Implarian North-West

[Natal]

Intro

The Hartnett Grizzly came up the road, entering the town of Silver City which was in the State of North Granite, smallest and most mountainous of the Natalian States, in the tree state point, with the States of South Granite and Owyhee. It was historically a mining town, as it was situated on the picturesque valleys of the Clearwater River. It was named after a series of silver mines that existed there, but was abandoned in the 1970s, before having a revival in the 1990s as a resort town, as it was surrounded by perfect slopes for skiing in the winter and hiking in the summer. Today, it was also a railway junction, connecting the praire interior to the coast through the Clearwater Pass, the only pass through the Granites besides Natal Pass, where Colter was situated.

Drew Stone drove his car, a typical Hartnett Grizzly, very common in rural Natal, from the main road into the all-paved driveway of the Pronghorn Inn, a bed and breakfast run by the most curious of persons, namely Alana Stone, Drew’ mother, Medea Minides, a Propontine woman, best friend of his mother’s, Amber Briggs, an Niitsitapi woman from the nearby reservation, whose native birth name actually translated to Cold Winds, and Vern Woodard, the resident village idiot and and alcoholic. There were two other cars, besides his mother’s on the driveway, showing they had some customers. Drew stopped his car near them and got out, going towards a small gate, where a scruffy, black haired shepherd dog was barking and jumping around, all waggling his tail, in clear excitement of seeing him.

“Pepper, calm down boy!” Drew said first in a low voice, but as the dog became more and more excited seeing him, he repeated, again and again, this time louder and louder. “Oh, Drew! The dog is just doing his own thing, never listening to anyone!” said a rasp woman’s voice with a strong accent, speaking as if there was a full stop after each consonant. “Amber!” Drew nearly shouted. “Good to see you here again!” she came up and hug him and then pushed him at an arm’s length and looked at him from head to toe. “Cedar City didn’t change you much, I hope!” she said and they both laughed. “Not as much as I’d wished,” he said still laughing.

He then returned to the car to drive it into the enclosing, so that it won’t block the cars of the customers, while Amber was holding Pepper the dog to not go crazy and run either outside or in front of the Hartnett. “It’s good to have around again a man in the house,” she said as Drew went out of the car. He was 28 years old, pretty much average in every way possible, a bit more on the athletic side after he was chubby in his childhood, with white skin, green eyes and black hair. Amber was a native woman in her early 50s, on the heavier side, always wearing a colorful dress and a cap that she always wore because she always moaned that she is cold. She always was in a good mood or when angry she always found a way to make fun of it, sometimes sardonically and a way of laughing that could be heard sometimes from streets away. “I thought Verne was the man of the house,” Drew said laughingly and Amber just gesticulated in a way to show her disproval. “Eh, he's such an idiot…” she said laughing but they quickly got interrupted by screams and shouts coming from inside the building and a man storming out.

“Come back, malaka! You think you can play us? You fucking animal!” yelled Medea as she came out the building, following him. Medea was a woman in her early 60s, with greying black hair, usually tied up, tan skin, and black eyes. She was described by many as an old hippie, always wearing extremely colorful clothes, usually with an even more colorful poncho in the cooler evenings and most of the time very close to her cannabis plants. As much as she always presented herself as the calmest person she knew, she always was angry at something.

The man ran to his car and took a knife out, but Medea came ready from the inside, sporting a pistol. “I'm going to kill you, you hear me? You found the wrong goose to annoy, malaka!” Medea shouted and while shocked by the initial ruckus, Drew and Amber relaxed seeing that she had the whole situation taken care of, while Pepper the dog was still more excited of Drew's return than of the scandal twenty meters away.

Alana came out running too, but when she saw the scene, she just sighed. She was the same age as Medea, but instead of letting her black hair grey out she dyed it blonde. She was wearing more neutral clothes and was wearing glasses. Her skin was light, showing her Engwhalian ancestry. The man looked at both and then at Drew, Amber and Pepper. He cussed something whispering and then threw some money towards Medea before jumping in the car and leaving, tires screeching.

“I told you we need to send away that drunkard, Verne. What use is to us, three women running the show here to have a retired military, mercenary, security whatever he is, if he is away, drunk or on drugs every time we need him?” says Medea as she turns to Alana. The other just shrugged and sighed and was ready to turn back in when she saw Drew and Amber locking Pepper's enclosing.

“Oh my God! Drew! You arrived! I though it will take longer!” shouts Alana as she nearly runs to hug her son. Medea comes too and in the manliest of ways, just punches him in a friendly way on the shoulder. “Oh come on, it’s just a 6 hour drive from Cedar City. I left very early in the morning,” Drew says and the other two were ready to talk more, but Amber intervened. “Let’s get him inside and eat lunch and calm down! It's freezing outside, for Chrissake,” she said.

The four went in. Christopher took sneak peek on the registry and was pleased to see that the Inn was filled to the brim for the next weeks. The development of the Slate Mountain National Park last year is beginning to bring a lot of tourists too and maybe even return Silver City to its glory from a century ago, but this time as a tourist town, not a mining town or just a junction where you stop just to sleep and eat.

Medea went to talk with some potential customers who were looking for lodging, while Amber and Alana went to prepare lunch. Out of the six rooms they had, four requested lunches too, so they had to prepare for at least 12 people, while Drew just sat in the dining room, scrolling through twatter and messaging some of his friends from Cedar City that he arrived safe and sound. After some time, he opened the window by which he sat, as he felt it was too hot inside, thus allowing the brisk breeze from the mountains to come in.

Amber came and offered him some bread and so butter as an appetiser as she said they were preparing the grill to make some steaks and it took more than expected for so many people. He continued to scroll through the phone, looking into the screen and disinterestedly munching on the bread, when he felt a strong breeze that came from a magpie that just landed on the window sill and was peeking inside, hoping to steal his snack. He was startled at first but he shooed it away, but not before throwing some breadcrumbs outside.

Just at that time, some of the tourists accommodated at the lodge entered the dining hall and were surprised too seeing the bird, and started photographing it. “Ay… another one… We should just rename it to the Magpie Inn here…” muttered Amber as she started coming with the food. The ruckus scared the animal, which quickly retreated from the window and left.

“Is this happening often?” Drew asked her after she set up the steaks, a rustic salad with tomatoes, onions and cucumbers, fried potatoes and some appetizers on a central table together with plates and cutlery for everyone and then came to him with food. “It’s something new, honestly. It started a few months ago, but if its something I observed, is that after the government declared the formation of the new National Park, we started having animals again coming close to the town, like in my childhood. I remember when I was a kid, I would go out of the house and see deer and even bears in the distance. It seems we are returning to that,” she said.

They were joined by Alana too, who brought them a bottle of whiskey too. “I know I promised I wouldn’t ask. But now, tell me, what made you return?” she asked, knowing very well she is a bit invasive, but it wasn’t very new to her as she was known to love snooping around and have all the gossip.

“Well, as much as I know it’s now what you’d like to hear, It’s not because I want to be back. I do miss Cedar City already,” Drew said as they started eating and as Laila poured each of them some wine in a glass.

“Eh… I do remember you back in your high school days, how desperate you were to leave provincial Silver City and leave us for the big city. But I’m insisting because you never seemed to regret your decision, always making your visits here as short as possible, always making sure I understand you see Cedar as your home. What made you return?” Alana asked, insisting. Drew tried to win as much time as possible, taking some meat, some potatoes, then munching on them, followed by drinking a sip of the whiskey. He saw that both Amber and Alana and a few moments later, even Medea, from further away as she looked around the tables to make sure everyone was okay, were all following him.

“Oh man… I was pretty much forced to do it. Things in Cedar City became heated and let’s say I ended up on the wrong side in the relationship with the upper echelons in the police. They pretty much told me that if I want to have a future, the only chance was to transfer somewhere else and as faraway from Cedar as possible, and the only places opened up for transfer were here, Moorehead, or some villages to the east of Blackmere,” he said.

“What did you do?” his mother asked, but in parallel, Amber interrupted, “what’s wrong with Blackmere?” she asked. “It’s a…” he started answerding, wanting to avoid his mother, but then stopped. He remembered she was from there and thus didn’t want to call it a shithole. “It’s a new place. If I have go backwards, I’d rather go to somewhere familiar like Silver City, rather than start from scratch in a village. It’s easier in the big cities,” he said. Drew avoided his mother’s gaze, but she made her presence felt quickly.

“What did you do?” she asked again, this time stopping eating but still keeping the whiskey glass in her hand. “Nothing that serious,” he said, evading the question. “And yet, you were forcibly transferred, so it was serious enough…” she added. “You promised to not ask questions,” he answered back, this time a bit annoyed. “At the same time, I will be offering you accommodation and welcome you back in this dysfunctional family… at least you owe me this. Tell me what you did…” she said again, insisting and at times, even threateningly.

“Jesus Christ, fine!” he said exasperated. “I pretty much hit the commander in the face,” he added. Amber started laughing and Alana dropped her glass on the table, only her quick reactions saving the table cloth from stains. “Jesus fucking Christ, Drew! What the actual fuck?!” she said annoyed and loudly, louder than everyone in the hall expected, with the tourists too looking towards her.

“He was a corrupt dickhead. He pretty much used his status as a commander at a police station in the city to run a prostitution ring. I found out about it and because I’m an idiot, I called him out, instead of just understanding that it was an open secret. When he started lashing out at me and started taking revenge for calling him out, I just snapped,” Drew said, still exasperated and annoyed, telling the story in a very rushed way, clearly ashamed of it and wanting it to be over as quick as possible.

“God, son… there are so many other ways to sort it. There are internal audits in the Police Service, I know of them as your granddad was a police man too, remember that!” Alana said, more concerned than annoyed or angry by now. “Yes, I know, but understand that if it reached a level where it’s an open secret for the whole station, it’s clearly an open secret for them too. In this fucking country, as long as you have the money you can do anything, the law is only for the dimwits who still believe in it and idiots who can’t sort themselves out and get caught. I was pushed in a corner and reacted, knowing that at least he’ll feel that,” he said. “At least, did he feel it?” Amber asked, smirking. “Yeah, broken nose and bloodied lip,” Drew said, faking meekness, clearly proud. Alana was just slowly turning her head in disapproval. “I literally don’t know if I should be proud or angry and this annoys me. But you’re an idiot, so at least I know you’re clearly a Stone,” she said, the last part making Amber laugh and relaxing the atmosphere.

After lunch, Amber remained to clean up after the tourists, while Medea and Alana helped Drew to his room “I know it’s not really you’re old childhood room anymore, but it’s as closest as possible,” Alana said as she opened the window to refresh the air in the room and Medea was setting up the fresh bedsheets. “It’d take this over some old childhood room,” Drew said. “In the next days I’ll report in to the local sheriff and I hope that if I do some good job, I can return to Cedar City as quick as possible,” he said. His mother hugged him. “Don’t worry, we don’t need you to rush. At least, compared to Verne, It would be nice to have a man around the hotel for a while,” she added.​

OOC: This intro post isn't really a new post, but rather a rewritten form of the OG Natal character RP I named Southern Savannas. What will continue will be thoroughly original, made of Norwest Natal.

 

[Natal]

Drew

The first week at the police department of Silver City has finally passed. Police Department was pretty much the most generous way of describing it, for it was mainly a 5 person department, led by the elected Sheriff, Oliver Mason, who was doing this for at least 40 years if not more, and then 4 deputy sheriffs, Joshua Matthews, a sulking middle aged guy who was always grumpy, Nathan Carr, who is pretty much Matthews’ polar opposite, always joyful, but also a bit of an alcoholic, Sander Barrett, a 21 year old who barely finished the police academy but because he pretty much barely passed, he got a job that everyone was avoiding and it was either this or in some cornhusker village in south Owyhee, and myself.

Sheriff Mason was a good guy, friendly but always caring of the community, but at the same time, he always made it sure to be understood that if you get on his bad side, you also have a lot of work to do to restore your renown or if you don’t want to put in the effort, leave the area. And by area, I mean the county, for he is the sheriff, not just Silver City.

Sitting at the southernmost border of the state of North Granite, Silver Country was one of the state’s smallest and least populated states, with Silver City, standing close to 1,200 people, being the best town in the whole county. The “City” had a weird history too. It was one of Natal’s boomtowns, which flourished by the late 19th century as people found silver here and mining started to develop, when the Implarian Silver Corporation got a concession and developed a company town here. When the silver mines ended up running dry in the late 1950s, many of the townspeople preferred to leave for better opportunities, and the population fell from nearly 10,000 people at its heigh to less than 200 in about a decade. By the late 1970s, Silver City was even declared a ghost town and there were talks in the state to demolish it and even disband Silver County, but the county capital got moved to the nearby Ewing Basin, another small mining town that managed somehow to keep itself afloat better when its own mine was shut down. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, interest in Silver City began to grow with many being fascinated in its old wooden structures, looking back towards what was a golden age. It wasn’t before the slopes that once roofed mines were turned into skiing places that Silver City began to see a revival. The government proposed the revival of Silver City, this time as a resort town for the skiing areas, starting the late 80s and early 90s ,and that is when my dad convinced my mom and her family to invest in the town by building the Pronghorn Inn. It wasn’t the only place which returned to life in the dead Silver City, but it seems the governmental revival of Silver City worked, as many of the historical buildings were brought back to life and the local government asked new investors to keep the wooden architecture from the last century and that is how Silver City retuned to life. Nearly four decades later, its population stood at 1,200 to 1,500 people. Still about 6 times less than at its greatest, but at the same time, the quality of life was higher than ever.

“So, what did we get?” asked Sheriff Oliver Mason when I entered the Police Headquarters after parking the police Hartnett Grizzly. “Two DUIs, and three fees for speeding,” I say, reporting what were more than seven hours of standing by the entry of the town from the interstate. “I will need some reports on them, so not going home before they’re written,” he said, but then I finally had my chance to show him how we did it in Cedar City as I gave him the papers already written. “Already?” Mason said looking surprised as I put the five reports on his desk. “I wrote them while sitting in the car,” I said, maybe a bit too proud of himself. “He was quite a bore the whole patrol,” Sander commented as he came too from the car into the headquarters and seeing the scene.

Sheriff Mason looked at them and then shrugged. “I like them typed and printed but this works too for the moment. I’d rather not have you write them in the car thought and better, set them up correctly at the station. Tomorrow, I don’t want you to rewrite them now, but tomorrow I want you to come and write them at the office,” he said as he locked the drawer of his desk with the reports. He then looked at me and then at Sander and then smirked.

“You’re barely 21, aren’t you?” he asked and Sander one nodded shyly. The sheriff smiled. “Stone, take the youngling for a legal afterwork beer. Ensure he knows what’s is the pillar of the community,” sheriff Mason said smirking. “I’d join you, but I have to do some shopping for dear Eileen, and I’ll also wait on the two night-shift guys,” he said, referring to the chores his wife asked him to do.

We went to the cloakroom in the back and left behind the vest and the black police uniform, coming out in civilian clothes. I took my jacket and the keys of my car and waved goodbye to the sheriff, right as the two guys who were working night shift this week were coming in. “Lucky bastards,” said Matthews, sulking as always just as he was coming it. “You should have kept the young greenhorns to do the night shifts, not torture us future retirees,” he moaned to the sheriff. “Eh, they will get their fair share of night shifts, but I want to get them used to the town first and foremost,” Mason commented. I didn’t know what they continued talking, as we went outside.

Sander followed me to the car and got in the moment I unlocked it. I went in too, turned on the engine and waited a bit for it to warm up as it was extremely cold outside and it started snowing, something the news already warned up about. It’s something that I was dreading if I had a night shift, to end up getting calls from idiots stranded in the cars as they did not respect and follow the warnings. Sander was alternating between looking at me and looking absently outside. He had sandy blonde short hair and very light blue eyes. His face was a bit stocky but he was quite handsome, with only a few hairs on his chin and a little moustache that he shaved.

“What’s the local pillar of the community?” he asked me and that brought me back to life. “Huh?” I ask, a bit confused. “The local pillar of community the marshall was talking about,” he said, like a kid unsure what is happening around him and when I just laughed, he got even more weird. “You’ll see very soon,” I said as I finally put the gear into rear to go down on the road from the driveway of the police station, and then drove through National Road.

Modern Silver City was covering probably less than a half of what the town was in its prime, but part of the rejuvenation came with the idea of keep the old buildings and its pioneer architecture alive, so that meant more than 75% of the buildings were made of logs and the rest of granite bricks and wood. The town had a small clinic, smaller than the already petite police station, a fire station, two schools, a middle one and a high school, a downtown with some shops, and by the foot of Mount Murphy, where three skiing slopes were situated were some hotels, including the Pronghorn Inn were situated. The city stood at an elevation of a little over 6000 feet (1800m). Along the State Road, which was going around the town to not smother it with truck traffic, stood the railway station, which was on an important junction along the Clearwater Pass, as it met with two secondary branches. It was used mostly for freight, with the exception of three passenger trains per week day, and during the weekend, around ten per day. This high position made the local station to be the highest in the United Republic, probably what was kept as a local pride point. I drove very little, as the police station was downtown, before I parked my car on National Road, happy that I managed to find a parking spot.

“This is the community’s pillar!” I proclaim as I turn off the diesel engine, pointing towards a big pub, named The Pour Authority, in what was a not-so-subtle wordplay, which in my mind didn’t even make sense as we were as far from the sea as ever. “A bar?” he asked. “Not only a bar. THE bar,” I say. “Around here, you need THE bar in order to survive the winters and if you become a frequent patron and are recognized by its people, it means you’re part of the community,” I say smirking, but he looks at me concerned. “So you’re all alcoholics?” he asked meekly. “Functional alcoholics… mostly…. Hopefully,” I say, laughing to cheer him up a bit. It was dark for a few hours, but the city was lit and quite nice, even if it was cold, with temperatures already reaching -4 degrees (-20 celsius). After locking the car, we go in.

“There he is! I told you he’ll come back!” a man at the bar yelled as he entered. “It seems you really are a part of the community,” Sander commented, but I didn’t say anything as I wanted to offer him a surprise. “You act like that every time I come around, as if it’s shocking to see me here,” I say. “Hey, a dad can always be happy seeing his son, can’t he?” he commented as he invited us unto the chairs by the bar. “His son?” Sander asked surprised. He probably wanted to ask me, but he was a bit too loud, so my dad heard him. “Of course, in any sane family, a dad should be happy to see him son, even if he’s a Bison voter,” my dad commented, and filled us two glasses with cold draught beer. “The joys of Cedar City,” I mutter. “Is it true they force you at gunpoint to vote those pesky Bisons there?” he asked. “Not as much as they force you here to do the same for the Grizzlies,” I answer back. My dad just laughed and waved me off, while Sander was looking about gob smacked.

“Aaron, need to change, because table three has only a 100-dollar bill,” said Kaileigh, a server in her 40s that I remembered since I was a kid coming to the bar after school and doing my homework there before going home when dad finished the work. “Ooooh, look whose here! I thought that Cedar City ate you alive!” she said as she came to me, hugged and kissed me. “Here, some change, but test the bill to ensure that it’s genuine,” dad commented as he gave her some weird pen and some cash.

The establishment was quite big, with about 10 seats at the bar, 15 tables, a pool table and a pinball machine. It had vintage wooden paneling that I always felt it gave it a warm vibe that contrasted so much with the cold outside, especially in winter. When I was a kid it was mostly just drinks and some snacks, but since dad managed to convince the neighbor to combine their businesses, now they serve some real food too, as the bar pretty much incorporated the nearby grill place, and later, when he hired a Radilan immigrant he began to serve pizzas too, in what was funnily, the most original Radilan pizzas one could find outside the big cities of Natal, and it was hear in the heart of the Granites. Since it was winter, there were many tourists as many skiers were enjoying some drinks after the slopes closed. My only question, knowing the city, was if they know what dangers lie if they try at night, in the winter, to go on foot from downtown to the place where the hotels were by the mountainside, as they can meet with all sorts of animals. In the winter you won’t find bears as they’re hibernating, but there were sightings of cougars, wolves, deer and all sorts.

“It seems you know everyone here,” Sander muttered. “Yeah, grew up here. Tried to escape it and even managed to get in Cedar City, but it seems it didn’t last long,” I said as I pushed the glass of beer towards him. “Must be nice to know the people,” he said, and then added “Cheers,” before taking a big gulp. “Drew, who’s your friend here?” Aaron asked after he served some other customer. “Sander, a colleague, started as a new deputy sheriff like me,” I said. “Sander… interesting name. Around here we usually had Alexanders,” Aaron said, but Sander just shrugged. “My family were great fans of the Federation of Westernesse. They named me after the president,” he said and Aaron interrupted him, “Aaaah, yeah… Sander Rygaard. What a man… what a man!” he said and I just shook my head in disapproval. “After what president am I named?” I asked him and he shrugged. “Andrew was just popular in the 90s so your mother decided to go with that,” he said and that made Sander laugh a bit. I knew he was mocking me in a friendly way, but I liked the new guy was starting to relax a bit. “You see, that’s the joys of being a middle child,” I say. “You have brothers?” Sander asked me and I nodded as I was drinking my beer.

“Yeah, too many, an older and a younger sister,” I said. “One is a successful businesswoman, the other still a student, at least by boy is back in town and will remain with us,” Aaron intervened. I just growled, which made Sander laugh again. “What’s the situation with mom?” I asked my dad. “Are you finalizing the divorce?” I added and Aaron just shook his head. “You thinking of getting back together?” I asked, astonished. “Nah, well remain separated, but we decided to not get a divorce. Finally, we are getting along as decent friends. Why fuck it all up by opening wounds with divorces or getting together? It’s clear none of us would remarry as we have a certain age now, but we decided to just remain separated. She has the inn, I have the bar and the house,” he said and I just shrugged.

As I was finishing my beer I could hear Sander’s stomach growling. “Do you have some food?” I asked dad, as clearly, the guy seems to have been a bit intimidated by him. “We always have, this is not the Pronghorn Inn,” he says very proud of himself and I just roll my eyes. “What do you recommend?” I asked. “Paolo is in the kitchen. He can make you some nice pizzas,” he said but I just waved him off. “This guy comes from Gold Bay. He’s from the Golden State. He doesn’t need your pizza when all he ate growing up was that,” I say and my dad laughed while Sander blushed. “Bring him something local as a welcome,” I say and I look then at Sander who was clearly petrified a bit. “Are you okay with this?” I asked, just to be polite and he nodded. “We’ll take stakes with mushrooms and potatoes. The stakes to be something local, gamey,” I say. “Gamey? I have venison and even bison, but you’ll be paying for that, as it’s expensive. I’m sponsoring your beers or a cheeseburger at most,” dad said and I made a sad face. “Here I thought I was the favorite in the family,” I said. “Bring me a nephew and we’ll talk about that,” he said.

“So, what shall it be?” he continued after he served another customer. “Fine, bring two venison stakes with mushrooms and potatoes,” I said and then an idea hit me, perfectly to welcome Sander in the Granite Mountains. “Do you have oysters?” I ask dad and both him and Sander looked weirdly at me. “Oysters? Here?” Sander asked weirded out. “You know, Granite Mountain Oysters,” I say, explaining and my dad caught my drift and immediately smiled slyly. “Sure, I’ll bring an appetizer too,” he said as he went to request the food from the kitchen.

“What are Granite Mountain Oysters?” Sander asked me, a bit fearful of what’s coming up. “Some local delicacy. Don’t worry, they are edible and really nice. They are deep-fried in flour with salt and pepper. They come with a white steak sauce too which is mayo with some horseradish and other spices, and they are nice,” I explain and he seems to calm down a bit.

As we were waiting for the food and sipping on our second beer, I looked around. Dad went back to sort out something in the kitchen, Kaileigh was running around, aided by some new girl that I don’t remember seeing before. The bar was filled to the brim with people I remembered from my childhood but also with some tourists too. A gang of teenagers were playing pool, clearly two guys trying to impress the girls in their group and I did remember how I was just doing the same when finishing classes from the Silver City High School, which was situated just across the road. Some of the customers left, and the cold wind coming from outside caught my attention as I saw familiar faces coming in.

“Look who’s here!” a woman around my age, with light brown hair up to her shoulders and green eyes, with a round face that made her in my eyes look very good, said. “Kate,” I say as I rose from the bar to meet her. “Jesus, Drew it’s been years, if not a decade already! Look at you!” she said as she pushed me back and checked me from top to bottom. “You should shave that stubble, but other than that, not bad,” she says. “Glad to see you’re the same, always nagging me!” I say and we both laugh. “Okay, I’ll be going to my guys, but it’s been great seeing you and I hope to see you around more,” she said as she pointed towards a small party of three more people.

I recognized two of the older ones in her party, one was an old Physics teacher and the other was the secretary for the Silver City High School. They seemed unchanged from 9 years ago when I graduated. What caught my attention was the younger man with them. He seemed in his 20s too, with short dark hair and a very short beard, no more than a week long’s stubble. His hair was dark and I couldn’t catch his eyes, but they were clearly dark brown and his face was oval on the taller side, He was about the same height as me, if not a bit more lightweight. He was wearing a brown overcoat over a beige sweater and some black denims. It was, probably one of the most beautiful men I’ve seen recently, but I wasn’t sure if this was the Silver City effect, as I felt I’ve seen only alcoholic lumberjacks and annoying tourists or it was in general. He probably felt I couldn’t take my eyes off him so he looked at me and for a fraction of a second we made eye contact, before I turned away. He followed Kate meekly afterwards to a table.

I was only brought back to earth when dad brought the appetizers. The “oysters” looked decent. I knew what to expect but I pushed Sander into trying them. “They are horrendously fatty?!” he commented gagging as he was munching on one of them. “Try them with the white sauce, it’s very tangy and improves them,” I say as I push the sauce to him. He seemed to like them, or at least his hunger was too great to criticize them, to my dad’s joy. I was listening a bit absently to Sander making some small talk, talking about his life before the police academy, in Gold Bay. I was thinking more of Kate and the new guy than what he was saying, so I was probably a bad conversation partner as all I did was agree on what he was saying on nodding.

“Hey, Kate, how are you?” I could hear my dad asking and that caught my attention again. “Great, Mr. Stone. Can we get four beers at the table?” she asked, as it seems she came at the bar besides us. “Sure. You want to pay now or at the end?” my dad asked. “I’m promised them I’ll buy them a few rounds, so I’ll come here to buy them and ask Kaileigh for when we make a tab for the table,” she said, already knowing fully well how everything went in the bar. She then turned to me. “I see you’re still enjoying balls,” she said looking at me and Sander. I smirked and Sander blushed, a bit confused and concerned. “You know me,” I say, smiling. “Too well,” she commented rolling her eyes. I decided I’d explain the comment later to Sander.

“Kate, who is that guy?” I asked her, nodding to their table, as my dad left to fill up their glasses with beer. “Who?” she asked, before even turning, but then continued as she took a glance towards their table. “Aaah, yeah… that’s Spencer. He’s some IT guy who came this summer to work for the Silver County School District. He’s quite nice, even if he’s a bit shy at times,” she said. “Why?” she then asked. “No, it’s okay…” I say and I immediately regretted it as it made no sense. “You jealous?” she asked and I started blushing immediately. I mumbled something but then she turned to my dad to pay the bills. “It doesn’t sit well with you, but if you’re really that curious, there’s nothing special between us. And to even calm you more, It’s not because I didn’t try,” she said and then took her beers and left.

“What was that about, what are you jealous about?” my dad asked as he came and brough us our main meal. “No, it’s nothing,” I said but then Sander interrupted us. “What was the balls thing?” he asked and we both looked at him, and I didn’t really know what he was talking about as my mind was thinking more on the jealousy comment. “Oh, yeah, the oysters. They’re deep-fried bull testicles,” my dad said and I could see Sander looking shocked. “Oh, don’t be a wuss. You seemed to like them when eating them,” he added. “Yeah… the texture is fatty and weird, but they’re decent,” Sander added, which made my dad happy and brought us out third beer.

