head. My lungs cry out for air, my legs are all but jelly under me, but I can’t risk stopping now. They are too close. The screeches and groans of the man-eaters chasing me are enough to push me past the limits of my weak body. Days of rationing, my food, and water have left me malnourished. So I force myself until the air I’m taking in no longer reaches my brain or muscles. The branches of trees cut at my exposed skin as I push them out of my way, growing dizzier. I jump over a fallen log and stumble as I reach the other side, my legs finally giving out on me.

The once faint sounds of the walking dead now all too close, The dead woman trips over the log falling on top of me, its jaws snapping at me, its grotesque graying skin falling off in places, hollow eyes stare at me, dried pieces of something in its teeth. Reaching for the hunting knife in my boot, I use one hand to hold it by its throat as my hand easily slips through the decaying flesh above me. I turn my head and, using all the force I can, slamming my knife through the temple of the thing’s head, the spray of black blood that hits my cheek and chest is thick and smells worse than rotten eggs. This dead thing that was once alive woman falls like the dead weight she is. I pull myself from under her and lean against the log. The other dead seem to have forgotten me or too far behind for my exhausted body to care.

I don’t know how long I sat there, slowly letting my body catch up to my mind, letting it rest. I had run over five miles of unknown terrain on a body that hasn’t eaten or drank anything in three days. I sat there staring at the dead thing. It had the burned body of a woman. Half her face is gone. It was missing some hair, and it smelled of rotten pork, which made my stomach grumble in emptiness. I pull my bag and look in it. I had a protein bar half-eaten and half a water bottle with boiled river water in it. “Yummy,” I say half heartily.

The woman she probably hadn’t turned over three weeks ago, maybe four. I shake my head and stand my legs, only wobble a little before they decide to work with me instead of against me. My lungs no longer feel like they will jump out of my chest, and my throat doesn’t feel like it’s bleeding. I finish my water, shoving the bottle in my bag—no need to add litter to the decaying world.

Keeping my eyes and ears open as I’m walking munching on the protein bar, it wasn’t more than maybe half an hour when I hear the men’s voices, the sounds of their heavy footfalls and wolf whistles that fill the air in a dangerous song. I stop moving the sound of my feet on the dry leaves on the ground go silent, but the others take a moment, dropping my bar. My movements are quick reaching for the pistole that I had in a hostler on my hip. I pull it out, cock it, and keep walking. Spotting one man, then another, I can hear one more before I pick up my pace, and I sprint. That’s when the chorus of cheers and the chase truly began.

The men are faster than the bitters are they can think and plan when I zig, they zag, I dance through the woods, monitoring the two men at my sides, not daring to slow down, I’m coming up to an opening in the trees, no place to hide, no safety. It’s a battleground. As I break through the woods, I feel two arms grab me wrapping in me in a menacing hug.

I slam my foot down and throw my head and elbows back. I hear the satisfying crunch and groan of an injured man.

“Bitch” The unknown man says as I jump forward, the gun pointed at the man’s head.

“Back off, I know how to use this,” I growl out. I keep backing away from the man, his buddies showing up, their weapons raised. They all looked like the stereotype of an inbreed hilly billy, ratty matted, unwashed hair, and overalls. One even had a potbelly, the man who grabbed me had smelled like he never washed even before the downfall of humanity., none of them had guns. Still, three against one isn’t in my favor, no matter the training, not when my body wasn’t at its peak.

“Three against one honey, come with us nice and quiet, and maybe just maybe you get out of this alive” Lie, I won’t survive what they have planned for me, my body might survive, but my mind won’t. I pull the trigger and shoot the man who grabbed me.I can’t hesitate not when my life is on the line.

“MATTIE, You killed my brother!” Pot-belly yelled he came at me first, and I shot him in his chest twice with two quick pulls of the trigger. I had three bullets left with Potbelly down. I quickly aim at the other one. He came at me at once. Brown hair sticking to his sweaty skin, his arms spread out wide. I brace myself for the hit from him. He takes me to the ground, my gun falling from my hands and away from the us.

He hits my sides and face as I struggle under his weight; I bring my knee up between his legs as he grabs at my leather jacket, pulling at it, trying to tear it off my body; just as my knee reaches his third leg, he holds my hair. Pulling it as he groans, I claw at his face as he slams his fist on my face again. When I scream, he hits my head into the ground. I use my arm to feel around for my knife, my finger brush against the smooth metal at my thigh; he holds my arm down, stopping my movements; I squirm myself under the man as he feels up my body pulling at my thin tee shirt. I bring my head up and slam it against his face. I feel the blood run down my forehead. He falls backward, and groans as my fingers hook around the hilt of the hunting knife. I jump on top of him and slam the blade into the man’s face three times; I bring it down until he stops moving bright red blood, sprays against my face covering my hands and chest, my jacket hangs loosely off my shoulder, my white shirt torn and bloody. I’m still on top of the dead man when I hear a whistle.

“Well, damn, look at these boys” The voice was cocky, and as I turn, I can see why he was tall with a thick beard and messy black hair, a leather jacket hung with grace off his shoulders, a baseball bat with barbed wire wrapped around it like a Christmas tree lights in his left hand. He screamed Alpha male; he was dangerous. The five men behind him didn’t intimidate me as much as he did and the guns they all held.

“Take one step closer. I fucking dare you” I spit out a mix of my blood my victims and slowly stand adrenaline coursing through my veins, my blood knife held in my hand.

“Now wait a damn minute, we’re not here to hurt you, Doll,” Alpha male said as I move away from my bloody victim, picking up the gun not a few inches away from where I shot Potbelly, who was groaning and moving again. I slam my booted foot down on his head over and over, cursing him to hell.

“Then I can leave you and your men, stay there, bury your friends here, and I will go. They would be alive if they didn’t try to kidnap and then rape me.” I feel my adrenaline high slowly coming down; my body suddenly feels very heavy after killing the last attacker I need to get out of here. I walk away from the bodies. My gun still pointed at the Alpha man and his team.

“Names Negan Doll and those sad sacks of shit ain’t my men Number one rule to run with me, no rape,” Alpha man or rather Negan says.

“Then you’re not here because I just brutely beat and shot your men,” I say, lowering my weapon and taking a deep breath, the entire ordeal finally catching up to my brain. I have just been violated, it hasn’t even been a month since the world ended, and people were already taking and killing people. I had just killed someone. I killed three someone’s

“No, in fact, I like a woman who can handle herself,” Negan said his men, relaxing at the sight that I had lowered my gun on their boss. Negan takes this as a sign to walk closer to me. He was a good foot taller than me and huge muscles, no fat on his body covered in denim and leather. Almond brown eyes and a dimple smirk.

“God, Doll, you’re a mess; how about you come with my men and me? We have a nice little house not too far from here. You can wash up, relax, have something to eat. No one will hurt you as long as you’re with me.”

I tilt my head up and look at the unknown man. He pulls out a scarf from his jacket, and cautiously he raises his hand to clean the blood off my face.

“Your one badass woman just kicked a bitter’s head in, took down three shit heads all by yourself, got me all tingly in all the right places” Is he flittering with me right now? Negan is wiping blood human blood off my face and flirting with me, and he’s not scared of me at all. He finished wiping off all that could be when he offers me his hand.

“Come on, Doll, let me take care of you.”

Negan was my savior that day, and we filled the days that followed with flirty words and sarcastic comebacks. We fought but grew closer. He never treated me like I was fragile, never made me stay back when the Bitters came. I was a warrior in his eyes, and he treated me like a queen.

“Never hide from me, Alice, you are a warrior, you are a survivor, a badass built for this world, never forget that”

Then that day happened, the day that the world reminded me that nothing in the apocalypse is safe; nothing is forever.

We had grown in number more men, and the youngest one was 17. I was no longer the youngest in the group, and we moved on from the small farmhouse to just being on the road. We had stopped for the day one scout had spotted a mall that appeared not to have gotten raided. The cars were waiting for their owners to come back to them< I was apprehensive about going into the mall if the vehicles were still there, then where were the people or bitters.

“Don’t worry, Ali-cat, Lucille will watch out for you,” Negan said. I glared at the six-foot-one man.

“I’m not scared, just worried you can’t be too careful, Bossman,” I say, poking his chest; he grabs my hand and kisses it.

“No need to worry, Doll, this will be easy in and out.”

If only that were true, if he had just listened to me, we would still be together.

When we got in, it was quiet, and Negan made it known that he was right; the mall was safe. We were laughing and grinning, going in and out of stores gathering supplies. His men kept a respectful distance behind us. Negan takes my hand and pulls me into an open Forever 21, where Negan is pulling out dresses and heels. I roll my eyes and look around, my eyes falling on a perfect gift for him.

“Hey, look what I found,” I say as I hold up a red scarf as Negan holds out a black choker with a golden letter ‘N’ hanging from the middle.

“I found you something as well,” He says as we swap gifts, “Help me put it on,” I feel his warm hands brush my golden blond hair over my shoulder, slipping the black felt choker over my neck clasping it in place.

We walk around just a little more when we hear the tell groans and moans of the dead outside one door of the indoor theater; we look at each other and head back to the group. I drop Negan’s hand as I see one of the younger guys; Gary reaches for the theater room’s main doors. “DOn’t,” I yell just as he opens the doors; it was too late. He pulled both doors open; the swarm of Biters that came out was overwhelming. We didn’t stand a chance. All we could do was scatter. I feel Negans rough hand grab for mine, but then the dead get between us. It wrenched Negan from me. The sounds of our men’s guns overran the mall, firing shots and the screams of those who were ripped and torn apart. I see Negan’s beloved bat coming down on the heads of the monsters and the men who were too late to be spared as he and the inner circle of men make their way out. “ALICE!” his voice calls out as I pull my knife from the skull of another Bitter “NEGAN, I’LL FIND YOU, I SWEAR,” I call out as I push myself to the main door shooting three more bitters in the head.

“STAY ALIVE DOLL” I hear his voice one last time before I make my way out the fire door of the mall. Stay alive; that was his final order to me: stay alive for Negan for my savior. I make my way to the woods, one hand reaching to touch the necklace at my throat. The sounds of the dead following me as I found myself back at the beginning alone and chased by the deceased.

#negan x oc #the walking dead #negan smith #rick grimes #Spotify #SoundCloud

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pickalilywrites · 4 years ago

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hi everyone!!! here’s the eretra au that a few of you might remember from my wip posts a few months (?) ago! i’m really excited about it, so i hope you guys like it. it’s very loosely based off a kdrama called big, although there aren’t very many similarities. i hope you guys enjoy it :)

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My First Love Come Back to Me

Eretra. Big AU.

I’ll Love You in the Rain or Shine Series: Chapter 1

12788 words.

Read on Ao3!

Eren stands in the deli section of the grocery store staring down at the premade sandwiches that have, judging by the wilting lettuce and stiff-looking squares of cheese stuffed between dry bread buns, been sitting there all day after being passed over by other customers for more enticing premade meals like the colorful, little sushis in their plastic containers or the burritos so stuffed with filling that beans are practically spilling out of the tortilla wraps meant to contain them. He looks at one particularly sad-looking sandwich. Turkey chunks and droopy lettuce leaves are shoved inside a stale bread loaf. Tomato juice from the poor fruit that was cut to make this depressing sub bleeds out from the bun, dripping onto the plastic wrap that can hardly hold the thing together. A strange assortment of veggies also poke out from the bread - bright yellow bell peppers, chunky strips of carrots, and slices of onions - but they look as though someone has carelessly dropped them into the sandwich because they’re not even evenly dispersed through the sub. It is, Eren thinks, the most wretched sandwich he’d ever laid eyes on.

It’s a little sad, the fact that Eren is spending so much time picking out something to bring to a family dinner that he would claim, if anyone bothered to ask, to not give a single shit about. And, really, he doesn’t, but it makes him feel slightly better about going to those miserable gatherings if he’s able to bring something he knows his stepmom will hate. Except she’s not really his stepmom. To be more precise, the woman is his father’s first and only wife - the bastard having never married Eren’s mother - and his half-brother’s mother. In all honesty, Eren can completely understand why the woman hates him. He is, after all, a constant reminder of his father’s infidelity. It’s not like Eren likes her either and, with all of the snide comments about his upbringing and disappointing career path (although Eren has no idea why that is any of her business), she hasn’t given Eren any reason to.

Eren looks down at the sandwich again, leaning towards not getting it. As much as he would love to purchase it and slap it down on the dinner table with a cheerful smile, there are only so many times he can buy disgusting sandwiches for his family dinners. He really outdid himself last time with a self-made sandwich with all sorts of odd ingredients (blue cheese, coriander, tuna, onions, cherry tomatoes, the works) that had no business being slapped between the same two buns. He even remembered not to toast the bread buns. Apparently, the only thing his father’s wife hates more than sandwiches are untoasted sandwiches, but not everyone can afford a $300 panini press like she can. Apparently, any panini press with a smaller price tag can’t be called a real panini press. Eren only half-regretted his decision to bring the disgusting thing to his father’s house an hour later when he sprinted out of the house and biked half a block away to empty the contents of his stomach on the edge of a poor neighbor's sidewalk. No, a normal deli sandwich would be a step down from his previous contribution to family dinner, Eren decides.

He walks up and down the aisle of the grocery store, taking his time even though he’s already a half-hour late for dinner. (He’s doing them a favor. Nobody in their right mind should be having dinner at five when the sun is still high in the sky.) His green eyes glaze over tubs of soup and plastic bins filled with salad. For a moment, he wonders if he should walk through the shelves of chips on the other side or maybe into the frozen food section so he can haul a tub of melting ice cream to his father’s house, but he wonders if that’s too petty. It’s probably best not to, Eren thinks with a grimace. He doesn’t want to ruin junk food for himself forever.

In the end, Eren purchases a little tub of potato salad, hoping that it’ll be enough to piss off his Disney-esque sort-of stepmother. It’s not perfect, but he supposes it will do. It’s probably not as grotesque as the stuff he’s brought before, but he likes how simple it is. That woman’s definitely going to be miffed that Eren bought potato salad as if he cared so little that he couldn’t be bothered to spend a few minutes in the kitchen to make the same dish. He’s really going to enjoy seeing the vein on her forehead pulse when she sees him standing at the door with the potato salad.

Eren thanks the cashier for ringing up his purchase, sliding two dollars into the charity box next to the register, and walks away with his tub of potato salad, whistling as he practically skips out of the grocery store. He hadn’t taken as long as he would have liked; there are still fifteen minutes before six and he had hoped he would burn enough time to arrive at six-thirty, but maybe he can take a roundabout way to his dad’s house, Eren thinks as he drops the tub carelessly into the front basket of his bicycle. He unlocks his bike with a click and pulls it off the bike rack before mounting it and pedaling away.

Taking the direct route would be too quick. Eren quickly pedals across the road as soon as the road is clear and finds his way to the creek that cuts across the suburbs. It’s the same creek Eren used to play beside when he was a child. He fell in there once trying to catch a frog and his mom scolded him for being so reckless. It’s also the same creek that he frequented during the spring of his sophomore year of highschool when he was assigned to do a bug project, which Eren hated especially when the same project was no longer mandatory after his school cut the science department’s funding the year after. Eren doesn’t think he’s visited the creek ever since he graduated from high school. He blames it on college and summer internships taking up all his time and never really allowing him to return to his youth, but the truth is that Eren wouldn’t have sought out his childhood even if he had the time.

It’s not that Eren had a terrible childhood. In fact, Eren would say that he had a fairly happy childhood. True, he grew up in a (mostly) single-parent household, but his mother was always patient and attentive to him even though he was a pain the ass about 75 percent of the time. Nothing incredibly significant happened. He didn’t win any awards and he never made the honor roll, but his mother was fine with it as long as he did his best. It was strange, but he got a lot more shit about his grades from his sort-of stepmom than he did from his own mother. He’s not particularly sure what his father thought about it. Eren’s father never said much of anything to defend him, but his father hardly said anything to him at all. It was kind of like not having a father at all, so it wasn’t really that surprising when Eren found a way to avoid his old neighborhood completely after his mother passed away after his senior year of high school.

Eren hadn’t planned on returning so soon. Actually, he hadn’t planned on returning at all after he had left for college. He only came back the summer after freshman year, but he bummed it at his best friend Armin’s house and only ventured as far as Armin’s front lawn. The following summers he crashed at his ex-boyfriend’s house - an art student-turned-tattoo artist who somehow ended up setting up a shop in the city Eren and Armin grew up in - or Armin’s dorm when they were both working at their internships. Somehow, they ended up landing jobs back in their hometown because evidently the big city did not want them and they were too young and broke to go up against the universe. Maybe another day.

It’s not that bad. Despite renting an apartment near his neighborhood, Eren hasn’t run into any childhood friends that might still remember all the embarrassing things he did as a teenager. He’s bumped into a few parents at the grocery store that would smile up at him and talk about how nicely he’s grown while reaching up to ruffle his hair. Other than a few childhood friends and the “family” he feels obligated to meet due to the biological bond he unwillingly shares with his father, Eren has successfully avoided most of his past.

He pedals past his old middle school, zooming past the gates and grimacing as he remembers the less pleasant parts of his past - struggling with algebra, running a mile at seven AM, and the terrible school uniforms they forced on everyone in a strange attempt to boost standardized test scores. He’s happier when he crosses the street and is greeted with the lit-up shops - the convenience store where he’d happily slurp down slushies with Armin after school, the Chinese restaurant that his class would frequent every year for Lunar New Year’s, and the bakery store that always smelled of freshly baked tarts and pies. Eren’s pedaling slows as he approaches the bakery and he inhales deeply, his lungs filling with the scent of buttery baguettes and chocolate tarts. The aroma is so distractingly sweet. His mouth begins to water at just the thought of them, and Eren wonders why he hadn’t bothered stepping foot in the bakery since coming back. He’s about to stop his bike and pop in for a brownie or a lemon bar only to realize that he’s biking far too fast and about to crash into someone.

“Shit!” Eren’s bike screeches as he swerves out of the way and he crashes into a pole so hard that he can feel his teeth rattle. He topples to the ground with a hard thud, groaning as he rolls over onto his side that didn’t get smashed violently against a pole. When he opens his eyes, he sees stars as well as the face of an old man that he had last seen a decade ago. Eren tries to sit up, but his side is throbbing and he can only clutch at his side, trying his best to suppress a groan so as to not startle the man he had nearly collided with. He gives the man a weak smile. “Hey, Mr. Ral. I haven’t seen you in a while.”

The old man’s mouth, which was already open to begin with after seeing Eren’s embarrassing bicycle collision, falls open a bit wider. “A-are you … okay?” he asks after a while, squinting a bit as he looks at Eren’s face and tries to place a name to it. Eren doesn’t really blame him for not remembering who he is. It’s been quite a while since they’ve seen each other and Eren has grown up a lot since then.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just a little bump,” Eren says, laughing it off. He manages to sit up and pushes himself off the ground, standing up and brushing off the little pebbles that have managed to stick to his face and clothing. He picks up his bike, leaning it against the pole before turning to the man again. “It’s Eren, by the way.” He pauses, observing Mr. Ral’s expression. When he sees that the man doesn’t recognize him, Eren politely adds, “Eren Kruger. I’m Zeke Jaeger’s younger brother.”

A spark of recognition finally lights up in the old man’s eyes at the mention of Zeke’s name. Eren’s not going to lie, but it kind of hurts. “Ah, Zeke,” Mr. Ral says fondly. Eren shifts from feeling hurt to feeling slightly jealous. “How could I ever forget him? And you, of course. You two used to play with my dear Petra back in the day.”

Petra, a name that Eren hasn’t heard in years, and yet hearing it still makes him blush like a young schoolboy. He ducks his head, his hand rubbing at the back of his neck, and he prays that Mr. Ral doesn’t notice the sudden flush of his cheeks. “Yeah, it’s been a while. How is, ah, Petra doing?” he asks. He had meant to ask the question casually, but he stumbles over the words a little too quickly.

“Petra? She’s well,” Mr. Ral answers with a smile. The corners of his eyes crinkle and his laughter lines deepen. He doesn’t seem to notice how flustered Eren is. “She just started teaching at the same university that Zeke is teaching at.”

That’s certainly news to Eren. Zeke hadn’t mentioned that at any of the family dinners Eren had attended recently. It could just be because Zeke hadn’t run into her yet or it had simply slipped his mind, but Eren kind of doubts it. If Petra’s father knew, then it’s highly unlikely that Zeke didn’t know. As much as Eren wants to frown, he fights the urge to turn the edges of his mouth downward and gives Mr. Ral a thin but polite smile. “That’s great to hear. What does she teach?”

“English,” Mr. Ral replies, his chest puffed out proudly. It’s endearing how much he adores his daughter. “She teaches some upper-division classes on creative writing and a few classes for freshmen on critical reading and writing.”

Eren’s smile is more genuine now, more fond as he listens to Mr. Ral speak about his daughter. “Yeah, that sounds like her. She was always really good with words.” He remembers lazy summer afternoons lying underneath the shade of a tree and pretending he was sleeping so that he could listen to Petra talk to Zeke on the front porch. It wasn’t even that he wanted to eavesdrop. He just liked the sound of her voice. Eren wonders if it’s still as wonderfully soothing and soft as he remembers.

“And what about you?” Mr. Ral asks, snapping Eren out of his reverie. The old man seems to ask out of polite obligation. It figures that he isn’t really interested in Eren’s life. After all, he hadn’t remembered that Eren existed until five minutes ago.

“I just graduated a few months ago. I majored in child education,” Eren replies. He looks down feeling slightly embarrassed although he’s not sure why. It feels like a step down from Petra’s accomplishments. His sort-of stepmom would certainly agree. She enjoys rubbing Zeke’s doctorate in Eren’s face whenever she gets the chance. Eren clears his throat and adds, “I’ve been working at Liberio Daycare. It’s near Shiganshina Elementary.”

It’s unclear whether or not Mr. Ral recognizes the name but he nods and reaches over to give Eren a pat on the arm, a grin on his face as if the old man is actually proud of him. “That’s good! Your parents must be proud.” He doesn’t notice the way Eren flinches and carries on. “It’s good to hear that you’ve been well.”