“Now, speaking of Kate,” he said after he returned too us. “Don’t be an idiot,” he added. “It’s great to see how your dad is supportive, isn’t it?” I ask Sander sarcastically nodding towards my dad and Aaron waved me off. “You were the most annoying teenager even and it was all about fucking around with her in your senior high school,” my dad said. “You know, he was a normal teenager,” he added, talking to Sander. “Until one day, when I see him in the bathroom, making his hair and using his mother’s sprays, because there was this girl, Katy,” he continued. “I didn’t know then, but that’s when my son went crazy and now, I know that back then, I couldn’t wait for him to graduate and move,” he said and I just rolled my eyes. “Oh come on now, I thought you were happy I’m back in Silver City,” I say, a bit annoyed. “Oh, I am, but I don’t want you to turn into the annoying teenager you were and I fear Kate was a catalyst for it,” he added. Sander just smirked, probably finally understanding where he ended up at, in one of those town where everyone knew everyone.​

 

[Natal]

Kate

“Miss R! I literally don’t get this text!” said one my students. The most annoying of them in the 5th period… Literally nothing prepares me for a Friday afternoon with these brats, than the sophomore Natalian History in the last period of the week. The school day starts at 8am and classes last 75 minutes with 15-minute breaks, with a 45-minute lunch break before the last period. It was already past 3pm and I was in the last minutes. As always, I divided the time in an hour of teaching and going threw a new lesson and then 15 minutes of exercises, and text and source reading. “Come on, Gabe, it’s not that hard, read the text again and do what the exercise asks of you…” I say as I take a look on the textbook. “… namely mention the great powers appearing in the text and then write your opinion on the independence and support it with two elements from the text,” I continue. He just growled.

I heard my phone vibrating on my own desk. “The only nations mentioned here are Sylvania, Nieveland, Cantignia and Touzen,” he moans as if I asked him to make the biggest effort even by reading a two-paragraph text on the international situation of 1920s and the Sylvanian civil war leading to the independence of Natal. I nodded absently to him as I checked the phone. It vibrated as a red weather alert came in with Interstate 120 closing of, because of the heavy snows, meaning that the Lookout Pass was closing off, and Silver City was to be linked to the rest of the world only through it’s State Highways linking it to Natal Pass and the capital city, Colter. “Yeah…” I respond back, absently. I looked out the window and I could barely even see the gymnasium through the school yard from how much snow was falling. I was hoping for all of this to have happened yesterday as it would have clearly meant tomorrow would have been a snow day and it would have given me a long, three-day weekend.

“I see no great powers here!” he answered back annoyed. “Jesus, Gabe! You really want me to sort out your own work, don’t you?” I snap back at him, he just smiled. “Miss! Can we leave a bit early?” a girl, who was besides him, asked. She was just the stereotypically bored student, never doing anything and if she raised her hand, it was to always ask to go to the bathroom. “We’ll leave when the class ends,” I respond back. “But besides the afternoon gymnastics and hockey practices, the school is all but empty so late on a Friday afternoon,” she moaned. “The senior programming class is locked with us too,” Gabe answered her. “Eh, just because you simp for some bitch there, that doesn’t make it right we’re locked in with the nerds,” the girl answered back. “Hey! Language! I told you we will finish when the bell rings!” I shouted at them.

I allowed them to write a few more minutes and then I took the text book. “Okay, Melissa, can you please read the text?” I say as I appoint the girl who was asking to leave early. “Miss, can we please, leave earlier? It’s just ten minutes! Nobody would observe!” she said, stressing on the begging. “Come on Melissa! Stop insisting! It’s not like I myself live in the school! I want to go home too, but we need to respect the program!” I say exasperated already. “But miss, it’s Friday, like Gabe said, only one other class is in the school, probably Principal Cleveland left already!” she continued. “Melissa, if I call your mother, what would she say if you wanted so much to just leave early?” I ask, but she just shrugged. “She would have asked you to let us leave earlier,” she said.

I felt I was losing it, but thankfully, the bell rand, signaling the end of class. I wasn’t sure if they truly just wanted to leave early or they enjoyed wasting time. “Write the opinion piece for homework next week!” I yell, but it’s not like anyone was listening to me anymore as they were packing up. I wait for them as they leave and then turn off the lights and come out myself. I left my laptop as it was my class, but I locked it as we will leave the doors by the porter.

“Hey,” I could hear a familiar voice saying as I was locking the door, but my first weird reaction was to panic and prepare a speech about not talking like that to a teacher. Thankfully, when I turned, it was only Spencer. I took a second to look at him from top to bottom, before I reacted. He was wearing some denims and a dark grey knitted sweater, that somehow, I felt made him dark and mysterious, especially with his black hair, stubble and dark brown eyes. “Oh, high, you gave me a fright,” I say and then lock the door for the second time and as always, I test it to see if it’s locked alright.

“Are you okay?” he asked, looking at me inquisitively. “Yeah, I’m just worn out. This last class is just something else,” I say as we begin to walk towards the teacher’s lounge to get our stuff. The students of mine and his class have moved towards their lockers to take their stuff and by now they began clearing the halls too. “Huh, they were right, we truly were the very last,” I mutter, and he looked at me confused, looking like one of these cute dogs who tilt their heads when they are inquisitive. “In the last minutes, they were moaning we should leave early and were saying that it’s just them and the nerds left,” I say and he smirked. “The nerds as in my AP computer programing seniors?” he asked smiling. “I used to be one of these nerds,” he added.

“Don’t worry about it, I am the most uncool person my own students seem to imagine existing, ” I say moaning as I open the door to the teacher’s lounge, where I see two more teachers there, the middle aged Marissa Ratliff, an Engwhalian literature teacher, and the retiree Alexandra Gallagher, who was still kept because if she would have retired, the school probably wouldn’t ever find a physics teacher to replace her. “Don’t worry about that, just look at us,” Miss Galagher said and we started laughing. “Plus, look at me, I am here only to terrorize them with history, so literally, between you and me, I’m unsure who is the bigger nerd,” I say and he smirks. I see Ms Gallagher and Ms Ratliff, interrupted by us coming in the lounge, returned to talk about their previous subject, something about some orthopedic doctors who are better in Cedar City than Colter. We took our coats and waved goodbye to the two and went outside.

“As much as I am worn out, I am in no mood to go home, to have my mother nag me again,” I say. “How’s the living in the Patterson household?” I continue, asking him, after giving the classroom keys to the porter and then going out in the blizzard. “Not the best to be fair, I feel like I’m a teenager again, and Mrs. Patterson is never satisfied. She always reminds me to never bring women overnight, and then she always asks me how come I’m single,” he says, laughing, a bit too loud, trying to go over the sound of the wind and the blizzard.

We arrive by his car, a 2014 Hartnett Coyote hatchback, which you would see more in the dense cities of the coast but it was dwarfed by the SUVs and pickup trucks that dominated the streets of the small towns along the Granite Passes and the prairies. “You got plans for this evening?” I ask, and he turned to me, before opening the door of his car. “Not really, probably do nothing, watching something on natflick and chill,” he said, shrugging. “Wanna go have a beer and play some pool?” I asked, trying to be as friendly as possible, probably to show myself that I am over him, it’s clear I spent some weeks in the summer crushing after him but he clearly wasn’t interested and then it hits me that probably he never thought of it in any other way. He shrugged again and then smirked. “I’d like it, but the weather is a bit nasty to walk all the way from the Pattersons to Pour Authority,” he said and I looked at him weirded. “You have a car, you know that right?” I ask laughing awkwardly. He just rolled his eyes. “I’m just not used to this city’s lax understanding how much alcohol is too much to drive too,” he said. “Fine… look, this is how we’ll do it. We’ll drive to the Pattersons for you to leave your car home, and then I’ll take you in mine to the Authority and then take you back home safely, alright?” I ask, and again, my anxiety hit me a bit and wondered if I maybe was insisting too much and it was just an excuse for him. He paused a bit as if to think it allover. “You promise we won’t die on the way back?” He asks, clearly in jest. “Come on, it’s not like it’s the first time I’ve done it,” I say and he just nodded in approval.

He got into his car, while mine was about a bit further away. After igniting the engine and cleaning the windshield of snow, we drove off, as by then we truly were the very last around, as even the school bus with the last students left. I followed him along Colter Avenue, and then going on Murphy Road, which finally led to a row of houses on the foothills of the mountains, right where most of the tourist establishments were, with the hotels, inns and ski slopes. There was quite a lot of activity as because of the blizzard, the slopes were closed so many of the people were just enjoying themselves inside. Music and voices could be heard from many. When he parked in front of a big yellow painted wooden house, it surprised me how close he was to Pronghorn Inn, which was literally just to houses down the road. I think I spent too much of my high school years in this part of the town. “You really live close to the mountains,” I comment when he finally jumps shotgun in my car. “Yeah, the Pattersons were the only ones who tolerated the headaches of the house allowance voucher I received from the school district. I don’t mind it, as I am close to the slopes so I can just go outside and go up to ski. Did it about three or four times when I had time off since the season started, but in the autumn, I was really scared that I might meet a bear or a wolf when I open the front door,” he said. “And did you?” I asked as I started driving. “Nah, at most a coyote and some raccoons, and of course some deer in the wooded area behind the house and that’s all,” he said, as if he was disappointed.

I drove back downtown, a trip no longer than ten minutes, where I was just cursing everyone and everything, as I couldn’t find a parking spot. In the end I parked in the grounds of the nearby Silver City Middle School.

“At least this walk from the car to the bar in the cold and snow will reinvigorate us, for later,” Spencer commented as we finally entered the Pour Authority. It was filled to the brim, probably because of how the slopes, who were still usually attracting the tourists event in the dark evenings, with the strong lighting, were closed off and thus many were just flooding the town. I looked around and I could see Aaron Stone, serving at the bad, Kaileigh and the new server were running around, clearly overwhelmed.

Aaron saw us and just invited us by the bar. “Come over here, it’s literally the only spot I’ve got left,” he said as he waves towards us. “What in God’s name is happening?” I ask a bit bewildered. “It’s probably because the weather was nice in the past days so many tourists were in town and now we’ve got this storm that closed off everything or something, but it is, either way, one of the best night we’ve had since forever,” he said as he filled two pints of beer and gave them to us without asking us what we want, before he ran towards other customer.

“And here I was, thinking we will be chilling,” Spencer muttered as we toasted and then took a sip of his beer. “And I was hoping to play some pools,” I said a bit disappointed seeing the table occupied. We both shrugged and took another sip of beer simultaneously. “Do you want to eat something too?” Aaron asked as he passed us by and I nodded. “I’d rather not serve people food at the bar when it’s this crowded as it will just make it impossible to serve the others, but Kate, come here,” he continued and waved to me to follow him on the other side of the bar. Both me and Spencer followed and went behind the bar, along a small hallway that to the right led to the kitchen, further down on the deposit, and to our left his office, where he had a big desk, some chairs, a computer and some deposit space.

“It’s extremely busy and much of the diversity in food I would have offered, it’s literally reduced to nothing, so all I can offer are burgers with some fries, as because of the weather, my Radilan chef got blocked in Colter and could not come to us, so I can’t even offer pasta or pizza,” Aaron was saying, apologizing as he moved some of the papers away, to ensure that we have the necessary space and at the same time we won’t spill anything on what would be precious or important.

“He seems to really go the extra mile to make sure we’re happy,” Spencer said, after listening to Aaron all but shouting in the kitchen to bring two burger menus in the office. “Yeah, he always was like this with me,” I said, smiling, remembering some of the events from a decade ago. “What was the whole thing?” Spencer asked, and to be fair, my anxiety again took over and I wasn’t sure if he was truly interested or just making small talk. “I’m not sure how to describe it, but I was together… or better said on and off… it was complicated, with his son,” I said, smiling shyly. “Usually if the relations didn’t work, I wouldn’t have imagined he would have been so friendly to an ex of his son,” Spencer said, a bit confused. “Heh, yeah… normally, but this is Silver City, and after more than 6 months in living here you probably observed that we pretty much have a place where everyone knows everyone, so if you prefer to isolate and not talk to anyone that you had it rough for a bit, you will end up ostracized by the community,” I said. “… like your hosts, the Pattersons,” I added and we both laughed. “Yeah, they are quite lonely compared to everyone else,” Spencer commented.

“But yeah, the Stones…. The Stones are a funny family, to be honest. They had their ups and down, Aaron and Alana were in my childhood the perfect couple, much better than my mother who loves her sleeping pills and my dad who loves his moonshine, but it just seemed that they weren’t perfect either. They argued and argued, Drew was telling me, when we were in middle and high school, and after a while, after we graduated, they separated and now they seem to be friendly and peaceful, so it’s probably for the best. They had three kids, two daughters and a son, and Drew was the middle child so literally he always was joking that the older sister, Louise was the one held the highest by the parents with great hopes of coming home with a husband and offering them nephews, and the youngest of the siblings, Sarah, being everyone’s favorite to spoil, that leaving him to be the, as he said, the “forgotten” one,” I say, making sure at the end to make the quotation marks with my fingers. “He was pretty much the nightmare of most of our teachers, probably trying to win people’s attention. It’s funny how from the chaotic anarchist provoking everyone he ended up a policeman,” I add.

“Where do you appear in this story?” Spencer asks, probably impatient. I shrugged and then laughed. “I come when in the middle of high school, Drew convinces me to come on a date with him here, at the Pour Authority. We were 16 and I do remember that he convinced Kaileigh, the server, who you saw there, to give us some beers stealthily so that Aaron didn’t saw us. It was our first date and we literally got drunk underage drinking after school,” I say laughing and Spencer just shook his head rolling his eyes. “Either way, I think that my good relationship with Aaron started that very day, when Drew went to the bathroom and I wanted to ask Kaileigh to put my phone to charge up, and Aaron saw me, took me aside and said the weirdest thing to me,” I said and made a little pause that I observed by now Spencer got hooked by my story. “Yeah, he literally just told me that I can do better,” I say and we both started laughing, right as Aaron opened the door and gave us the food. “What are you laughing about?” he asked, a bit bemused, probably by how loud we were. “I was remembering the first date I had with Drew, when you told me that I can do better,” I say, hoping he’ll remember the joke, and he immediately lightened up. “Oh, yeah, I do remember that. He was literally flunking history back then and I feared that a potential girlfriend would just disrupt him even more, who knew it would end up tutoring and saving him,” he said. He then allowed us to eat in peace as we did some small talk and gossiping from school.

By the time we finished, things have calmed down a bit and we returned to the bar, where Aaron was serving us beer, when I heard a familiar voice saluting the barman with extreme familiarity. “Hey Sheriff!” I could hear Aaron’s greeting and as I turned I could see Oliver Mason, the old sheriff coming in together with Drew and Nathan Carr, an older deputy who I remember from my childhood. I was listening absently to what story was Spencer telling me but I was trying to eavesdrop on them talking. “When are you going to give this one some real work?”Aaron asked. “Real work? I do real work! Today we stood with the radar in the morning at the entry from the highway, and then in the afternoon we had to ensure the the road was cleared after it was closed off,” Drew replied, a bit annoyed. “Real work as in some good night shifts!” Aaron said laughing. “Eh, this one’s fine,” I could hear the sheriff say. “I am working on the other young guy, some coastal who came in. I gave him night shifts with Deputy Matthews, hoping that he will square him away. Afterwards I will terrorise Stone Jr too with some night shifts, don’t you worry,” the sheriff continued.

“The table cleared, are you still in the mood to play some pool?” Spencer asked and that brought me back and I felt a bit ashamed for eavesdropping on them. I wanted to make myself somehow observed to have him join us, but I didn’t want to seem desperate. This might be perfect, as he would clearly observe us in the middle of the saloon, rather than hidden away behind everyone at the bar. “Sure!” I say, maybe a bit too enthusiastically.

We went to the table and I see Spencer preparing the balls and the cues. “Do you want to play classical billiard or cowboy?” I ask and Spencer shrugged. “Let’s go for billiard as I have no idea of the other and neither energy and the attention span to learn it now,” he said. I allowed him to start, but it seems that he wasn’t really the best of players. His white ball barely pushed the others in breaking the formation yet somehow managed to push the no.8 black ball in a hole. “Fuck me…” he cursed. I laughed and that is probably what caught Drew’s attention as when I looked towards the bar, trying to be as casual as possible, I saw him approaching.

“Hello, mind if I join you?” he asked. He was wearing civilian clothes, some grey denims and a burgundy hoodie. His black hair was short as I always knew him and he was wearing a longer stubble, from how I always was used to him in high school. His face is much pointier nowadays than how it was before, yet it annoyed me that I could feel my stomach going crazy as he was near. “Sure,” I say, trying to appear nonchalant. “You want to play too?” I ask and he nodded. “I’ll buy a round if you allow me in the game,” he said. “Sweet,” said Spencer and I felt that is when I lost any chance to get Drew’s attention for the whole night. It’s like the moment he observed him, they would immediately became the closest of bros and I began feeling left behind.

I allowed Spencer to start again, but he just defaulted and allowed me, not wanting to repeat the episode from before, probably not before Drew. “So, who are you? I’ve never seen you around before?” Drew asked him as I launched the white ball to break the formation. “Spencer,” he said as the two shook hands. “I moved to Silver City recently, early last summer actually. I’m from Cedar City,” he said and I could feel Drew’s eyes going larger than I ever saw them, clearly losing myself in them. “No way!” Drew interjected. “Where from Cedar City?!” he asked and I could feel Spencer was a bit enthralled by this surprising enthusiasm, as usually the mountain men was talking down the coastals. “Was born in Renton, but after entering high school my family moved more inside the city, on 12th Avenue,” Spencer said. “That’s neat! I lived in Cedar City about seven years! I loved it! The police academy was on 12th Avenue!” Drew said even more enthusiastically. “After the necessary exams to get a posting, I managed to get an apartment on Ocean Road,” he added and I could just see how Spencer was just shocked by it all, as if he was meeting some sort of royalty. “Ocean Road? You must be rich, as rents there are huge,” he said but Drew just waved him off. “I got the police station be nearby and as I was from Silver City legally, they were giving me a household bonus and that was paying about half of the rent and I was adding in the rest. It was the dream,” Drew said.

I observed as the night was dragging, Spencer’s play was getting worse and worse, up to the point that I could have imagined he would have been happy just to have Drew take over and him just chat and drink beer. Drew did took over and I felt that by including me in a lot of the talk it did remind me for how it was many years ago, but the weird thing is that we were all in our late 20s, and I was imagining myself now preparing to have a family and kids, not just a gang like we’re high schoolers.​

 

[Natal]

Drew

My feet were numb, my arms too, while I could feel my ears and nose burning. It was from the cold outside. Not that it was the worst temperature I felt, but here by the rills of the Clearwater, where the eponymous Pass started, the winds were strong and the air humid, making it quite horrendous in the midst of winter, especially if you had to stay outside. I look to my left and see fuckup Sander suffering even more. He was shivering like crazy and he was clearly suffering. “Boss, we should let Barrett warm up in the car on in the station’s lounge,” I saw as I turn to Sheriff Oliver Mason. He turned towards me and then looked at poor Sander. He rolled his eyes, growled a little and then just said: “Barrett, go inside! The last thing I want from you is to die of hypothermia there!” The other just barely moved slightly so slower because of how numb he was, pretty much just crawling at this point inside.

“Quite stoic, but sadly quite the halfwit too,” Sheriff Mason said as he looked at Sander going inside and shrugged. “He’ll make a decent policeman. Not the best, but I’ve seen worse too,” he continued. “He’s still young and hotheaded, sir,” I add a bit absently as I look around myself at the platform and the mass of people and reporters waiting and probably suffering as much as Sander. My mind just went for a bit to Spencer and the big smile he gave me when I told him I lived in Cedar City, going down to Kate rolling her eyes, something that she always did when we were in high school and I just loved it as it gave her this not-amused vibe every time. “I’ll terrorize him a few days, make him learn a lesson, so the shit of today won’t happen again,” he added. What he talked about was when last evening, Spencer ended being a bit too brusque and outright obnoxious to a young lady he stopped for aggressive driving. The lady ended up being the mayor’s daughter, who is a close friend of Sheriff Mason. In the end, this morning, Mason was held in an hour long talk with the mayor about it all, right when he was hoping the week will pass easily so he could take a trip in the weekend down to Colter to visit his son and his family there.

We were in the Silver City train station. The small station had two platforms for passengers and six more lines in a freight only railyard. Normally there was a train about every 2nd day stopping in Silver City, which was going from Colter to Shelby, as Silver City and Ewin Basin were on a less utilized branch that was mostly used for trains coming from the mines, but now, with the advent of the Granite Runner, Silver City will go from 0.5 trains a day to about 10, so there was quite a commotion about the town being again connected as it should, railway wise to the rest of the nation. Reporters, local politicians, trainspotters, curious tourists and bored locals, were on the platform of the train station, waiting for the inaugural train from Wapinitia to arrive. The morning was sunny and clear, but by now it got cloudy and a light flurry of snow showers has started by now, in the 2nd half of the afternoon. The wind was starting to get stronger and stronger and the cold showed that the evening was upon us. I still couldn’t feel my hands and feet, but I could feel the ears and nose burning and my lungs were burning from the cold air. Probably there were about -15 degrees or so, that meaning that by the time the night comes it will go down to -20 or even -25 degrees Celsius. We were here to provide security for the whole event, with the mayor, the sheriff and reporters around us, as if the arrival of the first commuter train of the Granite Runner service was a life and death situation, and the people around won’t still depend on their cars like crazy. My mind ran towards the last years of high school, especially in the senior year, when we had the final prom, and I felt like the king of the world when Kate accepted my invite to prom, and everyone else around us was acting like we were just meant to be together. The way the people reacted to her acceptance was how I always imagined people would react when I would ask her to marry me. Marriage… I always imagined back then that I would spend my life with her, but things changed. She went to Colter University to study history and education, I ended up in the Police Academy in Cedar City, in Implaria. We did promise to keep close and then come back together as we finished our studies, but life got in the way, and then Wayne came into my life, making me discover a lot of things about myself and probably be sent by the graces to test the hell out of my patience. But that is all behind now. Kate is back in my life. But then there’s Spencer too… Spencer Knight… Kate Callaghan.

I was brought back to the living by the train whistle and the agitation on the platform. The train was finally arriving. It was a Implarian Engineering Diesel locomotive, pulling three bilevel coaches. The color scheme of the Sounder, the commuter train of Cedar City was still on them, with a white top and a wavy blue and green bottom half mimicking the ocean was still on them, even if they are planned to be repainted for the new service. People started to get agitated and to photograph the incoming train. If I were ten to fifteen years younger, I would have loved it all, but now, I feel I was too cold, too cynical, too old for it all and just rolled my eyes, even if probably one of the closest memories of me and my dad was when we took the train to Colter so that he will buy me a bicycle when I was 13, and going back, Aaron outright asked the train driver to let me in the cab on the way back. Yet now, I would have rather been close to a fire pit, drinking something warm, or alcoholic… probably I’d enjoy something alcoholic more. Also, the hot tub on the patio of the Pronghorn Inn, or its sauna, one of them… or both. I’d take both. And a beer.

The mayor greeted some representatives of the National Railroad Corporation and TransNet, probably of the Ministry of Transportation too. While I stood by Sheriff Mason who was radioing Sander to come back, as finally something was happening. After the initial greetings and photo ops, a press conference was organized and I was listening absently to the politicians as they were talking about how life in the northern part of the pass, so long forgotten, was finally changing and now Silver City will finally return to its glory days, this time as a fancy resort town, than as dusty and rough mining towns. I didn’t really followed them, I would have rather be drifting away, but somehow, the cold just kept me there and I could feel myself shivering like Sander before, even if officially we were wearing a winter uniform that was allegedly made to keep us comfortable to down to -15 degrees. The black uniform was quite thick and insulated and I was wearing a sweater and a t-shit underneath it, on my head I was wearing the state issued Mountie hat, but beneath it I was wearing a woolen cap, to keep me warm, and yet, the wind somehow managed to go through it all and I could feel it in my bones. I would die for a glass of mulled wine and either was hot tub or the sauna. It’s funny, because I forgot how cold Silver Cit got to be, especially as the town stood close to 1,800 meters high in the Grans. Back when I was in Cedar City, I always hated how rainy and windy the city was and now I was hating how snowy Silver City is. My options are either just take my bags and move to Palmira to enjoy tacos, sun, palms and switch from skiing and snowboarding to surfing, or just learn to accept life around me more, than always be disgruntled about it. Problem is, the latter option is the hardest, even if probably is the most realistic.

“We’re finally done,” muttered sheriff Mason and that caught my attention that the mayor and railway representatives finished their speeches and now were finishing taking photos in front of the train and the station, while the public was dispersing. “Drive me down to the station. You officially have two more hours on the clock, but because we wasted so much time here, I’ll want you to do take Sander and do a patrol on the Clearwater highway, to ensure that the closed road is clear, and then you can go home. Carr and Matthews can take over afterwards with the night shift,” he continued and I nodded.

Mason started walking towards the black and white police SUV, while I all but punched Sander… in a friendly manner, to bring him back to life, to get him to follow us. “Come on, cowpoke, let’s get warmed up, do a patrol and then home,” I mutter and he mumbled something that I didn’t understand. I look back at him confused. “I said I never expected this shit to get this fucking cold!” he said louder but I just smirked, knowing that my smile and roll of eyes was just for show, I could just feel and understand him. He was from Gold Bay, that was probably the closest you could get in Natal to Josepanian coastal climate and he ended up in what is for him icy hell. Poor idiot. All of this for a shitty grade in his graduation exam.

I went to the driver’s seat, sheriff Mason was riding shotgun and Spencer went in the back, behind the boss. I turned on the engines and turned the ventilation and heat on to maximum. Mason laughed. “Oh, you greenhorns, that’s just lake a spring break! Don’t act like I’ve sent you visiting Alyeska in the Federation! At least I would expect that from Sander, as he’s just a Josepanian in disguise, but from you Andrew, not so much,” he said, laughing and mimicking disappointment in me. I could feel blushing a bit and I didn’t know what to comment, so I just shrugged and waited a bit on the engine to warm up, before driving.

I left the small parking lot of the Silver City station, and I followed Long Gulch Road as it passed through the forest, as for a few hundred meters, the train station area was isolated from the rest of the city, and then go past the intersection with Morning Star Road, where the Pronghorn Inn, most of the hotels and ski slopes were located and drove about five more minutes until I reached Jordan Street, which was the main thoroughfare that was passing through downtown. I followed it and then it was just a short ride to the police station. Nearby was the fire station, the town hall, a lot of buildings hosting restaurants and other small businesses, of course, the most important, the Pour Authority, with the Middle School further away and the High School on the other side of town. You probably needed 30 minutes of walking to cross the whole town from the High School to the train station.

“You know, he might be right,” the Sheriff said as we came into the police station and he had himself down at his desk, turning on the thermostat. “What do you mean?” I ask. “About the train changing everything. He might have been too bombastic, but in truth, think about it. It offers a 2-hour commute to the capital city and you get 10 trains per day starting today, not just a train every second day as it was before. Tourists will be flocking from now on,” he said, with a certain disappointment in his voice. “You really think so?” I ask, standing by an electric heater and Sander followed up. Mason just nodded. “You will see, it will fill up with commuters and nomads which will be wanting to be in the mountains yet close to Colter. It will be like a newly discovered oasis. I imagine it might even reach that 10,000 people threshold it had 70 years ago,” the sheriff added. “Isn’t that a good thing?” Sander asked. “The town will prosper,” he added. “It will prosper, but it will totally change. Rich people from Colter, from Cedar City, from other places will all come just because it’s cheap at the moment and it has nice mountains… They will just push the prices up and push away the locals,” he moaned. “So it’s time to buy some property,” Sander muttered, more like to himself. Mason’s comment on rich Cedarites or Colterites made me think of Spencer, and as much as I tried to see him from his point of view, I couldn’t see him other than one of the best things that happened to this sad town recently. Mason just rolled his eyes, ignoring Sander’s comment and then looked at me as I was smirking. “I know you are chilling and thinking you’ll have a nice future with the Pronghorn Inn and the Pour Authority, but never believe that sorts you out. Franchises will come, and maybe Aaron’s bar will survive, but hotel franchises are the worst and they will eat the Pronghorn alive,” Mason continued, moaning. I didn’t really knew what to say. It’s not like Silver City was getting this big of a new connection to Colter. It had highways that was connecting it to the Natal Pass and it was the entry point into the Clearwater Pass towards the Coast, and yet it barely had between 1,200 and 1,500 inhabitants. This wave felt a bit idealistic for who was expecting it, dystopian for who was fearing it, and I didn’t care nor believed in it, so I just shrugged and sighed. We stood a few minutes in silence and then Mason sighed again. “It’s past six pm, the Clearwater pass closed off more than 45 minutes ago, and by now it should be cleared off. Go take a patrol up to the end of the county on the road there to ensure nobody is on the road, and then go home. I’ll stay here in the station until the night shift arrives,” he finally said and I nodded and tried to offer him a comforting smile. I never knew exactly how to offer support to someone who felt his world was going down, even if it was all in his mind.

I was followed by Sander back to the car. I took again the driver’s seat and he sat shotgun. As I turned on the engine, I checked my telephone before leaving. I was spammed with messages on the family chat, with my mother, Alana, and Medeea arguing with Verne about fixing the internet connection at the Inn, and my dad making bad jokes about Verne being useless. I checked the other chat which was one we created a few days ago with Kate and Spencer. They were talking a lot about some idiot student who fought in the cantina and got sent by Kate to detention. Through the messages, I observed Spencer asked me what I was doing. Freezing my ass off and feeling trapped with a depressed sheriff, I write back, replying, sending afterwards a frozen, followed by a sad emoji. Kate was the first to answer with a laughing emoji. Mason again has a sad phase? She asked. Spencer immediately answered too, but with a grimace emoji. I’d rather be trapped with angry students than gloomy policemen. He said and I send them back a laughing emoji. He’s as depressed and miserable as always, I reply to Kate. Students are worse than a sad old guy. They are much more energic. I’d rather not, I reply to Spencer.

I started then driving and went back on the road to the train station and from there, I took a left turn on the high way. “You really think it will be bad as the boss says?” Sander asked me after a while. I just shrugged. “Nah. This town is small because very little people prefer to build from scratch here, so they just renovated standing buildings from before the abandonment, and whatever fell, was just abandoned. There won’t be a population boom coming from a commuter train that very little to nobody will use,” I say. “Look at the wooded area between downtown and the train station. That was all full of houses and if you walk along it, if no bear or wolf or cougar eats you alive, you will still find their stoney foundations. It’s been 70 years since the town was abandoned and 50 years since people started moving back and yet, in five decades less than 2,000 people came back, so don’t listen to Mason,” I say.

We drive for about half an hour on the highway towards Grandview. It was pitch dark by now, with much of the Ambiental light coming from the reflection of the car’s lights on the snow around us. The Clearwater pass was extremely narrow and windy and even if officially the road was built to mimic a freeway, it was done to separate the traffic so as to avoid accidents, but maximum speeds were not over 70kmh (45mph), because it was a dangerous route. It started snowing by the time we reached the limit of Silver County, a full-on blizzard started. There was a resting spot and an abandoned construction site that was supposed to be a future restaurant or drive in, and that is where we always turned around. On the way out the road was cleared. I was hoping everything was nice down too so I can just drive back to the station, leave the police suv and take my own car, to go to the Pronghorn so I can eat a warm soup made by Medeea and enjoy the hot tub or the sauna, if no tourist was using it. As we drove back, I could feel how strong the winds were as they were bursting around the vehicle.

“What’s that?” Spencer says pointing towards the reflection of our car’s lights into something far in front of us. I didn’t even care of it at first, thinking it might have been a road sign, but it was too big to be one. I sped up a bit, but when I felt the car swerving a bit in a slight curve, I slowed down. In about two minutes I could see it clearer. He was right, it was a vehicle, a pickup truck. I turned on the blue lights and let the siren be heard two times, before I parked by the truck. The pickup was standing in a weird position, as if it was missing a wheel.

I went first to the cab, but nobody was inside. “There’s no one here!” I yell to Sander, and that is when I hear a groan very close to me. When I look around I see someone caught right under the vehicle. “Jesus Christ!” I mutter as I was startled at first. “Are you okay?!” I yell as I go on my knees by the person, a guy in his 50s. He mumbled something. “Sander! Call an ambulance!” I yell and I started panicking, to my own shame. He said something but I didn’t hear or understand him, so I run back to our car. I took the car radio from him. “Headquarters, this is patrol car 1, we need an ambulance on the Clearwater Highway on the direction towards Silver City, about 25 kilometers from the city! Over!” I yell and immediately the regional dispatcher answers back. “This is Colter Area Sector 5, how grave is it?” a woman said in a metallic voice back. “A person caught beneath a vehicle, probably with a broken leg and a hypothermia!” I said. “Understood. Give me your phone number and I will forward it to the dispatched ambulance,” she said. I gave the radio to Sander to give them the details and I ran back towards the pickup car.

“Sir! Are you okay?!” I ask, but I felt the guy was mumbling and barely could be speaking. I thought at first to drag him out, but it would be probably worse for him. Sander was coming towards us. “They said very soon the ambulance driver will be calling us for details,” he said. I looked at the old man and as I asked again what happened I could see him barely moving to point towards his right leg. I took out my lantern and I looked towards it. The pickup truck was in a weird position because one of its front wheels was missing its tire and I couldn’t understood what or how happened but somehow, the guy went beneath the car, probably to check something. I looked around some more and I could see a jack which fell nearby and probably that was why, the person was caught. I went on my knees by the wheel to see it closer. There was some blood around. As I checked, probably when the jack failed, the car literally just fell on him and the break disk caught his leg. From what I could see there was a wound around his shin.

My attention was caught by my phone ringing. It was an unknown number. “Hi, we have a problem. We are literally caught in traffic and its crazy because of this new blizzard and shitty weather. Could you try and bring the person closer to us? Maybe to Silver City?” the paramedic on the other side of the line said and I could just feel panicking some more. “I think he tried to repair something at the car, but it fell on him and wounded him!” I said. In the meantime, Sander was giving the old guy some water and was speaking with him, trying to comfort him. “Where is he wounded?” the paramedic asked. “I think it’s the shinbone, clearly the lower leg.” I say and I could literally feel in the tone of the paramedic that he relaxed. “Good, so there can be no nerve damage. You need to bring him closer to us, because by the time we arrive, he will probably die of hypothermia,” said the paramedic, but by the time he finished the phrase, the signal was going down and I couldn’t hear him anymore. I curse and called Sander to me. “We need to take him to Silver City,” I mutter angrily. Sander nods anxiously.

“We need to try to raise the car and somehow drag him out. We’ll raise it together and as I hold it, you drag him from underneath it, understood?!” I ask, shouting at him and probably intimidating Sander.

“Don’t push from your back, push from your legs!” I say as I point towards some strongpoints at the bumper from which we could push. “The last thing I want is for you to break your back here,” I mutter. We try to push, but my hands slip in the snow and I lose my grip, with the car rising a few centimeters only to fall down, making the guy scream of pain. We try again after I get a better grip and I push Sander to do his best to pull him quickly, not caring of the groans and protests of the guy who was clearly hurting. Once he was out I let the car fall. I lounge to them and I take the guy in my arms, while Sander ran towards our car, taking the first aid kit from the car boot. The guy was probably around 75 to 80 kilograms and was quite heavy as he was sitting numb in my hands but I manage to push myself to take him to our car and I put him in the backseat of our suv. To my surprise, Sander quickly went with the kit towards him and cut the trousers he had around the wound. “I don’t think the bone was damaged!” he yelled at me as I went to the driver’s seat. Sander sat himself beside the guy and started bandaging his leg, while I started driving back.

I tried to reach Silver City as quickly as possible, but with the blizzard going from back to worse, I could feel the car swerving in curves as I was accelerating a bit too much. This is probably why I would never be a good ambulance driver or a paramedic. I would be panicking too much of everything. I radioed the headquarters and managed to direct the ambulance to wait for us there. The trip back lasted about 20 minutes in which Sander was trying to keep the guy warm, and was comforting him, and I was doing my best to reach the city as fast as possible, but still keeping all of us safe.

I could see the red lights of the ambulance waiting for us downtown by the police headquarters. “Help them out!” Sheriff Mason yelled to Nathan Carr and Joshua Matthews, whom have both arrived for their night shift, as I parked the car. The adrenaline was making my heart beat like crazy and my hands shake. The deputies and the paramedics stormed the car and helped move the old guy from our car to a stretcher and then into the ambulance.

“Good job, guys. That bastard would have been dead under your watch if we would have waited from these lazy idiots from Colter,” Sheriff Mason said as the ambulance was leaving. “I don’t understand how the fuck you get in this situation,” Sander commented. Mason just shrugged. “Sometimes, when you’re an idiot and don’t think things through, you just end up asking for it,” Nathan Carr commented. “Did you recognize him?” I asked the sheriff, but Mason shook his head and shrugged. “We will build a report on it all tomorrow, once we get some details from the hospital in Colter,” he continued. “Now, Stone, Barrett, go to the Pour Authority, have a drink and go home,” he added.​

 

[Josepania]

David

The icy gusts of the blizzard outside seemed to penetrate the walls of the school despite its admirable efforts to keep the cold out. It could simply also be a byproduct of my Josepanian heritage making me far more susceptible to the cold this far north. Even now I longed for the sunshine and relative warmth of Los Santos, even though I knew right now it was wet and miserable thanks to the same exact storm hammering the area. Still a few centimeters of halfway decent rain and cool weather sounded like paradise compared to the ninth circle of hell that I found myself buried in.

"Mr. Fernández," the words cut through my stupor and brought me back to reality fairly quickly, "Did you hear me?" Principal Geraldine Ponoka's previous query was clearly lost in my mind, and I shook my head somewhat sheepishly. "I'm sorry ma'am, still adjusting to the cold, and the coffee hasn't kicked in yet." I held up my still steaming cup as alleged proof, though the raised eyebrow she gave in response made me think she was conjuring up stereotypical images of being a pothead, or drunk on site, or some combination thereof, all on the first day.

Not that I would say no to such vices in the comfort of my own home or at a bar, but I was a professional for god's sake. Still, I resolved to pay attention as she repeated her question about my background. "Ah, well I was born and raised in Los Santos, Josepania, as you well know, graduated from Palmira Presidential University about a year ago with honors with a degree in library science, worked as a library assistant at the central branch of the city library for about four years simultaneously, and then decided to move up to Natal to keep developing my skills and gain some more experience."

It all sounded nice and reasonable, which is probably why she didn't buy it. She seemed like an inherently skeptical individual, and her somewhat craggy features, a byproduct of her Niitsitapi heritage, radiated that skepticism very clearly. "So rather than stay in sunny southern Josepania, where the weather is perpetually as beautiful as El Presidente's speeches, you decide to move up to the middle of nowhere in Natal freezing your ass off."

I instinctually narrowed my eyes somewhat at the offhand comment about El Presidente, but had to admit that, when put like that, it was understandable she didn't fully buy the backstory. "Well... to be honest I had put in applications for the public libraries in Cedar City, then Colter, but hadn't heard back for quite some time... truth be told, you were the first ones to actually give a damn about me, so I figured I might as well go for it rather than say no at an opportunity like this." It was a nice way of saying 'I didn't want to come here but didn't have much of a choice.'

Mrs. Ponoka looked much less skeptical after that, figuring that was the reason for the somewhat sparse and terse backstory given how talkative I usually was, but clearly something still didn't add up for her. "Fair enough... but why Natal? Josepania is a big place, you would've found a much easier time of getting a job elsewhere there than all the way up here. Better weather too."

I did my best to control my emotions, though it didn't stop a sudden, clenching pressure around my chest as memories I wasn't in any mood to dredge up from the depths started to rise to the surface. Memories of an old love, a lost family member, wasted years pursuing something that wasn't ever attainable, the usual feelings of inadequacy and hopelessness. Normal stuff for someone just turning thirty. "Change of scenery." I managed to respond, somewhat neutral in tone but with a cold edge to it, a subtle warning to those perceptive enough to not continue digging.

Mrs. Ponoka was, fortunately, perceptive, and she visibly backed off. "Well, you'll have that in spades here for sure. It's usually not as hellishly cold, only unbearably, but you get used to it after awhile." Her demeanor towards me changed, quietly but noticeably, with a measure of understanding that I was grateful for.

"God I hope so... how are the kids here?" I asked.

"Manageable, for the most part. Our teachers do a good job keeping them in line, but you'll need to establish your will as soon as possible so they respect you, otherwise they'll walk all over you and cause mischief out of pure boredom. As you've gathered, there isn't that much to do here."

I nodded along as I sipped my coffee, already thinking of times in the past where I had to remind patrons to follow the rules in the library, a constant battle of wills. I knew high schoolers could be crafty if they were committed, so the principal's advice was duly noted. At that point I saw two teachers round the corner and start walking down the hallway in the opposite direction. One was in his 20s, with short dark hair and a respectable stubble. The way he was dressed, along with his lanky build, made me think "Silicone Pass" immediately, and wondered what he was doing out here in the middle of nowhere. But simultaneously, it was heartening, because if he was able to make it then I could as well. The woman though, caught my attention much more thoroughly. She was shorter, with light brown, almost blonde straight hair that reached her shoulders, and a round face that gave her a gorgeous, delicate aura, which didn't take away the fact that, underneath that delicate beauty was clearly an iron will, a strength that only made her even more lovely.

It was only then I reassessed my thoughts and brought them to a screeching halt. 'Seriously? Dude, what are you doing? Are you actually going to go down this route of star-struck love at first sight nonsense? Dios Mio you're worse off than even you expected...' I was lucky I didn't lose step with the principal and managed to pull myself together as our two groups caught sight of each other and met in the hallway.

"Ah! Miss Kate, Mr. Knight, please meet our newest school librarian, Mr. David Fernández, fresh from sunny southern Josepania and looking for new experiences in the middle of nowhere." Mrs. Ponoka introduced me, seemingly doing her damndest to make me blush out of embarrassment, but I shrugged it off with a mild laugh as I shook both of their hands, "It's definitely different from Los Santos, but I'll acclimate. Pleasure to meet both of you." I responded, my Josepanian accent ever so slightly coming through. I tried not to notice if Kate noticed, I wasn't going to make a fool of myself that easily.

"Well then, Mr. Fernández," Kate began to respond, and I suppressed a very small thrill of her talking to me, mentally kicking myself for acting like some kind of teenager, "Welcome to our little corner of paradise. It's not Los Santos, but it's home."

At that point Mr. Knight spoke up, "You know, we were just about to head out to Pour Authority. Maybe you could join us?" He then paused and looked at Kate with some measure of meekness, "If... if that's alright?"

'Oh Christ, please don't tell me they're already a couple? That'd be just my fucking-' "Sure, why not? Might as well get the new guy fully immersed in the community sooner rather than later. He'll either be scared off or one of us." Kate interrupted my thought, and her accepting my inclusion made me temporarily forget my melancholy.

"Sounds like a plan! Just need to finish the tour here with Mrs. Ponoka first and get some paperwork finished, then I'll head over." I replied, a somewhat goofy smile on my face as I did so to really emphasize how excited I was about this.

If Kate was charmed she didn't show it, but at least she didn't seem too repulsed. She just nodded and said "See you there." as she and her hopefully-not boyfriend departed. The tour continued, but I was only half-listening. I was already trying to figure out how not to make an absolute idiot of myself later tonight.

 

[Radilo]

Michele

Skiing, I thought to myself. All they way in Natal... well Nonna (grandma) said she'd be paying, so sure, I figured I would come. It's always nice to spend time with the family. We'd gone skiing in the Dolomites a lot when I was a kid, since my dad had developed a bit of a passion for it. I was never very good, but I always had fun. Of course I hadn't skied in years, not since I'd gotten a job in Badua. Of course my father's knees now aren't what they were, so he can't do it as often. In fact, two years ago he couldn't do it all season because of a knee disk replacement. If we weren't making a big trip of it (including a lengthy detour to Natalian wine country), I'm not sure he'd even hit the slopes. Nonna, sadly, can't ski anymore, it kinda bums her out since she did a lot when she was younger; she is the one who introduced my dad to it afterall. But she's always liked to watch all of us have fun... by us, I mean her flock of grandkids and now great grandkids. And she misses Nonno a lot.

God, Nonno (on my maternal side) was such a character. He was born dirt poor to a Radin* family living in Lemina, about 10 km outside Badua. He officially dropped out of school at 13, but I'm pretty sure he quit going at 11. He was smart, and he probably would have been selected for the special "smart kids" program had he been born a generation later. But he was also a little shit head, he got in a lot of trouble at school. It didn't help that his dad was a drunk and a degenerate gambler... hehe... Nonno blew up the school toilet once with an M80... but he was smart and good with his hands. He got a steady job with a mechanic when he was... rather young. He was good at it, he moved up quickly. By the time my Nonna took interest in him he was actually making good money. That's why my Poppi (great grandfather, her father), a consigliere with a modest Camorra clan approved of their union, albeit somewhat reluctantly.

My Nonno later switched to repairing medical equipment (it's more similar to working on cars than you'd think) and started a business around it. By the time my uncle Giacomo (God rest his soul) was 10, Nanno was making more than my Poppi. He was an actual legitimate, upworldy mobile businessman in Radilo, a rarity. Yes, his father-in-law helped, but he was more legit than most. Our family never has been what Radilans would call "upperclass" but we are comfortable.

After my mental detour I came back to myself, sitting in a bar during a snowstorm, half a world away from my day job back in Badua, stairing at my fairly drunk father. We'd drank the same amount of wine, but he's in his 60s and I'm in my mid 30s, so he was feeling the effects more.

"It sucks that the Radilan guy who makes the pizza couldn't get in. I've been craving a decent one," my Papà said, noticeably a bit tipsy with his words.

"We might as well try local food while we're here; they got fried testicles." I was a big fan of Bourdain, so I know what prarie oysters are.

"I'll pass," Papà said, also knowing what they were.

Papà is a character in his own right. Also born into a poor family in Lemina, with an alcoholic abusive father, though he was of Radèlo stock. But his path was different from my Nonno's. He was of the age when "the smart ones" were identified, so he stayed in school, then went to college, then medical school... then residency... though he wasn't a practitioner for very long before he ended up in administration. He'd not known how to ski before Nonna took us to the Dolomites that one year... I was too young to remember... but he fell in love with it.

"I'm retiring early," Papà said, flatly.

"I figured you would. You've resented that promotion to imaging facilities' executive for two years. Mamà is tired of hearing about it. Are you both still going to move to the Dolomites like you've been saying?"

"No. My knees couldn't sustain it; the last few days have shown that. Not to mention your Mamà doesn't wanna be away from the nipoti (grandkids) in Lemina."

Mamà quit her job as soon as Nico, my first nefew was born... actually she quit when my baby sister Matilda got pregnant. Like our Papà, Matilda and I were "smart kids" though we never needed the extra money. So was Prisco, my brother in law... the dating pool among "ragazzi intelligenti" was always a bit... tight, I've realized. Though Mamà actually wasn't a "smart kid" ... she was smart, but I guess back then they didn't bother extending the formal courtesy to rich kids. Hehe... she actually wanted to drop out at 13, but my Nonno insisted she'd graduate and go to university. He promised her a brand new Maserati at 16 if she did... so she did.

"I will give you credit, you were good on the slopes, you were actually able to help Nico down the bunny hill, unlike Prisco and I," I said chuckling.

"I also had a solid pranzo (lunch) today," he joked referencing how my cohort of the family might have been a bit prodigious during our midday meal.

"You should see how bad we get before returning to city hall after our pranzo break... God... I swear the Camorra has its place but... they need to do better. Nobody knows what the fuck they're doing. Did you know they put metal sidewalk ramps in the Tianese Village? Metal... Jesus Christ," I said, making the Sign of the Cross.

"Don't worry about work right now. We're having fun, and Nonna is enjoying presiding over all of this. Anyway," he said, necking the rest of his wine, "I gotta get back to the hotel room, lest your Mamà gets worried... like that one night in Fehrbellin when our phones died... she was pissed."

I chuckled some at the memory of that trip, "I'm going to have a few more. Tell Mamà I love her."

He nodded and walked off, I was the last one standing. Matilda and Prisco had already fallen asleep--you know... kids and what not. And such had so befallen most of my other cousisns. Maria and Giuseppe (the two other single, childless cousins in our cohort) had opted to drink tequila for some unknown reason and were already out for the count. So I was alone in a bar in a strange land. I sipped on my wine for some time pondering ordering some deep fried dangly bits, just for the fuck of it. That's when I heared a moderately tipsy man exclaim "co’ rivo rivo" a Radilan phrase meaning to arrive casually at nonset time. I raised my head and saw him at a table with a few other people. With all of that liquid confidence going through me I approach him.

"Ti xe Radèlo?" I asked him.

"No, mi son Goséfèlo," he responded. The rest of the group went quiet, friendly, but a bit perplexed.

"Pare che semo lontani da casa," I joked.

"Si, me manca el caldo... vien a sentarte," he said gesturing to an empty chair.




*an ethnic group native to the Dolomite Mountains.

"Are you Radilan?"
"No I'm Joséphino."
"Seems we're both far away from home."
"Yea, I miss the warmth... come have a seat."

@Natal
@Josepania

 

[Natal]

Kate

We finished the 2nd period and I met with Spencer on the halls as we were going to the lounge. I was a bit bummed after getting ignored by some seniors who thought that they would get some easy grades because they’re in the last year and somehow we would be propping them for their college or university admissions. As I left my classroom, I was reminiscing on my days as a student of history at the North Gran State University in Shelby, and I was remembering I was the only one in my classroom who took the praxis exam immediately after graduation, to become a teacher. My classmates all found teaching to be hard, cringy and annoying, and all were dreaming of going into doctorates, museums and god knows what else, but in the end, as much as think it’s quite a hard and annoying job, in which I do love to moan about it, it’s the only career path that gives you security, especially in the field of humanities. As much as sometimes nasty students irk me, I always have this ocean of patience to not get annoyed and a plethora of internet culture references that somehow wins them over. If something in life annoys me, it is to be fair, that I ended up in Silver City. Not that I hated the town, or village or whatever one would describe it, even if I would have loved to live more in Colter, Stanley or Shelby, but still, what annoys me the most is getting back to a family home I wanted so much to escape from. A mother which loves her sleeping pills so much that she’s drugged most of the day, and when she’s sober she just nags me to get a husband and start a family, and a father who is absent and enjoys his beer more than anything. That is when I was thinking of Drew. Andrew was the mid son of a family that was loving all their kids and were all working hard to offer the three siblings a good start in life. When we were in High School and were dating, I was mostly all day at the Pronghorn Inn more like to avoid my family and somehow attach myself to theirs because I was truly jealous of him, especially seeing how he was acting like a fuck up and an annoying brat so many times back then.

“You alright?” I heard Spencer’s familiar voice. He had a low baritone voice, and had an interesting way of speaking, like he wasn’t putting effort in it for the sounds to be all clear, like he was whispering all the time. I always wondered if he ever yelled or shouted or if he is even able to. “Yeah, I’m fine, maybe a bit tired,” I say as we start walking side by side on the halls towards the lounge, to take our coats, because it was a shorter day today. “Wanna grab a bite and something to drink to warm us up?” I asked, as I really hated the idea of going home and I was starting to think more and more into finding a house to rent or an apartment in the downtown area. I was really hoping there was something decent to eat, too, because I didn’t manage to eat breakfast and last evening I argued with my mom and it killed my appetite for diner, so I was starving by now.

“Sure, why not? It’s not like the Pattersons make the idea or returning home attractive,” he said, mumbling and whispering as always. I did find that quite charming in him, giving him a vibe of mystery. I was thinking of how he hated renting a room with the Pattersons, and if I hate my own place too, we could look into renting together a house, but I felt I might make it weird, especially as I was really hoping it might be more than just friendliness in him towards me. “Plus, you were right, the Pour Authority does seem like a local institution, and as Drew said, the only functional people in Silver City are functional alcoholics, so I think I’m starting to be a part of this environment,” Spencer continued, joking. I rolled my eyes, but I knew he was quite right, but the problem was that every functional alcoholic turned into a genuine one at some point, so I preferred to stay away from that.

As we were walking, we were seeing Headmastress Ponoka speaking with someone on the halls. I thought it might have been the parent of a student, but as we got closer, he was too young to be that, so my mind then went to some legal tutor of someone and I tried to think of all the students I knew if there was a case for that, but nothing came to mind either. That was when Ponoka introduced him to us. The new librarian, she said, and he had an Ebrian surname and was from Palmira. Who the fuck would leave Palmira for fucking Silver City?

Spencer shook his hand. “Nice to meet you,” I say, thinking still of Palmira and Josepania and then I welcome him, trying to be as nice as possible. He seemed friendly enough and quite a goofball to be fair. At least from the very little I observed he was acting towards the boss, he had some charm and knew how to talk his way out of potential issues without stressing a lot and I really liked that about him.

After he said he’ll join us, we went to the lounge. “I hope you weren’t one of these dry types of guys back in Implaria,” I say, as I button my coat. “Nah, it’s impossible to be that in Cedar City, to many microbreweries, and apple orchards that produce too much cider around,” Spencer said and I rolled my eyes again. “Microbreweries and cider… if you say that towards a local here they will probably offer you flowers, thinking that emasculated you or take their guns out thinking you cussed them,” I say smirking and he just shrugged and shook his head. We went to the car and as always, I managed to convince Spencer to leave his car back home and I carpooled him to the school as on these shorter days we had the same schedule.

I managed to quickly find a spot to park downtown on the main street and we entered the Pour Authority. “Okay, boo, I’ll see you later,” I hear Alana say as she was just finishing a conversation with Aaron by the bar. The Pour Authority was quite empty, with the exception of some tourists that were speaking in a foreign language, something Meridian, Ebrian or Radilan. “Okay, I’ll see you later!” Aaron responded and winked at her as she turned. Alana saw me immediately and completely changed her tone. “Kate! How are you? How’s school?” she asked me. “Quite good Ms Stone, how’s the Pronghorn?” I ask. She just shrugged. “As always, making by with enough to be decent. I’m sorry to be in a rush but I have to prepare a room for a long term rent,” she said. “Long term rent? Other than Drew?” I asked casually. “Yeah, some Josepanian who got a housing bonus from the local government. I think the school district,” she said. Hm, it might be the new librarian, I thought. “Okay, I’ll see you later and don’t forget, to stop by, I’m sure Medeea and Verne will love to see you again,” she added before taking off.

I looked at Spencer and he just shrugged, so I decided not to follow up on it. We went to the bar, where Aaron greeted us and served us with two draught beers. “Got something to eat, Mr. S?” I asked him and he shrugged. “Sadly, my Radilan cook is again useless. First because he was snowed in and because he is ill, so no pasta or pizza today,” Aaron apologized. “Fuck, I really hoped to taste that awesome pizza that you advertised so much,” I added and Aaron shrugged. “You see? We really need to come here more often. As Drew said, functional alcoholics…” Spencer said, laughing at what I found to be a lame joke, but I was Aaron lighting up. “You see, Katy, this guy finally gets its. He’ll become one of us long before summer comes and he celebrates a year here,” he said to me and then turned to Spencer, “for this, my boy, extra fries if you get a burger,” he said, in a conspirative way to him, which made me laugh. Aaron Stone was probably the best host because you could never be annoyed at him. “Fine, you convinced me, I’ll take a burger,” Spencer said, as if it was the hardest effort to persuade him. “Can I get some finger steaks?” I asked and Aaron smiled warmly at me and nodded, before putting in the order.