“Likewise,” Eren says. His eyes wander towards the bakery. It hadn’t occurred to him to look for Petra before, but now that he knows she’s back in town he can’t imagine doing anything else. He half hopes that she’ll be inside, maybe clearing the display for the night or wiping down the countertops, but all he sees is a girl his age at the register munching on some lavender bars that hadn’t sold. Before he can stop himself, Eren finds himself asking, “Is Petra in?”

“Petra?” Mr. Ral asks with his eyebrows raised. Maybe it does seem out of the blue that Eren’s asking. Petra was always more Zeke’s friend than Eren’s. Mr. Ral gives Eren an apologetic smile and a shake of his head. “I’m afraid not. She told me she was eating dinner at a friend’s house. I’ll let her know you stopped by. Maybe you two can catch up sometime.”

Eren shouldn’t feel so disappointed, but he can feel himself deflating at Mr. Ral’s words. He really doubts Petra would want to meet up with him. It’s not as if they were incredibly close before. Still, he gives Mr. Ral a gracious smile and says, “That would be great! I should probably get going. I have to, ah, eat dinner…” His voice trails off and he looks to bike only to find the front basket empty. Eyes straying further, he finds that his tub of potato salad had rolled out of his bike basket and onto the ground where it lay pitifully. Thankfully, the tub hasn’t broken and the potato salad hasn’t spilled out, but somehow the salad looks even more pathetic than it did when Eren purchased it. It’s something Eren would have been happy about fifteen minutes ago, but it’s embarrassing now. Quickly, he goes to pick it up and drop it into his bike basket with the slim hope that Mr. Ral wouldn’t think much about it, but Eren has never been that lucky.

Mr. Ral must find him pitiful because he asks, “Why don’t you take some dessert home?” He’s already heading back into the bakery, gesturing for Eren to follow him despite Eren’s protests. “If you don’t, they’ll just go to waste. Or into my employee’s stomach, and goodness knows that she’s already eaten enough desserts today already.”

“Thank you so much, sir,” Eren says, humbly bowing his head.

“Sasha,” Mr. Ral calls the girl at the register. “Could you ring up a few things for Eren?”

The girl’s head snaps up at the call of her name, her cheeks filled with pastry and crumbs all over her mouth. “Sure thing,” Sasha says, gulping down the last of her lavender bar and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She walks over to the side, Eren following her on the other side of the counter, and washes her hands hastily. As she wipes her hands dry with the hand towel, she looks at Eren brightly and asks in a chipper voice, “Do you have anything you want in particular?”

Eren’s eyes scan over the display, but he doesn’t really look at anything in particular. He just wants to get out of this situation as quickly as possible. He’s embarrassed himself quite enough for today. “Just … whatever you’d recommend,”

“Alright-y,” the girl hums, taking a bag and stuffing it full with little tarts and tea cakes and croissants. Eren looks at her briefly, realizing that he doesn’t recognize her. She must have moved here sometime during the past six years when he wasn’t around.

As Sasha finishes preparing the bag, Eren walks over to the register and gets ready to pull his wallet out but Mr. Ral walks over, shaking his head. “No need to pay for it,” Mr. Ral says. He reaches over the counter and takes the bag from Sasha, presenting it to Eren with a smile. “Consider it a treat. Really, you’d be doing me a favor just taking it. They would have gone to waste otherwise.”

“Ah, thank you,” Eren says, his face flushing once more. He takes the bag from Mr. Ral with a small bow of his head. “It was great seeing you again, Mr. Ral.”

“Likewise,” Mr. Ral says with that same crinkly smile. He walks Eren to the door, watching as Eren packs the desserts alongside his potato salad. “Take good care of yourself, Eren, and tell your brother I said hi.” He waves as Eren assures him he’ll do just that, returning to the shop only once Eren has biked away.

This is not how the night was supposed to go. Eren was supposed to be wandering around the neighborhood with his potato salad before waltzing into his father’s house an hour late, his sort-of stepmother silently fuming at the dinner table while the family sat and waited for him. He hadn’t planned on bumping into his childhood crush’s father, and he certainly hadn’t planned on looking so incredibly pathetic in front of Mr. Ral. He can only imagine what Mr. Ral will tell Petra when she sees her dad tonight. Maybe something about how he grew up to be such a loser even though his half-brother managed to graduate with a Ph.D. and is now a successful anthropology professor at the local university. It’s not something that usually gets Eren down, but thinking about it now is making him feel especially miserable.

Eren’s not sure why the thought of Petra knowing how his life is so embarrassing. He hasn’t spoken to her in years, so her opinion of him shouldn’t matter. And even if she did have an opinion of him, he’s sure it wouldn’t be unkind. Petra had always been nice to him even when he was a kid and just being an annoying third wheel to her and Zeke. When his childish admiration of her turned into puppy love and eventually evolved into a full-fledged crush, she never brushed him off or thought him annoying, although there was a chance that she just never noticed. He couldn’t blame her for that when Zeke, honor roll student and valedictorian Zeke, was always standing right in front of her. He wasn’t even surprised when they started dating. It was inevitable. And when they eventually broke up for some reason that Eren still isn’t quite sure about, Eren knew he’d never be able to compare so he never tried to pursue her. It’s not surprising that he and Petra ended up losing touch.

As much as he would love to blame Zeke for it (and it would be incredibly easy for him to blame Zeke), he can’t. Maybe it’s strange that he doesn’t harbor a deep hatred for his half-brother. Their relationship has all the makings of a classic sibling rivalry - a complicated family history, stark differences in accomplishments, and affections for the same girl - but Eren could never bring himself to hate Zeke. Even if Zeke’s mother liked to hold all of her son’s accomplishments over Eren’s head, Zeke himself never bragged about them. In fact, he was quite humble and would even offer to help his younger half-brother if he was struggling with something in school. Oftentimes he would invite Eren to hang out with his friends even though their age gap made it a little awkward. He even remembered Eren’s favorite snacks and would make sure they were in supply whenever Eren came over to visit. If Zeke’s mother was an evil Disney stepmother come to life, Zeke was that one fairytale sibling that was kind to the tragic main character, so Eren had no choice but to like Zeke. Even when Zeke broke up with Petra and Eren couldn’t understand why, when Zeke told Eren that it “just happened,” Eren kind of left it at that and accepted that because he couldn’t imagine Zeke doing anything wrong.

Could Eren be classified with an inferiority complex with regards to his brother? Probably, but most siblings can. Eren would have to challenge whether or not someone with inferiority complexes would admire their brother as much as he does, but they might in a weird way. Eren’s sure that he and Zeke’s relationship would still be complicated even if they didn’t have all the weird history with Eren and Zeke’s parents.

Eren sighs as he flies down a dip in the road, letting gravity carry him down instead of pedaling. He really doesn’t feel like he’s in the right headspace for this family dinner. Usually, he lets all of that woman’s snide comments ricochet, but his armor has grown weak and he can just imagine her landing the right thinly-veiled insult, her words burying into his skin and hitting right where it hurts. For a moment, Eren considers calling the dinner off with an excuse that will be sure to piss his stepmother off — probably something about how he has to restructure his lesson plan for the upcoming week — but he glances down at the potato salad and bag of baked goods in his bike basket and realizes that he really doesn’t want to eat them all by himself. If he’s going to suffer, he might as well make the rest of his family suffer alongside him. And besides, he’s pretty much already at their house anyway.

His bike slows as he approaches the white-picket fenced house. He takes the potato salad tub and the bag of baked goods before leaving his bike on the driveway, not bothering to chain it to the fence because nobody would want to steal the old thing he bought from a garage sale anyway. The sight of it lying in front of the house instead of properly locked up will be sure to piss off that woman too, which is just an added bonus. With a sigh, Eren marches up the front steps, shifting the food all on one arm so he can ring the doorbell. The familiar chime rings out, muted from behind the wooden door. A muffled voice mumbles something Eren can’t hear, but he already knows that the speaker has nothing good to say about him.

The door is thrown open and Eren looks down to see his stepmother glowering up at him, blue eyes a raging storm. “You’re late,” she hisses. She doesn’t even give him a greeting; she just stands there in front of him silently fuming. Behind her stands Eren’s father. As expected, he says nothing to defend his son’s tardiness. The man just stands there, uncomfortable as he quietly observes.

“Sorry, Dina,” Eren says, squeezing past his stepmother who makes an indignant noise. He dangles the food he brought in front of her face, rolling his eyes when she snatches the bag from him only to wrinkle her nose in disgust when she sees the potato salad. “I brought dessert, too. Do you want me to put it somewhere …?”

Dina snatches the bag of desserts from him too, still huffing. “We have a guest tonight too. Do you know how rude you’re being?” she says, continuing to nag at him even though Eren has stopped listening to her years ago.

Eren’s father gently grabs Eren by the elbow, subtly ushering him inside to avoid any more conflict but Eren yanks his arm away.

“Well, maybe if you told me we were having a guest beforehand I would have showed up on time,” Eren snaps. He sounds angry as he says it, but he really does mean it. It’s one thing to be rude to his stepmother, but it’s another thing entirely to be rude to a guest he doesn’t know. He’d at least wait for introductions before deciding whether or not to show any manners.

Before his stepmother can say anything more, Eren stomps off into the dining room where Zeke and the guest are waiting. He keeps his head down, cheeks burning, as he pulls out his chair - the one furthest from everyone - and slumps down into it. “Sorry, I’m late,” Eren mumbles, still looking down.

“Eren,” says a deep voice that Eren recognizes as Zeke’s. Hearing the voice of someone other than his stepmother’s makes Eren relax a bit and he rests with his back against his chair, a little more at ease now. He can hear Zeke’s small smile as his half-brother asks, “Aren’t you going to say hi to our guest?”

“Uh, yeah. Hi,” Eren says. His eyes flicker upward, first at Zeke who sits across from him, and then at the guest. He looks so quickly at first that he doesn’t register exactly who he’s seeing until he does a double-take, his green eyes widening as they take in the woman sitting there. It’s someone he hadn’t expected to see ever again, much less sitting at his family’s dining table, and he’s so surprised that he almost chokes. For a moment, he thinks it might just be a doppelganger, but there’s no mistaking the soft dimples that appear in her cheeks as her lips curl in a smile. “...Petra?”

“Hi, Eren.” Petra’s voice is still as gentle and soothing as Eren remembers, the sound of it so honey-sweet that he feels his cheeks bloom a soft pink. There’s so much about her that’s different, but there’s so much more that’s the same. Her hair is shorter now, no longer falling right at her shoulder, but curling right under her chin in a short bob. It’s the same shade of ginger it was when he was a kid. If it’s under the right light, it would probably burn a fiery gold. Her doe eyes are the same pretty amber, sweet and dangerously entrancing at the same time. She’s even dressed differently, her button-up blouse and slick gray trousers such a departure from the casual jeans and t-shirts she wore ten years ago when Eren was still in high school. Eren feels horribly underdressed - his ratty university sweatshirt over a thin cotton tee and his ripped jeans are so shabby in comparison - but a glimmer of silver on Petra’s wrist attracts Eren’s attention to the charm bracelet she wears, jangling with charms that Eren remembers her collecting in her high school days, and he feels a little less like he’s meeting a stranger and more like he’s reuniting with an old friend.

“How are you?” Eren asks shyly, his smile bashful.

“I’m well,” she answers, and Eren feels himself melting into her voice the same way he did when he was thirteen. When she smiles, her head tilts ever so slightly to the right just the way it did when he first met her and her dimples deepen into her cheeks. “How are you?”

“Good,” Eren answers because he doesn’t trust himself to string together more than a word or two at a time. He wonders if she realizes how he’s unraveling at the sound of her voice or if she’s as oblivious as she was the last time.

“I’m glad,” Petra says, and the warm look Petra gives Eren reignites a flame in the pit of his belly that he had thought he extinguished long ago. Her head tilts a little bit more to the side, her eyes twinkling. “I missed you,” Petra tells him, and Eren finds himself in love once more.

«────── « ⋅ʚ♡ɞ⋅ » ──────»

There are rules to dealing with your ex-boyfriend after you’ve broken up, Petra knows, but it’s been ten years and she figures that these rules can be bent. So what if the last time she saw Zeke she was broken-hearted, crying in the rain as he turned his back on her? She was younger then, her feelings out of control for someone who didn’t care for her nearly as much as she cared for him. And, sure, maybe it’s terrible that she never received the closure that she deserves, but she can’t hold a grudge against him forever. They work in the same university and cowering behind the nearest trashcan every time they meet doesn’t seem to be a viable option. Petra’s older now and so is Zeke. They’re mature. They can be friends like adults are after they’ve broken up, so the universe should be able to understand her accepting Zeke’s dinner request that evening even if her friends couldn’t.

She only started to regret her decision when Zeke offered to drive her there after his classes ended - saving gas and the planet, he explained - and she agreed. Although Petra repeatedly told herself that it was a simple family dinner and that such an invitation was extended to Zeke’s other friends on occasion, she found herself sitting impatiently in her office, biting her nails down so close to the quick that her fingers started to bleed. Having to bandage her fingers as she waited did absolutely nothing to soothe her nerves.

“I don’t see why you’re so nervous,” Levi tells her over the phone. He taught in the mathematics department, but they had met after Petra had nervously stumbled into the wrong building and into his office on her first day at the university. The man has a perpetual scowl on his face, and that very same expression had nearly sent Petra running until she weakly explained that she must have gotten lost and he kindly redirected her to the building her office was located in. She thought that was going to be the end of their interaction until he emailed her shortly after asking if she had gotten to her office alright. Finding him a kindred spirit, he had become her first (and sadly only) companion at the university aside from Zeke. “If you’re friends with him, it shouldn’t be that big of a deal.”

“Well, it’s just that I haven’t really seen him since we, you know, broke up,” Petra explains, but she doubts that Levi understands. She had told him her history with Zeke a few weeks ago after he asked her why she was so jittery at the faculty luncheon, but he didn’t have much of a reaction. It was sort of nice having someone to talk to that wasn’t as hyperbolically reactive as the rest of her friends, but it was also painfully difficult when Levi didn’t show her any sympathy.

“You saw him last week when you were at the library to look for reference books,” he reminds her as if it were the same thing. “I don’t know why this dinner has you in a panic. You left me nearly a hundred messages while I was teaching class.” He hadn’t even replied to her texts, the bastard. He had simply left her on read until midnight before sending her a thumbs-up emoji to let her know that he had read her messages, which was not exactly the response Petra was waiting for.

“This is different!” Petra insists, but she knows Levi will never see it that way.

“You’re making this a much bigger deal than it needs to be,” Levi says. She can hear him scribbling something on the other end, probably correcting exams for his differential equations classes and marking a poor student’s paper in an abundance of red. “Either cancel or just go to dinner with him. You’ve had family dinners with him even before you guys got together right?”

“Yeah, but that was back when we were kids,” Petra mumbles, fiddling with the hem of her shirt.

“Then you’ll be fine,” he tells her.

“You’re horribly unsympathetic sometimes,” she sighs.

“If you wanted sympathy, you shouldn’t have called me,” Levi says with a cluck of his tongue, but he chuckles when he hears her groan on the other end. “Really, it’ll be fine. You’re just overthinking it. I’m sure it’ll be fine. And you said the kid will be there, right? His brother, so it’s not as if you’ll be alone with Zeke and his parents.”

Petra lays with her head on her desk, her phone pressed against her cheek. “Yeah, you’re right,” she mumbles, but her lower lip still sticks out in a pout. The thought of Eren being there, sweet little Eren with his eager puppy eyes and wide smile, does make her feel better if only a little. She probably hasn’t seen him since she broke up with Zeke. She wonders if he’s changed very much. He’d be in college now? Or maybe he graduated. “I haven’t seen him in awhile though. What if he hates me now?”

“You’re overthinking again,” Levi says. He sighs on the other end. If Petra didn’t know him very well, she would think she was bothering him, but he’s always like this. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Yes. No. Maybe,” Petra sniffs. She looks sadly at her bandaged fingers and picks at the ends of one of them. “Should I just cancel? Maybe I can tell him I fell down the stairs and had to go to the hospital or something -” Someone knocks at the door and Petra lets out a startled yelp, nearly falling out of her chair because she’s so surprised. When she looks at the door, she sees Zeke’s silhouette against the frosted glass pane. The sight of it makes her want to hide behind her desk. “God, he’s here already!”

“Too late for you to run then,” Levi says, not even bothering to hide his snickering. He’s such a sadist that Petra doesn’t even know why she’s friends with him sometimes. “Have fun at your absolutely normal dinner with your friend and his family.” Click!

“Asshole,” Petra mutters under her breath before shoving her phone in her bag. There’s another knock at the door — the same long, slow knocks that are a signature of Zeke’s — and she hastily shouts, “I’ll be right there!” before shoving her papers in her bag and stumbling out of the door, nearly tripping over her own feet in the process. She must look like a mess because Zeke raises an eyebrow at her when she emerges from her office. Petra catches a glimpse of her reflection in the window and winces at her frumpled shirt and the hair falling out of her bun. She mumbles an apology as she pulls the hair ties out of her bun, her hair falling in loose curls around her face.

“Did I catch you at a bad time?” Zeke asks.

“No! God, no,” Petra says, inwardly cringing at every word that comes out of her mouth. Even she can tell how awkward her responses sound, a little too quick and desperate. What is she being so anxious for? It’s just dinner with a friend — an ex-boyfriend, but a friend nonetheless. Petra clears her throat and asks as casually as she can manage, “How are your parents?”

“Hmm? They’re well, I suppose,” he answers. Everything about him is familiar. He’s grown just a bit taller since Petra last saw him, his shoulders a bit broader and his jawline a bit sharper, but he still wears the same double-bridge glasses and the right corner of his mouth still quirks upward just the slightest bit when he speaks. He even walks the same way, his strides a little too long and quick, and Petra finds that she still has to struggle a bit to keep up. If Zeke notices the same thing about her - how she still wears the same shade of lipstick, how she still has that habit of wrapping her hair around her finger when she’s nervous like she’s doing now, how she bites her lip when she’s not sure what to say next - he doesn’t mention it. “My father’s still working at the hospital with my grandfather. He’s been promoted to director of the orthopedics department.”

“Oh, congrats!”

“And you know my mother has been at the hospital now that she doesn’t have to worry about me anymore,” Zeke says. It’s strange how casually he says this, as if he doesn’t remember that the last time he spoke about his mother to Petra was when they were still together. “She really missed being in the OR. Says she’d rather be doing surgeries all day than taking care of me.”

“It’s nice that she can go back to it.” She nearly stumbles over a step but catches the railing before she can. When she looks up again, Zeke is already on the sidewalk and she hurries after him, a little breathless. “And Eren?”

“Eren?” Zeke seems a little surprised by the question although Petra doesn’t know why. He leads her to a car - a slick Mercedes with a shining blue exterior and tinted windows that don’t quite match Zeke’s academic profession — and opens the car doors with a click.

“Your brother,” she clarifies as Zeke walks over to the driver’s side and slips into the car. She opens the passenger car and slides into the seat beside Zeke, setting her bag down next to her feet. The door swings shut behind her. “He’s coming to the dinner too, right?”

Zeke turns on the engine and the car comes to life with a pleasant hum. “Most likely,” Zeke says as he checks the side and rearview mirrors before pulling out of the parking space. He even drives the same way, his arm resting on the side with his hand tapping against the door while one hand is on the wheel. Just watching him makes Petra’s chest feel tight.

“Ah, that’s good. I haven’t seen him in so long,” Petra says. For some reason, knowing that Eren will also be there makes her feel a little more relaxed about the dinner. “Is he still in college? I think he should have graduated by now.”

“He graduated a little while ago. He’s teaching now. Still on probation, but he says his colleagues like him so he’s not too worried about getting tenure after the probationary period is over.” He slows the car to a stop at an intersection and leans over, fiddling with the radio dial. He sets it to the jazz station and the sound of smooth brass and relaxed percussion fills the car.

Somehow, driving down the streets with Zeke is far more nostalgic than it ever was when Petra drove on her own. Some nights Petra drove home by herself, and all it ever felt was lonely. Maybe it’s the familiarity of having Zeke beside her like when they were teenagers, driving back home after watching a movie downtown or returning from a basketball game at their high school.

Petra doesn’t ask any more questions about Zeke’s family. She figures she can catch up with the rest of the Jaegers when she sees them at dinner. Instead, she asks Zeke about his classes and finds that conversation with him comes more easily after she stops stumbling over her words. He tells her a little bit about teaching anthropology (“Far less painful than you think it would be, at least when the kids aren’t just taking it to fulfill their core classes,” he says), his plans for the upcoming week (“It’s midterms, but the students should be fine if they actually look at the study guide.”), and the butterfly exhibit opening up at the museum downtown (“I’m thinking of putting it up as extra credit. Who knows, they might actually look at the other exhibits while they’re wandering around.”). Petra also fills him in on her own life, mumbling about how she still has to make the answer key to her own midterm and expressing interest in the butterfly exhibit Zeke mentions.

They pull up next to Zeke’s house, the very same one he grew up with. Not much has changed from the outside. The white picket fence is a little worn and the rose bushes have been replaced with peonies. The house is still the same shade of cream, but Petra is sure that the Jaegers had it repainted over the summer like they usually do. She looks up at the second-story window where Zeke’s room should be and vaguely wonders if it’s still his room or if he’s moved out and hasn’t mentioned it yet.

Walking up the brick steps to the door is a bit surreal. Petra doesn’t realize just how silent she’s been until the chime of the doorbell startles her and Mrs. Jaeger opens the door. As with most of Zeke’s family members, Petra hasn’t seen Mrs. Jaeger since she broke up with Zeke, but she had an amicable relationship with her. She can’t recall Mrs. Jaeger ever being angry, so she’s surprised when Zeke’s mother opens the door with a terrible scowl on her face.

“Mom, you remember Petra,” Zeke says, moving aside so that Petra can enter first.

The scowl quickly slips from Mrs. Jaeger’s face, replaced with a smile that Petra is more familiar with. “Petra, of course! I haven’t seen you in ages,” Mrs. Jaeger says, her voice strained. She waves Petra and Zeke in, shutting the door gently behind them. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“Likewise,” Petra mumbles. She looks at the kitchen doorway where Zeke’s father leans and gives him an awkward wave. The man, just as silent as he was when Petra was young, gives her a polite smile and a nod in acknowledgment.

“Sorry, we’re a bit late,” Zeke apologizes as he shrugs off his coat. He walks over to the dining room, Petra and his mother trailing behind him. “A student wanted to talk to me and it took a bit longer than I thought it would.”

“No need to apologize! Eren hasn’t arrived yet anyway. He’ll probably be late. Again.” There’s a harsh tone in Mrs. Jaeger’s voice that Petra hasn't heard before. When she looks up, she sees Zeke’s mother hovering around the table and arranging dishes, the same polite smile on her face as she does so. “Your brother, of course, didn’t bother to send a text to notify us that he’d be late.”

Petra wonders if Mrs. Jaeger usually speaks about Eren with such disappointment in her voice. Maybe she had always spoken about Eren like this and Petra had never been around to witness it or maybe it’s something that developed while Petra was away. Whatever it is, Zeke and his father seem used to it. Zeke merely shrugs, pulling out his phone to flip through his phone while his mother continues to mutter about how disrespectful her stepson is. Mr. Jaeger continues to stand at the doorway, not bothering to join them at the dining table, his eyes fixed on the carpet. He doesn’t bother to defend his son.

“Maybe he’s busy,” Petra says, interrupting Mrs. Jaeger mid-rant. She feels rude for speaking while Mrs. Jaeger is talking, but sitting in silence while Zeke’s mother speaks ill of Eren doesn’t feel right either. All eyes are on her now - Mrs. Jaeger a little surprised, Zeke with an eyebrow quirked upward as if in amusement, and his father with a look that’s almost relieved. Petra clears her throat and continues. “He’s a teacher, right? It must be difficult teaching so many children every day — making the lesson plan and everything. Maybe texting slipped his mind. He’ll probably be here soon.”

God, she hopes Eren will be here soon. Her cheeks are starting to burn bright red and she’s thinking that perhaps speaking up might not have been the best decision.

“Ah, you’re probably right.” Mrs. Jaeger seems a little more composed now, perhaps remembering that they have company over. She settles down in the chair across from Zeke and flashes a pleasant smile at Petra. “He can be quite forgetful of these things. Of course, you’d never worry your father like this. You’ve always been so responsible.”

Has talking with Zeke’s mother always been this difficult? Petra’s head is starting to spin, unsure of what response would be appropriate. She feels as if she should defend Eren, but she doesn’t want to make things awkward either. In the end, she smiles awkwardly at Mrs. Jaeger as if accepting the woman’s compliment and reaches out for the glass of water in front of her, raising it to her lips before she can say anything else that she might regret.

“Dear, come sit next to me,” Mrs. Jaeger calls. She gestures for her husband to join them at the table and Mr. Jaeger stiffly walks over from the doorway before taking a seat at the head of the table. Mrs. Jaeger folds her hands on the table, her gaze still on Petra. “How have you been, Petra? We haven’t heard from you in a while. How long have you been back?”

The series of questions leave Petra tongue-tied and unsure of how to answer. It’s so strange how casual the Jaegers can be about asking after her, like she hadn’t been such a large part of their lives — or at least Zeke’s life — ten years ago before disappearing completely. As if they didn’t know the real reason she hadn’t kept in touch. She’s not sure if she’ll ever be able to act as oblivious as them.

“Er, I’ve been back for a while now,” she replies. She bites her lip when she sees the look of surprise on Mrs. Jaeger’s face. When she glances over at Zeke, he doesn’t look back at her. He’s returned his gaze to his phone screen, ignoring her. Nervously, she laughs. “I guess Zeke didn’t tell you, but I’m teaching at the same university he is. A few undergraduate English classes and then a graduate course on nature and romantic poetry.” Petra doesn’t know why she feels a lump at the back of her throat or the sting of tears at the corner of her eyes. She nibbles at her lip again, looking down at her lap so that she doesn’t have to look at Zeke or his family. She doesn’t have a reason to feel hurt or upset. Maybe Zeke was busy and didn’t have the chance to mention it to his parents or maybe it just slipped his mind. It isn’t a big deal.

“Oh, that must be nice! Who knew you two would be working together after all these years?” Mrs. Jaeger says. She subtly pushes the cheese plate on the table towards Petra, gesturing for her to take one.

“Mmm,” Petra says, nodding as if she agrees with Mrs. Jaeger. It’s not as if she’s wrong. Petra certainly didn’t know any of this would happen. She knew some of it would �� getting her degree, teaching at a university, eating dinner with Zeke’s parents — she just hadn’t predicted other things like Zeke breaking up with her, not speaking with him for ten years after knowing him her entire life, or having to pretend that she’s okay.

Petra reaches for a cracker and a spread of raspberry goat cheese and shoves the entire thing in her mouth, hoping that she won’t have to answer any more questions.

“The university is nice,” Zeke’s father murmurs. It’s the first time he’s spoken all night. The sound of his voice startles Petra, but the other Jaegers don’t seem too surprised. “It’s near the museum too. Very convenient.”

“Ah, the museum!” Mrs. Jaeger clasps her hands together and looks at Petra expectantly. Petra nearly chokes on her cracker out of nervousness. “Have you been there yet?”

“Er, not yet,” Petra says hastily, wincing at the pain in her throat. She takes a quick sip of her water to relieve it. “I haven’t really found the time, I guess.”

“Oh, you should absolutely go!” says Mrs. Jaeger brightly. Petra had never thought Mrs. Jaeger was one to love museums, but there’s probably a lot about the woman that Petra doesn’t know now. All Petra really remembers about the woman is that she stayed at home during the daytime and worked at the hospital at night. She’s bound to have found other ways to occupy her time now that she doesn’t have to worry about Zeke anymore.

“You sound as if you really enjoy it.” Petra nibbles at another cracker. She feels as if she should smile right now, but she’s not sure if she’s able to. “Are there any exhibits you would recommend?”

“Oh, they’re all good! The staff especially …,” Mrs. Jaeger gushes, but her voice begins to trail off. Her eyes flicker over to Zeke as if waiting for a sign to proceed, but her son pays no attention to her. He simply reaches over for an almond on the cheese plate and pops it into his mouth. His mother’s smile tightens and she continues, “The butterfly exhibit that’s opening soon should be exquisite!”

Petra looks from Zeke to Mrs. Jaeger. Aside from Mrs. Jaeger’s forced smile, Petra really can’t tell what’s wrong, so she puts on a false smile of her own and nods. “I know. Zeke was telling me about it on the ride here.”

There’s a long and awkward silence. Zeke puts no effort in speaking and neither does his father, who still sits and stares at his lap. Only Mrs. Jaeger and Petra seem to be putting in any effort to pick up the conversation, both trying to appear calm as they search for some common ground to work with. Instead, the doorbell rings and Petra swears she hears a sigh of relief escape Mrs. Jaeger’s lips.

“It seems Eren has finally arrived,” Mrs. Jaeger says, her chair scraping across the floor as she gets up from the table. As she turns to leave, she flashes Petra an apologetic smile. “I’m so sorry you had to wait so long.” Petra is about to tell her that it wasn’t a problem, that she didn’t mind waiting (even if it was a lie), but Zeke’s mother has already disappeared into the next room with Zeke’s father following silently behind her.

For a moment, Petra wonders if she should try to talk to Zeke so more. It’s not that the quiet bothers her, but she’s never felt comfortable sitting silently next to others unless she was completely comfortable with them. Ten years ago this would have been fine, but now sitting with Zeke beside her without saying a word is making her skin crawl and her throat dry. She glances at him from the corner of her eye, trying to gauge his interest.

Zeke doesn’t seem to be bothered by the silence at all. He’s still scrolling through his phone, occasionally reaching out to pluck a cracker or another almond from the cheese plate. If he’s fine without any conversation, Petra figures she shouldn’t bother him. She settles down with her back against her chair rather unhappily and tries to occupy herself another way.

Petra tries not to eavesdrop on the conversation going on in the other room. First, she stares down at the lace tablecloth, gazing at the delicate pattern until the floral designs are burned into her corneas. Mrs. Jaeger’s voice begins to drift into the dining room, her tone just as cold and harsh as it was when she spoke about Eren earlier this evening. Another voice floats into the room as well, a voice like Eren’s but a bit deeper and rougher than Petra remembers. As the two continue to talk, Petra finds herself straining to listen to the conversation, but she can’t quite make out the words. The words exchanged don’t sound incredibly pleasant though.

“...if you told me we were having a guest beforehand I would have shown up on time,” Eren hisses as he walks into the room. He’s taller than he was when Petra had seen him last — probably as tall as his brother if not taller — but he walks with his head down and doesn’t seem to notice Petra seated at the table even as he pulls out a chair to sit down. Without looking up, Eren mumbles, “Sorry, I’m late.”

Zeke looks up, his expression amused. “Eren,” he says, setting down his phone for once. He rests his chin in his hand, mouth quirked upward in a smile. “Aren’t you going to say hi to our guest?”

“Uh, yeah. Hi,” Eren says, mumbling into his lap. His eyes flicker upward, first at Zeke and then Petra, but he doesn’t really register who Petra is until he takes another glance. His eyes are huge like a doe’s. He’s always had big eyes even when he was a child, large and green like gemstones. He’s grown into them more since the last time Petra has seen him, but they’re still enormous, growing wider as he recognizes her. His mouth falls open in surprise. “... Petra?”

She can feel her lips curling in a smile. “Hi, Eren.”

Eren smiles back at her, a little nervous but a lot more relaxed than he was when he first arrived. He’s still shy when he smiles, looking up at her before glancing down at his lap again. “How are you?” He sits up straighter in his seat, no longer slouching.

“I’m well. How are you?”

“Good,” Eren answers.

“I’m glad. I missed you,” Petra tells him, and she means it.

His smile is a little wider now and Petra feels the most relaxed than she’s been the entire night. It’s nice to know that, despite everything, at least Eren hasn’t changed and she feels less awkward being at a Jaeger family dinner after ten years of estrangement.

Mrs. Jaeger puts down a tub of what looks like a potato salad on the table, opening the container with a frown. “At least you didn’t come empty-handed,” she comments wryly.

Eren winces but doesn’t say anything.

Petra sits up. “It looks, um, delicious.” It doesn’t. It looks like a pile of mush and not at all like anything edible, but Petra begins to spoon some on her plate anyway out of politeness despite the look of alarm on Eren’s face. “Eren, your brother told me you started teaching recently. Where do you teach?”

“Just, um, down the street. Not really elementary … it’s a daycare,” he says distractedly as he watches her help herself to his potato salad. Eren hesitates for a moment before taking the spoon from Petra and switching their plates. He does it absentmindedly, almost as if he doesn’t realize what he’s doing until he notices everyone looking at him peculiarly. Flustered, he explains, “It’s not, ah, I don’t think it’s very good. So.” As if to prove his point, he puts a heaping spoonful of it into his mouth, gagging on it as he swallows it down, and scrunches his face up in disgust.

Mrs. Jaeger looks rather smug as Eren chokes. “I’ll just put this away then,” she says, removing the tub of potato salad from the table. She gestures for Petra to help herself to the other food on the table. “Help yourself to everything else, Petra.”

“Er, thank you,” Petra says. She does feel bad about not eating the potato salad, but Eren looks pretty relieved. Because she’s talked Zeke’s ear off in the car and doesn’t know how to carry on a conversation with the Jaeger parents, she decides to continue her conversation with Eren. “Daycare seems like it would suit you. I bet you’re great with kids.”

“I’m alright,” Eren mumbles as he pushes the potatoes back and forth on his plate, but he’s hiding a smile on his face, secretly pleased. He’s never been that good at hiding his emotions, which Petra thinks is an endearing trait. “Teaching at a university is probably harder.” He freezes for a moment and then hurriedly adds, “Your dad told me you work as a professor now. I ran into him before coming here. He mentioned that you taught English …?”

She doesn’t say anything for a moment, casting a side glance at Zeke. She thought Zeke would have mentioned that they were working at the same university, but maybe it never came up in conversation between the brothers or they just weren’t as close as they were before. Forcing a smile on her face, she nods, “Yeah, I teach English, but I wouldn’t say teaching university is more or less difficult than handling a daycare. They have their own challenges, right?”

“Yeah,” Eren replies, voice soft. His smile grows wider and, after Petra asks him about what it’s like teaching at the daycare, starts animatedly talking about his students. He seems very endeared towards a young girl named Gabi, a very mischievous but sweet troublemaker, and her companion Falco, a young boy that often has no choice but to be dragged into all of Gabi’s shenanigans.

Talking to Eren makes the rest of the dinner go by easily. He’s always been easy to talk to even when they were teenagers and she was dating Zeke. Sometimes she would wait at the Jaeger house and talk with Eren while they waited for Zeke to come back from baseball practice. Eren was always so animated when he talked, using his hands and sometimes bouncing up and down his seat when he got excited. He still does that now as he talks about his work at the daycare, listening intently whenever Petra or even Zeke exchange their own stories about teaching. It makes her feel as if the past ten years hadn��t really happened, like Zeke and Eren had been a part of her life the entire time.

“Oh, I brought dessert,” Eren says brightly. Before Mrs. Jaeger can say anything, he gets up to collect the paper bag on the kitchen counter and plops it on the dining table. He pushes it closer to Petra. “Your dad gave me some while he was closing up his shop.”

She laughs. “I eat too many of these as it is,” Petra says, but she plucks an almond cookie from the bag. Her teeth sink into the cookie, savoring its subtle nutty flavor on her tongue, and sighs. “Don’t tell my dad. He won’t let me eat anymore when I get home.”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” Eren grins.

Petra peers into the bag. “Did he give you any chocolate croissants?” She looks over at Eren. “Those are still your favorites, right?”

Eren looks surprised. “Ah, yeah,” he replies, blinking. “You remember?”

“Of course, I remember,” she snorts. She manages to find a pain au chocolat and places it delicately on Eren’s plate. It’s a little smooshed from the ride here, chocolate spilling out of its side, but Eren still looks at it hungrily. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Zeke leans forward. “I like the lemon bars. Let me know if there are any in there.”

She laughs and actually does manage to find one, but it’s a lemon-lavender bar. Zeke assures her it’s fine, picking off the little bits of lavender that are on the top of the bar. They eat like that for a moment and Petra feels an overwhelming wave of nostalgia. It’s probably unhealthy to yearn for the past, but Petra wouldn’t mind if things somehow ended up the way they were before.

When their dishes are scraped clean and the conversations begin to fade away, Zeke pats down the corner of his mouth with a napkin before announcing that they should stop for the night. He has papers to grade tonight, he explains to his parents who nod understandingly. The wooden legs of his chair scrape against the carpet as he gets up from the table and Petra slides out of her own seat, ready to follow him.

“Ah, Petra,” Zeke says, pausing like he’s just remembered. He looks at her, head tilting slightly. He’s stopped by the door to the living room, his hand resting on the doorframe. “Do you mind calling an Uber to pick you up? I’d drive you home myself but …”

“I …” Petra blinks, feeling like a deer in headlights. If she looked around, she would see that the rest of the Jaeger family has a similar expression. She’s not sure why she feels so surprised. Maybe it’s because she had expected him to drive her home, but maybe that was too much to ask of him after he had taken the trouble to drive her here in the first place. It’s not even that far of a drive to her house, but it’s probably too cumbersome for Zeke, who’s busy with grading papers and preparing for tomorrow’s lectures. There’s an awful lump in her throat like she had swallowed an egg whole, but Petra forces a smile on her face as she begins, “Sure, let me just call my dad -”

“I’ll take you home,” a voice says suddenly. Everyone turns to see Eren standing up from his chair. At first glance he looks angry, but Petra blinks again and there’s only concern on his face as he collects his jacket and walks over to Petra. He shrugs it on and smiles down at her, his expression a little apologetic. “Er, you don’t mind riding on a bike, do you?”

Petra has to lift her head to look at Eren and she wonders when he had gotten so tall. It must have been after she left for college. “No, that’s fine,” she replies numbly, too shocked to really think about it. She shuffles silently after Eren, mumbling a brief “thank you” when he helps her into her coat.

“It was lovely having you over again, dear,” Mrs. Jaeger says to Petra, a smile pasted on the woman’s face as she saw the two out. She doesn’t say anything about Zeke not offering Petra a ride back. “Do come again sometime.”

“Of course,” Petra says, although the promise feels empty. She’s not sure if Mrs. Jaeger notices or even cares because the woman shuts the door in her face before Eren and Petra are even out in the driveway. It’s not a cold gesture, but it’s a change from the days when Mrs. Jaeger would wait until Petra was almost out of sight before shutting the door and disappearing into the house.

Petra shoves her hands into the pockets of her coat and follows Eren down the driveway, watching as he runs to the bike he had carelessly discarded on the ground before entering the house earlier. Embarrassed, Eren hastily picks up the bike, brushing it off and mumbling something about how he had been in too much of a hurry earlier to properly lock up his bike. Petra assures him it’s fine. She’s only half-listening anyway.

“You can just sit here,” Eren says, patting a padded seat on the back of his bike. He throws a leg over his bike easily and looks at Petra, waiting expectantly.

She hadn’t objected to the ride home before, but now she looks at Eren’s vehicle of choice skeptically. “Are you sure you’ll be able to pedal with me on it? I’m a whole other person.” Petra hovers beside the bike, but she doesn’t get on.

“Yeah, it’s fine. It was fine when my boyfriends were riding in the back, and they’re a lot heavier than you,” Eren replies. It takes him a moment to register what he just said and then his face begins to color, cheeks glowing pink even in the dim moonlight. “I mean my ex-boyfriends. I rode around with my ex-girlfriend too, but she was really tiny too. She was …” He probably would have babbled on and on if Petra hadn’t sat down.

“Your exes?” Petra asks, eyebrow raised. She hadn’t really thought about Eren dating, but it’s funny to think about now. She doesn’t remember if he ever dated anyone when he was in high school. She probably shouldn’t tease, but she can’t resist grinning at the boy and saying, “It looks like you were busy in college.”

“Not that busy. Just … probably as busy as your average college student,” Eren mumbles under his breath, face still flushed. He gestures at Petra’s hands and then makes a motion around his waist. “You can … around me if, you know, you’re comfortable with it.”

“Oh, right.” She leans forward and wraps her arms around Eren’s waist and wonders briefly how someone so tall can have such a thin waist. “Do you remember the way to my house?” she asks.

“Of course,” Eren says. “It’s not that far from here.”

For some reason, the way Eren answers makes Petra feel warm. Maybe it’s just the heat transfer from resting her cheek on his back. She closes her eyes, feeling the wind rush around her as Eren bikes her back home.

It feels so comfortable, clinging onto someone so familiar and breathing in Eren’s scent, something like pinewood and a little bit of peppermint. He feels strong too, sturdy like a redwood tree. Petra doesn’t know why she doubted his ability to bike with her additional weight. He’d probably be fine having someone twice her weight in tow. She experimentally gives Eren’s waist a little squeeze. It must have been too sudden of a squeeze because they come to a screeching stop, Petra’s face slamming against Eren’s back and the two of them nearly go flying.

“Oh, ouch,” Petra says. One arm is still wrapped around Eren’s lithe waist, but she raises a hand to rub her stinging face. “That hurts.”

“S-sorry!” Eren stammers. He twists around to get a good look at Petra, forehead wrinkling. “I didn’t mean to stop so suddenly I was just … surprised.” He brings his hand down to where Petra’s arm is hooked around his waist, but he snatches his hand away as soon as their skin brushes as if he’s been burned. “Sorry!”

“It’s fine,” Petra assures him. Her nose is throbbing dully, but it’s not bleeding. “It’s my fault anyway. I was just surprised. You’re a lot bigger than you were the last time I saw you.”

“I’m alright,” Eren says with a shy laugh. He pushes off on the bike and starts for home again, pedaling easily despite Petra’s weight. He doesn’t startle when Petra leans against him again, her cheek rubbing against the cotton of his hoodie. His breath hitches a little when Petra wraps her arms a little tighter around his waist, but it goes unnoticed by her.

“Were they nice?” she asks. Eren makes a confused noise, and she can’t help but smile. Clarifying, she says, “Your exes. Were they nice?”

Eren pedals in silence for a while before responding. “Yeah. They were nice.”

“That’s good.” Petra sighs against his back, not noticing the way he shivers as if he can feel her breath on his skin. “You deserve to date nice people.”

Petra might have imagined it, but she thinks she hears Eren say something in reply. He says it quietly, though, and the wind carries it away too quickly for her to hear. She straightens her back, lifting her head from where it rests against Eren’s back, but he doesn’t repeat himself and she doesn’t ask. Maybe it’s just one of those things that are meant to be spoken aloud but not heard by anyone.

They don’t speak much the rest of the way home. Petra figures Eren is having enough trouble biking with two people and holding a conversation would only tire him out more. She just lets herself rest against him, watching as they pass streetlight after streetlight. It probably would have been more convenient to call a Lyft or an Uber, but Petra thinks accepting Eren’s bike ride isn’t bad either. It saved her from having to wait awkwardly for her driver to find the house while Zeke’s parents waited for her to leave.

She wonders if she should have gone to dinner in the first place. Maybe Zeke had only invited her out of politeness, but she had taken it to mean more than it did. She’s stupid to think that arriving at the Jaeger house meant that things could go back to the way things were. It was noticeably tense in the house. At first, Petra thought it was because of the strained relationship between Mrs. Jaeger and Eren, but now she’s not so sure. It’s not as if Mr. and Mrs. Jaeger had met her with open arms. They hadn’t been hostile, but they were polite in the way that people were polite to house guests and not in the way they would be to a childhood friend of their son. God, she’s so stupid. She should have just declined Zeke’s offer politely and never spoken to him again since he was obviously content with not speaking with her for ten years.

Burying her face in Eren’s hoodie, Petra gives him another squeeze. Eren doesn’t brake this time. He just lets out a surprised “oh!” and falters for a bit, bike slowing, before picking his pace back up and continuing on their way.