“Have you seen all that?” ask Spencer as we finally calmed down and relaxed by the bar, close to this Radilan family. “What?” he asked, a bit confused. “Alana, that woman that greeted me,” I said and he continued to look at me inquisitively, and that is when I remembered he moved here right before School year started on the 1st of September and only after Drew returned, he started understanding my close relationship with the Stones. He wasn’t here for many years or decades to understand all this history and yet me thinking that he knows it all is witness to the fact that he stood by me pretty much since he arrived and I greeted him on the school halls like we greeted that Josepanian guy. He just became one of the closest persons I have and he… I just stop. “That was Alana Stone, the owner of the Pronghorn Inn and she’s normally separated from him, but did you observe?” I say, a bit excited, like an old wife that discovered a juicy gossip, but he clearly ignored it. “Observe what?” he asked confused. “She called him boo, he winked at her. I feel they might be getting back together,” I say, probably a bit too happy and Spencer not understanding why I cared so much. He clearly didn’t care that much of them, because, like I said, he did have my history with them.

I quickly changed the subject when the food came and I really think we both were starving, because for the next fifteen minutes we just eat like there was no tomorrow. Right as we were finishing, I observed the new guy finally came in.

“Hey,” I waved him to come over and he came towards us saying some stuff in Radilan, which I thought it might be an apology, but as always with Meridian people, they think everyone speaks their language and they’re loud. Weirdly, this activated the Radilan family beside us who started talking with him and not before long we ended up all together on a table further from the bar, so as to not crowd it.

“So, what’s the deal, what makes someone leave sunny Palmira for the fringe of the Pass, right in a record breaking snowstorm season?” Spencer asked David, but the Josepanian just shrugged. “Probably the same that made a Silicon Pass guy leave Colter for Silver City,” he answered back. “Not really a Silicon Pass guy, more like a Cedar City bro,” Spencer answered back, making a bit fun of himself too, as there was a certain Natalian stereotype who was the typical pot smoking hipster who was a nazi with the definition of a coffee brew that was very typical of Cedar City. I did observe that David was a bit defensive when he answered Spencer and I didn’t want it all to be weird, but I was glad and smiled at him when I observed he did recognize the stereotype and laughed at Spencer. “So like me, a change of scenery,” he said. “And an unhealthy obsession with spending my free time on the slopes,” Spencer added and that made the Radilan happy, as he pointed at him. “Some of the best in the world are here in the Grans I heard, so I wanted to check them too,” he added.

“I think it’s because so many people think Palmira is like the end game, whereas if you are born there, everything that makes everyone go crazy about it, like the Palmwood sign and the surrounding hills, Vespucci Beach or Mirror Park and everything, these are just normal, everyday, boring places. You might be fascinated by them the first few times, tens of times, but by the millionth time you literally want to see something else too, and a lot of it came from that. Plus, Natal had an easy immigration system and I got use of that with the Federal Skilled Worker Program, and yes, as much as I wanted to be in Cedar City or Colter, I’ll be honest as I’ve been to Principal Ponoka and say that Silver City, in the end, was the only one that gave me a librarian’s job from the beginning and I didn’t have to get odd jobs until I could finally start the career I got my diplomas in, which is good I say,” David said, and he truly did have a certain foreign vibe to him, a little bit of rolling his r much more than a Natalian, and probably a little bit more gesticulation from the Radilan element to it, but I must say, he did have quite a chill energy that he was emanating that somehow was attracting you to him, even if, maybe he was just bullshitting his way through everything.

“Heh, I think everyone not born here probably wanted Colter first and foremost,” Spencer added and then we exchanged glances. I thought for a moment that he might see me somehow offended by it so he quickly stopped but I winked at him, which I observed made him smile shyly and blush a little. “Hell, even people born here try their luck somewhere else but we end up back,” I add to everyone’s joy. “Yeah, it has an energy and it choses you. It’s like the first level in discovering the infamous Pass,” Spencer added a bit mockingly. “How do you find it?” I asked David. “To be fair, horrendously cold. I know we’ve always been told in school in geography class about how Central Natal, even if it’s more to the south than the Federation, temperatures because of the heights and the winds are often as cool as the northern fringes of the continent. I did prepare everything I could, and bought the thickest coats and jackets one could find in Palmira, which you could imagine, now I discovered they weren’t as thick as I first believed,” David said, making the table laugh. “But if there is something I never expected, is the feeling of burning and stabbing you feel in your chest when you breathe in, especially when it’s very cold, like how it was last night,” he added. “The first year is the worst one, after that you will get used to it,” I say. “True, it’s my first winter spent in the Pass that is more than just a weekend here and there skiing and to be fair, I am quite taken aback too,” Spencer added. “But don’t worry, you’ll see the climate here is magical, you get used to the cold and when you finally got used to it, spring and summer come, so you spend them suffering from being too warm, until you get used to them, but by then fall and winter come and the cycle repeats. It all flattens out after a few years and you’ll be fine,” I say. “That’s when you discover you’re dead on the inside and that is what got you here in the first place,” Spencer said rolling his eyes and again, much of the table laughs, but the Radilans, who probably, as tourists, didn’t really want a bunch of locals to kill off their vacation mood by talking shit of the resort and place they are unwinding in.

I could hear Aaron agitated as the door opened and I could hear a familiar voice greeting him. I turned and I could see Drew coming in. It meant he finished his shift and I looked at the clock and was surprised how quickly two hours have passed. He sees me and comes to our table. As if I was possessed by some sort of muscular memory, I rose my arm towards him and he took my hand and gently squeezed it in his hand. It wasn’t really a handshake, but rather, what I’ve seen more like a secret greeting of ours that we have had in high school, not being all over the place like some couples were. After we had this weird ritual of ours, I was a bit weirded by it, because I did it without thinking and now, not being together with Drew, I find it weird doing it. He didn’t seem to even observe that he did it, as he just went towards Spencer. “How is it, Renton?” Drew asked. “Good good, not as great as you, Broadmoor,” Spencer said back and I was just taken aback as I had no idea what was happening. I looked at the Radilans, one of them was eating some Granite Oysters and wasn’t paying attention, and then I turned to David. We did share a glance but it wasn’t like he was ready to give me some answers.

“Renton? Broadmoor? What the fuck is that?” I ask and Spencer laughed and Drew rolled his eyes. To be fair, I was quite enchanted by how Spencer changed in the past months. From this sulking guy maybe a bit afraid of his new environment, he seems to have finally put down his protective shell and became relaxed enough to openly joke about… well, pretty much about everything it seemed. “They’re neighborhoods in Cedar City,” Drew explained. “Yeah, Renton is a suburb where I grew up and then lived on 12th, while Andrew here, spent his early days there on the 12th and then, like a rich bastard he is, lived for years on Ocean Road, which is in Broadmoor,” Spencer said in a very manner of fact type of way, as if he was a border representative of a tourist company presenting the areas of the city. I rolled my eyes and let them be, but not without ignoring the fact that he named him Andrew, rather than Drew, how everyone called him and it sounded so weird, because I was used to the this being used in high school when he was getting in trouble. Drew didn’t seem to mind.

We continued to drink some more and talk. The table was in a booth was in a U shape, and I had Drew sit by Spencer, I was between the latter and David, the Josepanian, and to the right of him were the Radilans. I think we might have had a bit more to drink than we should have, especially as Aaron brought us some moonshine to celebrate Drew saving the life of some guy who was having hypothermia and was close to death on the Clearwater Pass highway just a few days before, as it seems the guy will recover at the hospital in Colter. Probably by now I was fully drunk and Spencer too, as we all just stood, leaning on each other, while David and Drew followed the Radilans to play some pool. Not that they could play at all after all the alcohol, but at least they were happy as they were laughing their asses at how bad they were.

“You ever thought… we’ll end up like this?” I randomly asked Spencer, as I was leaning my head on his shoulder and he was leaning his on my head. I breathed in and I could smell the earthy and woody cologne he was wearing, while his stubble was prickling my forehand. To be fair, I knew I would hate myself completely tomorrow, but thank God it was a Saturday, so I could be hungover in peace. Yet at the same time, I would have done anything to keep this moment forever. I breathed in Spencer’s cologne again. He shrugged shyly to not disturb me. “Getting dead drunk in a bar that looks like a 70s style log cabin in the middle of nowhere in the mountains? Not really, but I can’t say I dislike it,” he says, and I feel the muscles on his face tense, feeling in his voice too that he was smiling. I could feel my stomach doing backflips and I really hoped it was because of him not the alcohol.

“Did you have someone… very close… to get home to?” I asked, trying my luck. He shook his head. “Only these old geezers, the Pattersons, who are hosting me, who hate me,” he says, making me laugh. “Of course, I hate them too, so in the end we’re good,” he adds, laughing at his own joke. “You do hate them…” I say, approving. “But I mean, in a good way, someone to look up too,” I say. He was looking absently towards the pool table. I could heel he nodded and then turned to me, right as I raised my head and looked at him.

We were less than 10 centimeters away from each other’s faces. His eyes were reddish and had shadows under them, probably exhausted after the week, but his light skin, dark hair and hazel eyes made him extremely handsome. “Not now, but I’d love to,” he said with a smile that I felt like a signal. I approached him and kissed him.

Our lips touched and I felt they were a bit dry but I felt he was coming closer and closer. His stubble was prickling my lips and chin, but I loved and I started going full in. I feel it’s been years since I felt like this. The moment our tongues touched, I could feel his back down a bit, but I raised my hand and rested it on his jaw and cheek, caressing them, and as much as I loved every fraction of a second of it, he could feel he tensed up. I opened my eyes and need his wide open less than a few centimeters from mine and somehow, I started to feel ashamed and to blush. He put his hand on mine and pulled it down from face and he back down towards a safe distance. He was red, his ears especially were burning. “Kate, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t…” he mutters but the drunkenness makes him mumble and only after I process in my mind what he said I finally understand him and that’s when raises up and I start to feel ashamed. “I’m so deeply sorry,” he said. “I have to go,” he added.

“Spence, no! Wait, I’m driving you! I’m sorry!” I said and then I quickly add an apology. He just shook his head. “It’s better to just cool off. I can walk to the Pattersons’ place, no worries. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, when we both clear our heads up, okay?” he says, speaking in that Cedar City way, extremely fast easting up all the spaces between words. He turns and nearly falls as he stumbles in a chair, takes his coat and leaves. Once I heard the door close I felt all alone in the universe, even if the bar was extremely busy by now. I could feel my eyes tearing up, and I wasn’t sure what was worse, the shame of rejection or the heartbreak of finally accepting that he never was into me? Maybe add to that the shame of feeling like I lied to myself for a few months about it all. I turned and look at the pool table. The others were doing their thing and didn’t observe the whole scene.

I went to them and Drew immediately caught up that something happened. “You’re okay? Where’s Spencer?” he asked. “He had to leave,” I say, blinking to as to hide tears forming in my eyes. “What happened?” he asked and I just shook my head. ”Can you please take me to the Pronghorn? I’d rather spend the night there,” I said, not wanting to go home, and with him nodding and understanding I feel I could add another layer of shame for myself, being in my late 20s and still acting like an idiot kid in high school, not wanting to go home after fucking up out of fear of arguments with parents. Drew nodded, supportively. I could feel he was drunk too, but somehow immediately got in an alert mode that made him act like he was sober. “Guys, I’m sorry, but something happened and we’ll have to go,” Drew said as he turned towards the Radilan and David. “Michele, we’ll see each other again tomorrow here, so as to meet before you leave. David, it was nice to meet you. If you stay for the long run, don’t worry, we’ll see each other plenty of time. Now excuse me, I’ll have to take Kate home,” he said.

David looked at me and I tried to hide my distress behind a smile, but I felt I failed. Even so, he knew at least to not insist and just offered me at this point a glance of support. I could feel something more could be build on that, but borders need to fall down first and hopefully they don’t collapse as they did with Spencer.​

 

[Josepania]

David

There was a moment where I felt... disturbingly confused. The feeling was drastically enhanced by the far too many beers and shots of moonshine that were currently coursing through my veins leaving me in a state of an existential tailspin. I had, frankly, no idea what to make of the actual... status? Relationship? Between Kate, Spencer, and now apparently Drew, and whatever was going on between the three of them. I was missing something, and I was in no state to really assess it, even though my brain insisted on trying because it apparently hated itself, which was on brand at the very least. I excused myself from the pool table to get a glass of water just to have a moment of reflection.

First there was that... handshake of sorts between Drew and Kate. That was the first warning sign to me that things were not as straightforward as I'd assumed. At the very least, there was a long-term friendship between those two, so it could've been nothing. Afterwards, while I was at the pool table with Drew and Michele, I had noticed Spencer and Kate by themselves, and that culminating in the kiss confirmed for me what I dreaded: clearly they were together, or at least about to be, and I felt my heart crushed even though it was utterly absurd, I had just met her a few hours ago. I tried to return to the pool game and focus on that instead...

And then... it all went to hell. Last I saw Spencer he had nearly tripped over a chair doing his best to leave Kate behind as quickly as possible, and she looked... devastated. Then she went to Drew, and whatever words were exchanged, he was taking her very seriously and clearly focused on getting her out of whatever situation she was in, so now I wasn't sure if there was... something between them? Maybe? Maybe just that close of friends, I don't know. All I know is that the look she gave me as she left felt frighteningly familiar: not fine, but not ready to show others she wasn't fine.

I must've taken too long as the bar, staring at my glass of water, for my new Radillan acquaintance Michele appeared at my side. "Questo è un posto strano, con gente strana..." he said in his native tongue, mentioning it was a strange place with strange people. I honestly could not tell how much he had observed, probably nowhere near as much as me unless he too had a boyish crush on Kate which I prayed was nowhere near the case, but he probably just... saw how upset everybody became at the turn of an escuta.

I smiled softly in response and muttered, "Brave persone con pessimi bagagli." He seemed to get the meaning quickly enough: good people with bad baggage. "I hope this hasn't ruined your vacation-vibes thus far." I followed up in Engwahlian.

Michele shook his head, "Far from it. At least I found some folk to talk to while I let the evening slip by. You really are looking for a change of scenery?"

It was starting to get mildly irritating fielding this question... I had to wonder if I simply wasn't answering it convincingly enough. "Yes. Is it truly that strange for a Josepanian to leave behind the homeland for Natal?"

If Michele was offended by my snippiness he didn't show it, though he did seem to regard me with an unusual amount of pensiveness, "A little bit. It's never just adventure that takes someone this far out of their comfort zone. I'm assuming the homeland wasn't appealing to you despite all it offered?"

I paused, wondering how much I wanted to say and how much I wanted to leave buried, though that anxious tightness was starting to make itself known again despite the best efforts of the alcohol to numb it all. "Being there just... made me sad. All the people I knew back home reminded me of other people and events that made me sad. Maybe... I thought in the middle of nowhere there was a place without sadness."

Michele nodded with some level of understanding, or maybe it was just the understanding of a drunk. "Everywhere has sad people, just for different reasons. But you seemed happy until recently, why is that?"

It was a good question. I took my time pondering it and sipping my water before I responded, "They helped me forget for a bit. It was... nice."

"Hold onto that instead, then. But you're going to have to heal whatever has hurt you sooner or later if you really want to be happy."

I grimaced but with a pained grin at the end of it. "I know... but I'm not ready for that yet."

"No one is, but I hope you'll figure out when soon... I'm going back to my hotel mio amico, you should go home too. Just take it easy, we'll see each other again soon maybe."

I gave a tired smile and hugged my new friend briefly but tightly. "Ve con Dios." I muttered drunkenly, then paid my tab and gathered my belongings. I had an urge to call my mom as I stepped out into the bitter cold, stumbling towards the car. At minimum I needed to tell her I was alright... and to make sure she was alright. She was hurting too, after all. The loss of a spouse was something I could only imagine in the same realm as losing a parent, but she was strong enough to stay.

'I hope she's alright...' I thought... not fully sure if I was thinking of my mom, or Kate. Maybe both.

 

[Natal]

Drew

It was the first time since forever when I didn’t put on an alarm on my telephone to wake me up. I was getting my first full weekend off, since I came back to Silver City, which meant that probably my Sunday noon I will received a message from Sheriff Mason that I will be in the next week for night shifts. Even so, when I was in Cedar City, even in my days off, I always put my alarm sound at 9am, probably an inheritance of my dad’s way of always waking up early, which ended up making me feel guilty if I spent the morning in bed, especially later than 10am. I think the last time I didn’t put on an alarm clock was in the summer we graduated and now that I’m thinking, that happened 9 years ago. But I spent too much drunk talking with Kate and letting her talk all the shit she wanted about herself, about her parents and even a little bit about Spencer, although the latter made her quite ambivalent, for every bad thing on Spencer, she found two apologies for him and a bad thing for her.

I was quite a lot of light outside and that meant mostly that it was sunny outside and it snowed overnight, so that was reflecting too. I rose from the bed that me and Kate shared. I was wearing some boxers and a shitty T-shirt and she was wearing her undies and one of my T-shirts too. When on the ride home, I was just happy that I managed to drive with no issue, but she was quite a mess. Pretty much crying uglily and blaming herself on the whole shithow, on how she lied to herself, imagining that his friendliness was something more special and how she was much more ashamed of it all than heartbroken. Her problem was that I knew her or at least I did remember how she was some years ago, that even that shame was heartbreaking for her. When we arrived at the Pronghorn, I allowed her to sleep with me because I knew how her parents were and I knew that the last thing she would want was to argue with them. I was in the mood for something more than just sleepy, but a mixture of me having too much alcohol in my system too, which didn’t allowed me to get a hard on and at the same time, feeling that I might just be used as some form of bodily quick release, while in the morning we would just regret it even more, made me just turn her off and while I could imagine a 2nd rejection would hurt, I could feel that later in the night, when we both sobered up a bit and talked a bit more, we discovered we made the right thing. She really was regretting it and it seemed she would want to keep it up in a friendly situation and not destroy the gang, as she called it. I did remember her that I invited Spencer over here some days ago, and she did say back then that she too would come, but now, she wanted to let the weekend pass before seeing him again in school, on Monday morning.

I rose from the bed and put on some black gym shorts and changed my T-shirt. She moved around, as if she looked after me in the bed, but instead of waking up when she didn’t find me, she just turned on the other side and continued sleeping. I went outside the room and I met Verne on the hallway. The mid 60 year old guy, with a long beard that made him look like he was half a hippie, half a lumberjack, looked at me and measured me head to toe. “You look like shit,” she says and laughs his typical loud and rasp laughter. “Gee, thanks. To be fair, you’re not that much different either,” I say and he just shrugs. “Had an entertaining night?” he asked and I was a bit confused. “Bringing Kate here like it’s 2014 allover again,” he says pointing with his head towards the door to my room. I shook my head. “Nah, I feel my time with her has passed,” I say and then I leave him to his business, while going down the stairs towards the lobby. Verne had a funny history. I think he was a school mate of my dad, or something, but I wasn’t sure that the timeline of that wouldn’t make sense as he’s a bit older than him, but he somehow ended up at the Pronghorn when I was a kid, got his room and I think, paid for it in maintenance duty in the place, while in the summer he would go around the nearby towns in villages for seasonal labor and comes back in the autumn, paying my mom quite a nice sum. Usually, he’s the caretaker of the building and also helps Amber clean up the building and do the housekeeping. We all loved him as part of the family, but as always never admitted it and become a thing to moan to him that he’s always idling. As always with people like him in Silver City, he was a full-on alcoholic, not a functional one like the rest of us.

“So, what happened last night?” Medeea asked when he saw me and nearly pushed me towards the dining hall where she was still keeping some omelet, toast and coffee aside. Because of yet another snow alert, no new tourists checked in, and that will probably last until Wednesday by the next week, but some left. “Eh, Kate fucked up so I got her here to let her rest,” I say and Medeea looked at me with suspicious eyes. “I didn’t do anything!” I say, maybe a bit louder than I wanted, which attracted the attention of my mother, Alana. She came by us, kissed me on the top of the head. “Okay, confess,” she said as she took a chair besides me and I felt a bit like in an ambush between the two of them. “There’s nothing to confess,” I say and at the same time, as if they were robots, shook their heads. “The last time you said that, Kate had a pregnancy panic,” my mother said, to my own exasperation. It was then when I finally noticed the background discomfort of a headache, right after I was happy to think I would not have a hungover. “Try to remember how bad it was with your on and off thing back in high school,” Medeea added. “Jesus fucking Christ! Nothing happened! Will you leave it?!” I say, annoyed this time nearly shouting. “Jesus, Andrew! We should be lucky if that didn’t echo all the way to Colter. Mind your language!” Alana said a bit annoyed too. “She just put too many hopes in a crush that wasn’t reciprocated, that’s all, and did the healthy thing of drinking her woes away. The good bit is that at least by the time we arrived, she was decently sober enough to accept it, not making it worse, but what can I say? She hurts and she’s ashamed by it all,” I say. “Christ, the youth of today. When I was your age I was married and already had a baby, and all you do is act like high schoolers again, ten years too late,” Alana moaned. “Yeah, and look how well we ended up being. Louise is angry all the time and dad makes half the town an alcoholic,” I mutter. My mother knew she herself crossed the line with the interrogation so she let this pass and she just grimaced at me, which was a sign for me to stop it too. “Who was she crushing on?” Medeea asked, as always loving some spicy gossip. “Some new guy in school,” I say and she lit up. “Oh shit, we’re hosting him, he literally slept on the neighboring room,” she said more to my mother than to me. “That’s impossible. He stays at the Patterson’s two houses down the road,” I say. “But who are you talking about?” I add, surprised. “That Josepanian guy, David something. He recently came to work at the High School,” she said. I’ll be damned if it’s not a friggin small world. “Yeah, he received a housing allowance like you and it literally is like a permanent tourist, so when he came to our door with it, I couldn’t say no,” my mom added. It means David will be quite around, I think.

I spent the rest of the morning drinking my coffees, as in chiller days I preferred to have some light coffees than strong ones, more to enjoy their taste than for that hit of caffeine. I then helped Amber and Medeea clean up the dining area, and left them clean the kitchen while I went to feed Pepper, the Shepherd dog, who was closed in his pen. That is where Kate found me as she came out. You could see she had a bad hangover. “How bad was I last night?” she asked me. “If I say extremely, it would be an understatement,” I say, smiling, as I left Pepper out for a bit to patrol the area of the in outside his pen. “I remember… the incident… I don’t remember how I did it what possessed me to do it, and I remember you driving back to the Inn, but I forgot everything else, so try tell me as nice as possible, how bad everything was?” she asked. Just as she asked, I could see David, the Josepanian, coming out of the building. Pepper immediately got excited and started running around him. “David’s coming,” I slowly tell Kate. “Do you want me to tell or just leave it when we can talk later?” I asked her. She shrugged. “He’ll find out anyway when things will get weird on Monday, so just let him know it now,” she said.

“Hey guys, are you all okay? You seemed distraught last night by something?” David said as he approached us, in a mix of avoiding Pepper and trying to also pet him without getting him too excited, because then he would just jump on him. Kate shrugged and growled, which made me smirk. “Eh, it’s okay. It will be fine. Kate just discovered last night that alcohol and too many feelings are bad,” I say and she looked at me with big eyes. “Was it really that bad?” she asked again. “Well, I was with David here and the Radilan at the pool table, but from what I understood, you were talking with Spencer and midtalk you decided to kiss him,” I say and she just covered her eyes with her hands and blushed. “Fuck my life,” she just moaned. “He quickly ran away and when we arrived, you held me a huge speech about how ashamed you are and about how you made everything weird now,” I continued. She moaned and then left out a growl of frustration. David looked confused at us. “A classic case of unrequited crush,” I say in a matter-of-fact way as if I was a narrator of a shitty movie. David frowned and slowly nodded pensively. “Are you okay?” he asked Kated. She shrugged. “Yeah, just hungover and ashamed. I know I should speak with Spencer with this to ensure that we’re good and it was just an alcohol infuse impulse and I hope nothing worse will happen,” she said. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll speak with him too,” I add. David nodded again slowly and then looked at his clock. “Sorry to rush you guys, but I have to go to the high school, because I promised Principal Ponoka that I will help her and the administrator sort out the library today,” he said. I looked at him weirdly. “But it’s the weekend,” I say. “Yeah, I know, but she asked me to help so it’s ready for Monday,” he continued, apologizing. “I need to get back downtown to get my car and then go home,” Kate said. “Do you want me to drive you?” David asked and she was a bit surprised but nodded in approval. Remembering life in the Silver City High School ten years ago made we wonder how much truly that library was frequented by students and if it truly was important for it to be ready by Monday, but I just shrugged. Who knows, maybe things have changed in the meantime. I gave them my goodbyes and then I had to pretty much run after Pepper to bring him back in his pen.

After lunch I spent an hour or two with Amber and Verne, who were cleaning the patio and the sauna and I was pretty much just talking and chatting with them, which was always the perfect excuse for Verne to take breaks because of his back pains, to the much annoyance of Amber. “Have you ever felt, that if you return to a place that you left many years ago, it’s like you go back in time and everything starts to feel like it was right before you left?” I ask and they both looked at me. “Did you touch again Medeea’s stash?” Amber asked me and I rolled my eyes. “Well, I would need to leave first to really feel it,” Verne said. “You do, you leave every summer,” I say and he looked at me with dead eyes and nodded. “Truth be told, when I return, nothing really feels changed here,” he answered back. “No, I mean not just a few months, I mean after years. Hell, it’s been 9 years since I graduated and yet I feel, life changed so much, but now that I returned, it’s like relieving the Senior year,” I say stressing more on what I wanted to say the first time.

Amber put the mop down. “Drew, you literally spend most of your time with Kate, whom from what I understood even slept over,” Amber started saying but was interrupted by Verne. “And oh boy, from what I heard, it was a steamy night,” he said, laughing. I just rolled my eyes again and Amber walloped him to keep him quiet. “What I mean, is that you are back with the same group that you knew from before. Me, this lazy asshole here, your mother, Alana, the people at the Pour Authority, hell, even Sheriff Mason,” she said, continuing and ignoring the grumbling comments of Verne. “Of course, it would feel like returning back in time, the next thing you’ll tell me is you want to join the local hockey team and I will really believe you’re relieving the Senior year, because you’ll find about half of your class mates there,” she said. “Not only them, but there’s new people too,” I interject, “like David, like Sander, like Spencer,” I added. Amber shrugged. “You really need closure with Kate and let her live her life too and you to live yours. I have no idea what happened last night, but if it is what Verne said, it’s bad and it shouldn’t have happened,” she said and I rose from the banister I was sitting on, defensively. “Nothing happened. We got drunk, she tried her luck with a guy and he rejected her, so I took her here, but nothing happened,” I say apologetically. “If you say so… the idea is, you need to understand you have history and you need to understand you must leave the past be the past, because let’s be honest, yes, you were quite the duo back then, but I remember how things were without the rosy stained glasses nostalgia gives you and I must say, it was extasy and agony, and yet, much more agony than the latter, so I’d say, just leave it be. Keep the friendship, but give yourself and her some space,” she continued. “I did my best to show that I am only for a friendship with her,” I say, feeling accused and starting to worry that I might have acted like an ass. “How could I show her that it’s all in the past?” I ask and look Amber in the eyes. “Find someone else. Be with someone else. I remember Kate, as much as she was calculated she was with her head in the clouds and benight too, so probably you can do your best by showing that you’re unavailable with that. In such a way, maybe she will wake up and understand she too has to move on. Believe me, I’ve seen you two together and it would be much healthier this way,” Amer said.

I left them to continue their cleaning and I checked my phone. The common chat I had with Kate and Spencer was dead. I wanted to see Spencer. We had planned some time ago an evening at the Inn, but now I feared Spencer won’t come and any real connection I would have with him came through Kate. At the same time, as shitty as last night was, Kate had a social network that would support her. She had Anne, he best friend from School, she had even my parents, her own, when they weren’t shitty. Spencer had nobody close and Cedar City was far away. I decided to message him: Hey, are you okay? I text him. I’m here if you want to talk about anything. I say and I immediately regret it, as I felt it might have sounded a bit too cheesy and cringe. I’m decent, thx. He texted back and then I saw he was writing some more. Could have done a lot of things better to be fair, he continued. Do you want to come by the Pronghorn? I texted back, hoping it would be a positive answer from him. I’m good, I don’t want to interfere and make things weird, he quickly answered. I started to get annoyed and at the same time anxiety was building in me and for the first time I was panicking that it might be a very real possibility that I might never see him if this goes on. You can’t ever make things weird. Kate said she won’t come, as she has to sort some stuff up back home, I text him. You need something to relax too, come to the sauna at the Inn, we’ll sweat off all the weirdness, I say and I flood him with some smileys. He takes his time a bit and I see he is writing and stopping as the pop us with the dots appears and disappears. I have no swimsuit, he finally texted back. No need, we’ll have towels, I text back. I’d say it’s a better option than sulking away with the sad bastards the Pattersons are, isn’t it? I send him another message and this time he quickly texts back. You’re right there. Okay, sold. I’ll be there at about 8 or so, he texted back. I felt like a weird kid again, energic and happy, ready to jump around. I shocked Verne and Amber as I just rushed upstairs and nearly crashed into my mom and Medeea as they were taking some bedsheets to be washed.

I went to my room and took a shower and then I spent the next three hours pacing myself. That didn’t last long, because after half an hour I just opened NATFLICK and watched two episodes of You are Tuning in, a sitcom about the crazy and idiotic crew of a fictional NBC radio station, when I heard knocks on my door. I went and opened it and was surprised to see Spencer there. “Sorry if I barged in, I never visited someone in a hotel,” he said, smirking and blushing a bit. “It’s okay,” I say, but he continued. “I think it was your mother who said I should just go up and look for room 12,” he added. “It’s okay, welcome to the abode,” I say as I widen the open door and let him in. “It’s not much, some have a bedroom, a lounge and stuff, I have only a double room a bathroom and a shared dining… hall,” I say. “At least you don’t have to cook,” he said as he came in. He took off his coat and put it on my bed. He was wearing some dark blue denims, and had a beige hoodie on him. “How did you arrive?” I asked him and he looked at me weird. “I walked?” he responded like he was questioning my sanity. “It’s just two houses away,” he added. “Yeah, but it’s Silver City, between these two houses you could have met with bears,” I say, a bit jokingly. “Don’t they hibernate in winter?” he asked me back much more serious than I expected. “I meant of the human kind. Who knows who shots you here because they think you’re a vagrant,” I say. He shook his head and sat on the small chair by my desk. “This place is weird as fuck,” he said. “I’ll be honest, after nearly a decade of Cedar City, I find it weird, alien yet familiar too,” I added. He nodded. I could observe he had something on his mind, as usually he was much more talkative and loved to make jokes or mock everything he could. “Are you ready for a spa?” I say and he smiled. “Well, don’t imagine a fancy one, just a sauna,” I added laughing. He nodded and rose up. I presented him the towels and he took off his hoodie, under which he didn’t wear anything and then went to the bathroom to take off his trousers and undies, while I did it in the same in the room. By the time he came out, shirtless, only with a towel around his waist that was wide enough to cover him down to his knees, I myself was putting my clothes in the wardrobe and I was handing his coat.

We went down and then went into the small hall that had the sauna and also a door leading to the patio outside. The general coolness inside the building, was contrasted to the strong heat emanating from the sauna. I was glad I asked Amber to turn it on beforehand and I didn’t have to wait for it now. We went inside and he sat beside me on the 2nd of the three rows of wood each higher one offering you higher temperatures. I poured some of the water on the hot stones and the sizzling I always loved left behind the dense vapors that already made me sweat. I think I was much more used to it than him and I found a bit of discomfort in the coolness I felt around my feet, so I went one seat higher. I looked at him. He was breathing slowly, and his skin was glistening, showing that he was sweating too. I always imagined he was lanky and skinny, but he had a light athletic build, with his pecs standing out a little and a shy four pack showing up too. On the other hand, I was bigger, as my own job asked it of me, but as much as I had more muscle, I never cared of having abs.

“Jesus Christ this is fucking nice,” he slowly muttered. “There was this place in Renton, that had an Olympic pool, where my dad sent me to swimming classes when I was little, and I continued to go there in my teenage years before moving downtown and I just loved so much the sauna,” he said. “I did love them too, but if I’m honest I used only this one, because every time I was at the gym in Cedar City, they were always so overcrowded that I avoided them,” I say and Spencer slowly laughed. After about ten minutes, I invited him outside to cool off a bit before going in again.

We went out on the patio, and I always loved how it felt when I could feel the heat emanating out of myself. It started snowing and a little started to gather on the patio’s banister. I looked towards the backyard, leading to the woods and the flops which were further away. But when a snowball hit me in the back. “You said you wanted to cool, innit?” Spencer said impishly. “Jesus! That was horrid!” I say and I quickly form a snow ball and throw it at him by he ducks. I run to him and catch him as I try to do what we used to call a snow shower, just pretty much smearing as much snow as possible on someone, as he fights back we end up wresting and we fall, laughing, into a pile of snow that Verne built after he continuously cleaned it off the patio after the last snow showers. We help each other to raise up. “Let’s go back, it’s fucking freezing,” Spencer says, still laughing and I was loving the big smile he was having. I let him go on first and I remain behind a little to turn on the hot tub. It was used my many clients, so it was always filled up with water and had a system that kept its water above freezing point so as to not freeze, and it was always checked by Medeea to be completely clean. I just turned it on to heat its water.

I follow Spencer to the sauna, where this time, he sat on the upmost row too. He did look tired and exhausted, probably didn’t sleep much last night, but still I feel the energy boost raised his morale. As I sat myself beside him, I allowed my eyes fall a bit on him a bit. His chest was covered by some light short hair, showing that he was trimming it and he had a happy trail going down. “It’s really nice, I can’t believe I was ready to say no to this,” he says. “Thanks for the invite,” he added. I blushed a little, and I didn’t know what to say. “No worries, after last night, I just wanted to make sure we’re alright,” I say and he becomes alert and turns his head towards me. “Yeah…” he says a bit unsure of himself and I just regretted it. “We as in you and me,” I say. “I can’t allow local drama push away someone that shares my love for Cedar City,” I say jokingly and he smirks. “To be fair, I never expected someone here to be into Cedar City. I received only hate about it before you appeared,” Spencer said, going back to being relaxed, closing his eyes. “At least you’re from Cedar City. I am worse, I am a Cedarite wannabe, which Silver City folk would hate,” I say and Spencer laughs. “You’re right, Broadmoor,” he says and I laugh. “But to be fair, it’s quite a beautiful country here. Ignoring the cold, I love these snow heavy winters here, compared to the rainy and dreary winters in Cedar City,” he added. “You’re right, Renton, there’s that to Silver City at least,” I say and it made Spencer laugh again. We spend about a quarter of an hour when we decided to cool off again.

“Want to mix the warmth of the sauna with the winter wonderland outside?” I ask and he looks at me perplexed. “At the same time?” he asked and I nodded. “We have a hot tub on the patio,” I say. We go outside and point him to is, with the hot water emanating steam, as I uncovered when we cooled off before, and that is why he probably ignored it before. “I’d love to, but I have no swimsuit,” he said, looking down at his now wet towel. I didn’t think of that, but then I had an idea and as much as it got me excited, I feel it was a make it or break it moment. “Did you play any sport in high school or college?” I asked him. “Yeah, soccer,” he said and I smiled. “Then probably you got used to showing afterwards, so it should be no problem,” I say as I take the lead and just take off my towel, going in naked. “The water’s nice, and in the end, you don’t need a bath suit when you have Adam’s suit,” I say and I could see a smile transforming into an impish grin on him. He took off his towel too and he joined me.

“This really is nice,” he said as he was relaxing in the water and using the towel as a pillow by the edge of the tub. The light snowflakes were melting as they were reaching the area of the tub, but the nighttime panorama, with the moon reflecting its light on the snow made it quite nice. “It’s very quiet here,” he said, pointing towards the hotel. “Yeah, it’s because we had another red snowstorm alert, so again people got scared the slopes would be closed until after it passes,” I say. I put my head back and looked at the sky and the peaks and I really hoped I wasn’t into Kate’s trap, but when I opened my eyes, I felt he was eyeing me, which to my shame excited me a bit. I turned away this line of thought because I didn’t want to make it weird, plus I also had a mission, to ensure that last night won’t push him away from us.

“Speaking of quietness, you were quite quiet about last night,” I say and I feel he tensed again. “Yeah, I am a bit ashamed,” he said. “I feel I lead Kate on and then I rejected her, which just made everything worse,” he continued. “Why do you think that?” I asked him and he shrugged. “Look, before you came, she was the first one to get close to me and not give me shit as the pussy coastal as many did here, so of course I wanted to be close to her, as she was not the best but the only friend, I made beside you. But I always wanted to see her a friend. I didn’t want to make it weird, especially as we work together too,” he said. “Look, you don’t need to punish yourself like that. I took Kate and she suffered her hangover here. Don’t worry about it all. She fears she made everything weird, but she too doesn’t want to push you away. She doesn’t want to make it weird. It was just the alcohol taking control of her,” I say. He looks at me and I could see how tired he was. “I’d like to believe that and not have it weird from now,” he said and I nodded. “She was a bit ashamed of it all, so probably on Monday she might come clear,” I say and I wanted to continue, but someone was coming out and I started panicking, fearing that it might have been a customer who remained and we would weird him out.

It was even worse, out of all persons, it was my dad. “Ah, Drew and…oh,” he said and made a short break. “I was just visiting your mother and…” he then looked towards the tub and observed we were naked. “Oh… yeah… sorry, I won’t disturb you…” he said and he just made a U turn and went back into the house. I went red as a lobster and Spencer could barely hold his laughter. “He seems chill enough,” he says and I just shook my head because everything about this interaction was just too weird. “I should be going too, because it’s getting late and I don’t want to have the fucking Pattersons lock their door on me,” he added as he went out.​

 

[Josepania]

David

I sipped the coffee from my thermos, hoping that it plus the aspirin plus the slamming a glass of orange juice a few hours earlier was enough to kill my headache. It was mild compared to early in the morning, but the pain was an unwelcome distraction from being with Kate, an extraordinarily unintended consequence of my impulse to be generous in helping her get back to her car. I wasn't fully certain where that confidence came from, but I wasn't about to question the results as we walked out of the Inn and to the parking lot where my old

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was, absolutely covered with snow from the night before. A few more minutes passed of me scraping the ice off the windows in relative silence, Kate preferring to take in the surrounding morning and deal with her own awful hangover. That was fine by me, she had definitely been through enough the night before, and I still needed to piece together where things truly stood... and where I was in all of this.

'Can you... not think like that for a moment, please? Just shut up and get the poor woman to her car and get on with your day already.' I mentally berated myself as I struggled to get the last of the ice off, finally with some success. "Ok... your chariot awaits, ma'am." I said as I, semi-flamboyantly, held open the passenger door for Kate in a chivalric gesture.

She looked momentarily unsure of how to handle this, before deciding to just accept it with a small smile and easing into the car. I'd have preferred a little less hesitation, but the fact she got inside at all without thinking I was too much of a weirdo was enough of a win for me, and I got into the driver's seat to turn the car on, cranking the heat and defroster as high as they could go.

"Alrighty... Pour Authority..." I muttered as I typed in the address in my phone's map app, still not fully clear of where everything was being the new kid in town, and simultaneously not wanting to go down the generic dude route of winging it and looking like a generic idiot in the process. But while I was entering the information and getting the directions, my music app started automatically playing the next song through my car's speakers, and

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Cursing under my breath in Ebrian I changed to the app as quickly as I could to pause the song, as this was not what needed to play right now given the circumstances. I finally managed to fumble my way into silencing the song before the goopy, over-the-top romantic lyrics started, and breathed a sigh of embarrassed relief. I glanced over at Kate who was observing the whole affair with something between amusement and bemusement, the ratio of which I could neither tell nor truly cared to.

After an awkward pause I gave a wry grin and said, "Technical difficulties, your DJ is still waking up. Please stand by."

The self-deprecation seemed to help ease the tension a little bit, and as I somewhat less frantically scrolled through my liked songs for something not romantic, Kate mentioned, "Got any Natalian classics in there, Mr. DJ?"

I paused for a quick moment, feeling myself transition briefly into work mode as I went through my mental rolodex before remembering what I heard on Musikk TV yesterday on the way to the school, and I grinned in small triumph. "Actually, yes, one of my favorites in fact." A quick search later, and

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was playing on the speakers to the satisfaction of both of us. Finally, the car got moving.

"This is a favorite song of yours?" Kate asked, easing back into her seat and closing her eyes to ward off some of the pain as I made my way downtown.

"Yeah, my dad played this all the time while I was growing up. CCR's one of the first ever bands I had listened to as a kid. I think my father had a soft spot for Natalian music in general." I replied, smiling as the pleasant memories came back of him blasting CCR on the radio as he drove me everywhere. It was a nice change of pace from the more recent ones I was used to having.

"There it is then." Kate stated matter of factly, so abruptly it dragged me out of my daydreaming.

"Huh?"

"The real reason why you moved here. You just wanted to listen to Natalian Classic Rock 24/7 at the source."

I paused for a brief moment, wondering if she was serious, then quickly realized she was joking and let out a chuckle, holding my hands up in surrender ever so briefly as I stopped at an intersection. "Guilty as charged, officer. Shall I step out of the car now?" I very briefly made to open my driver's door but stopped at the last moment.

Kate quietly laughed back and replied, "Not until we get to my squad car, so just keep driving and I'll book you there."

"Yes ma'am." I answered back, and started driving again. "Thanks for inviting me last night, really appreciated you giving me a chance to hang out with you and the others, make me feel more welcome here."

There was a mild pause, as that definitely brought back some unwelcome memories for Kate, but maybe not as sharp as they could've been. "I'm glad you had a good time, though I'm sorry it ended a bit abruptly."

"There's nothing you need to be sorry about." I interrupted. "You didn't do anything wrong. From what I gathered, it's just a misunderstanding that'll be fixed by tomorrow, I'm sure."

"Pretty awkward misunderstanding... I was an idiot, no idea how I got it so wrong..." Kate muttered, her shame clearly inflaming her hangover and causing some more pain.

I hesitated, trying to figure out what the right thing to say was, before deciding on, "Could be worse. Could've figured out you were wrong a few years in when the warning signs were right there from day one."

That caused an awkward silence to fall on the car as CCR did its best to fill the void with music. I immediately regretted opening up that particular wound in my head as memories, both good and bad, started creeping back in, while I was doing my best to focus on the road. Still, I couldn't help but remember her laugh, the fights we had, that ring I bought her, the phone call ending it all, each one fuzzy but far too vivid for comfort.

"I take it that comes from personal experience?" Kate finally broke the silence and halted the train of thought.

"... yeah. Four and a half years to be precise, almost to the day. Got engaged too, the result of a mid-twenties couple thinking that would fix things." I snorted with bitter laughter at that thought. "Turns out it only prolonged the inevitable and made the result that much more unpleasant." Strangely, talking to Kate about it didn't seem... quite as hard as I expected. Still not fun nor my first choice of topic, but the words came out a bit easier than I anticipated. "I don't say this to diminish your own pain, not in the slightest. What happened sucked, and you're right to feel awful about it... but it's not your fault, and you didn't do anything wrong. You just thought you knew something that turned out to not be the case, but it's ok, because you found out now before it got worse, and you still have the opportunity to be friends despite that. It's cold comfort, but something to hang onto if nothing else."

She seemed to become pensive after that, maybe even study me a little bit more closely than before. I couldn't fully tell as I kept my eyes on the road while we neared our destination, and I don't think I really wanted to know, as there was a mild tinge of embarrassment from me for daring to reveal something like that about myself. But, there it was, and however she wanted to take it was in her hands.

"I'm sorry you went through that." She said softly, and the tenderness in those words hit a little deeper than I expected, causing some of that tightness in the chest to come in again and require a bit more willpower than usual to keep it under control.

"Thank you. It was a learning experience, that's what I'm telling myself at any rate." I replied, turning on the main street and now driving slowly so that it was easier for Kate to recognize her car. When she did, I parked behind it and followed up my response, "You all kept asking why I moved out here, why here in particular. I wasn't lying when I said it was a change of scenery. I just... am not ready to fully say what I wanted to move away from, not to a lot of people anyway. I'm still figuring it out myself to be honest." I sighed and turned back to Kate, looking directly at her with a reinforced seriousness, "But I am glad I'm here, I'm glad I met you all last night, and most importantly I don't want to take away anything you're feeling right now. Just... know it's going to be ok, I promise."

I ended with a warm smile, one that could overcome the mild bitterness that was rising in me, and I hoped that she could see it was genuine. It seemed like it, and she returned the smile with a nod. "Ok... thank you for driving me."

"Happy to help. Speaking of, need any more help right now? I recall I gotta be arrested for my crime of coming here for the music." I replied with my goofy grin coming back, causing her to giggle a little and return a tinge of happiness to the scene.

"Naw... you've decided to make home here, that's punishment enough. I'll let you off with a warning, but just this one time." She then gathered her belongings in front of her, "I'll see you tomorrow, then?"

I smiled again and nodded, "You can count on it."

She exited the car, and I started putting in the directions for the high school, both to make sure I knew where I was going, and also to have a moment to deal with the far too complex torrent of emotions running through my head at the moment. I hoped work with reorganizing the library could take my mind off of things for awhile as it usually does, and that at some point it'd stop being so pervasive in my head. But moments like these... gave me maybe a little hope even through friendship it could happen.

 

[Natal]

Kate

The rest of Saturday was decent. Going to town with David cleared up my mind and probably he might be one of the pillars that can help me with everything. He said he wants to escape the past in Josepania, and I now feel a bit of an embroglio. Getting closer to a new acquaintance might be the perfect thing, as it’s like starting tabula rasa, with no history. Also, he’s a bit of a funny goofball too, when he wants, as much as he is quite reserved and mysterious at other times. Maybe I felt a little that he exaggerated with mocking himself for listening to some sappy and cheesy music, but eh, probably being able to mock yourself truly is a sign of intelligence and of being more laidback. That is something dearly needed in this dear shithole, Silver City. Too many serious people who think they are important and I feel sometimes I fall into that too.

I woke up on Sunday, by around 9am, and I was unsure if somehow the hangover was continuing into its second day or what I was feeling was actually just existential dread. I feel I should be used to the latter by now, but somehow, mixed with a continued hangover, it just made everything worse. I woke up from my bed, back in my parents’ house, and I went to the bathroom to pee and brush my teeth. The bathroom was feeling humid so I opened up the small window there and I could hear my dad whistling a song outside.

“There’s my princess,” my dad said as he saw me coming out the house. I put on some thick jogger pants, and a jacket and went out to see him. “You seem happy,” I say. He smirked and returned to shoving snow off the patio. “I’m 66 soon. If I begin to sour now, I’ll be like this for the last part of my life and I really don’t want that,” he said and I raised an eyebrow. “Hm… weird to hear that coming from you,” I say and he laughed. “Look, I may be liking my beers more than it might be healthy, but I really want to not…” and he stopped. “I don’t want to be miserable,” he said. “You don’t want to be like mom,” I said and he shrugged. “I think something changed in me a few days ago. I don’t want to push her. I want to enjoy life for myself too, rather than let her be this anchor that pulls me into the abyss,” he said, much more serious now. “Am I a monster for thinking like this?” he then asked me. I thought a bit about it, but I did remember how it was before my mother fell into quite a strong depression. There were happy days when we were functional and nice family and afterwards, days in which my mother felt like smiling, saying something nice, finding something positive in life and even rising from her bed felt like the most difficult things to do in life. For some years my dad tried to do his best to raise her morale, only to just get more and more sour himself. By now, I could only respect his decision and be thankful that if anything he wants to take care of himself too. “Nah, you need to take care of yourself too,” I say and he nodded and smiled at me, before returning to shoveling the snow.

I went back inside and, in the kitchen, I turned on the espresso machine to make us two coffees, over which I poured some milk. I came back outside and offered him one, before seating myself on the patio’s banister as he was continuing to shovel snow. “I feel I made grave mistakes in the past 48 hours,” I say and he looked at me confused. He took a sip of the warm coffee and nodded thankful of it. “What do you mean? If you’re pregnant, just know, we will accept it even if you’re not married and will aid you in raising them,” he said and when he saw my shocked face he started laughing. “Not funny…” I mutter. “But thanks…” I then added and took a sip of the coffee too. In the still cold environment, it felt warming to feel the hot liquid.

“Have you ever been rejected?” I asked and he stopped shoveling looking at me confused, before laughing. “A lot of times. Most of the times. Actually, it was only one woman who didn’t reject me and that is your mother. Maybe that says a lot about me or not, but the idea is that yes, I can remember some nasty feelings coming from all that,” he said, trying to be supportive. “I feel I made a big mistake,” I added and he smirked some more. “Honey, you made a big mistake when you got hooked by the Stone kid, for you both were just… too much. Did all the shit possible and were a nightmare for a teenager,” he added. “Thanks… but calling me out on past loves, as much as they were disastrous, doesn’t help,” I say sarcastically. I observed that he continued to listen to me, so I carried on. “The thing is, I feel I lied to myself thinking that a crush I had was mutual, and when alcohol took over, I made a step, kissed this guy, he freaked out and ran away,” I say with probably a tone that made me sound like the most miserable person alive. My dad could only laugh. “You do sound miserable. A miserable 12-year-old,” he said rolling his eyes. “You need to get a grip on this, Katy. It was just a rejection, no need to push yourself down so much on this…” he said and paused for a little. “If he’s like the Stone kid, thank god he said no,” he added laughing. And I just shook my head in disbelief and annoyance. “Look, I understand it feels like shit, but you need to man up now and care more of the people that truly care of you,” he added and this time I nodded. “I do fear though that it will be weird at school,” I say and he looked at me confused. “He’s Spencer, the new IT teacher,” I say and he just smirked again, this time irritating me more and more. “You need to sort that. Workplace relationships are hell,” he said.

I left him to shovel the snow and returned in the house. I observed that mom was still sleeping, so I just sat in the living room, turning on the TV and absently watching some morning talk show, which in the end was just white noise for me as I took my phone and navigated through some twatter posts. I was thinking of doing something to make sure that Monday wasn’t weird, so I should message Spencer, apologize, and hopefully he’s fine with it all. I opened up my chat with him and the last messages were about how we couldn’t wait to enjoy a spa evening at the Pronghorn Inn, but then I fucked everything up and ran away. I wrote a message that I then deleted because I felt it was too brief and impersonal. I then wrote another that I deleted because I felt I was just losing myself in shitty details that had nothing to do with Friday evening. I wrote another afterward, but I deleted it then because I found it weird. I saw Spencer got active in it and I feared he might see the icon of me typing again and again, so I stopped.

Immediately, my phone vibrated. My heart started going crazy, but it was only David, not Spencer. I breathed in relief, much more relaxed. I never would have imagined to have been this happy to receive a message from someone that I felt was still as much a foreigner as he was building up towards being a friend. Are you better today, he texted, asking me but ignoring some question marks, I thought smirking, happy it was him. Better, yeah. Do you have any plans for today or do you want to waste your weekend in that moldy library again? I asked and I added a tongue in cheek emoji to understand I wasn’t being aggressive. No plans today. The Pronghorn is filling up with tourists again and it’s quite the agitation here, he texted back. Do you want to escape a bit to downtown? I asked. Is there a lot actually to see there? he asked with some laughing emojis. It’s Silver City. I won’t comment on that. But we can get a coffee and make fun of the tourists, I say. Yeah, we can do that, he texted back.

To my surprise, I was quite happy and hyped of it all, somehow the weirdness with Spencer moving to the back of my head and I just decided to leave the issues of Monday to Monday. We decided to meet up in about an hour, so I went and cleaned up a bit in the bathroom. I then went downstairs where my dad was making a coffee for my mom so I decided to bring it to her. She was still sleeping, so I left it on her night stand and kissed her goodbye. I then dressed up in a cardigan and some jeans and then put on a vest too, and left.

I drove all the way downtown and managed to find a spot right in front of the Pour Authority to park. The Form&Function was the nicest cafe in Silver City and by this hour, at 11am on a Sunday, was beginning to crowd. I managed to find a place to sit outside, by the tables which were on the pavement. Even if we were in the dead winter, because of the radiators and the heaters that were situated a little over your head, if you kept on your coat, it was decent, especially as you were sipping on a hot drink too.

I sat and a waiter didn’t manage to come to me as I could see the ancient car David was driving coming down the road. He saw my car and parked behind it. When he got out, I waved at me, which he observed, to my joy because I didn’t want to shout at him on the street and we was coming towards me.

„I do wonder, how did that car manage to cross the Granites,” I say jokingly. He smiled and shrugged. „It does its job, but to be fair, you weren’t picky yesterday,” he said as he took a seat. „There was no seating inside?” he asked and I observed he was shivering a bit. „No...” I say as I looked through the window inside. „And sadly, no other better coffee spot. That’s why it’s so crowded too,” I add. „Eh, it’s okay,” he said, and I felt there was a hint of disappointment in him. I rose up and fiddled with the radiator, turned it to max power. „It will warm up in a bit more,” I say.

We were talking and joking a bit of the whole disaster from Friday, when a waitress came. „I’d like a big latte, but can you make it decaf?” I asked her. She quickly nodded and scribbled on a small notepad. „I’ll take an Occidentano,” David said, and then stopped. „Do you have any bread pudding?” he then asked. „Yeah, at the moment either simple to which you can add maple syrup, or with raisins. In about 15 minutes or so we will have some with dried peaches and forest fruit too,” the waitress quickly responded, a bit absently. „Can we have two simple ones?” he asked and then looked at me. „Or do you want with raisins?” he asked and I felt a bit blushing, being taken a bit by surprise, albeit a good one as I skipped breakfast and I could feel peckish. „Simple will be perfect,” I said. The waitress quickly scribbled and then left. “Decaf?” he asked me. “Yeah, I had two coffees back home, having a chat with my dad, so I decided I’ll drink this only because I love its taste, especially if its silky and creamy, when it’s with milk,” I say and he smiled. “I do love how you literally lightened up and smiled just by thinking of it when describing something that can be as random as a coffee,” he said and I laughed, feeling I am blushing a bit. “Eh, sometimes I like enjoying myself, I’m not the loose cannon you saw in the past days. And when I like something, I really do,” I say.

We didn’t have to wait for long until the waitress brought us our coffees and the cakes. “Heh, bread pudding. It’s been years since I had some,” I say, more to myself. “How did you know of it?” I asked David. “Eh, I did some research before. As I knew how to stay away from the Granite Oysters, I also knew to remain close to the bread pudding,” he said, smirking.

“So, how do you find it?” I ask him, while taking a sip of my steaming coffee and pouring some maple sirup on the pudding. “The pudding? I haven’t tried it yet,” he said, smirking some more and I just rolled my eyes. “I meant more like Natal and Silver City and everything,” I said. David stopped and looked around. “To be fair, it’s nice, although a bit cold. Wages are a bit smaller here than back home, but prices at the same time, are much smaller than in Los Santos. I checked some real estate around, and I feel I could buy a quarter of Silver City with the price of a house in West Palmwood,” he said. I laughed. “I’d honestly not curse you into buying property in Silver City,” I say. “Everyone here gazes towards Colter in the hopes they end up there,” I say. “Eh, Colter wasn’t that bad either, even if I say prices were going up. I’ve seen Cedar City being horrendous price wise. But it’s not only that. It feels like a decent place. Unsure what I’ll think of it in a month or a year, but now, it feels decent. I interacted with some of the people at the Pronghorn. There are these two workers there, an old guy who always moans that he has lumbago and clearly uses it to skive work, and this native lady who always cusses him. And of course, the two matriarchs, the Stone lady and an angry Pelasgian lady. It feels like the setting of a sitcom, honestly, but I quite enjoy it,” David said.

I took one more sip of the coffee when my attention was caught by the dark blue Hartnett SUV Drew was driving as it came down the main street. He parked in the only free space remaining free by now, which was right behind David’s car, which also meant that he could clearly see us when he got out. I somehow hoped he didn’t come to us, to my shock, David waved at him. Drew waved back and came to us precipitously.