“We’re almost there,” Eren tells her. As he approaches Petra’s house, the bike begins to slow before stopping completely in front of the driveway. When Petra lifts her head, Eren is looking at her, smiling. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Petra nods. She gets off the bike and pats down her windswept hair, brushing some stray locks out of her face. She manages to smile back at Eren. “Thanks for the ride back. I hope it wasn’t too out of your way.”

“It’s fine.” Eren sits at his bike, his smile a little lopsided. He looks as if he’s about to say something, but nothing comes. It’s only when Petra turns around towards her house that he opens his mouth. “Hey, Petra?”

Petra’s hand rests on the gate of her wooden fence, just about to open it. She looks at Eren, watching as he fidgets with the handle of his bike. “Yeah?”

“Did Zeke …?” His voice trails off and Eren’s looking everywhere except at her face. He nibbles on his bottom lip and Petra wonders what he’s so nervous about. His expression looks pained as if he’s scared whatever he has to say will hurt her, but Petra’s not sure why it would. After a moment, Eren swallows and forces a smile on his face. “Did Zeke tell you that … I work near your university?”

“You do?”

Eren nods. He looks a lot less nervous now, his shoulders relaxed. “Well, it’s not that far by bike.”

“Really?” Petra hums. “I should come visit you some time then.”

“Oh, you don’t have to -”

“Or you could visit me?” she suggests.

He blinks. “I can?” Eren asks. “Is that really okay?”

Petra almost laughs. “Of course. Why wouldn’t it be? You should just let me know beforehand if you’re coming,” she tells him. She walks over, pulling her phone out of her purse and handing it to him so he can add his number. “Text me or call me. I might not respond right away because I might have a faculty meeting or a lecture, but I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

“Oh, alright then,” Eren says. He types away on her phone, handing it back to her as soon as he’s finished. He watches with wide green eyes as Petra sends him an emoji — a simple “Hi, Eren! It’s Petra 😊” — and looks back at her with a grin. “I’ll come visit sometime.”

“That’d be great,” Petra says, and she really means it. “Thanks again for the ride, Eren. I really appreciate it.”

“It was no problem,” Eren tells her. He waves as walks through the gate and up the steps of her porch. He’s still waving when she opens the door and turns around, his smile a little goofy but cute at the same time. “Have a good night!”

“You too,” Petra says before shutting the door gently behind her. She takes a peek out the window and sees Eren still on the sidewalk with the bike. He stands there with a pensive look on his face before pushing off his bike and riding off into the night. Petra watches until he’s a tiny speck down the road. When she blinks, he’s gone.

Petra finds her dad waiting for her in the living room, sleeping because he can’t stay awake for very long after dinner. In his lap sits a half-finished crossword puzzle. Petra smiles affectionately at her father before pressing a soft kiss on the old man’s brow.

“I’m home,” she whispers as her father begins to stir.

“Ah, Petra,” says her father. He looks at her, eyes still bleary with sleep, and gives her a drowsy smile. With a hand, he pushes up the glasses that were slipping off his nose during sleep. “Did Zeke drive you home?”

Her lips press into a thin line. “No. He was busy,” Petra replies, trying to keep her voice as even as possible. “Eren took me home instead.”

“Eren?” her father repeats, not seeming to remember the name.

“Zeke’s younger brother,” Petra reminds him. She leans against the back of her father’s armchair as she tries to describe the half-brother. “He was a few years younger than me. Brown hair, big green eyes, kind of gangly.”

“Oh, Eren,” her father says, nodding. Petra’s not sure if he actually remembers or if he’s just being polite, but then he suddenly says, “I saw him earlier this evening before I was closing up shop. He’s very polite. He’s a nice boy.”

Petra leans over to rest her head on her father’s shoulder while her arms lay folded on the back of the armchair. She thinks about her ride home, how it could have been cold and miserable and lonely. And maybe her thoughts were all of those things, but the ride wasn’t. She can still feel the warmth Eren emanated from underneath his hoodie, how comforting it was to have someone to hold.

“Yeah. He’s a nice guy,” Petra says softly.

#eretra #petra ral #eren jaeger #zeke jaeger #big au #ilyitros #i'll love you in the rain or shine series #modern au #snk #damn i love food so much!!!

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stonecoldjerseyfox · 5 years ago

Text

Jersey on my mind (part 15)

In front of him the road lies deserted, in contrast to a clear blue sky. There’s not a cloud in sight. It could be a great day, if it wasn’t for his company. In his back Daryl has about a thousand walkers following him, flooding the road, creating a buzzing sound of hisses and dragging feets against asphalt.

Daryl pulls the sweat out of his forehead with the dirty rag he carries in his back pocket and revs the engine, to maintain the walkers attention forward. Nothing has gone as planned. During the practice run at the quarry, the truck blocking the walkers, preventing them from escaping, fell off the edge, allowing the herd of walkers to walk freely. They had to initiate the plan immediately.

And to top it all, Mila had a fit of rage directed at him and Rick the same morning at breakfast and stormed off in anger. Although they told her three times, or more, that she couldn't come along to the quarry, she still tried to persuade them. Why couldn’t she just understand that he wanted her to recover properly before she came along on runs and whatnot? And most of all, to be safe? Nope, she couldn’t see that. Maybe because he didn’t tell her how he actually felt, because he was a moron who couldn’t express feelings.

Carol (she can read him as if he were an open book) seemed to understand exactly what was going on in his head. Before they left for the quarry, she had approached him as he fixed the motorcycle.

“Why don't you just tell her you care?”

“Don’t know whatcha talkin’ ‘bout.”

“You know exactly who I mean.” Carol nodded her head slightly upwards. “It is easier to communicate if you actually say something.”

“Hm.”

“Not everyone can read the thoughts of others.”

“And you can?”

“I can read you.” Carol smiled and buffeted him in the side. “Talk to her when you’re back. And tell her you care, damn it.”

Daryl’s interrupted in his thoughts by a loud noise in the distance. A car horn. An elongated, high tone that causes his spine to freeze while it bounces through the woods around them. The tail of walkers hears it as clearly as he does. Daryl brakes and presses his feet into the ground, feels the weight of the bike against his body. He buckles his legs, letting the weight lie on his feet against the ground, preventing the bike from tipping over as he looks around. The horn continues to echo over the trees. To his dismay, he sees how his followers attention is shifting. They begin to disperse, to look for the cause of the sound. He revs the engine again, tries to drag their half dead attention back to him instead.

“Rick!” he shouts into the walkie talkie.

A raspy voice answers him.

“I'm here.”

“What's going on back there?”

At the same time, Sasha and Abraham drive up beside him in the car, Daryl kicks off again and they continue to drive.

“Half of them broke off. They're going to Alexandria.”

Not what he wanted to hear. Something has happened. Daryl’s sure of it. Sasha looks worried, probably thinking the same thing. Abraham brings his walkie talkie to his mouth.

“Towards you?”

“We ran ahead.” Daryl hears Rick's voice chattering through the crackling speaker in Abraham’s walkie talkie. “There's a horn or something. Loud, coming from the east. It's not stopping.”

Daryl's heart rate goes up to max. What the hell is going on? And who did they left behind in Alexandria that’s prepared for combat? Carol, Maggie, Morgan ... Mila. Mila. Damn it!

“I'm gonna gas it up, turn back.” Daryl calls in his walkie talkie.

“We have it.” Rick replies. “You keep going.”

“They're gonna need our help!” Daryl shouts back and starts to get angry.

“Gotta keep the herd moving.”

What the hell does it matter, Daryl thinks angrily.

“Not if it's going down, we don't.”

“The rest of that herd turns around, the bad back there gets worse.”

Daryl clenches his jaw and looks behind his back, at the thousands of bloodthirsty bastards. Something has happened in Alexandria, his gut feeling tells him that. And a whole bunch of walkers are on their way over there right now. Rick and the others are on their way over there, but what if it’s too late? What if they’re outnumbered? What if the Wolves saw them leave Alexandria?

“Daryl?” Rick shouts through the creaky speaker.

Daryl feverishly tries to think clearly. He looks at Abraham and Sasha. Sasha does her best to appear calm, but her knuckles, grabbing the steering wheel, are shivering. He sees in her eyes that she’s also worried, the same goes for Abraham.

“Daryl?” Rick repeats.

Rick can handle it. He’s with Michonne, Glenn and the others. They got this and Daryl has his job. He has to do it for the sake of the community. And he can’t leave Abraham and Sasha alone. What if something happened to them? What if the car breaks down? But his conscience is undoubtedly split.

As if Rick could read his thoughts, Daryl hears him say, as if he has stopped running completely to speak:

“I'll take care of it.”

“Yeah, I heard you.” Daryl replies, reluctantly.

Radio silence follows and they continue along the road at a slow pace. Sasha puts her hand on the car horn and gives it two light presses; poking at the attention of their companions, makes them want to follow their lead. Daryl on the other hand feels as if a belt is being tightened around his chest.

“Hey.” Abraham calls him back to the present. “They're probably okay.” “Hm.”

But he’s not convinced. To be thrown into an unprepared attack... No one can be fully prepared for such a thing. A flood of emotions, even anxiety, flushes over him. But Daryl pushes it back. Focuses on the road ahead with all his willpower, tries his utmost to turn off the brain and his heart. They continue to drive slowly under silence, in what feels like an eternity. For every meter, that lump of anxiety grows in his stomach. Soon they reach the Alexandria sign. It hangs on the edge and looks ravaged. A ‘new start’ is promised. He recognizes the houses. The porches and the trees. But are they still gonna be there when they come back? Or will all of this be in vain? He squeezes the handlebar. Is there any way back there that doesn’t include having to go zigzag between a thousand walkers in the opposite direction?

“Hey, we've gone five miles out yet?” he calls to Abraham.

“Give or take some yardage.” the former sergeant replies. “My guess is about six, maybe eight even. You got a reason for asking?”

“Next intersection I’m gonna spin around and go back.”

“The plan is to go 15 more.” Abraham calls, in an attempt to persuade him to not go.

Daryl has already made up his mind.

“Yeah, I'm gonna change that.”

#daryl fanfiction #daryl x oc #daryl dixon #Jersey on my mind #Daryl Dixon Fanfic #The Walking Dead fanficition #The walking dead fanfic #fanfiction #twd fanfiction #fanfic #twd fanfic #the walking dead fandom

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rustbeltjessie · 5 years ago

Text

Belmont and Clark

I clicked the link Meg sent me, and saw the headline I’d dreaded for years: Demolition Underway at Corner of Belmont and Clark. I read the article, and read another, earlier article on the same topic. I’ll spare you the dull details, but the gist is this—all the buildings on the corner of Belmont and Clark are being bulldozed to make space for some hulking monstrosity of glass and steel, yet another ugly, shiny building where rich people can live, park, eat, and shop. (Just think! One day rich people might be able to live in a completely encapsulated world and not have to breathe the same air as us riffraff!)

I cried a little, and then I got angry. Later that night, I drank whiskey and tried to explain to my partner why I was so upset. My partner attempted to placate me by telling me that it didn’t matter if they tore those buildings down or covered up that parking lot (don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone—they’re building over my favorite parking lot), because the memories will live on in my heart. “No!” I shouted. “You don’t fucking get it!” “I don’t want the memories! I want my Punkin’ Donuts!”

* * *

I’m not drunk, or as emotional as I was that night, but to tell you the truth I don’t know if I can explain anything. I can’t explain why I loved that street and that corner so much. I can’t explain why I’m so fucking pissed that they’re erecting this new building. I know I shouldn’t be this upset. Like I said, I dreaded that headline for years; part of me knew it was coming. My favorite cafe—which had been across the street from Egor’s Dungeon—shut down in 2001 and by 2002 was a trendy shoe boutique (now, it’s a gyro place). Punkin’ Donuts became a combined Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin Robbins in 2003, and at the same time they started having attendants patrol the parking lot (not that that did much to dissuade either teenage loiterers or drunken brawlers)—and I was mad about that. I wrote about it in the final issue of Safety Pin Girl. I called it the “Death March of Progress.” Less than a year later, Clarke’s remodeled and tried to make themselves seem fancier by doing things like having Daily Specials (but a diner where drunks and weirdos congregate that has Daily Specials is still a diner where drunks and weirdos congregate). Condos and other signs of gentrification started appearing on Belmont a decade ago, and I wrote about that, too: I kicked at the walls of condominiums that now rise to great and ugly heights on the spots where there were once little stores, cozy walkups, and greasy spoons.

So I sorta saw it coming. Not to mention, I never lived in the Belmont/Clark neighborhood, and I haven’t really hung out there since early 2009. Why, then, does this feel like a great personal loss? Why do a few overpriced and overrated “punk rock” shops and a shitty parking lot in front of a crappy chain donut joint still feel so much like home?

* * *

The closest I got to living in the neighborhood of Belmont and Clark was the apartment I lived in during the first half of 2004. It was just off Belmont, but about two miles farther west, much closer to Western than to Clark. That was close enough. On chill winter days, I hopped on the bus (the Belmont bus!) and rode east, disembarked across from Clarke’s. That was around the time they were trying to make the place a little more upscale, and Maggie and I bitched about it. “Clarke’s sucks now,” we said. “Why do we still go there?” One night, we went to Clarke’s for fries and coffee ‘cause we had nothing better to do, and we ran into a group of old friends and new friends and realized that was why we still went there. Because everyone in town went to Clarke’s. Because none of them had anything better to do, either.

On warm spring days, I took a travel mug full of iced coffee and wandered on foot, no hurry. Sometimes I’d stop to roll a cigarette or browse in a record or bookstore—to drool over all the things I’d’ve bought if I had money to spare. I’d stop and talk to strangers, maybe stop for a bite to eat if I’d scrounged up enough change from my coin jar. Mostly, I just wandered—I had no money to spare but all the free time in the world. I was young and broke and unemployed, and something about swaggering down Belmont in the springtime sunlight made me feel good about being young and broke and unemployed.

And on warm spring nights, Maggie and I hopped astride our bikes and headed east. We sang along to the songs that blared through the shitty handheld tape player she’d duct-taped to her handlebars, and flipped off pedestrians who told us to get off the sidewalk, or flipped off drivers who almost hit us when we rode in the street. Sometimes we stopped at Clarke’s, other times we kept going, and I swear if Lake Michigan weren’t there we could’ve ridden forever.

* * *

See, my love runs the length of Belmont, from California Avenue east to the lake. It runs from the corner of Belmont and Clark northwest to Cabaret Metro, despite the existence of Wrigley Field and its attendant Cubs fans. And that one little area, from the Belmont Red/Brown/Purple Line stop to the corner, and around the corner to The Alley, is the nexus. It is where my love is at its highest proof.

My love for those streets and the place where they intersect is a swig of cheap vodka. It’s a gut feeling, a flutter and a punch. It is something I’ve been trying to explain for years, which is why I write about it so often. In a piece I wrote years ago, I said: Belmont Avenue is my favorite fucking street in the whole world. I read it at a zine reading, and some people teased me, told me that Belmont was cheesy and overrated. One friend said: “I used to love Belmont, but after I got a citation for smoking cigarettes on the Red Line platform, my enthusiasm waned.” I only smiled and nodded, because those people obviously didn’t get it. I knew Belmont was cheesy and overrated. I loved it anyway. And no matter what fucked-up shit happened to me in that neighborhood, I continued to love it. I continued to love it because…and here, wait, could it be? I finally have an explanation:

It was the first place where I felt comfortable in my skin, accepted and celebrated as a weird artsy kid and as a punk. You know, I could sit on the filthy sidewalk for hours, chain-smoking and writing in my journal, and no one thought I was pretentious or a nerd. I could wear my blue hoodie covered in shoddily sewn-on patches and more often than not, someone would say to me: “Hey, I love that band,” and I’d make a new friend. And it was the first place where I felt accepted not only as a weird artsy punk, but as a queer person. Because there were gay bars, there were same-gender couples kissing and holding hands, there were boys in lipstick and high heels and girls with shaved heads and hairy armpits. So the story of my love for those streets is also a queer coming-of-age story. And it is the story of the girls I knew.

When I think of my days and nights on Belmont and Clark, I remember the girls. Oh, there were boys, boys I dated and slept with and had crushes on; boys I met on Belmont Avenue or hung out with there—but the girls are the ones that stand out in my mind. Girls who were my friends, girls who were my lovers and significant others, girls I only saw once.

There was Annie, my first real-life girlfriend, the person who first took me to Belmont. We walked around holding hands. We went to thriftshops and punk clothing shops; we modeled clothing for each other, bought jars of our favorite Manic Panic hair color—hers Carnation Pink, mine Pillarbox Red. We got coffee from the Punkin’ Donuts to warm our hands against the raw-wet late-winter wind. When I was brave enough, I kissed her and felt a warmth tingle my veins, a warmth greater than any that coffee could produce.

There were the older punk rock girls I met in the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot that first time I was in Chicago all on my own. They were glorious in their spiky, neon-colored hair, their tight jeans and short skirts, their high-top Chucks. We walked together to the MTX/Queers show; they gave me sips of their booze and shouted down catcalling Cubby Bros.

There was Beagan, who sat with me on the summer sidewalks, smoking cigarettes; who walked with me in the soft snow flurries of two-days-before-Christmas. We kissed and giggled. We pointed out the passersby we thought were cute, and assured one another we’d always think the other was the cutest one of all.

There were the girls of my Kokomo Caffe days: Schuyler, who I encountered my first time there. She charmed me with her stick ’n’ poke tattoos and her messed-up hair and her brash attitude. I played “Rebel Rebel” on the jukebox, she knew all the words, and I was in a whirl. Polly, the gorgeous old-school gothpunk. She had flawless Cleopatra eyeliner, her favorite bands were The Slits and The Damned, and she always offered me one of her clove cigarettes (which she kept in a silver case, shaped like a coffin). Winnie, with her shock of red hair and a smile like a match-flare. She gave the best hugs, they were one of the things that helped pull me through that hellish time in my life. Parker—we were both white girls with Chelsea haircuts and steel-toed boots. We bonded over trying to find ways to show the world that, though we looked like skin byrds, we definitely weren’t byrds of the Nazi variety. The girl whose name I never knew—I thought for sure she was gay or bi. She always made eyes at me. She had a leather jacket and a fucking rainbow mohawk. Then I found out she was not a queer punk, she was a Christian punk; she wasn’t trying to flirt with me, she was trying to convert me.

There was Latisha. Though we were on-again/off-again as a couple, there was never any bad blood between us. The night we met, we hung out on Belmont. We went into sex shops where we annoyed the employees by tickling each other with feather dusters and trying out various floggers and whips. We went into clothing stores; I bought a purple plaid dress that I wish I’d held on to, though I’m sure it wouldn’t fit me—it was too tight and too short even then. We parted ways, that night, at the El station—she had to get on the southbound Red Line, I had to board the northbound Brown Line. As we stood on opposite platforms, waiting for our trains, we blew kisses to each other and waved at one another with imaginary perfume-scented handkerchiefs. Over the next four years, much of our time together was spent on that street. We yelled at cops who harassed the homeless who gathered on bus benches and in the Dunkin’ parking lot. Some nights, we got coffee at Clarke’s after queer punk shows. This was when I was young and brazen enough to consider a second-hand slip and torn-up fishnets appropriate show attire, and I know all eyes were on us when we spilled into the diner on those nights—scruffy punk girl me, falling out of my slip, high femme Latisha with her high high heels and her pin-up girl dresses, both of us half-drunk, with make-up smeared by pogo-sweat. Other nights, we danced at the Belmont gay bars. Our favorite nights were ‘80s nights, when we could writhe, melodramatic and strange, to new wave and New Romance. Sometimes we did shots with drag queens. Sometimes one or the other of us picked up a hot butch and left with them, or let them fuck us in the bathroom. Usually, we just danced; usually, we went home together.

Once, walking down Belmont with a friend of mine, a punk girl looked me up and down, from the top of my short black hair to the booted toes of my red and black striped tights. She gave me such a lustful look that my friend turned to me and said: “Damn. That girl looked at you the way a Gossip song sounds.”

There was Filia—every time she visited my neck of the woods, we bummed around Belmont and Clark. Usually, it was summer. We drank iced coffees until we thought we might puke. We smoked endless cigarettes, though the sodden summer air was so thick in our lungs we choked on it. We ogled skinheads and picked up bottle caps we found on the ground. We sang “Summer in the City” at the top of our lungs, convinced that a Chicago punk band should cover it because it was the anthem of Belmont in the summer, and the backs of our necks were dirty and gritty. Babe, don’t you know it’s a pity…

There was Maggie, who I mentioned above, my long-time partner-in-crime from the moment we met. Maggie and I on the bus, on our bikes, on foot. Maggie and I headed east on Belmont. Maggie and I stopping into Schuba’s to drink afternoon beers and take silly photobooth pictures. Maggie and I staying up all night at Clarke’s, or loitering in the parking lot of the Punkin’ Donuts. Maggie and I stopping into Blue Havana to buy Bali Shag; Blue Havana which we referred to as HomoSmoke, because everyone who worked there was gay as hell. There was a cute butch gal who worked there, she had a tiny ‘hawk and a face full of piercings and we both awkwardly attempted to flirt with her. Maggie and I—I’ll stop now, because I have so many Maggie/Belmont memories that I could fill up a whole fuckin’ book with those.

And there were others. Other girl friends and girlfriends, other girls I flirted with, other girls I was too nervous to even talk to. Out-of-town pals I took to Belmont when they came to visit, and in-town friends who loved that neighborhood almost as much as I did. Zine-writing girls and rock’n’roll girls. Goth girls and punk girls. Girls with mohawks and girls with dreadlocks and fuzzy-headed baby dykes. Tattoo artists and hairstylists and baristas and diner waitresses. I love(d) them all.

* * *

After I read the articles, I read the comments. The commenters fell into three different categories. 1. The balanced, rational people. They said they were ambivalent about the proposed building but thought that progress was good for the neighborhood. 2. Those who said: “Good riddance! There are muggings in that neighborhood that are probably perpetrated by the teenagers who loiter in that parking lot!” Those who said: adios crappy Dunkin' Donuts and nasty Ally [sic] building. That corner has been nothing but a hangout for hookers and troublemakers for years. 3. The nostalgia-keepers, who shared stories of hanging out there before and after punk shows or raves. They said: “Yeah, there were problems, but the place had character.” Someone responded to one of the nostalgia-keepers, and said: are you saying you are sad to see a dunkin donuts [sic] and its parking lot go? If so, that’s fucking weird.