“Hi guys, what’s up?” he asked but he seemed weird and nervous. “Are you okay?” I asked him and he shrugged. “Yeah, I’m fine, it was just a weird evening,” he said and concerned me, because the idea of weird evenings begins to be a thing in this weekend. “What happened?” David asked too. “You remember we were talking of coming to the Pronghorn to its spa?” he asked me. “Yeah, but I told you I won’t come because I didn’t want to make things weird,” I said. “Well, you don’t need to worry about that anymore, because Spencer came and we talked and he too said he’s a bit ashamed of it all, and wants to leave it all behind and return to normal,” he said. I really felt something heavy taken off my shoulders as he said that. Thank God. I was fearing he will hate me and I thought I destroyed it all.

“So why are you pacing?” David asked him, clearly observing Drew as incredibly nervous. “We were talking and sitting on the patio, just after we got out of the sauna, and my dad randomly appeared out of nowhere,” he said. I was a bit shocked too, but David didn’t understand. “And what’s wrong about that?” he asked. Drew was a bit exasperated. “The deal is that he and Alana don’t get along, and he prefers to stay at the Pour Authority and the old family house they have downtown, while Alana stays at the Inn,” I explained to David. “It’s pretty big,” I add. “They used to argue a lot, very badly,” Drew said too. “But still, why are you pacing like crazy?” I asked him again. “I need to speak with my dad. I have no idea for how long he was there and how much he heard and saw of me and Spencer, before running away when we observed him,” Drew said and I just felt he was cryptic and it just confused the hell out of me.

“What do you mean, how much he heard or seen?” I asked, but that is when Aaron came out to change some poster put beside the door at the Pour Authority, which was just a few tens of meters down from us. I waved at him and Drew’s dad waved back. David waved shyly and Drew just nodded. “So?” I asked him, but he didn’t take notice. “I have to go,” he said and he waved us goodbye, going towards the bar.

“That was weird,” David said. “Yeah… like I said, welcome to Silver City…” I said. “Do you have other plans for today?” I asked him as I took another sip of my coffee, which by now was cold.​

 

[Josepania]

David

The question took me a bit by surprise, as I was still focused on the retreating Drew, uncertain of what exactly had just happened. I didn't fully buy his explanation of the drama between his parents being the reason for his odd, nervous demeanor, and his mentioning of being heard and seen with Spencer got both my attention and Kate's as did his not answering it. At this point, I could only assume his father was overly concerned about how Spencer had treated Kate on Friday, but that didn't fully add up to me either... so it was with all that running through my head when Kate asked if I had any further plans for the day, and I felt myself begin to panic as I sipped on my lukewarm Occidentano to buy time and think.

The truth was that I had been thinking about going to a hockey game in Colter, where the Colter Avalanche were playing against the Gold Bay Sharks, my favorite Natalian hockey team given its proximity to Josepania, and the game promised to be a fun experience regardless of the result and be my first hockey game in years... but her question, to me, was an invitation to spend more time with her, an invitation I simply could not pass up. But I had truly no idea what else to do in Silver City, which was... comparatively boring when put against any Josepanian city let alone my home in Los Santos... wait a minute...

"Well..." I began, frantically coming up with how exactly to propose this without being too forward, "I had been thinking about going to a hockey game in Colter later today. The Avalanche will be hosting the Sharks, and I'd love to see a game in person while I got some free time... did you want to come along? Tickets are cheap, it'd be my treat."

It was a gamble, this was an escalation of whatever we were doing now in regards to... intensity I guess. What even was this that we were on? Was it a date? Fuck if I know, and I'm not sure what she thought it was as well and dared not to try to figure that out. If she said no I was not sure what else I could propo-

"Huh... ok, yeah. That sounds like it could be fun." She responded, sending my out-of-control train of thought into a screeching halt as I considered the implications of this. "I can buy a ticket with you, that's not a problem. Did you want to take the Pass Runner there? Would be far less wear and tear on our cars."

My spirits soared as I soaked in her acceptance. It was already a thrill to go to a hockey game, now it'd be with her too. "Sure! I was thinking about using that anyway, but you've convinced me. Maybe we should get going now, just to make sure we're not late."

She agreed, and we quickly finished the remnants of our bread pudding and coffee to drive down to the train station. The timing was near perfect, for as we bought our tickets for the train and got on the platform, the train to Colter appeared, further convincing me that this was the best idea I had all day thus far.

On the train ride, in the middle of random talk about light topics, Kate asked, "What do you think Drew meant by how much his dad heard or saw with Spence?"

I paused, thinking carefully about how I wanted to respond. My theory about it relating to her was obviously no bueno to bring up, and besides it felt like a dumb theory to begin with. "I don't know... he was very nervous about it, though, and I get that there's a lot of family history of his I'm not familiar with, but it being about his parents makes no sense to me... It must be something he said to Spencer that could've upset his father, but I can't begin to speculate about that... would you know?"

She shook her head immediately, still clearly puzzled by the whole thing, but simultaneously pleased to see she wasn't alone in her confusion. The topic moved on and I felt relieved to have not made an idiot out of myself. Along the way we got the app for tickets through the Colter Avalanche and purchased two cheap, nosebleed tickets, with me trying to insist on paying for Kate's but her shutting that down decisively. I think she appreciated the effort, and didn't mind that I offered and persisted with it, but I knew better than to keep harping on it after a bit, so that it wasn't weird. What I was feeling with her was... nice. Relaxed, fairly minimal tension despite the lack of familiarity with each other. It was refreshing.

We eventually came into sight of Colter, and the view of the city nestled in the bosom of the Granite Mountains was still quite an impressive sight aesthetically. It was also, simultaneously, a bit of a let down to an urban Josepanian like myself, as it was so small to me... Los Santos was utterly sprawling in comparison, stretching beyond the horizons like it was a country in itself, whereas Colter seemed like it was barely big enough to fit in Downtown Los Santos, sitting within the mountains like they were city walls from medieval times back in Gallo-Germania. I kept that last bit to myself though as I looked out the window, looking vaguely like a tourist admiring the view. Was it a bit of show for Kate? Sure, but it was harmless, and I wasn't going to put down Natal anytime soon despite the Natalians' best efforts to ridicule me for choosing to live with them over staying in Josepania or, god forbid, moving east into humid and Frankish Acadiana.

We reached the main station, and I found myself pleased to see that the arena for the Colter Avalanche was almost across the street. "Man, that's such a nice change of pace..." I muttered, with Kate catching it and raising an eyebrow in puzzlement. "Presidential Union Station in Los Santos is nowhere near as close to the hockey arena like here, it's such a pain in the ass to get around that city sometimes, be it by public transport or bus. I'd have had to get on another line just to get to the stadium, but here, it's right in front of us."

"Is Los Santos that big?" Kate asked, clearly struggling to comprehend the size.

I nodded, "It's basically a country within a country. Makes the rest of Josepania feel much larger than it actually is, like it's a continent of its own. I'd need to explore more of Natal to see if it has the same vibe, especially Cedar City, but that's a trip for another day. In the meantime, we got some hockey to watch."

On the trip over, it had become clear that Kate never really got into hockey for much of her life, but she was meaning to give it a try, so my offer was a good excuse for her to check it out. Meanwhile, I had grown up going to a bunch of games down in Los Santos thanks to my dad, and also following the Natalian Hockey League alongside the Josepanian Hockey League. I'm sure she was going to be plenty surprised by my enthusiasm in the game when puck drop happened.

Sure enough, as soon as the game begun, I got invested in the game. And it was an excellent one from puck drop. The intensity of the players on the ice definitely was a nice surprise to me compared to back in Los Santos, where although the Seals there were my die hard childhood favorites and not necessarily bad, the Avalanche and Sharks took the game at another level of serious. The body checks were brutal but full of finesse, the passing was crisp, and the fans of the building were loud and invested, and I was too, cheering on the Sharks as much as I could while answering whatever questions Kate had about certain plays or penalties.

The first period seemed to go by in an instant, a goal from each team scored off of screened shots in the first ten minutes, and for the Sharks goal I jumped out of my seat and cheered like the rest of the Sharks faithful, high-fiving them with equal levels of glee and leaving Kate somewhat stunned by my enthusiasm. It felt like a return to the good old days when dad took me to games, watching the Los Santos Seals recreate magic on the ice. The second period was a much slower affair, full of plays blown dead due to offsides or penalties. But there was a point where a fight broke out, and I cheered on the Sharks player as he put up a good show against the Avalanche player, though the Avs came out on top of that particular tilt. The game went into the third period still tied at one, and it was a tense affair throughout, some mixture of the first and second as each team tried to find a way around both's defenses. Then, an Avalanche player got into a breakaway, just him and the goalie, and he deked the puck so magnificently that even when the Avs faithful erupted in cheers while the goal horn went off, I applauded in appreciation for the effort even though I knew that was a dagger into the heart of the Sharks team. In the last minute, the goalie was pulled, but an empty net goal sealed the fate of the Gold Bay Sharks, and that was game over.

Throughout the game, I alternated between watching the game intently and cheering on the Sharks and cursing the Avalanche, and talking with Kate about my observations of the whole affair, switching back and forth effortlessly between rabid fan and calm observer. I think my enthusiasm might've impressed her to some degree, or it could've made her think I was a lunatic and strange man. And yet... I felt like it was the former. She seemed to have fun, feeding off my energy and learning about the game, and even though the Sharks lost I still clearly had fun, as did she, all the while with us eating hot dogs, nachos, and drinking beer. It was a chance to forget the awkwardness of the Pour Authority, the uncertainty that followed thereafter. It was all just a chance to enjoy life together.

It was... different from what I was used to over the past few years. And as we walked back to the train station to head back to Silver City... I felt happy.

I hope dad enjoyed the game as much as I did...

 

[Natal]

Drew
Sunday 18th to Sunday 24th of February

I left Kate have her coffee with David, as nice as I could. As much as I would have enjoyed being with them and chilling a bit, I felt my stomach church and bouts of fever like sensations, why I knew they weren’t from any flu or cold, but rather anxiety. I wanted to speak with my dad and I wanted to make sure everything is okay. It stressed me out so much that I didn’t manage to sleep at all and while Spencer laughed it off and found my reaction and dad randomly appearing out of nowhere to be extremely funny, I could feel he was a bit concerned that I was going crazy with it all, especially as I felt this flood of anxiety and angst that I didn’t feel in more than ten years, like returning back to my late teenage years and I felt I was going insane. At this moment, I didn’t know what was stressing me out more, all my anxieties or the fact that I lost a night’s sleep right as I was starting night shifts in Silver City and clearly Mason will smack me if I sleep on the post.

I saw Kaileigh taking some cases of beer out of the Pour Authority, and putting them on the pavement, waiting for the waste truck for the recyclable materials and that was my cue that there is some activity in the Pour Authority, and that also means that dad is there too. My mom, or Medeea acted normal in the morning so I just needed to make sure my dad is okay and I just hope, everything is just in my head, a crazy scenario my anxiety is waving, rather than being sent to the guillotine, as I feel right now. I nodded as a goodbye to Kate and David, clearly observing they find me acting weird, but I had this on my mind and I must ensure there is no weirdness between me and dad and later, I can sort out the whole Kate-David thing too.

I leave them drinking their coffee and eating their bread pudding and I move towards the Pour Authority. Kaileigh greets me and I nod towards her back and then I enter the bar. I was weird to see it outside the working hours. So lightened up, so clean and filled with fresh aid, its like a completely different place from the one I’ve seen for nearly 30 years of my life.

My dad was at the bar, laughing as he was talking with a woman, with long blonde hair, facing him. She seemed familiar to me, even if she had her back turned to me. Oh no… it was Louise. Jesus, if she’s here, some stuff must be truly fucked. The last time I’ve seen her she was saying again and again that she’d die than return to Silver City from Cedar City. That makes two of us, I thought as I approached. We both said that, yet here we are, probably to the annoyance of both our parents.

“There he is!” dad said as he saw me approaching, making Luise turn, as she gave me an impish smile. “Andy!” she said as she approached to hug me. “Lulu!” I say, hugging her back. “You know I hate you calling me that,” she whispers as we continue to hug. “You know I do the same with Andy,” I say. Aaron was looking at us hugging and whispering and he just shook his head, muttering: “Jesus, it’s clear I failed with the first two, thank the Lord for Megan,” he said, referencing our youngest sister.

“Good to see you, brother, although it is weird seeing you here, in Silver City,” she said. “Yeah, things happened back in Cedar. What about you?” I asked her as we both sat in front of the bar, as Aaron joined Kaileigh to clean up and prepare for the opening. “Good… good.... I just wanted some time off so I called mom and dad to give me a bed for the weekend to escape the city for a bit,” she said and I looked at her circumspect. “Okay, Sunday and Monday, Tuesday I’ll be back, fine?” she said, as I continued to look concerned at her and when I rolled my eyes, she groaned. “Fine, I’m in talks with a Josepanian company that is interested in buying my business and they want me to be an associate. I hope they will buy it for about 2 million Dollars and make me an associate, fine?” she said, and then looked at me straight in the eyes in the fiercest way possible. “If you tell mom or dad of this before me, I’ll kill you and feed you to the bears here, you hear me?” she said threateningly and then relaxed when I nodded.

I did remember she initially had a startup company that created anti-wrinkle and hydrating face creams with pine and cedar essential oils, marketing them as being made with regional, local and seasonal goods, which it seems pushed her on the spotlight, having her company explode. Now her company was big on the coastal states and had their goods sold in the cosmetic isles of many of the supermarkets there. “Why don’t you want dad to know about you selling the business? They probably give you more than its worth,” I said.

“Well, idiot, because of the whole associate status,” she said, ignoring my snide remark. “It will mean I will finally leave this shithole and move to Los Santos,” she said. “Los Santos?” I asked. “Why does it shock you? You never want to escape Silver City yet again? Even if you fucked up?” she asked me. I shrugged. “To be fair, Cedar City or Colter would be the dream, rather than Silver City or any other shithole around this country, but still,” I say. That’s when she gave me her all-knowing arrogant smiles, making me as always, feeling like I’m small and idiotic compared to her. “Well, that’s the difference between us. You dream of snowy and cold Colter with its short rainy springs and cool summers, or of year-round dreary and rainy Cedar City. I dream of warmth, palms and the good life of Josepania,” she said, but dad was coming close to us and heard bits of what she said.

“What good life in Josepania?” he asked and I quickly intervened. “We were talking of David, leaving the warmth, palms and good life of Josepania for Silver City,” I said and dad just waved it off. “This town… hell, even Natal itself, might not be as nice looking as Josepania, but believe me, people here are nicer and much more genuine,” he said as he left again to aid Kaileigh and Mauro, the chef from Radilo, bring in the supplies and everything necessary for today. “Thanks for the save,” she said. “You owe me,” I said. She smirked. “No, you paid me back for not saying anything about Wayne,” she said. She of course, was referring to Wayne, my first and only partner, other than Kate, which I had in Cedar City. The six years I spent with Wayne was as much of a rollercoaster as they were with Kate, but being faraway from Silver City, I felt much more liberated. If course, my own personality, needing to talk about shit in my life with someone, made me open up to Kate, especially as she too was criticized by mom and dad for going from man to man and I felt we could form a united front. She still threatens me to this day that she will call me out for living the “sex, drugs and rock n roll” lifestyle in Cedar City. Of course, I still say that she exaggerates and makes it sounds much more glamorous than it was, but I must say it truly wasn’t healthy. He was one of these open relationships and polyamorous types. I wasn’t, but I was the never say no out of fear people won’t accept me type, so if I’m being honest to myself I did some stuff I’m not proud of myself. But now, Wayne, after trampling on my feelings, soul and at times, health, for I still remember that AIDS panic I had back in 2018, is all but dead for me and even if I returned back in the closet, in Silver City, I still felt a bit liberated from a vicious circle that probably would have killed me 20 to 30 years earlier than it would have been natural. Speaking of closets, Wayne and probably someone much more important, Spencer, everything reminded of my anxieties from last night.

“You alright?” she asked me as she probably saw me blushing up. “Dad saw me,” I say whispering as I look around, but it was only us in the main room, with everyone else in the back. “What do you mean saw you? Having sex?” she asked, starting to laugh. “That should be funny,” she continued. “Well, not really, I don’t know for sure if he’s into me, but he saw us naked,” I said.

She started grinning. “This is too good of a story,” she commented. “I need a drink for this though,” she said. I looked at my watch. “It’s eleven in the morning,” I moan. “I’m in vacation, Drew, leave me be,” she said a bit more annoyed than I’d expect. “Get a grip,” I said and she just groaned. “Dad! Me and Andy are going for a coffee nearby! Call us if you need anything!” she yelled. “Fine!” I could hear a faint response. “Let’s go,” she said, nearly pulling me. “Not to the Form&Function,” I say and she looks at me weird. “It’s the only decent coffeehouse here that isn’t flooded with tourists,” she said. “Yeah, but Kate’s there,” I say. She looked at me. “I thought the crazy days of Wayning through the whorehouses of Cedar City healed you from that, but it seems coming back to Silver City turns you into the same teenager I left when I went to college,” she said. I tried to resist, but she pulled me some more. “Be a fucking man and man up!” she muttered as she all but pulled me out of the Pour Authority.

Luckily for me, Kate and David left, even if their remains of coffee and bread pudding remained on the table, which sadly for me was the only empty table to take a seat on. A waitress came to clean up and we ordered to coffees with milk and some croissants. Louise pulled out a joint as the coffees arrived. “It’s legal here, right?” she asked as she saw my shocked face. “Yeah, since last year,” the waitress responded, offering her an ashtray. “Jesus Christ, Louise, it’s still morning,” I moan again. “I said, I’m on holiday! I want to relax in the days the Josepanians are discussing and thinking on my offer, and be away from everything,” she said. “At least don’t breathe it towards me, I have to drive and work tonight,” I continue moaning.

She lightened up her joint and then took a sip of her coffee. “So, tell me, what the fuck happened?” she asked me, totally ignoring my previous requests. “So, there’s this guy,” I say and she rolled her eyes. “Drew, we’re siblings, we know each other… there’s always a guy,” she said, but this time it was I who ignored her. “He’s called Spencer Knight. He’s from Cedar City and is the new IT guy and computer programming teacher at the high school,” I say but she interrupts me again. “A guy you have the hots for and he’s a failed IT guy here in Silver City?” she asks a bit snidely. “He’s not a failure,” I reply back a bit outraged and she smirked. “But you didn’t deny you got the hots for him,” she said laughing. “Either way, no, he’s not a failed IT guy. He worked at some company in the whole Silicon Pass conglomerates, but felt overworked and he wanted someplace chiller so he looked towards the education sector,” I say but she interrupts me again. “And everything in Colter is overbooked and no position opened so he ends up here, it’s a story since the end of times in Silver City,” she said and I nodded in agreement as I ate my croissant and drank my coffee.

“The thing is, my gaydar goes crazy around him,” I say. “It’s not a real thing,” she said, interrupting me. “Call it intuition if you want,” I respond and then continued. “It seems Kate was into him and tried to kiss him when she was drunk, but he ran away,” and this is the moment the whole story flowed out of me like it was in a single sentence, just wanting it out as quick as possible, “and I took Kate with me to the Pronghorn and we spent the night together but then the next day we were supposed to meet up in a relaxed spa day there, but she was ashamed of the whole scene, so she avoided it, but I didn’t want to lose Spencer and the budding whatever relationship, be it friendly or romantic that is, so I insisted he come, and he responded to my invite, and we relaxed in the sauna talking and chilled in the patio and I turned on the hot tub because you know too how nice it is, especially when its cold outside, but he was saying he had no swim trunks, so I decided do fuck it and gambled my chances with him and invited him to skinny dip and he accepted and he was nice and hot and sexy and we were chilling and I promise you it was nothing vulgar, but then dad randomly appeared but he was taken by surprise and I’m unsure he saw us naked or not, especially as I didn’t turned on the patio’s light, but still, he was in the Pronghorn at night and he was startled and nearly ran away when he observed it was me,” I said and then I took a deep breath, because that was horrendous to retell.

She took another sip, finishing her coffee by now, and took a deep smoke from the joint, finishing it. “What the fucking hell, Drew?” she asked me. “I don’t even know where to start… You spent the night with Kate? You skinny dipped in public and got outed by dad? All in a single weekend? That’s like record braking levels of fuckups,” she said, at first very sternly and serious, but slowly turning into a smirk, then a grin and by the end just laughing at me. “I do love you, little brother, but you’re a fuck up,” I say. “It means it’s clearly genetic,” I say. “Thing is, I just let her sleep of her drunkenness, so nothing happened. Same with Spencer. I am more concerned with dad,” I said. “Why, because he saw you? Didn’t you say it was at night?” she asked. “No, you idiot, are you high?” I asked her, a bit irritated. “At night, at Pronghorn,” I say, a bit slower.

Her eyes opened up. “Shit, they’re getting together again,” she said. “Or she’s fucking with Medeea, which is just sad, that Pelasgian witch is nice when she’s high, but when she’s sober, she’s a cunt,” she added. “The thing is, I don’t care if they get together or not, but I want to talk to him and warn him that for their best interests they should not do it, because they always ended up arguing uglily,” I say. “Get a grip, Drew, if anything they just fuck around, but we should snoop around, because I love myself some nice gossip,” she said and she quickly rose from the chair and started walking back to the Pour Authority. She took me by surprise, but I rose up to follow her when I remembered I forgot to pay. I quickly put a 20-dollar bill beneath my cup and I ran after her, managing to reach her and entering the Pour Authority first.

“You alright?” Aaron asked a bit confused as he was seeing us flustering like this as we entered. “Yeah, grand,” said Louise with a devilish smile. “Drew wants to talk to you about last night,” she quickly said and I started blushing. Aaron rolled his eyes and sighed. “Fine, I wanted to avoid this,” he said and Louise grinned. “I’m sure Drew wanted too,” she muttered and we both rolled our eyes.

Aaron waved us towards the office, on the left-hand side of the hallway leading from the bar to the kitchen. “Fine, what do you want to know?” he asked a bit wearily, clearly wanting this to end. “What happened last night?” Louise asked and I could feel myself blushing about it all. “I went to the Pronghorn and wanted to spend the night there,” Aaron said. “With mom?” I asked. Aaron just laughed. “Oh, God no, calm down with that. I told you when you just moved back to Silver City that me and your mom are not at our best ever relationship and we’re just friendly to each other,” he said. “Then may I ask, with whom?” Louise insisted. Aaron sighed again. “Look if you really want to know, I had dinner with Medeea,” he said and we were both shocked. “With Medeea? Ugh… I hope she was high, she might be charming then,” Louise said. “Isn’t it a bit risky to date Medeea at the Pronghorn of all places, where mom is always around?” I asked and Aaron laughed. “You’re joking, right? It was your mom’s idea all along! And don’t call it date, it was just dinner, and I don’t think I will want to follow it up. She feels a bit of a difficult person. A bit too bossy,” he said and Louise started laughing, which made both me and dad laugh too.

“But what were you doing, in darkness on the patio?” Aaron asked as he turned to me and I felt myself blushing again. “Eh, he was just skinny dipping,” Louise says with an impish grin. “Again back to Kate?” he asked me and I sighed in relief, which made Louise laugh. “Nah, she’s too smart to return to this one,” she said laughing. “With whom?” Aaron asked me. “A friend,” I said, a bit sneakily. “We just lacked swimming trunks,” I added. Louise went serious, as if it was the make it or break it moment, and Aaron looked for a second that felt like an eternity in my eyes. I felt my heartbeat go crazy, but logic told me it should be okay, in the end, mom was the one calling me out when I was ten calling something I didn’t like as gay, and once, when I made in my rebellious teenage years a snide remark towards some camp guys who clearly were a couple, dad did tell me that I’m too old by then to not accept people for whom they are, something that always sticked with me. My mind was telling me that everything should be okay, but my heart was going crazy. “I see..” he said and then eased his gaze.

“Look, both of you,” he said and he looked at us. “You need to relax a bit. You don’t need to babysit me. I look at both of you and see two adults that can carry themselves and their future families, whatever their form or size, in this world, just remember to take care, protect yourselves and use common sense. If I manage to see this in you, you need to see the same in the person that educated you so well,” he said and smiled to us, before rising up and hugging us.

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful, other than I spent most of the days sleeping and most of the nights either at the station, or patrolling around the town with either Sheriff Mason or Deputy Carr, the joyful alcoholic. I invited Spencer Monday to the Pronghorn to dine with us, just as he was texting me that the Pattersons were annoyed that he was using their kitchen and as Medeea was serving us with Chicken Parms and some mashed potatoes, he was telling me how he managed to talk it out with Kate to ensure no awkwardness was between them. It seemed, in his view, that the presence of David was relaxing her a lot, as he always found her a bit too tense in the autumn and early winter, before the Josepanian came.

On Sunday evening, I woke up, just before my last night shift of the month, and I decided to reinstall on my phone the Cruizr app, which I did use a lot in Cedar City, when I was looking for partners. Even if I didn’t use it for a long time, more than three years, I was happy my account was still functional. Even so, Silver City was Silver City, I didn’t want to appear here with my face, so I edited the account and for the moment I was just looking around without any picture. In such small towns, very little chances to see photos, but I was curious nonetheless. When I activated my location and thus it showed around profiles, I was flooded with photos of mostly abs, dicks, some faces which I didn’t recognize, but the majority where photos from the neck down, usually to naked upper bodies. I was more curious than anything, with a part of me wanting to find that stereotype of alpha male from high school that found himself and now was cruising for males online, but I didn’t find anyone known, until the very last account. No name, no nickname, but rather just S, age 28, and a slightly toned body, situated 100m from me. My heart started pounding. It might be him. I wrote him a text, but the app gave me an error, not allowing me to send messages without a photo. I wanted to find something, whatever to put on my profile, but by the time I managed to change it, he went offline.

Irritated, annoyed and disappointed, I let my head fall back on the pillow and put the phone away. It was anyway time to prepare for the last night shift and I could hear Medeea, Amber and Verne talking on the hallway. S, 28 years old. It’s clearly him. I could remember that body everywhere. It might have been in dim light in the sauna, or by the moonlight on the patio, but I felt I started at it too much to not remember it. I looked out the window which was towards the street and I could see the house of the Pattersons’. There were 4 light poles between the Pronghorn and the house. That’s about 80 meters, with the differences from the street to the rooms themselves, yeah, that’s the 100 meters the app said. It truly was him. It now makes sense why he ran away from Kate and why he gladly accepted my invite.​

 

[Natal]

Kate
18th of February to 10th of March

A hockey match… Back in my college days in Shelby, the University of North Grans had its hockey team be the most successful and significant of all the sports practiced there, so it was impossible to avoid it. Back then, I hated it because in my circle of friends nobody was into it, and when we received invites and decided to go, I was bored to death, because nobody truly made me understand how this whole thing works. David seemed too a bit into it… a bit too much into it, like half the students at the Shelby Campus, but at least he gave me the chance and had the patience for me to understand what’s been happening. I liked having that coffee with him, as he seems chill, not having a ton of baggage in Silver City, although I did learn to not insist on asking him of his Los Santos life. The trip to Colter by train was nice, reminded me of how dad used to take me to the station as he did love being a trainspotter, the game was much more entertaining that I would have ever admitted and the fact that David was there mixing his goofiness with some full-on ultra fan mode and then as a teacher with infinite patience to explain what’s happening, it made it even nicer. Afterwards we had a drink in a bar by the train station, because the match ended and we still needed to kill an hour for the off-peak Pass Runner and then he drove me back home. I must be honest, at first, I took it as a friendly outing, but afterwards it hit me, that it might be a first date, even if, with the day ending and Monday following, I feared the worst. I already had an example of what it means to delude yourself that someone is into you and tomorrow I will have to face that. When he left me back home, he smiled and we hugged. I felt I may have been a bit too tense, but it wasn’t because of him but rather because I was dreading the next day.