Well, then I’m fucking weird, too. I could try and give you some arguments against gentrification, some reasoning behind why I think it’s important to leave a space for the wacky teenagers and their crime, for the troublemakers and the hookers, because that’s part of what’s making me angry. What I’m even angrier about is that they’re destroying a piece of my history, and I don’t like change. I like change when it means gaining new experiences and interests and friends, but when it means losing people and places? Fuck that. I get grumpy when places I love get remodeled, and I get downright livid when they’re torn down. I can’t remember the last time a girl looked at me the way a Gossip song sounds, and most of the girls I mentioned above are no longer part of my life. I’m fucking selfish, and if I can’t have the girls and the moments back, well—I would rather see those buildings and businesses vacant and crumbling than see them razed. That way, at least, they would stand as a monument to my past. That way, I could visit them and see the ghost of my old self peering out from the empty windows, my old self with her slip-dress and her smeared make-up, her endless cigarettes and scribbled notebooks, gazing out the windows, waiting for the girl(s) she loved to pass by.

My partner was right, in a sense. The memories do live on in my heart. All the girls, all the people I encountered near that corner, will live in the Belmont and Clark of my heart forever. All the people and a hundred moments and a thousand small things. The cracked sidewalks covered in broken glass, the secret graffiti, the heavy silver-green trees of Chicago in the summer. The stench of car fumes and donut grease and diner grease, cigarette smoke and beer and that weedy lake-smell when the wind is blowing in from the east. The abrasive honking of taxis, drunks singing their favorite songs, “Belmont is next. Doors open on the left at Belmont.” Sometimes, I think I’m okay with everything going away from me forever—girls, places, everything—but right now, I’m not. It’s all tattooed on my fucking heart, but that’s not good enough.

I want a tattoo of the CTA map, with the Belmont stop blown up bigger than the rest. I want a brick from the rubble of Blue Havana and Architectural Revolution. I want to stand on the corner and chug a 40 oz. of Old Style; I want to pour the dregs onto the cracked hot sidewalk. I want to scream: “Fuck Building a New Chicago! I want the old one back!” I want to sing, with Chain and the Gang backing me up: “Devitalize!” I want to save that brick from the rubble of my past, and when they build that hideous new building, I want to send it hurtling through the shiny windows. Attached will be a note that reads: “Fuck you. You’ll never fucking get it.”

—Jessie Lynn McMains [originally published as a mini-zine in early 2015; also appears in the collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Punk]

#jessie lynn mcmains #chicago #lakeview #writers on tumblr #essay #memory #clark and belmont #my writing #queer stuff #girls #love #loss #what we talk about when we talk about punk

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loveforpreserumsteve · 4 years ago

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Those Who Fall: “APTF” Story (Modern Domestic Stucky AU)

Eight:

Parking in the garage, Bucky cut the engine and climbed out. Steve started to as well, until Wanda asked, "You live here?"

Having gotten used to the brownstone, Steve almost forgot what it was like to see it for the first time. It brought Steve back to his former self who was positive that he and Bucky wouldn't be able to afford it. Or that it would be too large for just the two of them. Sure, they had fixed it up once they did purchase it, but the bones of the house had always been elegant.

"We do," Steve confirmed, climbing out and opening the passenger door for her.

With some difficulty, Wanda climbed out of the car and rubbed her small baby bump. Eyes wide as she looked over everything. The hockey sticks, the baseball and softball bats, the plethora of soccer balls and basketballs. On the walls, bikes were mounted out of the way. Up top, in the loft were kayaks and inner tubes for their camping trips at the lake. As Wanda's eyes roamed over the interior of the garage, so did Steve's; trying to see what she could be seeing.

However, all Steve could see was a home.

Bucky led them through the garage and started the tour. Pushing open the door to the right, he said, "This is the laundry room." Turning, around, Bucky pointed to the door at the end of the hall, "That's our bedroom."

Then, he started heading upstairs. Bucky first, Wanda next, and Steve last. Once at the main level, Steve noticed that the girls were absent while Luke and Ethan lounged on the sofa in their pajamas, freshly bathed and relaxing before bed.

"These are our sons." Steve gestured to the older boy on his phone, "Luke and --" he gestured to the little boy cuddling with a hand-me-down Pascal pillow from, Tangled, "-- Ethan."

Both boys turned to look at her while Bucky said, "Guys, this is Wanda."

"Hi," Ethan shyly greeted before bashfully burying his face in the stuffed chameleon's body.

"Hey," Luke gave her a nod before redirecting his attention to his phone.

Wanda cleared her throat and softly returned, "Hi."

Steve smiled. They didn't seem to hate each other, and he saw that as a success. All the while, Bucky gestured to the left, towards the front of the house, "That's the sitting room."

"There's art supplies," Steve told her, giving her a kind smile when she looked at him, "You can use anything in there. Markers, paints, beads. Anything."

Mutely, Wanda nodded and ducked her head when Steve looked at her for too long. Steve's heart broke a little more, with every movement to withdrawal into herself. They had kids like that in the past. The abused and neglected. With Sun-Hi, they had spent months trying to get her to even make eye contact with them. Now, she was a confident young woman in culinary school. With Tommy, it had taken longer, but now he could argue without having a panic attack. Which was miles away from where he had been.

Steve could only hope that they'd be able to help Wanda, too.

As the trio made their way to the kitchen, Steve asked, "Would you like to eat first? Or you can bathe while we warm it up."

Wanda shifted uncomfortably and meekly answered, "I'd like to shower."

Steve nodded and started guiding her back through the dining room and into the living room. Rounding the grand staircase, Steve led the way. All the while, Bucky could be heard in the kitchen, preparing the soup. On the second story of the house, Tibby could be heard with Sophia.

Tibby could be heard laughing, "It must be nice being a duck."

"Quack, quack," Sophia giggled.

Rounding the banister, Steve found Tibby brushing Sophia's stringy-wet hair while the little girl pretended that her arms were duck wings. Steve couldn't help but chuckle at the sight and the joy that radiated off of them. Once Wanda was on the landing, Steve gestured towards the two who could be seen in the doorway of the girls' bedroom and said, "That's Bucky's sister, Tibby, and our daughter Sophia."

Wanda nodded in acknowledgement and Steve gestured towards the rooms closest to the stairs, "These are the boys' rooms." Walking towards the other end of the hallway, Steve passed the bathroom and said, "We like to leave the door open, so people know that it's not occupied. But we also knock whenever the door is closed, just in case. Pretty common sense stuff. There's hair-ties galore that you can use, and unopened toothbrushes in the second drawer."

Another nod and Steve led the way towards the other two bedrooms. The one that Katie shared with Holly when she was home from college, and the one with multiple beds that was currently only occupied by Sophia and her dolls.

Gesturing to the room on the right, Steve said, "You'll be staying in here."

Wanda peeked into the room and sheepishly smiled at the little girl who had stopped quacking long enough to have her black hair braided so it'd be curly, "just like Auntie Tibs'." For a moment, the two paused and smiled over at Steve and Wanda, nothing but kindness. Steve could already see the adoration filling in Sophia's eyes. Sure, she loved her brothers, but she loved having sisters, too.

"You can choose either of the other beds, just not the one with the pink floral comforter and the bumblebee pillow. That's Sophia's bed." Steve informed, crossing his arms and hugging himself instead of hugging this poor girl who needed so much love.

Thickly swallowing, Wanda darted her tongue out along her lips to wet them and answered, "The bed closest to the window, please."

For a moment, fear shot through Steve. Terrified that she'd try to make an escape and run away. Only, his imagination got the better of him as he dreaded that next time they found her on the street, she'd be dead.

Shaking the thought out of his head, he squeezed himself once before he dropped his arms and turned to look at the timid brunette. "How about you take a shower and I'll find you some clean clothes and change your sheets, so they're fresh?"

Simply, Wanda nodded and headed for the bathroom. Steve was starting downstairs as Wanda closed the door. Only, he paused when she did. Through the crack of the door, she peeked over at him and quietly said, "Thank you."

"No problem," Steve sincerely grinned.

Once the door was closed, he continued on his way. Looping around the banister at the bottom and heading straight down to the lower level of the house. Figuring that the only clothes that would comfortably fit, would be Bucky's. Immediately checking the dryer to see if there were any warm clothes in there. However, it was just the kids' laundry, so Steve headed into their bedroom and straight for their closet.

Knowing that the Father's Day sweatshirts were the softest, Steve grabbed a maroon colored one that correctly claimed, Number One Dad. Smiling down at the soft garment, he rifled through Bucky's sweat pants until he found a pair of gray joggers. After all, she was taller than him, so she definitely wouldn't fit a pair of Steve's. Plus, Bucky's were comfier.

As Steve returned to the main level, he found the boys still lounging along with the sleeping dog. Glancing at the clock, Steve reached over the back of the couch. Smoothing down Ethan's damp hair, Steve said, "Bedtime."

"Papa," the six year old unhappily whined, burying his face further into the Pascal pillow.

"I know, bub," Steve soothed, "But it's late and you've had a long day. I've had a long day. And you don't want to be grumpy tomorrow."

Ethan huffed and dramatically slid off the sofa, disturbing Thor at their feet. Still clutching the stuffed chameleon to his slender frame. Tugging at his Mandalorian, The Child, pajamas until they were right on his body again. Then, he slumped his shoulders and started trudging up the staircase.

Shaking his head, Steve directed his attention back to Luke and told him, "I want you to go to bed in an hour."

"Got it," he grumped, stretching out on the sofa, not taking his gaze off the phone.

Recognizing that something was wrong, Steve rested his arms on the back of the couch and asked, "What's up?"

For a moment, Luke just chewed on his plump lower lip. Then, he looked up at Steve and sat up. Quietly, he huffed, "She's older than me. Which means that I'm back to sitting in the back seat. And that my movie choice will be pushed back. And… and I'll have to wait until she's done in the bathroom before I can get ready."

Sighing, Steve walked around and sat on the couch. Setting the clothes to the side, he gestured for Luke to come closer, and that was exactly what he did. The boy leaned into Steve's side and rested his head on Steve's slender shoulder. It still surprised Steve sometimes with how much he had grown in the last four years. He had a growth spurt, where his shorter, chubbier frame thinned out for the most part, which he seemed particularly thrilled about. He had armpit hair, and that, for some reason, surprised Steve because his little boy was growing up.

Smoothing Luke's slightly damp, combed out hair away from his face, Steve rested his cheek on the top of his head while he was still able to do so. Trying to comfort the teen, he said, "Just because someone new came into the family doesn't mean that you're going to be pushed to the side. It doesn't mean that we're not going to listen to you, or not care about what you have to say. And it sure as hell doesn’t mean that we're going to love you any less. You should know that by now."

Luke eased against Steve, "Thanks, pops."

"Of course," Steve assured, kissing the top of his head, "We're always going to be here for you. Always. No matter how old you are, or how far away you move -- although I would like to still be close enough to hug you, please and thank you -- you can always come to us. And when you don't remember that, we'll remind you." Then, for good measure, Steve added, "I love you, bub."

"Love you, too," Luke exhaled deeply, as though he had truly forgotten. And maybe he had. But Steve meant what he said. When Luke gave his torso a squeeze, Steve knew that he remembered again. Remembered and believed him.

#a place to fall #jump then fall #those who fall #bonus #stucky #steve rogers #bucky barnes #steve rogers x bucky barnes #marvel #fanfic #wattpad #ao3 #modern au #domestic life #fluff #smut #otp

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shophotlavablog · 4 years ago

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Inspo: Lizzy Alvarado

Lizzy went from an internship at Steakworld to a career woman at depop. One of my favorite Lizzy stories is that she used the tips from a post I made on tumblr about” how to land an internship” ON me and got the job. Now She is the the marketing manager at Depop and constantly making waves. She is always inspo for Hot Lava design and aesthetic so I wanted to highlight this hustler to inspire everyone to seize the moment and make it happen for yourself.

Q: What have you been working on lately?

With my job everything has turned digital, which has been a crash course on how to do an event in digital format. So, I’ve been doing a lot of [Instagram] lives with different artists and trying to bring the energy that I used to do with my work IRL to digital, so it’s kind of been a challenge, but it’s been fun.

At home, kind of just nesting it up. I feel like every few weeks I realize how long we’re going to be in quarantine—so I, like, redo my house a different way, so I think it’s kind of nice because since quarantine started I’ve really settled into my house. I have a lot of house plants and cats, so I’m kind of like trying to keep everything alive.

Q: What are some things you’ve been doing to prioritize “me time”?

I think by making myself a challenge. Right now, me and my best friend are doing this workout challenge, where we FaceTime each other and do the workout at the same time. It’s been my mental and physical entertainment, and gives me something I have to be held accountable for, like trying to workout and having a goal.

Recently, I took a week off. Even though were working from home I don’t think it’s the same as when you’re working; you always have to take a little break and reset and a lot of my coworkers and myself have not given ourselves that, because we’re working at home, when are we going to take that time and just sit? But recently I took a whole week off and I didn’t answer one Zoom meeting or do anything. For me, that reset my whole mindset and gave me time to just think about the reality of the position we’re all in, and my reality, like what I need to do instead of living in limbo of half doing things because I’m waiting for us to be out of quarantine his life for now just telling yourself that you need to adjust at least until like January or something for now and just set my dates back, pushing things back as things happen.

I feel like I’ve been working later and more sporadically when I’m working from home because you can just check your messages or your computer whenever, and you can get up and see the dishes are piling up and spent two hours cleaning your kitchen, and then you have to make up for it, and then you’re working until nine or something, so it’s definitely a balance figuring it all out.

Q: Can you give us a small walk through on how you started out in your career, and what younger you would need to hear to get where you are?

I started off by doing a PR internship in NY that was focused on beauty products. It was there that I learned a few hard truths like the "top 10 best products for glowing skin" mentioned in vogue was actually just a list of products that various PR agencies were able to pay off editors to add. It just didn't sit right to me and I didnt end up staying at the agency after my internship, but it did spark something in me about promoting products that I did like and that aligned with my values: sustainability, female owned brands, etc.

One great thing about my time in NY is that's where I happened to meet my boyfriend on one fateful night out at Max Fish which is usually the opposite of the place you meet your soulmate lol. Anyways fast forward a few months and I ended up moving to LA for said boyfriend and had to completely start over. I had no connections in LA, no friends, and at that point was still too early in my career for my resume to stick out of a pile. The start was rough and I had to get PT jobs to make money while I figured out what the fuck I was going to do in this new place where people usually move to with very specfic big dreams.

Now to the good part, the part where HOT LAVA started it all for me. Rachael loves this story and I didn't actually admit it to her until several months after working for her. Basically I had been reading her advice column Steaktalk for a long time and she had a post about how to get a job. Literally she broke down how to set up your resume, cover letter, and mentioned ways to set yourself apart from the rest. Well I used it to apply for an internship with her and it worked! Once I had that experience in LA under my belt I was able to transition into a brand manager for The Cobra Shop which was right next door to the HL office and eventually I started working for Depop as a Marketing Manager which is where I am today.

Q: Tell me your most embarrassing moment in your current career/ relationship/ creative endeavor:

That’s a tough one. I feel like when you’re first starting out, everything feels embarrassing. I remember the first time I came to Hot Lava—I didn’t do anything I can think was embarrassing, but like, being embarrassed of my existence of just not knowing how to interact with people. Because when you just see everything online, when you finally meet people in person, sometimes it can be really overwhelming. It’s kind of funny to just be embarrassed for being yourself sometimes, but I feel like you grow out of it.

Q: Do you think about where you’d like to be in 5 years or even 1 year, or are you more of the “in the moment type”?

I am more of a person who is in the moment. I do think of where I want to be in five years but I don’t hang onto that title too much, because I think if I think, “In five years I want to be a CEO,” and right now I’m just a marketing manager, in my head I’m like, “What am I doing? I’m just out here everyday not doing that.”

I feel like I live in the moment as far as knowing that, if you are in the moment, it’s going to pay off in the future. If I do work on whatever I’m supposed to be doing at the time, or whenever I’m given the opportunity to do that, then yeah, it will pay off in the end.

I don’t think my career really started to move until I was able to accept being in the moment. For me, when I think about my jobs and how I got to being hostess in New York, to being a dog walker and now to becoming a marketing manager, I don’t think I was able to do that until I was able to say that I just need to live in the moment and get that job to make money right now.

I knew I thought I could do something great but I wasn’t able to do anything great until I was able to sit myself down and handle the basics like, get a job—not “the” job, but a job, and just do OK at that, get your money right, and get to the right place. And slowly I was able to start looking for internships and then I was able to get one. Then it just grew from there.

I feel like if I was living with my head in the clouds, thinking about the future, I wouldn’t have been able to do that because I wouldn’t have accepted just getting a basic job for now.

Q: What causes you stress and how do you ease those stresses?

Prioritizing my work/home life tasks stress me out, especially working from home RN if you have a deadline but also a pile of dishes to do it's hard to ignore that when you aren't able to leave the house and ignore the home life stuff. I try to read self help books, make lists, ect. The biggest help is self talk and just reminding myself that the world won't just because your todo list isn't complete.

Q: Name one hobby:

I really like going out and riding my bike, so finding places are safe right now has kind of been the thing. I don’t go mountain biking or anything, I like riding my bike in a nice/safe area. I also don’t want to be in the city, so I’ve been looking for national parks nearby and local areas where you can do a 14 mile bike ride or something. I used to live in New York and I would ride my bike everyday, so I used to ride 25 miles a day, but now it’s like 12 miles I’ll make a whole day out of it.

I also really like music, but it’s sort of like a personal thing. I write songs and work on stuff, but I’ve never thought of it as something I’d do in reality. But, I’ve been doing that a lot more since we’ve been in quarantine.

Q: One thing you always tell your best friend:

I mean I tell her everything. I literally have become attached to Facetime with her daily since quarantine started. It's kind of a nice thing because she lives all the way in Texas so being stuck inside has brought us closer. I used to call her every couple of days and give her the highlight reel of my week but now it's like every 3 hours and life is so boring stuck inside that no detail is spared.

Q: If you wrote a book what would the title be and why?

Scared for No Reason: Why Doubting Yourself is Your Downfall.

I feel like there are already many books about this subject but I haven't found one I really connected to specifically. One of my biggest realizations in life is how much fear has stopped me from doing things I am actually really passionate about or interested in. I am still on the road to ultimate confidence (giving myself a deadline of reaching age 30 for this), but a lot of things changed in my life when I pushed past the fear and doubt that is a big part of my inner voice. A few examples are applying for internships that have led to my career (thanks Hot Lava), talking to my boyfriend who I have now been with for 5 years, walking up to a brand's creative director and telling them I can produce content for them and making that my side gig. The point is none of this would have happened if I was listening to that fear voice in my head saying I'm not good enough, pretty enough, or qualified enough.

Q: What's your favorite Hot Lava piece and why?

My fav Hot Lava piece recently would have to be the bike shorts or zebra dress just from a design perspective. I think the team really hit the nail on the head and created trending pieces in a unique Hot Lava style. My all time fav piece and first piece I ever bought is the surf top! I purchased the first one HL ever produced the night it launched in 2014 or 15? Its white and has an eye! But I love the cut the most. I have it in black and lime green too. It's just the perfect top, a contrast of modesty with the high neck but also sexy with the tightness.

What's on Lizzy's Playlist:

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jessiewre · 5 years ago

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Day 22

Sun 26th Jan 💜

It’s been a year to the day since we lost Nanny. That’s mad isn’t it. Miss that legend.

Woke up at about 5am because we’d gone to bed too early, but managed to power through and stay in bed till 7am. Phil got up and continued researching his new obsession - a half marathon near Kilimanjaro - and I joined him at 8:30am for Spanish omelette breakfast included in our 25$ a night room. Good deal that init. People say that in London you’re never further than like 5 meters away from a rat. Well thats like me and good deals, there’s always one close by for me to sniff out. Maybe I’m more like one of those pigs and the deals are truffles.

I digress...

The hostel manager was now wearing a chefs coat and I realised he was now the chef. What a multi-talented chap he was. I threw him into a frenzy by asking for salt, pepper, ketchup and chilli sauce, and eventually went into the kitchen myself to assist.

The ketchup was in a huge bucket bottle in the fridge and he gracefully glugged it out into a plastic squeezey bottle that he couldn’t find the lid for. Yum.

Shout out to Stella and Helen who will surely boke at that description of keptchup.

We got bodas to the Woman’s Centre for the recommended walking tour starting at 10am - but there was a big bike race on believe it or not, and so road blocks meant we had to walk the last kilometre. Phil was loving the bike race, I could see his legs twitching like he was imagining himself on a bike that moment, but I soon snapped him back to reality by power-walking ahead to avoid us being super late to the walk.

The sky was rapidly turning a dark shade of grey but Phil assured me that the weather report he’d checked stated that there would be no rain until midday or later.

You may be able to sense where this is going.

We arrived at the Centre and sat in the sofa area for the introduction, and the exact moment the woman began to talk and tell us about the community, the rain began to thunder on the metal roof and no one could hear a word she said. After 10 minutes, the intro finished and the rain actually calmed down a little, but then it went totally crazy again and me and Phil looked at each other like...hmm should we just not do this walking tour.

Another English girl there was thinking the same thing and the 3 of us decided to ditch the tour and head back the next day, while the 3 older people and a young American woman went off in the torrential rain with umbrellas. Umbrella’s are all good and well but I couldn’t see another soul on the streets so I seriously doubted how good a community walking tour would be in this weather. We chatted to the English girl, Esther, and she was ending a weeks work doing research for the Princes Trust who she works for. In a nutshell, she creates programmes for local groups in different countries to integrate technology into their lives to improve their prospects and quality of life. Really interesting! Phil mentioned that she should hang at our hostel later if she wanted as we were planning on trying out the bowling alley on site, and she was really up for that, especially considering she was in Kigali on her own and it was her last night.

The rain eventually calmed down enough for us to jump on a boda and we decided that considering the rain, it would be appropriate to visit the Genocide Museum at this point. We knew we were going to visit it at some point so made sense to be inside during the rain.

We were really hungry though and didn’t want to rush through the museum, so thankfully there was a cafe on site where we had a vege burger and vege panini, both with chips. We decided we’d try and lay off the chips for a while after that meal, it was the chip that broke the camels back.

The Rwandan Genocide museum was a harrowing and necessary visit.

The below information is upsetting, I’ll warn you now.

genocide

noun

noun: genocide; plural noun: genocides

1. the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular nation or ethnic group.

To briefly summarise, the problems began when the country was ‘colonised’ - or should we say if we’re being honest, when the country was invaded against its will. The Germans were first in 1899 then the Belgians in 1916 and then the Belgian’s decided to split the country into three different groups. Ultimately this created a sort of competition between the groups of people that had never existed before and this was what they say sparked the issues in the country. Fast forward to 1994, and the genocide officially began, over a period of 100 days - neighbours were murdering neighbours, friends were murdering friends. Relatives even betrayed each other. By turning people against each other, the ringleaders were able to sit back and watch the killings happen for them.

Being in the country now, its very difficult to imagine it happening, as it feels vibrant, friendly and safe. But the images in the museum leave you under no illusions. People were mindlessly slaughtered, no one was spared - children, pregnant women and men. It was absolutely mind-blowingly horrendous.

The museum talks a lot about how the international community sat back and let it happen, like Rwanda was on another planet that no one cared about. There is obviously a lot of pain from that which was difficult to read about.

But there were also a number of people who put themselves on the line by hiding people in their houses and gardens, saving many lives. Unfortunately, there were not enough of those people and over a million people were killed. They are still uncovering mass graves today.

There were videos playing with interviews from survivors talking about the guilt they feel from being the only member of their family who survived. But incredibly, they spoke about forgiveness and said they would like to forgive the perpetrators if they were willing to ask for forgiveness. They spoke about moving forward with only peace in mind, as this was what would move Rwanda forward in a peaceful way. By seeking revenge, the violence and pain would continue, they said. It’s unbelievable to hear that from someone who watched their innocent young siblings and mother murdered by machete in front of their very eyes. You can’t even imagine what this person has gone through.

One of the most difficult parts of the museum was The Children’s Room. This section had beautiful photos of child victims printed in large portraits displayed around the room, with a small plaque underneath each one with bullet points of information about the child, like:

Name

Age

Favourite Snack

Best Friend

 Then the final point for every child was

Cause of death

The descriptions here were detailed and distressing.

Obviously there is a huge amount of detail missing from this account of the genocide and I urge you to have a read about it if you have time and are interested.

We left there after a few hours taking it all in and went to find the Inema Art gallery, as we’d read about it being a really cool artists space that has had a lot of international interest.

It was different to what I expected, as there wasn’t actually a lot of pieces in there - more like a few extremely large pieces, each priced around $5000. So obviously, we bought two and headed off.

Well anyway, some of the artists were there stood near their art in smart clothes and were hoping for a super rich muzungu coming in and buying everything. That was not going to be us, so we thanked them and headed to the cafe for a little coffee.

Not before I asked them if there were any female artists there.

One guy said No, the women in Rwanda seem to stick to the craft-making and THEN he said that even though many are good at art, he thinks they are lacking in passion.

I said Hmm perhaps you means Confidence, not passion.

He was like Oh yeah, maybe that.

Yeah MAYBE THAT mate.

We boda’d back to the hostel and Phil donned up in his gear for a run. Just before heading off, he finally booked himself a spot onto the Kilimanjaro half marathon in Moshi, Tanzania on 1st March. FFS. Better get practicing on my excited supportive girlfriend look then.

Meanwhile I sat in the hostel garden watching videos on how to use Procreate on the iPad. Suddenly realised Phil had been gone AGES and then he rocked up having run like 10 MILES and then said Oh also, I may have tripped over and potentially broken my toe.

He’d taken out his phone to check the map and ended up kicking a bit of metal sticking out of the group, and then he’d fallen over and made a few new cracks on his phone screen (to join the 5 that were already there).

Wicked.

Phil had a quick shower and change while hobbling around on his bad foot (I hear broken toes are brilliant for half marathons), and Esther arrived at the hostel, so we went searching for a restaurant open on a Sunday. After a few fails, we eventually stumbled across a place called Afrika Bite and negotiated the 10k per person meaty Rwandan platter down to 5k each for a vegetarian version for all of us. It was so good! Garlic potatoes, peanut sauce, rice, vegetables, fried banana, salad, plus some ‘fish fingers’ ordered as an extra. Such a welcome relief to eat something local and delicious. Shout out to those who are reading this blog mainly for the food descriptions.

We went back to the hostel to play in East Africa’s 2nd bowling alley (the only other one is in Nairobi!) and Esther made sure she mentioned she had a ‘bad neck’. That would explain her unbelievably bad scoring thats for sure. Ok now to be fair, Phil the physio also advised that she use the heaviest ball available which turned out to be truly awful advise and after a stagnant run of about 2 points in 6 goes, she tried a really light ball - and actually hit some pins! Go Esther.

Can I also mention that this bowling alley had a system where a bloke hidden at the end would organise the pins and reset them for us manually using a kind of lever system. He always managed to move his hands out of the way before the ball struck the pins of course.

Esther headed back to her hotel and we ended up playing basketball on the two hoops game with Desire the manager. Our quick game of ‘How many can you score in 1 minute’ managed to take over our lives for over an hour. My record was 23, Phil’s 24 (he’s taller init) and Desire managed 33 (well, he works there so ya know). Was addictive and super fun and I got the impression Desire will spend the next year working on his pb.

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pcttrailsidereader · 6 years ago

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A True Story of Life and Death on the Trail

About 50 miles of the 165-mile long Tahoe Rim Trail utilize the PCT high above the west side of the Lake Tahoe Basin. Mountain bikes are permitted on about half of the trail (NOT the PCT portion). The trail ranges in elevation from 6,240 feet at the outlet of Lake Tahoe to 10,338 feet at Relay Peak in Nevada. Renee’s story, now just two weeks old, took place near the southern intersection of the Tahoe Rim Trail and the PCT.

Renee is the Executive Director of the Siskiyou Land Trust in Mt. Shasta City. She comes from a Shasta Valley ranching family and is a life-long Siskiyou County resident.

By Renee Casterline

In early September I headed out on my longest solo backpacking trip to date: the 170-mile Tahoe Rim Trail. I spent two months reading, researching, planning, packing, watching weather forecasts, reading water availability reports and being super excited. Come September 5th, I was ready.

When I set off that first day, I was filled with wonder: What would happen on this journey? What would I experience and learn? How would it change me? And, when it was over, what would I want to do next?

It took several days to get into a groove. I had to adjust to the elevation, hiking 14-20 miles a day, setting up my small camp, often in the haze of dusk. By day 5 I was starting to settle in – I’d picked up my resupply box, hiked through most of the dry sections, started to develop a rhythm in setting up and breaking down camp.

Day 6 was long and late into camp, I’d left town mid-morning and took a break on the climb out of Kingsbury to chat with a couple who had just started their thru-hike. The whole day the terrain was stunning, from the narrow granite-lined section after climbing out of Heavenly, pretty views of Nevada farm country, the cheerful sound of a stream flowing, and the enormous tree at mile 82. Monument Pass offered a view of the mountains to come to the south and west, and a gentle traverse. It was uphill into the bowl of Star Lake, its shoreline shaded in the afternoon and chilly in the breeze. The trail up to the pass was the littered with gleaming quartz – pure, white faces, warm roses and dusty orange – that slowed my hike as I scanned the ground around my feet. Coming down out of the saddle between Freel and Trimmer Peaks, I was looking forward to heading toward Desolation Wilderness the next day. Finding water and a campsite were all that was on my mind as the afternoon faded.

When day 7 started, I had decided to slow down for my final five days and make them more relaxed, less driven by miles and hours. I’d look around more, take more breaks, get into camp earlier. I’d be patient and present. At this point in the trip, the challenges were more mental than physical. I wanted a hike I could be proud of, not just for the thru-hiking achievement, but also for my state of mind.

During my lunch break, while drying my socks in the sun and enjoying the ketchup from my resupply that fancied up my tortilla, cheese and salami, I chatted with a friend. It was downhill the rest of the way to the crossing at Luther Pass, then a bit of a climb to Round Lake for the night. Yes, I still had a bunch of miles to go, but I was going to take it easy, let the hiking go by smooth and pleasurable.

Coming downhill off a small knob after Freel Meadows, I saw something strange in the trail. My eyes and brain sought to make meaning of it. What was that? As I got closer, I realized it was legs and my first thought was that a hiker was napping in the trail (I’ve seen it before). Not wanting to startle the man, I clicked my hiking poles together to warn him of my approach. When he didn’t respond I started talking – “hiker coming up behind you.” Still no movement. A small black dog appeared at my knee from along side the trail, then ran to the man.

I slowed my approach, my gut starting to roil. He was laying on his side in a pool of sunlight, his back to me. When I shook his shoulder his skin was warm, but he didn’t respond. He was arched back a bit, the curve of his neck exposed. I lay my fingers there, but there was nothing to feel. When I walked around to see his face everything broke down: This man was clearly dead.

It hit me like physical blow and I staggered back up the trail, bent over and struggling to breath. I dropped my pack and called my husband.

“There’s a dead man in the trail. There’s a dead man in the trail. There’s a dead man in the trail.”

Coming to grips with what I was saying, Vinnie tried to calm me. But my rational mind was gone and some reptilian part was in charge. There’s a dead man in the trail! For one minute on the phone with my husband, I fell apart. Then I hung up and dialed 911. After a few questions and pulling my location from my cell phone signal, the 911 operator transferred me over an El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department deputy.

“Renee, tell me where you are.”

The deputy’s voice was steady, no spike of adrenaline to my ears, even though I was freaking out. I gave him my location and the details of where I’d started my hike that day, how far I’d come, which trail crossings I’d passed. My Guthook app had failed me, showing my location in South Lake, so I couldn’t give him an exact trail mileage. Satisfied with that, he moved on.

“How do you know he’s dead?”

How? Because he’s not breathing or moving. Because he won’t respond to me. Because there is no movement in his abdomen. Because his face is splotchy blue and white with flecks of spittle dried on his lips. Because ants are crawling over him. This man is dead. The words raced through my mind, but I tried for a composed response. I don’t remember what I actually said to him.

“Have you tried for a pulse?”

I laid my fingers on his exposed neck again. I told the deputy that my heart was pounding so hard and loud I wouldn’t have felt a pulse if he’d had one.

He kept on in his calm manner, telling me they’d be coming in a helicopter, that it would be 45 minutes before they arrived. He asked me to look for an open place where they might land, even though the wind was picking up.

“I want you to stay put and wait for me.”

For at least a half hour I was alone with the dead man and his dog. I didn’t know how long they’d been there, so I gave the dog water and some of my lunch. My heart was racing and my breathing was shallow, but cell service was good. I called my husband again to give him an update. He’d been in touch with a friend of ours who is a retired police officer, the same friend I’d talked to during my lunch break, so I called her back. She delivered the first piece of advice that helped get me though: walk away from the body. Stop looking at him.

It was surprisingly hard to do: I had to repack a few things and it seemed an overly large task. Finally I loaded up and moved away.

“Good. And you’re not looking at him?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Look away.”

I had to walk a bit farther up the trail so that I didn’t have a line of sight. Somehow, I had become tied to this man that I had never seen before. At some point while I waited, a passing hiker told me that I didn’t have to stay, that I had done enough by calling 911, that I could keep hiking. Leaving wasn’t an option I could contemplate. My mind was still spiraling between panic and numbness. I told the deputy I would wait. He’d asked me to take part in getting the helicopter close for the recovery. I couldn’t leave this man, with his tanned legs spanning the trail, dirt pushed up by his boots when he fell. I certainly couldn’t leave his dog.

I called another friend, this one part of our local Search and Rescue team.

“What are you doing calling me? Aren’t you on the trail?”

I gave her the quick run down of what happened. “I need you to answer two questions and I need you to do it quick, I don’t have much time before the helicopter arrives. I need to know how to get my breathing under control and how to get them to put me on that helicopter.”

“Ok, this is like yoga,” she said. “You want your out breath to be longer than your in breath.”

“Thanks, I can work with that,” I told, my breathing still sharp and shallow.

It was nearly two hours between the time I called 911 to the time that the deputy and Search and Rescue team members arrived. During that time, 8 people came by on the trail. The first few times the exchange was the same:

“This man’s dead!”

“Yes, he is. I’ve called 911, a recovery team is on the way.”

Then word passed up and down the trail, so that the next group of folks who came through had already heard. Some were helpful, others passed through quickly, unwilling to make this part of their day. I was focusing on my breathing, I told a couple of mountain bikers. They assured me that I was doing a good thing, then gave me their gatorade and shot blocks. Their brief presence was amazingly soothing.

I was up on the knob when two Search and Rescue members arrived from a fast hike in. One of them stayed with me while the other went out beyond the body in the other direction to reroute anyone coming up the trail. Not long after, the deputy and another SAR member, who had been dropped off by the helicopter somewhere nearby, arrived on the scene. The first thing he did was give me a hug, then he told me I’d done a good thing.

He went to work at the scene, while I stayed well away, willing myself not to look, not to ask what he was doing. A short time later, they loaded the man into a thick, blue vinyl bag with wide handles down its length and began the task of carrying him out. As we started down the trail, his dog ran back to the spot he had fallen. After that, we put her on a leash and I hiked with her. After only a 100 yards on the trail, the team of 4 decided that the best route to the waiting helicopter was off-trail and they headed overland.

I’m not sure how long I followed them over rocks and logs, through tangles of limbs. Their team work and grit were admirable. Here were four people doing the hard work it took to bring this man home to his family. At one point, when they had sat the bag down for a break, a phone rang.

“That’s you.”

“No, it’s you.”

“No,” we all looked down, “it’s him.” Someone was calling this man.

They carried him for a bit less than a mile to an open hillside where a CHP helicopter waited. The man was loaded into the helicopter, along with the pilots and deputy. The Search and Rescue team, me and the dog, headed downhill over ground that crumbled underfoot for all the mole holes. After 15 minutes or so, we wove through a stand of trees and emerged on the trail. Another mile and a half and we were out at the Highway 89 trailhead, cars whipping by in the evening gloom with a speed and noise I hadn’t heard for days.

It’s been over a week now since I left the Tahoe Rim Trail after finding that man. I’ve heard from the deputy that he was 65 years old, but nothing about the cause of death. To my eyes, it looked like he died mid-stride, out on a beautiful sunny day with his dog. I prefer to think of it that way. He’s been returned to his wife and family, and his sweet dog was reunited with them, too. Early on during that event, a friend told me that I didn’t have to stay out on the trail if I didn’t want to, that I should think about it. Not staying on the trail was an easy decision: my mind was numb, minimally functioning, and there are simply too many decisions to make on a solo hike to go out in that condition.

Initially, it was difficult for me to describe this event: it wasn’t negative, even though it was traumatic. Neither would I call it positive, even though a friend said that was I did was an act of service to the man’s family. It is something so outside of ordinary life that only one person has said to me, yes, that happened to me, too. In the days that have followed, I’ve had really helpful, caring conversations, naps and acupuncture. I followed up with each one of the four ladies I called on while I was standing beside that trail. My husband and I have found our way through those fragile days with love and tears and some laughter. I’ve reached out and found that I have a large, remarkable, diverse group of folks who support me. The biggest turning point in my recovery came on the day, exactly one week later, when I told my Rotary club about the event. The hugs and conversations that followed have helped soften the sharp edges of this tale.

It’s natural to want to assign some meaning to this, to draw out a lesson. In this past week, I’ve tried so many ways to try to give this some context. All of that is slow in coming, but that’s alright – I’d been practicing patience on the trail that day, and it seems to have stuck with me. I’ve been hiking, writing, thinking back. Next week I’ll head out on a five day backpacking trip for a work hitch on the Oregon Desert Trail at Steens Mountain. I’m not worried about whether or not I’ll be back out on a solo trip: I know that I will – soon. And I’ll be back on the Tahoe Rim Trail, too. It’s at the top of my list for next summer. I’m certain that as I retrace my steps, memories and lessons will come to me, and I’m equally certain that I’ll know that exact spot on the trail when I reach it.

#death on the trail #Tahoe Rim Trail #Round Lake #Search and Rescue #solo hiking

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el-and-hop · 7 years ago

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The One Where El Steals a Dog

Characters: El Hopper, Mike Wheeler, Jim Hopper, Karen Wheeler

Time: Post S2

WC: 2.3k

[Ao3]

Summary: When Mike’s heart breaks, El saves the day.

[A/N]: This isn’t fluffy. This isn’t angsty. It’s…Halfway Happy.

With added Prequel El, Hop, a Bear, and the Vacation

It was a warm November afternoon when Mike and El biked to the Wheeler’s for dinner, their high strung backpacks seemed to rustle their hair more than the cool breeze.

Mike had already picked El up from the cabin, excitedly ranting about his mother’s meatloaf and spring salad (it was all he talked about for a week).

It was Friday, just the day before the party was going to have another big D&D campaign, and, even though El was going to see him again the next day, every waking moment they could spend together was spent utterly in paradise.

Everything seemed perfect, at least until Mike noticed a sign sitting on the porch of a house just off the road.

In big black letters, the sign said “FREE PUPPY.”

Now Mike had always wanted a puppy, but his parents never let him get one, for reasons he understood but throughly ignored. When the Byers had gotten their dog, Mike spent hours over their house playing with it until his mother came by to take him home. She always wondered why he’d say goodbye to the dog with more affection than he'd ever say to her.

El nearly ran into the back of Mike’s bike when he abruptly stopped in the middle of the street.

Her brow furrowed when Mike told her to wait there and he’d be back in a second. She watched inquisitively as Mike rang the doorbell and spoke to an older lady behind the door. A few seconds later Mike was holding a black and brown glob a fur in one hand and a collar and leash in the other hand.

By the time Mike made it back to his bike, El realized the small furry thing in his hands was just a tiny dog, like the one the Byers had. She also noticed how Mike couldn’t stop smiling.

“The lady said he’s a german shepherd. About a month old. She was gonna send him to the shelter in the morning. I didn’t want him going there. Its one of those shelters that…never mind. I think I’ll call him Frodo. Cus he’s small, like a Hobbit. My parents will understand. They’re cool.”

Karen Wheeler, to El’s dismay, did not understand. Karen was not cool. The shouting was terrifying enough that El thought it right to stay behind and let Mike fight this battle on his own. She wasn’t going to get in between Mike and his mother, not after how kind she was to her.

“Michael Wheeler you know your father is allergic to pets,” Karen shouted, standing in the doorway to house. “Even then, you cant keep your room clean, so how can I expect you to take care of a dog?”

“Mom, the lady’s gonna take him to the shelter!” Mike’s voice broke. “They’re gonna kill him!” El could see streaks running down his face.

In that moment El was pulled back, pulled into a memory so vivid yet it seemed to only live in images. She recalled the lab, a cage, a furry cat. She remembers crying. She remembers the dark room. She remebers Mike’s smile just mere minutes ago.

In that moment, El decided what she was going to do. No one was going to get hurt. Not Frodo. Not Mike.

El held Mike’s hand the entire car ride back to the lady’s house.

Karen wasn’t taking any chances letting Mike walk the puppy back, for fear of him hiding it from her, pulling another one of his ‘stunts’ to get what he wanted.

Quietly, El sat in the car, watching Mike and Karen walk Frodo back to the front door of the lady’s house. She couldn’t hear much of the conversation, only picking up “apologize,” “sorry,” and “you have a big heart, kid.”

The last one put a knot in El chest, one that she hated feeling more than anything in the world. Mike Wheeler was the biggest hero she knew. He always put others first. He’d found her in the rain, gave her a home, protected her. He cried every night for 353 days, hoping she was safe and warm. That’s what El loved about Mike. His kindness was something she longed to reciprocate. He gave but rarely received. He’d say El, you don’t have to get me anything. Having you home is the greatest gift I’ve ever received. Sure, El would be as kind as she could to Mike, but nothing ever seemed to live up to what he did for her.

By the time Mike got back in the car, El noticed that his eyes were red and puffy. She could tell he was trying to hide his face from her. But she could see how broken he was. She always could.

“Mike…” El reached out to Mike, and put her hand on his knee.

“It was a stupid idea in the first place.” Mike smiled at her, seemingly tying to act like the streaks of tears on his face didn’t exist. He turned his head and stared longingly out the window, making that face El had grown accustomed to. She’d memorized it during those nightly trips to his blanket fort, watching him from miles and miles away.

They didn’t talk the rest of the ride home, but rather just sat, his hand unconsciously holding hers.

After what seemed like the most depressing dinner El had ever experienced (she would rather have ate a tv dinner in silence with Hopper: Mike side-eyed his mother every few seconds, Ted Wheeler acted more confused than he did first meeting El, Nancy left early to go see a movie with either Steve or Jonathan [El still couldn’t figure out which one Nancy was seeing, because she was always around both], and Holly screamed when Karen wouldn’t give her ice cream before the meatloaf), El began preparing to leave for home.

She had a scheme in mind; she was going to be kind. Yet Mike-l can’t let anything bad happen to my girlfriend-Wheeler always had a way of nearly ruining her plans, just like all the times he tried to stoped her from doing something nice for him.

“You ready, El?” Mike said as he went to put on his shoes. Mike thought he was taking El home. Of course.

“Mike,” El said, looking him dead in the eyes. “I can take care of myself.”

She was being kind, in her own way. Mike wouldn’t have to go all the way out to the cabin just to come back home. She’d be saving him all that time and energy. Yet she knew Mike would just spend all that saved energy worrying about her safely getting home. Halfway happy, she thought.

“El I canmbmb mmbbthbmb…” Mike’s face went red and his eyes grew wide. He couldn’t move his lips. El brought her sleeve to her nose and wiped the blood away. She smiled as he gasped for air, a slight giggle escaping from her nose. “Hey! Not fair!”

El was already out the door by the time Mike processed the situation. She was getting on her bike when she heard Mike run down the stairs. She was about to take off when she felt him grab the bike.