In the house, both my parents were waiting, taking sneak peeks out the visor of the door, like I was 10 to 15 years younger. “He seems like a nice guy,” my dad says. “Exotic even,” my mom commented. “He’s from Josepania,” I interrupt her. “He’ll lose that tan pretty soon here,” she continued. “He seems nice,” my dad added. “He is,” I responded to him. “What’s he working?” my mom asked. “At the high school, he’s the new librarian,” I answered to her, this time starting to get annoyed because it feels like an unnecessary interrogation. “He seems much nicer than Stone Jr.,” my dad said, concluding, and remembering the craziness of ten years ago, I nodded in approval.

The next day was the one I dreaded the most, so much that even if I was waking up at 6 to start classes at 7 am, and went to sleep at 10pm, I was still awake at 2am. I parked into my lot by the main building and I could see Spencer’s car was there too. David didn’t arrive yet and the student’s parking lot was barely one third occupied, even if classed were to start in a quarter of an hour. I went to the teachers’ lounge to leave my coat, and take the key to my class and right when I was walking down the hall to my class, Spencer comes out of his, which was right across the corner from mine.

“Hi Kate,” he said meekly to me and I could see that he felt awkward like hell. I already blushed by moment I heard his door opening, so I could feel I was a wreck too. “Hey Spence,” I say, not going formal, because I still didn’t want things to be even weirder. “About last night,” I said and I did observe he wanted to say the same thing, but he stopped at the first word. “I’m deeply sorry,” I said, continuing. “I was drunk, I miscalculated, and I made a klutz of myself,” I said and I looked at him in the eyes. Damn, that dark brown hair and those dark blue eyes were still rocking, even so, I needed to get a grip. David was nicer, especially with the big smile, nicer teeth and dark brown eyes. Especially seeing Spencer so concerned, weary, and weirded by everything, it made me even wonder what I saw in him, because he was feeling now like a middle school pupil who was caught doing some shit and admonished. “I’m sorry too. I know I shouldn’t but I responded to the kiss, and then I panicked and instead of acting nicely, I did the shittiest thing and ran away,” he said. I nodded awkwardly and paused for a bit, which made everything even weirder. “I’m deeply sorry, it was the alcohol,” I said again, but then I decided that he’s nice to keep as a friend and I must be honest at least for him. “Look, no…” I said and I could see him perking up as if to ensure he follows me thoroughly. “Look… I had a crush on you and somehow, I deluded myself that it’s reciprocal, so the alcohol just gave me the courage to try, and I’m deeply sorry if I hurt you,” I said and he smiled. Fucking men, of course he smiled, I just told him I had a crush on him. Jesus… fucking men. If you tell them you find them hot, they are so gullible that you can make rounds around them. “It’s okay, I’m deeply sorry I didn’t make it clear from the beginning. I want us to be friends, because you were pretty much the one who welcomed me in Silver City and made me love this place. I can’t imagine my life here with us avoiding eachother,” he said and this is when I smiled and perked up. “I want us to be friends, nothing more complicated,” I said and he nodded in agreement. That’s when we saw Ms Ponoka coming down the hallway, shouting at us: “Classes started 5 minutes ago, what are yous two doing?!” she said as she was approaching. “You have kids around?” he asked when she reached us. I looked through the window of my class and Spencer did the same to his. “Twelve,” he said. “Eight” I say. Ponoka growled irritated, then sighed and finally shrugged. “The snowfalls of the weekend stopped traffic in the Clearwater Pass, while Ewing Basin seems to be totally blocked, so today we function just about one third of capacity,” she said and then waved both of us back to the classrooms.

David came around the time the library was opening, which was at 9. We met in the breaks on the hallway and we talked of the match last night. It seems he was thoroughly into it, so much that in the next period, when I told the class to do some work by analyzing the Engwhalian Magna Carta, I was looking on my laptop for tickets for the next match the Colter Avalanche were playing. By lunch, we went to the cafeteria and David kept a place for me, so that I don’t have to seat by Marissa Ratliff, the middle aged Engwhalian literature teacher, or even worse, Alexandra Gallagher, the retiree physics teacher, where I know the only things people will discuss would be at best recipes, or at worst about how Mr. Ratliff is a shitty husband or how Miss Gallagher goes to the doctor in Colter a bit too much. Of course, if Ms Ponoka would seat at that table, it would have been outright hellish, as she’s a bit scary and a workaholic. “Mind if I come seat with you too?” Spencer appeared out of nowhere, with a tray filled with mashed potatoes, green beans and some meatballs. “Headmaster Ponoka scares me and that’s the sole other option,” he whispered, ensuring nobody hears him. David laughed and pointed towards a seat right by me.

“You’re alright, Spencer?” David asked him as he sat. He was taken a bit by surprise. “Yeah, sure, as good as one can be, why?” he asked back and I could clearly see he was a bit stressed. Probably from the weekend’s adventure. “No, just wanting to make some conversation, it would be a sad lunch if we just eat in silence,” David said, smiling. I looked at him and seeing his big smile, I couldn’t but respond, and I could see Spencer was smirking too. “Yeah, I was just avoiding the old ladies table, because I don’t want Miss Ratliff to moan about her husband and then hit on me,” he said but clearly stopped a bit too soon. A part of me felt it was because of me kissing him, but to be honest, setting my gaze on David, who was clearly impishly enjoying this, made me relax too so when I laughed, Spencer relaxed too. “Yeah, she’s quite something, you should have met Mr. Caragiu,” I said, and both Spencer and David looked at me confused. “He was this old mathematics teacher, who moved here from the Socialist Commonwealth, of Valerian descent. He was calling himself a ‘man always in love’ and he was always flirting with everyone. He was just too sweet to find him harassing to be fair, and you could always laugh at his jokes, albeit they were a bit raunchy at times,” I said and they both smirked.

“I liked yesterday’s match,” I say as I turn to David. “If you’re such an afficionado, I was thinking, maybe we could go to Colter again, next Saturday, because the Avalanches are playing with the Cedar City Krakens. It’s probably the nation’s derby, with the two big cities,” I say and I don’t know who was more surprised by this, Spencer for randomly inviting David, or David for me liking it so much that I wanted a second one just a week later. “You went to see a hockey match?” Spencer asked and I nodded. “Yeah, yesterday. Kate decided to show me the capital too and I decided to introduce her to the joys of hockey,” David said. Spencer nodded. “Do you have any news of Drew?” the latter randomly asked and it surprised me. I glanced at David and we made eye contact and I hope Spencer didn’t observe it. “He is working night shifts this week and knowing him, he hates them with a passion, but other than that, he’s fine,” I say, but David interloped. “He did act a bit weird on Sunday, didn’t he?” he asked me and I could feel Spencer tense up a bit. “Yeah, we randomly met him on the street by the Pour Authority, he wanted to go and talk with Aaron, because he said things were weird on Saturday,” I say and Spencer looked at me with a face I couldn’t describe. I wasn’t sure if he was concerned, or bored or panicked or all three in the same time, which I know it shouldn’t be possible. “What do you mean weird on Saturday?” Spencer asked. “He said something about his dad at the Pronghorn,” I said, avoiding the commentary Drew said about ‘who knows what he saw about me and Spencer’, to which I felt Spencer immediately relax. “Heh, yeah, I didn’t really get this whole thing,” he said, he seemed pretty stressed that Saturday evening too. “Yeah, it’s because of the weird relationship Alana and Aaron Stone have,” I explained. We couldn’t really continue the talk much because the break ended and Ms Ponoka as always quickly rushed us all back to classes.

The rest of the day passed normally. I started to finally relax after the Saturday’s fuckup. My Thursday, David invited me to dine at the Pronghorn, and from what I understood, it was Medeea which insisted to hell and back, while David wanted to ensure that while he enjoys my presence, he doesn’t want to rush things or make things weird. Of course, I found that later from Verne, who as always, uses his job as a janitor and maintenance guy there to pretty much learn all the rumors and gossip, all while skiving work, saying he suffers from chronic back pain. He also told me something about Drew being enthused and excited about something regarding Spencer, but I was so confused by how he was cryptic, unsure what he was talking about and mumbling, that I just ignored it. He must be only now observing the bromance developing over the two simping over Cedar City.

On Saturday, I left for Colter at noon with David, taking again the Pass Runner. David was nice and all, but a part of me wanted to cut off his Los Santos big city arrogance about how it’s such a big place that it doesn’t compare with anything, so I reserved about 6 hours to walk him around. We took a stroll along Broadway, the main boulevard downtown, which was filled up with cinemas, theatres and high rises, and then we walked through the Green Glade Park, which was much nicer in summer, but even so, its winter wonderland atmosphere was nice enough. We then stopped for a meal at Out n About, and then hiked through the Cherry Creek neighborhood, with its 19th century mansions, 1920s modernist buildings and the riverfront, with this leisure facilities along the Natal River, from where the whole nation is called after. We then took a cable car up to Jack Colter Peak, at a total heigh of 3,200m, and we stood there for about half an hour, watching the city, as the Pass’ urban agglomeration was continuing north and south along the valley as much as the eye could see. We then went down and returned to the station, where the Avalanche Stadium was.

This time I wasn’t taken by surprise. I spent a week to learn the game and I was sure that I wanted my guys from the Grans to fuck up these shitty coastals. It was clear David grew up with the local teams of Los Santos and he loved them the most, but I think the intensity and the natural vibe Natalians had with their winter sports, thanks to the nation’s weird geography and how many people were living in the cold mountains, made the game probably much more intense and a true show, compared to the ones in southern Josepania. As I was cheering for the Avalanches, as I would always root for my mountaineer brothers over these sad fishmongers from Cedar City, I watched David as he was mesmerized by the game. Probably seeing games in Natal and the Federation was the dream for any hockey afficionado. On the train back home, he couldn’t stop talking and only discussed and relieved the best moments of the match.

The next week was quite chill but boring. The weather cleared so it was business as usual at the high school, with no other disruptions. Drew returned to day shifts and we started seeing him again, especially at the Pour Authority. By the 8th of March, on Friday, I finished at 2pm, but I waited on David until the library closed at 5pm, to leave the high school and then we went to the Pour Authority. “This is for you, I wanted to give it to you earlier, but Ponoka held me back giving me shit to do,” David said as he offered me a red tulip as we were exiting the high school. “Oh?” I said, a bit surprised, but clearly loving it. “International woman’s day. It’s big in Josepania, a socialist holiday about the emancipation of women everywhere in the world, so it’s the respectful thing to offer flowers, like in the song, Bread and Roses. Revolution and emancipation, but at the same time, enjoy the beauty of the world too and never forget their femineity, if not, even be empowered by it,” he said and I think that impressed me even more. I knew the holiday, and I knew it was big in Gallo-Germania, especially in the Socialist Commonwealth and in Ebria, even if more conservative states were trying to paint it as a Mothers’ Day, no, it was an anti-sexism day and a celebration of women’s emancipation. The fact that David thought of me, even if it wasn’t a big thing in Natal, surprised me in the most positive of ways. “Thanks!” I said, blushing. It was the only thing I could say, for I was lost at words.

I followed David driving to the Pronghorn to leave his car there, and then he joined me in my pickup to drive downtown to the Pour Authority. “We need to celebrate the weekend… and women’s liberation,” I said with him laughing, clearly proud of himself for pretty much being so observable that I was touched by his gift. At the Pronghorn, to my surprise, Aaron gave me a flower too, this time a silver wattle. “To my 3rd most favorite lady,” he proclaimed as he gave it to me, to the applauses of the drunks sitting at the bar. “You’re a history teacher of of course you know today’s significance,” he added. “It’s also a thank you for pretty much resisting so much time with Drew in his shittiest moments many years ago,” he added, which clearly made David laugh, as he was behind me. “He wasn’t that bad, at least I dealt with him only 5 years, you have to deal with him 29 years,” I said, to which both Aaron and David started howling.

I gave Aaron my coat and the flowers and he said he’ll put them in his office and then I ordered beers for me and David. I could see Spencer and Drew playing pools, so we joined them. “Happy 8th of March, Kate,” Drew proclaimed too as he saw us approaching, and I could see Spencer muttering something too about it. It clearly was a weird thing for your average Natalian, but me being a history teacher and a feminist, I feel I have influenced the Stone family towards observing this holiday too. “Thanks guys!” I saw a bit surprised as to my own shame, I did forget about it this year and nobody in school said anything of it.

We played some pools and drank some beers and while David was quite good at making a goofball of himself with it, as it seems as good as he was with his hockey, the game of pools was killing him, I was checking on Drew and Spencer and I could just observe how much they were growing closer and closer to eachother. I quickly pushed away these thoughts. I should be happy if Spencer found another close friend in Silver City, even if that guy is Drew, my weirdo ex with whom I probably learned too much about love and live, and I feel half of it was unhealthy. Although I must be honest to myself, I promised I will be. I am a little bit jealous that their bromance full on reduced my more than half the interactions I had with both of them, even if I had David.

“The season is coming to an end,” Drew said, referring to the weather announcements of spring coming even in the Pass. “Yeah, we should take to the slopes tomorrow. Who knows we might get some later snowstorms, but if climate changes as it does, it means we have no promise we will have snows until November,” Spencer said. I turned towards David, as the guys continued to play and by now both Drew and Spencer were struggling to insert the black eight ball into a hole. “I know you’re big with hockey but how good are you with skiing?” I asked David and he looked at me a bit panicking. “Usually where I’m from, I’m used to palms, surfers, and other stuff like that, skiing has no place in that environment and we never went to the mountains in the winter for it, as it was always seen a rich people pastime,” he said. “Rich people?” I asked. “Weird country… You can rent the equipment here for like 25 dollars for a day,” I said and he seemed to relax a bit, but he was still tense. “It would be my first time too,” he said. “No worries, I’ll come with you,” I said. I then turned to Drew. “So, you wanna come or are you working tomorrow?” I asked him. “I’m free, I’ll come,” Drew said. “And do you ski as well as you did?” I asked him and he impishly grinned at me. “Hopefully so,” he said. “How about you, Spence?” I asked. “I’ll be coming… Thing is, I barely skied, I’m more used to the snowboard,” he said. Of course he is… “So you’re one of those…” I moan and they all laugh.

The next day, we all met at the Pronghorn, and went to the slopes. It was much more crowded than expected and as I hoped and imagined, Drew and Spencer of course wanted to go on the difficult slope, but I remained with David on the novice slope, to make sure he doesn’t die or break a leg. It was a nice day to be honest, cold enough for the snow to be all natural and dry, warm enough to be nice outside. Other than the slopes being overly crowded and David falling much more than I ever expected, I couldn’t find something to complain about.​

 

[Natal]

Drew

I feel old. I do remember some of my shittier moments back in Cedar City, where I could have partied the whole night, sleep for an hour and then return to the academy. Today, a week of night shifts, even if I slept an average of 8 to 9 hours per day, just finished me. I feel like dying and I could gladly sleep for about 48 hours by now. Even so, night shifts in Silver City are the dream, compared to Cedar City. Here, you just patrol and chill for most of the time, with a call here and there and false alarms and such. Back in the big city, it was like going to war. So much activity at night and so many calls that I always dreaded them. I think even my current exhaustion wasn’t coming from the night shift themselves, but rather from wasting so much energy just worrying and anxiously waiting for it.

Now, I have 3 days off to recuperate. I tried to keep myself from sleeping in the day in the aftermath of my last night shift especially to somehow recover for the next months and restore my circadian rhythm. In the morning, I ate breakfast, where Medeea made a Sfakianopita or something like that, which were some pancakes like cheese pie with nuts and honey, which seems to have been extremely popular with the tourists hosted at the Pronghorn, as they quickly jumped on consuming all of them while leaving much of the buffet alone. As I munched away, I saw David came down too and I waved to him to join me.

“Everything alright?” I asked him as he came to me to leave his coat. “Yeah, pretty good,” he said as he put his coat on the chair, and pointed towards the buffet. “I gotta hurry as the locusts are swarming there,” he said and I looked worried towards it, seeing how the tourists were full on jumping on it. As much as this behavior disgusted me, at least it will make it known that the meals at the Pronghorn are good. A weird mix of Natalian mountain cuisine and Pelasgian, but still fusion cuisines were the big thing, so clearly everyone was happy with it. “Try the cheese pies Medeea made…” I say but as he was trying his luck to reach some, it was clear he won’t reach any.

“They act like they never ate in their life,” David said, returning with some toast, some butter, an omelet and some fresh cut tomatoes and peppers. “They’re in holidays, they don’t care of anything but themselves,” I comment and David nodded. “Usually that means they are egotistical in the daily life too,” he moaned and I agreed. “So, what’s the deal?” I ask and he looked at me a bit baffled. I observed I moved to Implarian slang, so I internationalized my speech. “What’s up? What’s been happening?” I repeated the question. David just shrugged. “Nothing special. I never thought that being a school librarian would mean so much work, but I have to help organize the school clubs too, ensure the schedule is followed and if a teacher is absent, I must stand in for them, pretty much ensuring that the students don’t trash the classroom or hurt themselves. All that in parallel with keeping the library open, and ensuring that it’s functional and everything. To be fair, I feel a bit overworked,” David said. I grimaced a little. I did remember how back in the days we did had the librarian come to our class when the teacher was absent to cover for them, but I never thought they would get so overworked, as I always thought it was the sweetest gig in the school. “Sounds nasty. I pretty much slept little to nothing all days because I felt the sun was up and simply couldn’t get a good rest, all while having to patrol the town at night. At least it was a quiet week…” I moaned too. “I did go two weeks ago with Kate to a hockey match and it seems she liked it so much that she invited me tomorrow to another match. Colter is playing Cedar City,” he said, quite proud of himself.

I stopped a bit to think of it all, but then I worried he might have observed it, so I continued talking. “It’s good for Kate to find someone which she likes and both of you are open to spending time together. I feel it’s for the best,” I say, adding the last part because I felt the beginning sounded weird. David quickly finished his food and then left, saying he has to go buy some flowers because it was the 8th of March, the International Women’s Day.

I returned to my room and I started to clean it up a bit. Started doing the laundry, cleaning up the bathroom, changed the bedsheets and dusted. As much as I tried, it still didn’t really feel as a home, but rather a long-term hotel stay. A part of me started to wonder if I would resist living with my dad if this meant leaving the Pronghorn and having a room in a real house. At least here I don’t truly live with my mother, just in the same building, more like in an apartment block, each of us with our own flat. Even so, I started laughing that in this case, the jackpot would be if dad and Medeea somehow hit it off and he moved in here to be with her and I get the house… of course, the opposite can be true, and he could get Medeea to the house and I remain at the Pronghorn… until I buy my own place. Even so, I’d rather die than buy in Silver City. It’s Colter or Cedar City for me. I need my people, not the mountaineers with whom I always felt weird.

I laid on my bed, still exhausted, and I could feel I won’t be able to function after a week of night shifts to be full on 36 hours no sleep only to sleep at night. Still, I wanted to sleep at nigh too, so I set up an alarm to ring at 2pm so I could get some 6 hours of sleep and I didn’t need more than a few minutes to fall asleep.

I had some weird dreams, which I remembered because the alarm rang right in their midst. It was a weird one, where the people at the sheriff’s office were rushing to the high school and I had to reach it quicker than them, to find Spencer and tell him to go home because something was not right. Dunno where Kate and David were but right when I reached him, the alarm woke me. Weird one. I felt strange. I could feel less tired, but at the same time, I sensed that holding my eyes open necessitated the most effort in the world.

I went out of the room as I could hear Verne and Amber talking. “There he is!” Amber said quite happy to see me. “Here to help me escape from this lazy bum?” she asked, pointing with her eyes towards Verne. “Hey, I told you, I can help, but don’t push too much effort on my back, because it’s not as it was when I was young. I’ve got lumbago…” Verne quickly responded defensively, but then made eye contact with me. “Jesus fuck, you look like hell,” he then said and I could not but laugh. “Coming from you, it means it’s really bad,” I said and both him and Amber perked up and started laughing. “If you’re bored, you can go down and help Alana, because Medeea isn’t around,” she said. I shrugged and thought for a bit. I could go back in my room and just do some websurfing, or watch something on natflick or maybe even play something on the Clover Club, but I wasn’t in the mood really.

I went downstairs and I was seeing Alana, my mother checking out some tourists. “Everything fine?” I asked and she just sighed. “Medeea is away and I have to aid the kitchen staff with the clean up all while still manning the reception, at least until Amber and Verne end their cleanup,” she moans. “Where is she?” I asked and immediately after I felt I should have known the answer by now. “The Pour Authority, with your dad,” she said. “So, it gets serious,” I say. “So, you know,” she said grimacing and I just nodded. “Yeah, I observed they were getting close that’s why I even proposed to them to meet up and even date, but to be honest, and I might be egotistical for this, but I hoped that it would make Aaron be spending more time here, rather than Medeea around the Pour Authority,” she continued moaning. I didn’t really know what to say, so I just shrugged. “It’s probably the war too, that stresses her out,” I say, referring to Medeea. “Yeah, it’s clearly that. She just told me that she’s in contact with the Pelasgian diaspora and they want to aid some dissidents from Pelasgia, a family called Tiveriadou, which rand to Ebria and now are coming here, to escape the war and the Pelasgian regime,” Alana said. “The world is going to hell and to be fair, I always imagined that this corner of it would remain functional. Seems I was wrong…” she said, a bit defeated. I looked at her, feeling a bit of sorrow, for what is clearly nothing that I could change about the world or her viewpoints on it. “If you want, I can hold the reception here while you organize everything in the kitchen,” I said, truly hoping that she won’t tell me to go there instead if I really wanted to help, which she didn’t. Her face just brightened. “Thanks! I will be ready in maximum an hour, so if you could hold the line here, I have a family which is supposed to check out and they requested a late checkout, and two check ins. Everything has been paid already, so they just have to sign on taking the rooms and give them the keys. Do you remember how the system on the computer worked?” she asked me and I nodded. She left, not before giving me a hug and then quickly ran towards the kitchen.

I logged on the system with my old credentials from back when I was in high school, more surprised than anything that they still worked and then I pretty much just chilled. The historic Pronghorn Inn was once the old Silver City Hotel, built in the 1890s, and then left to rot when the city was getting abandoned in the late 60s. My father’s family, which was living in Silver City since the 19th century moved away when the mines have been depleted, but in the 70s, when my dad was in his very early teens, they returned to the city and bought a building, a house and the ruins of the Silver City Hotel. They worked in mining around Glenoma and they managed to save up quite well so when the government announced its intent to revive Silver City, they couldn’t believe their eyes and decided to gamble all their savings by buying the three properties. In time, the house became the family house in which I grew up, the building downtown ended up being the Pour Authority and the old Silver City Hotel, by the mid-70s collapsed and rotting, we rebuilt and by the early 80s the Pronghorn was born. My dad did have two other brothers who were miners like my grandpa, but one died in a mining accident when the elevator collapsed down the shaft in a mine around Glenoma, the other died of silicosis. With my dad being the youngest and now the only one alive, he was the one who decided to end the family tradition of minework because he saw too many relatives suffering from accidents, broken backs or pulmonary illnesses, so he moved to the hospitality business, which truly flourished when he met my mom in Colter. She fell in love with Silver City and pretty much dedicated her life to me, my sisters and the Pronghorn Inn, even if her relationship with my dad was rocky at best. Probably property issues are what kept my parents together on paper, even if they are separated. If it works, it works.

After a while the guys who left late were checked out. They waited because their car broke down and they decided on the last moment to still enjoy a holiday so they took the train and decided to wait in the hotel for the me moment the Implarian Express, the train linking Moorehead, OY and Cedar City, IM would be closer so they don’t carry their luggage around them. I then spent about half an hour aimlessly looking on the maps extension of the Doodle Slate browser, going on street view in Cedar City, reminiscing on my days there, then in Colter for a bit, and then in Los Santos, ending is Kispest and finding it intriguing that the last dates of street view were from 2020, before the collapse of Pannonia, with the city clearly looking a world difference away by now. I closed it afterwards a bit bored, as mom didn’t come back, when I looked at the clock and saw it was past 3pm. Probably by now, people finished work in the high school, so I could message Spencer, Kate or David, to see what they are up to. But instead of opening the Chat app, I decided to try my luck and opened up the Cruizr app.

By now the app expanded my area quite a lot to even reach Colter, because of how little people I could see before, but now I was spammed by accounts with face pictures, so they clearly were from more open and progressive areas, which meant mostly only the capital. Of course, between them, the usual torso pics and dick pics, but again, the S.,28 quickly draw my attention. He had a green dot on a corner, showing that he was online. I checked the photo more closely, and tried to remember that evening in the sauna, but I was nearly sure it was him. I decided to try my luck. At worst I confused him and I’ll just block the guy. I never would have thought I’d manage to find you here, I texted him and I could feel my stomach doing sumersaults and my heard beatting like crazy, which went even worse when I saw that he started imediately to type something. I really hoped I’d find you here, he texted back. I started feeling a heatwave hitting me and my knees started trembling. I took some deep breaths to calm myself down and also talked me down a bit, because my inner self was annoyed that I was acting like a middle school girl who was giggling like crazy because her crush observed her.

The customers who were to be checked in came exactly at the worst moment, as I couldn’t wait to message Spencer, but I had to sort them out. I had them complete two forms where they put their names, IDs and signatures, and I quickly gave them the keys. When I returned to the phone, it seemed things changed to a saner application. I really hoped something like this would happen, pretty much since you returned back to Silver City, he texted, with a series of smiley emojis. To be fair, I was unsure about you, but I felt that the evening at the sauna at the Pronghorn really gave me the necessary vibes, I said and he sent some laughing emojis. Yeah, it was quite enjoyable and I’ll gladly repeat it, he wrote. As much as I was hoping for something to happen, at first I wasn’t sure, because I felt you were into Kate, he continued and I just sent him some rolling eye emojis. Kate and I go a long way back. But there is nothing nowadays. We’re just friends, I said.

I could see he was texting something, but my phone started vibrating like crazy. It wasn’t a message, but rather a call and I immediately saw the photo of Louise grimacing in the middle of the screen – a photo she herself took and she herself forced herself pretty much went into my phone a few years back to set it as her contact photo.

“Did I tell you I hate Josepanians?” she asked as I answered, not even waiting for a greeting or greeting herself. Then again, me and Louise kept a much closer relationship, than Megan kept with both of us, especially as there were only 3 years between me and her and 8 years between me and Megan. “You didn’t but I always imagined you to be a bit misanthropic, so I never would have imagined you needed to take all the peoples on a one by one basis to say you hate them” I say, but she quickly cut me off. “Don’t be a smartass, nobody likes them. Thing is, I sold the business,” she said. I wasn’t surprised but I got concerned by her tone, as she felt… suffering… more than anything. “Congratulations!” I said. “No! It’s a disaster!” she said and I was even more confused. “Didn’t you want to sell it?” I asked. “Of course I did! But I wanted to be a partner of the big firm taking over and I wanted to be in Josepania!” she said, exasperated. “So I imagine they didn’t make you a partner, they just gave you the money,” I say. “Even worse! They gave me more money, but put in the contract that for at least 5 years I head their business in Natal!” she said, and by now I was wondering if she was truly angry or playing a role. “You’re… weird…” I say, a bit staggered because as much as I liked her weird ass only aggressive and loud personality, she was impossible to understand at times.

“To be fair, I was fucking with you a bit. I got the deal, but I still am a bit bummed that I won’t go to Los Santos as they promised me,” she said, this time more relaxed, clearly showing that she was playing a role initially. “They gave me 5 million dollars, over the 3 they initially offered, but it’s with the condition that I remain at least 5 years in the company and I head their Natalian businesses,” she said. “So, you got rich and a safe very well-paid job. Seems like heaven. It means they truly believe only you know the Natalian market this well,” I said and she growled a little. “Yeah, that’s what they said too, problem is, like I said, it killed off all my hopes of moving to Los Santos and Josepania,” she said. “Oh, come on, 5 years can pass very quickly,” I say and I could feel from the pause that this time she clearly was exasperated. “I’ll be 37, Drew, I don’t think I’ll be interested in moving and starting over at that age, leave me in my sorrow,” she said and then stopped for a bit. “There’s a worse thing too,” she added. “What?” I asked. “I will have to leave Cedar City and move to Colter,” she said. I was ready to say that the Pass isn’t that bad, and it could be worse, like Gold Bay or Moorehead or Glenoma, but the other tourists who were supposed to come have arrived and I quickly closed the phone and told Louise I’ll call her later.