“Can we at least say goodbye?” Mike’s voice was shaky, as he was never one for endings.

El noticed his hand let go of the handlebars and saw in his eyes something that said please just don’t leave me hanging. They always ended their time together with hugs and kisses. El was having none of that tonight.

“No goodbyes,” El said flatly. She hated goodbyes.

“But…”

“You’ll pick me up tomorrow.” El started to get herself situated on the bike again. She didn’t look at Mike, but rather had her attention focused on the road ahead. She started to pedal forward, leaving Mike behind her. Then she heard a shout.

“Hey El-” Mike’s voice cracked as he yelled. He wanted to tell her something, something important, but her shouts interrupted him

“Love you too, Mike,” El called out to him, not even turning as she said it. Loving Mike was as natural as breathing. She pedaled into the darkness away from the glow of the Wheeler’s porch light. She knew exactly where she was going.

It took a shorter amount of time than she expected, but when she arrived at the lady’s house, the darkness inside made El breathe harder.

The sign that read “FREE PUPPY” was gone, leaving the lady’s porch barren and cold, the front door obviously locked, but that didn’t phase her. Hopper told her something about “breaking and entering” before, mentioning it when he talked about his case files that he always brought home from work. This wasn’t a crime, El thought. I’m saving Frodo.

El stood at the front door, and, with a tilt of her head, she heard the sliding of the chain lock. The front door creaked as it slowly opened. She could see Frodo right in front of her. He was locked in a cage far to small for him. He was asleep, his head resting on crumpled newspapers. As El stepped in the sound of snoring froze her in her tracks. She turned her head to see the outline of the lady who had given Frodo to Mike. El had to think fast. Not two seconds later a wool blanket floated across the room and rested over the lady’s face. El thought that maybe it would subdue the sound.

Creeping forward, El grabbed the collar and leash from atop the small cage and gently opened it. Inside, Frodo perked up, his ears wiggling even though El was as quiet as she could possibly be. She noticed his tail wag when she reached in to pick him up.

She didn’t bother to close the cage behind her.

She made her way out the door, shut it, and locked it with her mind. With Frodo now trying to lick the blood from her nose, El smiled and hugged him tighter than she probably should have. She didn’t get to touch him when Mike brought him home, so, being close to this ball of fur felt like love at first touch.

“We’re going home. You’ll be safe.” El kissed the top of his head, just like Mike did for her. El bent down on her knee and took off her backpack. She carefully put the collar and leash in first, Frodo just after. The wiggle on her back brought a smile to her face as she mounted her bike and took off, the cabin not too far.

When El closed the door to the cabin, Hopper was already at the kitchen table, late night coffee steaming, case files spread out.

“Hey kid, how was the Wheeler’s?” Hopper looked at El with a smile. He knew she loved being there. Karen’s food was always better than his cooking. Hopper also knew that 90% of the reason El went to the Wheeler’s was to spend time with Mike. Something was off, he noticed, when El didn’t respond. She had an intensity in her eyes that he rarely saw.

El sat down on the floor right between the table and the sofa. This wasn’t normal. Hopper perked up and closed the open file in front of him. The coffee cup made a subtle knock on the table when he set it down. El pulled the backpack off and carefully set it in front of her. When she unzipped it, Frodo crept out. Hopper’s face went white.

“El what did we talk about? We’re taking it to the shelter.” Hopper stood up, his arms folded in front. El knew Hopper wasn’t going to be happy. He never liked it when she brought animals home. Their fight after the bear cub incident resulted in neither of them speaking for two days.

“The shelter will kill him. Frodo stays here.” El kept her eyes on the puppy as it curled into her lap. She was never letting this dog go.

“El, kid, come on.” El noticed Hopper’s voice changing. He wasn’t angry. He was tired.

“No.”

“Kid…” Hopper’s eyes grew tighter when he noticed blood coming from El’s nose. She was looking at something behind him. He turned around to see his still steaming cup of coffee floating ever so high above the large stack of files on the table. El got what she wanted. She always had a way.

“Frodo stays safe.” El was trying to hide the tears growing in her eyes. Her stern face subdued by her quivering lip. She kept one hand on Frodo’s back, petting him and keeping him warm.

“Ok, fine. You’ll take care of him, feed him, walk him, clean up when he shits on the floor? Promise?” Hopper looked at her like he did the night of the Snow Ball. He gave her new ‘not stupid’ rules.

“Promise.” El was going to protect Frodo like Mike protected her. If Mike couldn’t save Frodo, El would. It was her turn to be kind.

“Can I at least ask where you found uh Frodo?”

“No.” When El retreated to single word sentences, Hopper knew the topic hit her hard. He wasn’t going to push any further. He loved seeing her happy. And this puppy would take her mind off Mike Wheeler, even though they saw each other every day at school. He knew El was going to keep her word. She never broke a promise.

When Mike stood at the door to the Hopper’s cabin early in the morning Saturday, he expected Hopper to be the one to greet him at the door. His breath was knocked out of him, however, when El appeared behind the door, wrapping her arms around his chest, squeezing him tightly.

“I want to show you something,” El said, pulling out of their hug. She grabbed his hand and pulled him into the cabin. “Mike, meet our new dog, Frodo.”

Mike’s jaw nearly hit the floor when his eyes fell on the huge, terrifying chief of police, sprawled on his stomach, tugging a rope in which the other end was in the mouth of a small dog. Mike had never seen Hopper this happy.

“El…how did…” The smile on Mike’s face hurt. He couldn’t contain his happiness. He thought the dog was gone, like he couldn’t save it. His thoughts were interrupted by a hug from behind. He felt El’s curls press into his back.

“You can’t always be the hero, Mike Wheeler.”

#stranger things fic #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things headcanon #mike wheeler #eleven hopper #el hopper #jane hopper #Jim hopper #mileven #mike x eleven #el and hop #ross writes #random rants #Ross writes fic

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aalensharp · 3 years ago

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boggirlsummer · 3 years ago

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Crazy Al’s Last Rodeo: June 23 - 30

Zoey started her thru-hike of the Tahoe Rim Trail (165 miles, ~10 days) a few minutes ago and after writing this I’m headed back to Berkeley. How did we get here? What happened to the PCT?? It’s a long and heartbreaking story...

Last Tuesday, riding the high of our low mileage creekside day and my amateur culture critique, we set out for our next campsite/water source, 21 miles away. We came across our first trail register early in the day and before I could stop her Z signed us in under the name “Crazy Al.” By 1 pm I was already blasting Kate Bush through my fancy new athletic headphones, which didn’t bode well for my physical and mental state given we still had 10 miles to go. At 3 pm we took a break under a big tree on a ridge and triple checked the maps to confirm: yep, there was our final destination far, far in the distance. My left foot was starting to hurt (as it had since our second day) and my legs were more disgusting than ever (feet pics available for paying subscribers - Venmo me $5). Side note can you believe I brought condoms on the trail?? LMAO but hey at least I didn’t bring TWELVE like Cheryl Strayed in Wild…damn gurl.

By 5 miles out my foot was completely trashed and I limped/used my pole as a crutch/tried not to cry/breathed through my mouth like I was in a fkn Lamaze class for those final miserable hours. We finally arrived at the creek and were bitten by literally hundreds of mosquitos instantly. We also discovered that Zoey had developed trench leg, and since mine was looking even worse we started freaking out that maybe it was poison oak and who knows how many times we had touched our faces and eyes and why didn’t we have LTE so we could do some research?? Morale was extremely low (mostly me).

Wednesday morning we hiked five miles to the highway to hitch a ride into Burney, our first resupply stop. We were picked up by a nice off-duty truck driver who bless him had a cooler full of water bottles in the front seat. I asked him about his work and he said he used to drive 11 hours a day without any days off for up to three months and that his new local gig is much better, though the pay isn’t as good. It got me thinking about what “good money” means to a lot of people, especially outside of the Bay Area tech bubble, and what they have to do to live decently. It makes me mad and also makes me feel like a piece of shit for wanting to never work a comfy well-paid desk job again.

Anyway, we got dropped off in Burney around 10 am and discovered that every motel in town was booked for the night. We went to a diner while we figured out what to do and ate our first off-trail meal (Z: sweet potato pancakes and fruit, Me: a chicken fried steak ofc). I slowly broke the news to Zoey that despite my lifelong dream of being airlifted I was scared to keep walking on my busted foot and get stuck somewhere/ruin my body. We also realized that a “historic” heat wave was about to hit the West Coast and even if Zoey continued on solo she’d be hiking in ~105 degree heat for a week or more. So, I convinced Z to head back to Berkeley with me to regroup.

We killed the next four hours loitering at various locations in Burney while waiting for the bus to Redding. The diner was full of characters and I had a lot of fun eavesdropping. Highlights included an overly affectionate couple who were DEFINITELY having an affair, a teen with a shaved head who hates small towns and everyone in them (lol), and an asshole Elvis lookalike who tried to incite a fight between two waitresses while his hot wife(?) sat silently and was either mortified or used to it, I’m not sure which is worse.

We eventually left the diner and posted up in front of the post office, Rite Aid, and finally the sporting goods store. Rite Aid is the best pharmacy because they sell their in-house brand of ice cream, Thrifty, which is all around delicious and also makes my favorite crazy flavor: lemon ice cream (NOT sorbet) with pieces of lemon warhead candy mixed in. WTF!! My mom took me to Rite Aid the day I got my first period and bought me baby tampons and a double cone with chocolate chip cookie dough and chocolate malted crunch, so it felt right to get a scoop on yet another day of transition and bodily trauma.

I’ve never really loitered before and it was actually pretty fun. So many random people stopped to talk to us about the PCT. One woman who had spent the morning collecting cans and was off to enjoy her day with a tall boy and a pack of cigs stopped to chat and as she walked away said, “Be careful!” but then corrected herself, “Actually, don’t be careful, be safe!” We loved that, so badass. Sound off in the comments if you think we should get that tattooed somewhere, maybe on our rib cages.

We caught the bus to Redding, where we spent the night in a motel room that smelled like smoke and had no shampoo. I booked us a queen bed but the front desk guy was like, are you sure?? and upgraded us to a king. I’ve had this happen more than once when I’ve checked in to a hotel with another woman. It’s like they think two women shouldn’t sleep in the same bed and a bigger bed is more appropriate. Like bigger bed = fewer opportunities for us to accidentally brush feet in the middle of the night and suddenly become gay?? These people need to stop watching Carol. Also if we were actually gay I think we’d be more hyped than anyone about the upgrade cuz king beds are the sexiest thing ever. ANYWAY.

Thursday morning we took the train back to Berkeley and were rescued by our housemate Amy, who drove us back to the Bog (our co-op). The best part of coming home was reuniting with our housemates’ dog Blossom, who considers us her crazy aunts. After the novelty of being able to shower and sleep in a bed wore off, I slipped right back into my pre-PCT depression. Three cheers for staring at the ceiling all day and eating Popeyes in my car! Even Zoey was uncharacteristically angsty 😬

The good news is that my foot isn’t broken, but almost a week off the trail and it still hurts to walk on. The heat wave persists and wildfires are starting already along the PCT (the town where we were supposed to resupply this week is currently under evacuation warning). As bummed as we are to change plans after months of planning, we think the best thing to do is bail on the PCT for now. After Zoey finishes the Tahoe Rim Trail, she’s heading to Washington state for a few days with her mom before we reunite in Portland for the remainder of July. We’re hoping to thru-hike the Oregon Coast Trail in late July/early August, but may bikepack it if my foot is still busted.

So stay tuned, Bog Girl Summer hobbles on! Lucky for you, the future holds significantly less trench leg content and more ice cream, bikes, and Portlandia vibes.

In the wise words of Dawes, “Things happen, that’s all they ever do.”

xoxo,

Crazy Al

#Spotify

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brandysadventureblog · 4 years ago

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Gifford Pinchot National Forest Loop (WA State)

8/2/20-8/4/20

Day 1: Cascade Locks to Trout Late (43.64 miles / 2,542 ft elev. gain)

Day 2: Trout Lake to Lower Lewis River Falls (40.31 miles / 2,491 ft elev. gain)

Day 3: Lower Lewis River Falls to Cascade Locks (49.43 miles / 2,805 ft elev. gain)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another reason I wanted to revisit this blog is because I wanted to write about the weekend bike trip I was able to do this past summer. It was really important to me and I’d been wanting to share my experience for a while but I didn’t because ~reasons~ (the same ~reasons~ I vaguely alluded to in the previous post). It also felt like I wouldn’t be able to accurately convey what this trip meant to me in words, but that doesn’t mean I can’t try.

After my first two bike trips, I set the goal of doing at least one major bike trip per year. Turns out being an adult with responsibilities isn’t the most amenable to that plan. Other adventures were had, but no bike trips lasting more than one night. This past summer, I was determined to change that.

I had first planned this route back in the summer of 2017. Unfortunately, the weekend I planned to do it was the hottest weekend of that summer. Also, all of Oregon was on fire. I finished the first day feeling like I had just biked 40+ miles in high 90 degree temps while breathing in forest fire smoke... because that’s exactly what I had just done. I decided it probably wasn’t safe to continue on and I had a friend come pick me up the next day.

I attempted the route again in May 2019. This time I couldn’t even finish the first day. For various reasons, I was dealing with intense body fatigue and I could hardly even pedal on flat ground. Feeling defeated, I had to have my friend come and rescue me again, just six miles short of the campground.

This time around, I was determined to not fail a third time. I decided to actually train for it and began biking almost every day starting at the beginning of the summer. Even getting back into the training rides, I felt myself coming alive again. I didn’t realize how much I missed biking and it was so refreshing to get it back.

When the trip weekend came around, I was excited but nervous. I was in better biking shape than I had been in years, but this route had wrecked me twice before and there were some pretty big mental hurdles to overcome. I was shaking as I crossed over Bridge of the Gods to start, but as I rode further and further down WA SR-14, I started to hit my stride. Turns out bike touring is much like... riding a bike (sorry, I had to). The entire ride went pretty smoothly and, before I knew it, Day One was in the books.

Day Two was a completely different story. After an hour of biking straight uphill, my bike chain broke. I had a spare emergency link but I couldn’t get it to click. The only thing I could really do is coast back downhill to the general store to get to wifi and figure out what to do from there. Right before getting into town, I lost my coasting momentum and had to walk. A few minutes into the walk, I got approached by a couple who said they were also cycle tourists. They asked me what was wrong and how they could help. I told them I needed a new chain, but the closest bike shop was almost an hour’s drive away. To my surprise they were like, “Cool. Let’s go there.” It was a total faith in humanity restoring moment. They were the nicest couple and we got to chat about our past trips on the drive. After the new chain was installed, they dropped me off at the exact spot my chain had broken that morning and I was back on my way.

Or so I thought. All of a sudden, my bike wouldn’t shift gears. I realized there was something wrong with my bike derailleur. Luckily I was able to do some quick roadside bike maintenance and continue on with the climb. The first half of the ride was entirely uphill and the last half was entirely downhill. After the chain mishap, the derailleur issue, and a couple hours of straight climbing, I was looking forward to an easy end to the day. Turns out Day Two wasn’t done with me yet.

Shortly after I began my hard-earned descent, I started to come across some road closed signs. I figured there were maybe some downed trees that cars couldn’t pass by but that I could get around with my bike. I was right—there were a couple downed trees blocking the road. Turns out there was also a section of the road that had been completely washed out except for a tiny sliver just wide enough to very carefully walk my bike over if I took everything off. It took me a few trips to bring my bike across along with all of my gear, but I made it past just fine.

I loaded the bike back up and resumed speeding down the mountain. I zoomed around a hairpin turn where I discovered ANOTHER section where the road had completely washed away. This one was even worse than the other. I actually had to bring the bike down into the crater and push it up a steep incline to get to the other side. The loose gravel made it hard to get my footing and I definitely got close to falling into the abyss several times. For both of these situations, I want you to imagine it being precarious enough to be exciting but not so dangerous as to make you worry that I did something stupid (although it was admittedly probably closer to the latter).

Just as my bike and I emerged on the other side of the crater, a car came rolling around the corner. They had apparently also not been informed that the road had been yeeted down the mountain. I asked if the rest of the route had any more surprises for me and they informed me that, other than some potholes, the road was more or less intact. That was a huge relief as I had been contemplating heading back up the hill to the previous night’s campground because I was worried that I’d come across something even more impassable than what I’d already experienced. The car turned around and I loaded my bike back up. Once I was sure they were well out of earshot, I screamed at the top of my lungs like Jack and Fabrizio on the bow of the Titanic. (For the record, I did not scream that I was the king of the world, but I damn sure felt like it.)

The rest of the route was pretty chill, but I was running several hours behind schedule. When I rolled into the campground, there weren’t any sites available. I decided to make several loops, looking as tired and hungry as I could, hoping someone would take pity on me and offer to let me set up my tent on their site. I must have looked pretty pitiful because it only took me two loops before a woman named Verna asked if I wanted to stay on her site with her and her daughter. Apparently she used to be an avid cyclist and was excited to see me roll up on my bike.

Day Three was comparatively uneventful other than I biked up a fucking mountain. I can’t remember if it was the most elevation I’ve covered in one day, but it was certainly done in the most condensed number of miles. My strategy was to bike for half a mile (slightly more if I could), wait for my quads to stop screaming, bike for another half mile, and repeat that until I got to the pretty viewpoint that let me know I had reached the top. While I was enjoying the view, a woman came up to me and socially distantly tossed me a pack of energy chews to help get me through the rest of the ride. She informed me that she was a cyclist (wtf does everyone bike here?) and that she carries around energy chews to give to anyone she comes across doing a long bike ride. She invited me to join her and her (making some big assumptions here) gaggle of older lesbian friends (I think she was also making some big, but accurate assumptions about me) on their hike. Any other day, I would’ve loved to join their gay little hiking crew, but my legs wouldn’t have appreciated it that day and I had to decline.

The rest of the ride was all downhill and there was nary another human in sight for a good chunk of it. I used that as an opportunity to sing Brandi Carlile songs loudly and off-key and shout various obscenities at the top of my lungs. When you have an opportunity to do that, I highly recommend not passing it up as it’s very cathartic. I took some obligatory, self-timer photos in front of the Bridge of the Gods sign (oh hey, Cheryl Strayed) before rolling back to my car in Cascade Locks, feeling prouder of, and more like, myself than I had in years.

I’m not really a God person, but it did feel like something larger than myself was at work here. (Seriously, what are the chances that I would find the exact two people I needed to to take me to get a new chain and that a random car would pull up to a washed out section of a closed road to let me know that the rest of the route was clear??) Everything aligned on this trip just as it needed to. I wasn’t meant to complete that route the first two attempts. I needed to complete it at that very moment in my life. I didn’t quite know at that time that I’d be making some really important life decisions just a few weeks after the end of that trip, but that trip helped give me some of the strength that I needed to move forward with those decisions. There’s really nothing like a bike trip to help you realize your self-worth, to remind you that you can do hard things, and to relearn to rely on yourself while staying open to the help and support others are offering you.

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annieintheaair · 4 years ago

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Love & Valentine’s Day

The last time it really snowed in Texas, that I remember, was in 2015 when I was in flight attendant training. I was scheduled to do a work flight that weekend and the snow came down instead, canceling flights, and keeping us indoors.

Everyone I talked to told me that in Texas, when it snows, you just stay home. Being from the northeast, that just seemed weird to me because life carries on when it snows.

I don’t know if someday I’ll wake up and re-download dating apps or miraculously meet someone while out and about but for the time being, I’m focusing on myself and doing my best to find new hobbies and make new friends.

Since it has been cold and snowy, I’ve been binge watching Firefly Lane on Netflix this weekend and I was watching an episode today where after Tully gets married, she flips out on her husband and makes him leave. He doesn’t want to leave at first but she screams at him that he has to go and as soon as he gives in and does, she falls to the floor in regret.

Have you ever done that? Have you ever asked someone to leave but deep down, you were testing them to see if they’d choose to stay anyway? This scene brought me flashbacks to November. I remember flipping out on James and telling him to leave. I thought he would go and I ended up falling asleep that night, only to wake up in the morning and find that he hadn’t left. At that point, I felt like I couldn’t change my mind. He packed up his things and in a more calm way (but not without tears) that morning, we said goodbye.

Without going into detail, we did patch things up a few days later but looking back, I think that was our breaking point. I should have been glad that he stayed that night on my couch and in the morning, I should have apologized and told him to stay. I think sometimes we just can’t let go of our pride.

In Firefly Lane, Tully finally gets up the courage to apologize but at that point, Max has decided that he wants a divorce. She tells him anyway that she wants a fresh start and if he wants one too, she will be at the spot in the park where they got married, the following day. Max basically explains to her that she wasn’t there when he needed her to be and that she wouldn’t talk when he wanted to talk with her. He doesn’t show up the next day and she’s heartbroken.

This story line tugged at my heartstrings really badly. I’ve been the girl crying on the floor and later trying to apologize and fix things to only be turned down. I’ve felt that pain of feeling like it was all my fault and feeling rejected and like there was nothing that I could do or say to fix everything.

It has been almost two months now since it ended and it was two months yesterday since I last saw him. My heart still hurts. I keep wishing he would show up and we’d figure it out. There are so many days that go by that I keep wishing we could have a fresh start. I feel like Tully, standing at the park, waiting for him.

The thing is, you can’t make yourself important to anyone. They have to choose you, each and every day. They have to want it as badly as you do and they have to be willing to work things out. I’ve learned that love isn’t easy. Love doesn’t mean that everything goes smoothly all of the time but that you work through things. Just like Tully realized, sometimes it’s better to hold on and keep pushing to work things out instead of running away but you both need to run in the same direction together.

I think about Valentine’s Day last year. The pandemic hadn’t really started yet, life was normal, and I went to Phoenix for work where I went on a first date with Kris, who I had met on Match.com. It was a great first date but for many reasons, it didn’t go anywhere beyond that day really. We became friends and that was about it.

A lot has happened in the last year. To think that after that day, I proceeded to go on more dates and have my heart broken twice, it’s no wonder that I’m feeling down about love and not at all interested in getting back out there to meet someone new.

I remember a couple of years ago after having been taking anti-depressants for a while, my therapist told me that she felt like maybe my dosage was too high. At the time, I thought that she was just saying that because she was afraid that I’d stop seeing her every week if I felt so numb that I didn’t need her help. There have been days, like in early January, when I felt like my dosage wasn’t high enough but lately, I feel like maybe she was right and maybe it really is too high.

I’ve gotten to the point that I don’t know how to feel anymore. I don’t know how to really put my feelings into words and the more I try to tell myself that I’m ok, the less I really believe it. Have I become so good at convincing everyone else that I can no longer convince myself? Am I ok or am I not ok? Has my medication made me too numb?

These days, I feel like I’ve run out of words, which is weird for me. It’s like deep down, I have so much to say, but the words don’t come out. I feel like I’m no longer heard so it’s no use to even try to get the words out.

With only a few weeks left until I return to work and my old life, I’ve decided to refocus all of my efforts. Instead of getting back on Bumble for dating, I’ve pursued new friendships. It’s incredible to me the new people that God has brought into my life. These new friends that I clicked with immediately have made me wonder where they’ve been my whole life and have filled me with excitement for what’s to come. I feel like we’re all going through similar things and while some people I’ve talked to are in relationships or married, those I’ve met in person so far are living the single life. At 31, it feels so good to finally have some single girl friends.

I’ve also been going to the gym frequently and trying new exercise classes, as well as cooking healthier meals at home to get myself back on track. I’ve been going back out for walks with my dogs (not 10 mile walks like I did in the spring but every bit helps!). All of this has made me realize that I think James and I made a huge mistake.

While I don’t think our relationship was a mistake, I think it was complicated because we jumped into it so fast and began spending nearly every minute of everyday together. I forgot about my own life and stopped trying to make new friends. Even when I was in Wyoming in December, I had plans to meet up with a girl from Bumble BFF but then didn’t for many reasons but mainly because I didn’t want to tell James that I wanted to go out without him when I was there visiting him.

Being with James had me giving up on my own life. I guess I lost my sense of self in our relationship. I stopped going out for walks or bike rides unless he wanted to go with me. I had even made friends with a girl named Emma but stopped hanging out with her because I always chose James over her. At the time, I thought that was a good choice but looking back, I realize that we probably needed to maintain our own lives in order to have a strong and stable life together.

I always hated the girls who gave up on their friends when they were in relationships and there I was, that girl, and I didn’t even realize it. Where did Annie go?

I know that James looks at my Instagram stories and I can’t help but wonder what he’s thinking. Does he wonder where the girl he dated disappeared to since we broke up? Does he miss the old Annie or does he wish he was with the new Annie?

The other day I rushed to the hair salon because I swore I saw some white strands in my hair. White, yes, white, not grey. I’m pretty sure it was caused by stress and even though my mom tried to suggest that maybe it was a white blonde, I was still in a panic. I thought the girl would do my base color as blonde but something clearly went wrong and left my hair with a reddish tint. At home, I told myself that red (or anything) was better than white and maybe I just need to embrace this new version of myself. I never would have gone and asked for her to dye my hair red but maybe red is just the change that I needed. Maybe red is the beginning of the new Annie.

I’m tossing this back and forth-- am I the new Annie or the old Annie, before James and all of the heartbreak? Maybe I’m a mixture of both. I’m reclaiming parts of my old life before James but I’m also embracing this new version of myself.

Being alone has given me more time back since I’ve been working my part-time job right now and not flying. When I’m out and about, I don’t feel like I need to rush home to James because he’s not there but I stay out around town and I get things done. I love spending my evenings (and some mornings) at exercise classes, bible study, and serving with the students at church. I’m enjoying making dinner plans with new friends and even had brunch today (on Valentine’s Day) with a new friend.

All of these new things in my life are great but that doesn’t mean that I don’t miss James. Sometimes I feel like I wish we could have that do-over, just like Tully talked about on Firefly Lane. I wish we could meet up in person and talk about all of this and realize these things together. I wish we could start over and maintain our own lives but be together and go to sleep and wake up together everyday. I wish we could hold onto what worked and fix what didn’t work.

I feel like there is no end to missing him. I feel like I constantly put on this façade that everything is great but deep down, I’m still hurting. If you’d seen what my house looks like these days, you’d understand. I’ve always been the person who tries to keep my house tidy and I even “chop” the pillows on my couch and make my bed everyday. Lately, I don’t do any of those things. My kitchen seems to be an endless mess, my pillows don’t look nice, there’s papers on my kitchen table, my bed isn’t made, and I haven’t even put my suitcase away from my recent travels. The laundry is piling up, once again.

When does this end? Will there come a day when I stop missing him? If I’m not looking to meet someone new right now, how will I move on?

Maybe tomorrow (as I tell myself everyday), I’ll clean my house and get my life back together. Aside from my house, the goal these days has been to get myself back in shape and lose some weight (that I gained while we were dating). It’s not even that I want to look like I did when I met James but I want to look better than that and even better than when I was spending time with Ryan.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing to focus on myself right now and even if we never get that do-over or I wake up and it’s April (like in my dream last week), I’ve learned to never let go of my own life. Never stop maintaining your own life for your relationship because you need both your life on your own and your life together in order to have the best kind of relationship. It has to be a good balance of both.

Happy Valentine’s Day! You are never, ever alone.

xoxo

Annie

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adriennescomingbacktolife · 4 years ago

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(IX)

“I’m sorry I didn’t come earlier.” Adrienne Levi leveled her gaze at Matt Knox, sitting up in his hospital bed. He slurped at a Jello cup, dislodging the gelatin and swallowing it whole. Crossing her arms over her chest, she let him finish. “Wasn’t sure what to say.” Knox rolled his tongue and the cherry gelatin prize down his gullet. He eyed Adrienne evenly, a smirk cracking his features before speaking in a dazed, sleepy tone. “Hello is a good start, I think.” At least he was still charming in his way, she thought. “Hi.” Adrienne did her best to hold back the waterworks. But that was before she watched the dumb match where these two nearly murdered each other, especially with what happened afterward. “Do you believe me now about him?” She asked with a mix of concern and slight irritation. Knox closed his eyes, exhaling through his nose. He took a moment before responding. “Would you be mad if I said I almost had him?” He said with a wry chuckle, “I always believed what you said, Ade. But you know me well enough now to know that giant, angry mental patients aren’t something I’ll shy away from fighting.” For the briefest moment, his gaze goes somewhere far off. To Zane’s wild eyes at the end of the match. To that horrid smell on his breath. The howls. “But yes, I believe you.” “...I talked to him last month, Matt. Like away from all of this.” Adrienne hadn’t told anyone about that strange conversation. Sometimes she wondered if it even happened. “He’s not okay. He seems sick. Like physically ill.” Matt’s face fell into a frown. His voice came flat, and not just because of the painkillers. “Physically, mentally,” he shook his head, “If Zane is that messed up, maybe he should be institutionalized. Someone like him, if there are that many underlying issues...hell, fuck underlying, just spend thirty seconds with him.” He wove a hand through the air, before chopping it as he made his point. “Zane King is going to kill someone. Maybe it’s not entirely his fault, but the longer people dance around and pretend it’s a non-issue? The bigger a risk, it becomes not just to the victim, but to Zane himself.” He paused, breathing in, before letting out a long exhale. “I have no love or understanding for Zane King. But, I have miles of it for mental illnesses. Hell, sometimes I see and talk to--” He stopped himself. “I’m just saying. He needs help, even if the help is being put out of commission.” Adrienne had a feeling that Zane welcomed threats like that every day. Pulling a seat closer, she sat next to Matt’s bed. “Maybe.” She said uncertainly. Her mind wandered to how this encounter only seemed to serve as a catalyst. Everyone seemed on edge, whether it was about this match with King or the other fires spreading as of late. Matt eyed her quietly, before reaching out a pale hand, knuckles swollen and bruised and grasping one of hers. “We never get any kind of breaks lately, huh, kid?” He asked in the kindest tone he could muster. “Between Silvio’s past coming to reap whatever was sewn, Mitch riding a bike between here and Detroit on no sleep, The Rat, Sebastian, and his fucking mouth.” He said, shaking his head. “At least it isn’t boring.” Adrienne’s hand relaxed in his. “No, it isn’t.” Knox squeezes her hand, before releasing it and settling into the bed. He looks around the room before setting upon the stuffed blackbird at his bedside. He reaches over and plucks it, showing it off to Ade. “Had someone drop this off while I was doped out of it last night. I think it was your new tag team partner.” Matt said with a cheese-eating grin, “You know, the one you replaced me with.” Adrienne feigned shock, “I didn’t make that decision.” Eyeing the bird, she smiled. “Besides, I think our mutual friend is trying every way possible to cause conflict. Especially after Stan was fired for cause. I guess carrying a list of my supposed daily routine is frowned upon.” “Fuck that guy.” Knox laughed, pausing to wince and favor his midsection. “And fuck Axton Gunn too. And well, almost everyone else if I’m honest.” A soft chuckle escaped as he eyed the drip. “Man, this stuff numbs everything but the tongue.” He sighed slowly, feeling and enjoying the warmth. “Yknow, Adrienne,” he has leaned back into his pillows a bit more, eyes lulling halfway, “you three. You, Mitch, Silvio. It’s like someone broke my reflection up into three pieces. Mitch, I remember bein’ that angry and protective because it was yesterday.” Another self-aware chuckle. “Silvio, well, he reminds me of all the ghosts.” And without a beat, he pointed a finger at Adrienne, “And you, It’s like an out of body experience, when I laid eyes on you. All the doubt and self doubt to boot, but then all the god damn grit to overcome.” A brief pause. Adrienne continued to let him roll. She was enjoying the company of a good friend. “Like my theme, you see.” After letting her soak in his pun, he continued, “You are currently enjoying … what, a five-win streak? You know that puts you only behind Silvio and Cortes, right? The tag champion, and future tag champion.” The cocktail seeping into his veins was clearly getting the better of him, but he adjusted and spoke clearly, “You’re better than good Ade. You’re great. Might be the best.” Adrienne responded with a polite smile. She let the Axton stuff slide. Too much to consider to get an argument about a celebrity and now a co-worker. One that she happened to think the best of. One she was struggling mightily with. Matt was someone special. Past that gruff exterior and tenacity to curse like a sailor, she saw a man finally reconciling with a past worth forgetting. It seemed to be a commonality. “I appreciate that, Matt. I’ve still got a long way before I could talk about myself like that. I’m not sure I ever could.” She didn’t intend to self-depreciate. Was a nasty habit. “But I do understand where you’re coming from. I’ll make an effort to think better of myself. I promise.” “You better, or I’ll take that Baltimore title from you. If you win it.” He snorted then, “Christ, I’m not watching that match. My best friend and my dragon...friend.” Matt furrowed his brow and shrugged before concluding, “You two are gonna tear the house down.” Adrienne acknowledged the compliment with a nod. However, his hesitation quirked her interest. She thought of something sarcastic to say. Maybe joke a little. But this was important, she could tell. Adrienne squeezed his hand and spoke low, “I’m happy for you, Matt. I really am.” “Yeah? Well, I mean, I don’t know what it is. Don’t wanna label anything or...” he trailed off. She nodded along, understanding that he would always be guarded considering the public spectacle his life has been made. “Guess it’s just nice, having a match to watch where I don’t hate someone. Not that I’m gonna watch.” Matt squeezed her hand back then, his voice lower now too, “You helped open me up to this sort of rot though, you know that, right? You dug me the rest of the way out of that hole Bert wouldn’t let me die in.” Listening intently, Adrienne felt the weight of his words. She never thought she had much of an impact on anyone. She tried her best, certainly but to hear something like this took her aback. “Learned that it was easier to put all that aggression into helping someone instead of hating everyone.” He snorted. “Christ. You’d think this was my death bed, and I was having ‘The Surge’ the way I’m goin’ on.” “The Rat has that effect.” She said with a knowing smile, followed by an immediate shame for letting that slip. Knox went to make a quip about bad breath when suddenly a knock on the door cut through the room. Standing at a proud five foot, seven in the doorway was a young, blonde, distressed looking woman of maybe eighteen. She wore an Imperial Youth Wrestling shirt and blue jeans. Matthew’s features went still a moment before a smile broke them up. “Hey, Hope,” he said with as much doped up cheer he could muster. Adrienne waved at Matt’s daughter that she had heard all about. But now wasn’t the time to chat. It was clear that Hope was being respectful, but that this was visit had a reason that didn’t involve her. “Matt, I’m going to leave you two be.” Standing up, Adrienne went to the doorway. “And after today, I could use a drink.” “I’ll be honest. I’m pretty shaken up about this one.” One of the newest contenders to the Baltimore City Championship, Adrienne Levi, was sitting at a corner table at the Angels Rock Bar. Located right in her new home city, she felt it would be an appropriate setting to talk about well, rock stars. It’d be a lie if she planned this. Adrienne just happened to be out mailing a letter when she saw a flyer for a free concert. Also, it was ladies’ night. Her little digital camera was placed on the table, framing the shot tight and level. Despite her surroundings’ dim lighting, it was clear she had on a black t-shirt on displaying Axton Gunn’s charming visage. Her elbows were on the table, hands steepled. Her eyes shimmered as she mulled over and contemplated her choice of words. “This is like my third take,” she admitted with her usual meek tone. “But I wanted to make sure to get this right. In less than a month, I have a great opportunity to represent this city. But that can’t be my focus.” Adrienne pivoted the camera slowly towards the stage. Stagehands were setting up for a concert. “Let’s set the stage.” When the shot reverted, her grin was apparent. “Get it, cuz like they’re setting … the … stage?” After the proverbial crickets sounding off in her mind, Adrienne continued, “Maybe I’ll just edit that part out.” In between her words, the ambiance of the bar took over. Clinking glasses, random conversations, and of course, the mechanical bull she made a concerted effort to ignore when first walking in. “One more stop before that huge century mark. Same partner. I know that I can trust her. I know that the fierce attitude that The Dragon Lady possesses will maybe lend a different perspective to this upcoming encounter. And they may be the very reason that she walks out champion instead of me. These aren’t things I can fret about right now. Our opposition seems to be of the same wavelength. I could understand why Sebastian Hawke would look up to someone like Axton Gunn. It would only be natural that these two eventually worked together. However, judging by all of our reactions, I doubt none of us expected this.” She gestured with her hands, following by a slightly exaggerated shrug. “But here we are,” she said with a smile, “Sebastian, I’m sorry I couldn’t find a shirt with you two on it. Maybe you’ll rectify that later for me. This isn’t just about your partner. I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about you. I wish I had half the courage that you did. The ink wasn’t dry on your contract before you accepted the challenge of someone who personifies this company’s mission statement. That is ultraviolence. You stood toe to toe with Mitch Heart and earned a lot of people’s respect that evening.” Mitch Heart had intended to teach Sebastian a lesson in humility through brute force. And while Hawke succumbed to The Broken, it only seemed to harden his heart. It made Adrienne wonder if that approach has been common to someone like this young man. “May we talk about what else happened? I think its rather important. To be dismissed, to be infantilized, to be marginalized - it hurts. I wanted to thank you for your advice the other day. I know that you meant well. Maybe those sorts of ideals worked for you in the past even. But that isn’t who I am. Here’s what bothered me just a little, Sebastian. I think you were just angry, and that’s okay. But you tried to hold me accountable for the actions of my friends. Maybe Matt Knox can be a little caustic. And Silvio and Kohaku are quick to speak their minds. And well, you met Mitch personally. I get it. I may have held Steve Matthews’ feet to the fire for his half-hearted denouncement of Alex Winter, and so maybe you think I’m a hypocrite.” Pausing, she took a sip of the ice water the server brought her earlier. The cubes were already melting, and she could maybe go for something harder. But Adrienne had promised herself not to drink on camera anymore as it set a poor example. “It’s a little different than a friend coming to my defense when you chose to be abrasive, don’t you think? However, I admonished my friend because I don’t think you had done anything particularly wrong. You were just asking questions, right? Or is that you’re confused that I could associate from people so different than me? It just requires a little empathy, Sebastian. Either way, everything washed out in the end. For you, this is an opportunity to hit the reset button on your debut. Maybe muddy the waters of the Baltimore City Championship scene by getting a definitive victory over the current contenders. However, if you wanted to, you could ask your partner about his motives sometime.” Adrienne slid her business phone into view. Having previously set this up, a brief audio snippet played for all to hear. ”...so glad to see you made so many new friends without me, Silvio. Can’t wait to introduce myself to ‘em… one by one.” That was Axton Gunn just mere moments after he drove Silvio Leon’s skull into the mat. Notably, after a feigned motion to reconcile. Adrienne’s expression was mired with conflict. Hesitation marked her words. “Axton, I know you may hear this a lot. But I’m your number one fan. Your music has always been a beacon of light in the darker periods of my life. That’s a little dramatic, huh? Your take-no-prisoners attitude is something I wish I could emulate every day. You just say what you want, consequences be--” Adrienne cut herself off. “You know what I mean. Axton, simply put, you’re one of the coolest people ever. And as evidenced by your debut against Kohaku, you bring all of those intangible rockstar qualities to the ring as well. Not only that, but you’ve also given so much back. You use your influence to help those who are less fortunate. And if you would forgive me for this little weakness, Axton, you’re striking to look at. Your eyes are mesmerizing. Your smile makes me melt.” She said with a reverence like the many times she had rehearsed in the mirror if she ever had the chance to meet him. Well, before this. “You are just perfect.” The clip played again - a startling interruption to her star worship. “But, you’re not.” Adrienne’s words hung in the air. She did her best to revert to a neutral tone. Maybe even stoic if her soft eyes didn’t always happen to betray those attempts. “You said as much. That makes me foolish to place you so high. It was wrong of me almost to deify you. I deprived you of your right just to be human. I would hope that you would extend that same courtesy towards my imperfect friends.” Habitually, she wiped away at her eyes. “I’d like to reintroduce myself. I’m Adrienne, and in just over a week, we’ll be opponents. Nobody will remember my name like yours, but in that ring, we are equals. I don’t want to brag, but I’ve worked hard, and I’ve done well for myself. I appreciate the kind words you’ve shared about me. I really wanted to say something prior, but well, you’re a star, and I’m just me. I’m okay with that. For the first time in a long while, I think maybe I like the person I see in the mirror. One of the reasons I’ve been able to do that is because I’ve promised to be honest. I can’t break that promise for you, Axton, I’m sorry.” Leaning forward, Adrienne stared intently into the camera. She spoke in a calm voice as if she was truly speaking to an audience of one. “Your first appearance in Carnage Wrestling wasn’t as Axton Gunn, the award-winning rockstar. It was as someone who had traveled across to the country to confront someone that had hurt you. Let’s take that at face value. You’ve always been truthful in your art. So I believe you. You laid everything on the table, and I think you and Silvio have a lot to talk about.” She said this with utmost sincerity. Adrienne’s gaze to Axton faltered as she continued, “And then I saw Axton Gunn as I’ve never seen him before. Not that I know you or anything. I’m just basing this on what you’ve allowed me to see. You struck Silvio.” Her fingers tapped on the table lightly as she looked away for the brief moment, all of this accompanied by a small sniffle. “You know, in this industry, a lot of issues get resolved through violence. There’s a distinct difference in what you chose to do and what happens within the confines of a match. Sometimes it even seems a little preformative. Silvio hurt you. So you decided to hurt him. This sort of thing happens every show. Could even get desensitized to it.” Whether she meant to or not, Adrienne’s hand went to the side of her face. “I always blamed myself when this sort of thing happened. There was something that I did to deserve a lesson. I needed to understand the hurt that I caused. Sometimes I’d get confused, and I wouldn’t learn fast enough. But, suffering creates clarity.” Her demeanor softened once she affixed her gaze towards the lenses of the camera. “I don’t think that is you at all, Axton. I can’t speak to whether that was premeditated or not. You’re one of the smartest people around, so when you speak, maybe I misunderstood what you meant.” For a third time, the statement from Axton played. “You met Kohaku last show. He may have pinned you in that ring, but you planted that seed. You sowed that doubt on the type of person Silvio is. You admitted what you did wasn’t enough. Silvio hadn’t learned his lesson. As you watch this, Axton, ask yourself a small question. You ever wonder how Kohaku feels about all of this?” Adrienne couldn’t confess to know about the inner workings of Starfox. However, their affections had been public, so no wonder Axton found out how he did. “None of this. None of this would be my business, except you made it my business. I’m next, Axton. I’m your number one fan, and I love everything you do. I expect you to be on your best behavior. I expect you to be the Axton Gunn that I’ve maybe had dreams about. But Axton, I can’t play the part you want me to. I can’t feed into this campaign you have against Silvio Leon. You will need to handle these things in private, and you need to be held accountable for how you chose to react to Silvio’s decision to leave you. All of this can be done without any more lessons.” Sitting up straight, Adrienne’s voice climbed to one of determined resolve. “Axton, I hope you understand how difficult this was. When that bell rings, you face a team that has been battle-tested under precarious circumstances, with the mutual understanding that eventually, we’d have to compete with one another for just one prize. The Dragon Lady will speak for herself some other time, but I can say in the brief time that I’ve known her, she’s the bravest woman I know. And well, when you lock up with me, Axton, I won’t be your number one fan. I will be the woman who stood up to the rampant misogyny that still permeates this industry. I helped quell back those who would corrupt the innocence of this world.” Adrienne’s eyes sparked if that were even possible, and she spoke with the fervor of someone who truly believed what she was saying. “In the face of low expectations, I’ve climbed through the wreckage of one of the most devastating nights of my career, and I’ve thrived. One day, I don’t know when and I don’t know how, but I’m going to be remembered, too. I hope that I haven’t made Sebastian or you angry with me, Axton. I just wanted to let you know where I stand. I’m going to fight you, removed from whatever your plans are, and if I have the opportunity to beat you?” Letting that question linger, she answered it herself. “I won’t hesitate.” Reaching forward, Adrienne went to turn the camera off. Inadvertently, her elbow knocked the plastic tumbler over and spilled water all over the table and her shirt and lap. “Darn it, not aga-” The feed cut. Adrienne let the bubble mailer slip from her hand into the open hatch of the USPS mailbox. Addressed to one Sylvia Gould.

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