I did the same as for the previous ones, quickly sorting out a form and giving them the key to their rooms. I also offered them some suggestions for the nicer slopes and of course I recommended the Pour Authority for the best place to eat and drink in town. As they went upstairs, I checked my phone, and Spencer continued to text me a bit. Do you want to do something over the weekend? I texted him, after discussing more on the whole situation and why he stood away thinking I might have wanted to rekindle stuff with Kate. I have to return to school at 6pm because I have a meeting with the parents of a class, and I have quite a lot of papers to grade, but we could do something on Sunday or Saturday evening, he texted. Or Saturday evening and Sunday, I text with a wink emoji and he sent a few laughing ones. I’d like that more, he said. Then again, it’s Silver City on a Saturday evenings. The options are just to get drunk, I said. Sounds good. Pools at the Pour Authority too? He texted back immediately. It was for real. A first date with Spencer… or second date, if we could the naked episode at the spa in the Pronghorn.

I stood half an hour more at the reception desk until Alana took over again and by then Medeea came back too. I went outside to enjoy the sun a bit, and I liberated Pepper the dog to roam around the Inn, until Amber came to feed him. I returned afterwards in my room, took a shower and was planning to start watching the 2nd season of You’re tuning in, on NATFLICK but by halftime in the first episode, I felt my eyes heavier and heavier so I decided to go to sleep at 8:30pm.

The next day, I woke up at around 10am, after sleeping an ungodly amount of time, but I felt anew and refreshed. I helped in the morning Amber and Verne do some work around the Pronghorn, and by that I mean more like taking Verne’s place of just chatting while they were working. I then had lunch with my parents and Medeea, which was talking about aiding this Pelasgian family come over, and then finally the time has come, to see Spencer in a more… romantic way… as romantic as a pub in Silver City allowed. I could feel my knees shaking of the excitement as I took a shower, and put on some grey denims, a black sweater with red decorative elements around the shoulders and the wrists and my dark blue winter coat. I took my car, a Hartnett Grizzly, and drove first to the Pattersons’ house, where Spencer was renting a room in, to get him.

The Pattersons’ always hated me since middle school, so I preferred to stay away, parking on the other side of the road, rather than the driveway which they never used and was occupied by Spencer’s car. “Is this a date?” he said as he jumped into the car. I shrugged. I was hoping to say yes, but I was afraid that he might not want it like this so I tried to hide my weirdness about it. “Depends. If you want so, sure, if not, it can be just a night out,” I say and he responded with an impish smile. “I would like it to be one, but I hate first dates, because they put this huge pressure on you and they are awkward and everything. Can we say that it’s the second and imagine that the evening two weeks ago was the first date?” he asked. I laughed. “I’d enjoy it even more if it’s a second date, but wouldn’t it be weird if we had two weeks between them?” I ask as I was still laughing. “Eh… let me think,” he says as I start driving. “You know… most gay men our age pretty much meet on Cruizr, fuck, and then if they enjoyed the sex, they do second dates,” he says after a few minutes. “Yeah, we just sweated in a sauna and skinny dipped,” I said. “Exactly, we’re actually moralistic compared to our generation,” he said. “Puritanical, even,” I say and we both started howling and laughing.

We reached the Pour Authority quickly and I am glad dad allowed me to park in the driveway to the back entry, where supply trucks were coming in, because downtown was packed. I ordered ourselves two beers from dad, who was manning the bar and when I saw the table wasn’t used, I requested the balls and cue sticks.

We were well into our second game, which Spencer won and now he was destroying me, even if by the time he finished his second beer, his aim got worse and worse, when Kate and David joined us. It seems they went pretty much on a date too, even if none of them actually said it. Then again, neither me nor Spencer actually wanted to say we were on a date too. David was talking about the hockey game and making some dad jokes here and there, which probably made us all laugh more because we were drunk than anything.

As the night was continuing and closing time was drawing near, I saw the tourists I checked in later this evening at the Pour Authority and that is when I remembered that I recommended them to enjoy the slopes before all snow melted. I then proposed to the others to do this the next day. Spencer was into it, for it seems a lot of what made him choose the Pass, besides the whole Silicon Pass IT bro scene over Cedar City, were the mountains and the winter sports. David protested a bit, saying he had no idea how to ski, but Kate quickly convinced him too. On the way back, as we were approaching the Pronghorn on Murphy Road, I stopped in front of the Pattersons’ house, which I found dour and dark and sad, so before Spencer jumped out the car, I quickly interloped.

“Do you want to be a puritan?” I asked him, and he needed some time to process what I meant, before remembering how we started this night out. He laughed and shook his head. “Never been, nor do I want to,” he said. “Do you want to spend the night at the Pronghorn?” I asked, trying my luck again, feeling like that evening two weeks ago. “It’s nicer, friendlier, probably warmer,” I say. He started grinning. “Hotter even,” he says and we start laughing. He nodded and I just continued on my way, a little over a hundred meters to where the Inn was.​

 

[Josepania]

David

I groaned in pain and discomfort as I stretched out my legs, feeling each muscle protest with soreness from the unjust workout I gave them through the day. It turned out that skiing was an exhilarating activity, and quite fun once you got into a rhythm with it, but to a complete novice like myself it was also quite a struggle to find that rhythm and limiting the amount of wipeouts. And those wipeouts were painful, because as it also turned out, snow wasn't soft.

I was fortunate to have Kate as a skiing partner for the whole affair. She surely must not have had as great a time as she could've if I wasn't involved, but throughout the day she stuck by my side, doing her best to teach me skiing basics and some tips to prevent as many slipups as possible. It was... challenging to take her lessons to heart, but through the day I kept insisting it was not because she was a poor teacher, but because I was such a poor student. The moment I thought I had mastered one aspect, my mind eased off on another and balance was immediately lost, resulting in me falling on my ass.

Still, every time I fell, every time I collected a new bruise or overstretched muscle, I responded not with complaining, but with laughter. I was playfully persistent in my self-deprecation over my skills, insisting that if Kate gave me a few years I'd be good enough to be an equipment manager for the professional skiers. Each and every time she responded with her own laughter, marveling at my persistent humor and goofiness, and it sounded genuine. Whatever doubts she had about her own ability to teach or if I was having a good time seemed to be pushed out, left no room to fester in her minds, because I was too busy leaning fully into being a fool.

To my benefit, I found her laugh was addictive to me. It was a very effective balm to the pain, and it shifted the focus away from getting good at skiing to how much fun we were having sharing jokes and reveling in my unbelievable mediocrity at the whole affair. I felt happy, despite all the pain and aches and grumpiness.

Kate was next to me, also relaxing after the long day, probably more focused on stretching out her mind than her muscles given her experience with skiing, but she was observing my pained difficulties and cheerfully remarked, "Don't worry, two or three more winters here, you'll be in the national championships."

I chuckled in response. "Sure will. But why stop there? Give it five or six years, and I'll be competing in the Olympics in Pelasgia and bringing honor, glory, and medals to Josepania. With you as my coach, the sky is the limit."

She smiled at that, a smile as warm as the fireplace in front of us at the lodge, and it filled me with more comfort than the flames in front of me ever could. The past few weeks here in Silver City had felt very therapeutic for me, being able to forget all that was bringing me down, making me depressed and miserable, and it felt like I was being given a new lease on life, a chance to start anew and try again with having a job, having friends... and as I looked at Kate I wondered, maybe having another shot at...?

'Come on man, don't mess this up. Don't ruin it by trying to make it more than what it already is. Are you even fully over Sarah?' I thought to myself bitterly, and I hated how that thought seemed to cut through the warmth within me.

It was apparently noticeable, because concern flashed over Kate's face and she asked, "You ok? Aching more than usual?"

I paused, wondering if I should just go along with the cover story Kate unwittingly provided and keep the status quo going... or if I should finally be honest with her. Surely she had picked up some of the signs, the subtle hints that I liked her in a way that went beyond just a simple work friendship, or even a standard friendship. I felt afraid though, afraid that if I disclosed anything to her she'd be unwilling to reciprocate, either because of what happened with Spencer, or whatever the hell is going on with her and Drew, or maybe just because she didn't like me that much. I didn't want it to end, I didn't want it to go back to square one, I didn't want to go back to that dark hole of-

"No... not that. I guess I just wanted to ask you something." I heard the words come tumbling out of my mouth sending my thoughts into a screeching halt, like I was speaking without considering. I don't know what came over me but I forged ahead despite Kate's puzzlement. "I've really, really enjoyed these past few weeks with you. It's really made me feel welcome and almost... home up here in Silver City. And I... well..." 'Oh Dios Mio here it comes...' "I... like you Kate. Like... you know, really like you." 'Can you get any more cringe you weirdo?' "I've felt that way since I first saw you back in the school. But the timing was bad, lots of stuff happened. I loved going to hockey games with you, having coffee with you, sharing some drinks, and this skiing trip despite all the bumbling and the falling has been wonderful because it's been with you."

I couldn't even focus on how she was reacting, I was just in full autopilot mode, the words I'd been holding onto since day one being laid out in front of her like a dinner being set, me scrambling to make sure everything was in its place, and hoping beyond hope that she would say what I wanted, what I needed her to say.

"So... yeah I... I know this is all sounding kinda weird and out of left field, but I guess I wanted to ask... are we dating? Like, have we been dating for awhile now? Because if so, I'd like to continue. But only if you want to. If you don't I totally understand, workplace relationships and all that, me being an out of towner, plenty of-"

"I'd like that."

Her interruption was akin to smashing into a brick wall, a complete halt in mental momentum and immediately snapping me out of my babbling and idiotic speech, and I finally got a good look at her. She was blushing, maybe out of embarrassment, maybe excitement, but the smile she gave me was the warmest I had ever seen to this point. I could barely believe it.

"I'd like that a lot, David."

I had no words left, I was too stunned to comprehend what had just happened, but instinctively, as she made the decision to move next to me, I put my arm around her shoulders and held her, tenderly, and we just stared at the fireplace for a few minutes, allowing ourselves to just... accept what we've probably known for some time. At some point we'd head back, out of the lodge and catch up with Spencer and Drew, but that could wait.

 

[Natal]

Kate
10th of April

Dating again. The last time I did it was immediately after I came back from Shelby, but that idiot didn’t want to move an inch away from Colter, and with me managing to get a post only back home in Silver City, it became quickly observable that he only wanted me to come again and again to Colter and him never spend any effort at all to come to Silver City. A long-distance relationship can’t work if you just expect your partner to do everything while you just sit on your ass and make excuses. Before that there were some passing relationships in Shelby when I was in college and even before that, it was Drew. Now that I think of it, it is extremely sad that of all my relationships, the craziest, probably most toxic and the most insane of them all, the one with Drew is also my longest relationship ever. Maybe David will be different. I mean… he is different. Then again, Drew too is different because it seems we were toxic and clearly not good for each other’s growth when we were together, but somehow when we reverted to being just friends, and also after 10 years, when we clearly both matured, we are much more different that the shitty brats we were back in High School. Then again, David is a lot of levels so much more different. It’s clear that his goofball persona is a mask that hides much anxiety and issues, but that same issue also makes him extremely caring for the others, making him go the extra mile to be sure everyone is happy and pleased.

The day on the slopes make me feel good too, with him, as probably cured much of my own anxieties regarding him, that I can too be interesting and offer some hobbies that he doesn’t know about that yet manage to be interesting too, the same way hockey was for me. I was a bit fearful that I would end up clingy and scare him off or maybe even boring, but it seems he was open to what I proposed and that he was quite interested in them, which made me feel quite good about it all. He joined me as of yet on every second Saturday for the History Club, which I organized in the very library he was administrating, and also joined me and Drew and Spencer on the slopes, that was, before the snow disappeared, and even if the latter two always had a way of disappearing. For the likes of me, I never would have expected such a bromance between Andrew and Spencer, but here we are… also, with the good weather coming, I do hope David will be open to do some hiking too, and not be scared by potential meetings with cougars, bears or other creatures roaming the Grans.

On Eastern he went back home to Los Santos to spend the day with his mother and when he came back, he felt weird, as if he was quite relieved that he returned. I asked him if anything was alright or if he had arguments with the family, as the weird cultural cringe us Natalian have for our own nation immediately triggered and I was imagining that his family was putting pressure on him to come back and he started regretting that he came to Natal while there and somehow here, it reminded him that it was a good decision… at that time… “No, it’s not this. It’s actually that it reminded how Los Santos is, how it’s people are… I don’t know how to describe it… It’s like walking barefoot on streets filled with shards and nails. It felt that besides my mom, nobody else really is open and genuine, but rather everyone just wears this mask where all they do is boast about how great their life is, and how they live so well, and yet, they are all closed off to never talk about their issues too. It’s like the biggest taboo ever the Josepanians in Los Santos ever imagined is to actually have a heart to heart with someone where they really tell stories with their issues too and they open up to recognize that life has its goods, but also its bads. Problem is, so many people are wired there to only show a glamorous life and to do random name dropping to show they are important and successful and important, that it becomes this exhausting race to just be over the others in being more successful or at least pretending to be,” he explained to me, in the week after Easter, as we just sat in the cantina for lunchbreak.

“Is your family made mostly of overachievers?” I asked him, curious, as I did feel the same when I was younger when my parents, both studying to be engineers and who prepared to work in the mines or for the mines around Silver City, back in the day, were always pushing me too, especially in Middle School, and his story somehow remembered me of all that. “I mean, they’re okay, they do want, as any parent, what is the best for their children, but they’re neither the type who smothers your but also nor the type who ignores you. No, this all comes after during the Eastern break I met with some high school colleagues and they pretty much presented most of their lives as if they are the biggest names in the top100 magazines, when I actually do remember some of them being the laziest and shittiest fuckups. Also, I did hate that most of them presented my work at the Silver City HS as being this weird thing as if I ended up at the very end of the world and they framed it as this huge failure,” he said.

“If you think of it, failure is all subjective. For them, if they see success as living the Radilo Beach and West Palmwood lifestyle, of course Silver City is a failure. Shit, it’s even hell on earth,” I say and he started laughing at the last addition I made. “For me, if I’m honest, it did start in the same way. You may know that me and Drew weren’t probably the best students ever in this school. We were quite shit, let’s be honest. Not of the not learning and not doing work type, but the annoying, always provoking kind, and even that bit us, or at least me, in the ass, because after annoying most of the teachers, good luck in getting a recommendation, so I didn’t get accepted in colleges neither in Colter, nor in Cedar City. For Drew it was better because his dad managed to get Sheriff Mason to give him a recommendation, so he ended up at the Police Academy in CC. I ended up in Shelby at the University of the Northern Grans, which let’s be honest, it’s quite a B list university, and after trying my best to get a place at a school in Colter or even Shelby, it was the same Silver City which me and Drew terrorized, to be the one welcoming us back,” I said and I laughed at what I felt it was an absurdity, even if he probably didn’t feel it, but once he will know more of my high school days history, he will understand it more.

“You know, I’m not a religious person,” I continued, “… hell, the last time I went to a church was when I once visited Acadia and I wanted to see some fancy gothic churches there as they were made as copies after the ones in the Holy Frankish Empire. But what I felt interesting, at least for me, was a religious explanation of how God, if he exists, can be good, yet allow evil and suffering exist too, and that is, that probably this universe is the least evil of all the possible timelines, or something like that… I dunno, I’m not a theologian, but that is the main gist. Who knows what could have happened with me in Cedar City, Colter, Shelby or whatever. Maybe this is where I was meant to be to flourish and thrive and to be fair, I can’t complain, even if at that time, I saw it as the worst thing to happen to me,” I said and David nodded. “To be fair, I felt exhausted by that image of always projecting your mask of success as I reached points where I was getting anxiety and panic attacks from feeling smothered by it all. It may be a failure to all those idiots, but to be fair, Silver City, and even Colter, is where I felt so much better, like I could relax and breather. It’s like the horizon line is thousands of miles away, even though we’re in the mountains,” David said.

I looked around and saw Spencer, so I waved to him to join us. “Speaking of people who ran away from the big city,” I whisper to David who chuckled. “I fucking hate homeroom,” Spencer said, seating down besides us. He better positioned his tray and prepared a fork to eat a pasta dish, which I had too, while David had a chicken teriyaki wrap. “What’s wrong with it?” David asked him and Spencer shrugged, showing his most disgusted face, which made me laugh. “I have some shitty students who don’t understand that actually you do need to come to class, not collect over a hundred of absences, and also some shittier parents who don’t care about it all, as much as I message and email them,” he said. “You need to write a formal notification,” I said and he looked at me even more disgusted. “Ugh, that would be even worse,” he said. “Why?” David asked, a bit oblivious to the nightmare that was Natalian school bureaucracy. “It’s pretty much a letter from the homeroom teacher to the parents of the students notifying that the student will get a reduced ‘behavior’ grade, because they skipped too many classes,” I explained. “So what would a reduced behavior grade lead to?” David asked. “Once they get a B, they lose the chance to get scholarships for the next year,” Spencer explained. “And when there’s potential money involved, parents go crazy. They care much more about that money than about their kids actually going to school and getting an education,” he added.

He stopped for a bit and looked around, as if to ensure there’s nobody that can hear him other than us. “Problem is, these letters need to be signed by Ponoka and I fear she will flay me alive that I didn’t send them earlier,” Spencer continued. “Eh, it can’t be that bad. How many absences are we talking here?” I asked. “About 160 for one girl, 140 for another and 90 for a guy,” Spencer said, to the shock of David and to me, knowing how families in Silver City are, especially the ones that didn’t manage to sort out the whole redefinition of the city from a depleted mining town to a booming tourist resort, I just shrugged. “Speaking of the lion ready to kill you, heads up!” I whisper as I point with my head the incoming principal.

“Right the persons I was looking for,” said Ponoka as she came to our table. Her stern face was the same I knew since I started school in Silver City, yet weirdly it relaxed when she made eye contact with David. “Mr. Knight, everything okay?” she asked Spencer who squirmed a little. “Yes, Ms. No issues as of yet,” he said, clearly stressed out. Ponoka, who was standing beside him, rolled her eyes, which made me laugh, but I did my best to hide it. She had a way of stressing everyone around her, especially Spencer and David, as they were the most recent additions to the school. I even felt the latter tensing up like crazy as she was around. I for one, knew her since I started 1st grade, as she was back then Principal of the Middle School and later moved to the High School just as I started it too. I feel I knew her at her worst, when I was a student here, but also at her best, right now as a teacher. She had a way of stressing out the newcomers to try to impose a work ethic, which I understand, considering that this high school might be one of the best in the Pass outside of Colter, whereas the one in Ewing Basin has become nothing but a hornets nest of drug traffickers and other dramas, so she had nearby a counter example and thus was ready to keep the staff and the students on their toes to ensure they’re at their best behavior, even if she usually mellows out after a year of knowing you, if you do your job. “Good,” she said, patting Spencer on the back, who made eye contact with me and clearly felt like dying.

“Mr Fernández, I was actually looking for you,” she then added, looking at David, and again, the muscles of her face relaxed. I don’t know what magic David had over her, but it felt like she was going through an internal conflict where she wanted to scare David a bit too, like she does with Spencer, yet she seemed to be unable to do so, like something in her wanted to be more maternal towards him. “As you know, the libraries of the high school and of the middle school are the only ones in the city, after the municipal library closed down when the mines closed and people left the city back in the mid-1970s. Yet, even if the city is booming and growing at rapid pace, we don’t have a municipal library, so I had a talk with the mayor, and we decided, in the weekends, to keep the school open, so that people can come to the library and read a book, get access to a computer and internet connection if they don’t have one at home and so on. Don’t worry, you won’t need to work more hours, even if there might be overtime opening up for you, as the town hall will send someone to do some shift work with you instead. I will want, if you’re okay with it, to move to doing sometimes weekend shifts, and you will get the days off during the week and so on. If not, we will just have someone from the townhall come on the weekends. The idea is that we need you to ensure that the list of books is actually up to date with what we have in the warehouse and also, on Friday evenings, after the students leave, to cordon off the classes, so we open up like a lane for the people to follow towards the library, so as to ensure they don’t get lost in the school or steal some of the equipment or whatever else. I’ll give you a few days to think about it and you can come by Thursday, after the Day of the Declaration of the Six to look for me in my office and tell me if you’re open to weekend shifts too or not, so I can make a program and give it to the town hall. That would also mean on Thursday and Friday you should recheck the lists and everything,” she said.

Ponoka talked some more administrative stuff regarding the library that I didn’t follow, but when she left, I could feel how Spencer and David relaxed like crazy. “Jesus… is she always like that?” Spencer asked and I smirked. “Only on you two and the students. At least this year. When I first came, she was worse with me, as she remembered me as a problem student, so she terrorized me for two years to ensure I do everything right and I’m good at my job. Afterwards she became chill and really nice. Me and my family once even invited her and her husband to a barbecue and outside the school she’s actually really cool. It’s just this stern mask she wears to keep everyone in line here,” I explained. David rolled his eyes. “I’ll think about what I’ll do. To be fair, as much as I’d want her to like me and to see that I don’t skive work, I’d actually enjoy having a 9 to 5 from Monday to Friday, and not having weird schedules,” he added.

Spencer just shrugged and finally started eating his food. It was a pasta dish with fusilli spirals smothered in a tomato with basil sauce, some olives and what clearly was grilled chicken breast for protein. I for one quite enjoyed it, but he took a bit and he didn’t seem sure, and then took another, when he stopped at the dish and looked disgusted. “What the fuck is this?” he said. “What’s wrong with it?” David quickly asked, seemingly concerned. “Oh, come on, it’s nice,” I said as I was taking the last bites of mine.

“Nice?! This shit is nice? This tomato sauce feels like diluted ketchup that was then reduced on the stove with extra herbs and condiments,” he said. “You’re too sensitive. I’ll let you know for that you get at the Silver City HS Cantina, this is luxury,” I said and he looked even more disgusted. “This is an offence to my heritage,” he muttered. “Heritage? I thought you were Engwhalian, being named Knight,” David said and to be fair, I thought Spencer might take offence, as he seemed already offended by the sad plate of pasta, but he just smirked and shook his head. “Compared to Josepania, which was an Ebrian and Radilan colony that gained a lot of Engwhalian immigrants and colonists, Natal, like Sylvania was an Engwhalian colony that got a lot of Radilan and Ebrian migration. Pretty much everyone who came here that wasn’t from Thaumantica got its name Enghwalianised to ensure that they had any form of social mobility,” I explained, trying still to ensure that there’s no bad blood between them, as I try to turn this into a learning opportunity, even if, from the looks of it, they were both sincerely relaxed and I think I misunderstood the situation. Spencer wasn’t this type of guy who was very proud and prone to fighting, even if that went against any stereotypes. He was actually very similar to David, difference being that he never opened up so much, at least to me. Maybe he was a goofball for someone else.

“Yeah, Kate’s pretty much right. In the 19th century this area was pretty much closed off because mercantile interests seemed to have a racist undertone too, so they tried to keep it open solely to Thaumanticans, hence going around it all by Enghwalianising your name. Hence, my family became Knight a few generations ago, after coming to Natal in the 1890s from Radilo, where they were named Cavallo so they renamed it knight,” Spencer said. “The Stones too,” I interjected and to my surprise Spencer nodded knowingly. “They were called Stan, when they lived in Pelasgia,” I said. “Stan doesn’t sound Pelasgian…” David said. “I would have expected a Stanopoulos,” he added and both me and Spencer smirked. “They’re Tiburan. Muntenians, some population that’s this weird remnant of old Tiburia there. If you come to the Pour Authority, Aaron will do everything possible to make you go crazy by telling family stories,” I said to the other two laughing.

Once we finished the lunch, Spencer and I both went to the classes while David returned to the library. As we walked, on the halls, with the last students running around us to not be late for their classes, I all but growled when I checked my schedule on the phone, as it seemed I was bad as memorizing by timetable, and saw I had class with the Juniors. “I at least am relaxing with the seniors,” Spencer said. “Yeah, ‘cause you use that shitty textbook where you give them impossible exercises, chill for an hour to see if they compose the code for them and then in the last five minutes you pretty much sort it out to their shock that it can be done easily. I for one, have to talk for a whole hour to these guys about political science, and let me tell you, it’s so abstract they have no idea what’s happening in general let alone with this,” I say and Spencer shrugged, smiling. “Not my fault Senior Year Computer Programming is half a year C++ about optimizing your program and the other half databases,” he said and he quickly slid into his classroom to the hurrahs of his students which clearly loved him.

As I then crossed the hallway to the other side, where my classroom was, I could hear some arguments and even some shouting. “What in God’s name…” I shouted to cover the students as I opened the door to get in the class, but I was stopped and pushed into the door by one of them who was rushing to get out of the classroom. For the split second I looked at his face he had teary eyes and he had a deep red blush. “Damian! Patton!” I shouted after him as he ran away on the hall. The other students stopped in complete shock, probably because when he ran out, he all but shoved me in the door and with that, the classroom all but got mute. I could hear Ponoka yelling, so she probably saw him, but by the way she was continuing he was clearly ignoring her too.

“What in God’s name did you do?” I ask as I come to my desk. That is when I observed my right breast was hurting, as he hit me, but the shock and then the adrenaline kicked in and I didn’t feel it for the moment. “It’s that freak, Patton!” some girl in class said. “He’s just always a big deal out of everything, that unstable psycho…” she continued. To be honest, knowing this Lana Osborn and how she always commented in class and deep down I knew she was one of the group that made me hate this class, it’s now wonder Damian Patton all but ran away. “Lana, please refrain from using words that you clearly have no idea what they mean, especially when used to demean your colleagues,” I say in the sternest way possible. “But…” she tried to comment. “No buts… For now, please, I don’t want to hear anything from you,” I say, this time really annoyed. As always, she just rolled her eyes and started checking her phone. I decided to deal with that when the class starts.

“Now, can someone else please tell me what happened?” I asked. “We were just joking miss,” Luke McGuire, another student, a soccer team jock said. He was one of the students I found to be decent in that class. He may have been a soccer player and was dreaming of playing professionally, but at least he always kept the peace in class and always actively listened to me when I taught. “You were just joking?” I asked. “You really think someone all but runs away to avoid you seeing him be overwhelmed from jokes?” I said, doubling down. “It was Colby, he just made some joke with a sexual undertone,” Luke said, pointing to another student. “Oh, come on now, it wasn’t even that bad. All I said was that he should just relax by taking some….” He started saying, but I stopped him. “Stop! I don’t want to hear it,” I said. “Look…” I wanted to continue but I myself was interrupted. “Miss you’re not old like Principal Ponoka, I imagine some 10 years ago people were joking the same way,” Colby said, with a tone that he was apologizing. “Look, it’s not about sexual jokes or not or if me or Mrs. Ponoka made them back in our day. It’s about disrespecting your colleagues,” I say and of course, Lana, the devil’s advocate always jumped in. “Miss, it’s not right, we joked, he was the ones disrespecting us, he got aggressive,” she said. I was ready to cuss but I bit my tongue. “Thanks for this…” I grumble. “I will investigate. In the meantime, until Damian returns, I want you to stop commenting. First and foremost, you will go to detention. Colby and Lana first. I might send others later,” I said. They both wanted to protest. “I said without comment unless you want to see the inside of Mrs.’s Ponoka’s office too,” I said and quickly hushed them.

As they rose and went, I messaged the councilor about the issue and I knew Luke will pretty much tell me a horrific story where they bullied Damian, because I did know him, and as much as he was quiet and you would imagine him to fold easily, Patton was a strong kid, so the fact he did all this, it means it was bad. I had to message Ponoka, so she called his parents too so they can come take him home and calm him down.​