#when will people stop twisting our label into like a million different things that its not

[spacedlexi]

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[tinamaetales]

Fine, not fine

When the pandemic broke out in 2020, I was left with nothing to do. Our WFH arrangement during those times is not something I consider as a heavy workload so most of the time I just find myself alone with my own thoughts – which is one of the scariest scenarios for me. To kill time and distract myself from my own self-destructive thoughts, I decided to watch documentaries on Youtube but there really isn’t enough for me so despite not having a huge salary, I decided to subscribe to Netflix and from then on, I was able to watch a lot of movies, series and documentaries. I really wanna write a reflection on each of the stuff I’ve watched but I’m too lazy these days (and yet, here I am writing one).

As I mentioned, I watched a lot of stuff on Netflix but the last three that I’ve watched lately (before I start being invested with American Horror Story series), Angel’s Last Mission: Love, The Good Place, and Mystic Pop-up Bar tend to have a common theme – life, death, afterlife. I didn’t even do it on purpose; I was just really interested in the plot of their stories. What these 3 shows have in common is that they discuss about the morality and consequences and these days, I’m really interested in those topics. Lately, I’ve been questioning myself about what kind of person I am – am I good or bad? I also keep on having an internal debate with myself as to whether or not there is an afterlife and if there is, then where will I end up? Heaven or hell? Those questions are kinda giving me some headache these days but at least it’s a good distraction from my own self-destructive thoughts. Somehow, Philosophy seems interesting to me now (during my College years, I dreaded that subject but still managed to get a 1.25 final grade lol). Anyway, here are my thoughts about the shows:

Angel’s Last Mission: Love

Major lesson: Keep the faith

This kdrama has such a beautiful way of presenting its story that you will fall in love with it in just the first episode! (Also because Kim Myung Soo’s dimples are to die for, omg I’m so in love) Anyway, this drama’s plot is interesting: an angel who disobeyed the law (he’s not allowed to meddle with the lives of humans especially since he’s a guardian angel for animals) on his last day was given the most difficult mission – to make the fallen ballerina know what love is. As I am writing this, I can’t help but feel emotional because the show knows how to attack one’s heart. I will not be telling more of its plot for I might end up spoiling it so I’ll just provide my major take away from this kdrama. (This is one of those kdramas that I can watch again and again coz it’s beautiful)

I was raised in Catholic faith, which is really not a surprise for a Filipino like me since this country is heavily influenced by the Catholic Church, but ever since I’ve become an adult and finally opened my eyes and allow myself to stop living under the notorious gaslighting of people around me, I struggled with my faith in God. It’s really difficult living a traumatized life. In 2018, I seek for professional help and was diagnosed with Dysthymia and Social Anxiety Disorder. And despite therapy and medication, I have not yet healed and sometimes feel like my situation is getting worse. As such, I felt so alone in my struggles which became the reason why I relate to Yeon Seo’s character. People labeled her as a cold bitch and most of them are expecting her to just move on and heal without fully understanding where she is coming from. When Yeon Seo said “Do you know what it feels like to be left behind? It feels like I’m abandoned alone in an endless desert” it hit close to home. I know that one’s pain should not be an excuse for acting up and being mean but people should also understand that healing is different for all of us – we heal at our own pace at our own time. Pain can change a person – I know it fully well for I’ve become a completely different person because of all the pain I’ve been through. But what this show taught me is that God is a merciful God and He will not let us be drown into the abyss of darkness…..somehow, He will make a way to get us back on track and sometimes it’s in ways we never imagined it to be. Like how they sent angel Kim Dan into Yeon Seo’s life, God will also be sending us the answer to our prayers for He loves us and He is the only one who will never give up on us – even though we gave up on ourselves.

The Good Place

Major lesson: There is hope for humanity

I’ve been obsessed with sitcoms since 2019 (if I remember the year correctly) for they’re easy to watch and just fun but I never expected that a sitcom will make me become philosophical and somehow question my own morality: am I a good person?

For a show with only four seasons and fifty-three episodes, The Good Place sets the bar high for a sitcom.  It did not drag its plotline but is able to tell the entire story in a way that leaves the viewers satisfied with it. The Good Place is a story *SPOILER ALERT* that revolves around the afterlife lives of the four main characters: Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason who all end up in the “good place” because they earned enough points on Earth but there’s a catch, two of them are not actually meant to be in the good place. Eleanor and Jason both mistakenly went to the good place because they died at almost the same time as someone with the same name as them but the other two actually deserved to be in the good place. The dilemma started when Eleanor admitted the truth to Chidi, a Philosophy professor who specialized in Ethics for he is torn between helping them or snitching on them. But perhaps the biggest plot twist of all, *SERIOUSLY STOP READING IF YOU DON’T WANT ANY MORE SPOILERS* they are not really in the good place. All four of them are in the Bad Place disguised as the good place and they were specifically chosen to torture each other, just like what Jean Paul Sartre said, “Hell is other people” Now this gets interesting because while none of these four people have committed heinous crimes which can then make them deserving of a spot in the bad place, the actions they’ve done during their lifetime on earth has bearing. At first I find it surprising how Chidi and Tahani end up in the bad place considering that Chidi spent his life in the pursuit of goodness and Tahani is a philanthropist who raised millions of dollars for charities. But then, as the show progressed, I understood. Chidi’s vast knowledge of morality made him become an indecisive person which led towards the suffering of others. Chidi made other people suffer because he finds it difficult to make a choice. On Tahani’s part, she raised millions of dollars to help improve the lives of others but such is a self-serving interest – she did not do those things because she wanted to help but because she wants to make herself look good. On Eleanor’s part, while she did not commit serious crimes, she was a big ass jerk towards others during her time on earth. With Jason, although he is kind, his actions often lead to disasters and although unintentional, harm towards others. With these in mind, I guess it’s safe to say that humans are doomed for the things we do are most of the time self-serving. It’s hard to make it to the Good Place because in one way or another, we do some things that affect others in a negative way. But what this show also taught me is that while it’s true that hell is other people……humans have a chance to improve and be better when given the proper environment as well as when they help each other out. Just like what Michael said “The point is, people improve when they get external love and support. How can we hold it against them when they don’t?”

At first, this show kind of made me realized that I’ve been a bad person….that most of the decisions I’ve made in life are self-serving….I only do things that benefit me and I could not care less about other people but my biggest realization here is that, I acted this way because my unhealed pain and trauma is manifesting itself. I have been hurt way too much that it made me become a bad person and end up with the mantra that life is shitty anyway so why try to be good? And because of that, I felt bad. Now, I try my best to do good things, not because I want to feel good for myself but because it’s the right thing to do. I have come to the realization that just because I was hurt does not mean I have the right to inflict pain on others. I know that morality is not something that can easily be answered since it’s such a complex thing and humans are flawed but as what Michael said (he has a lot of great lines from the show, I can’t help but to keep on quoting him) “What matters isn’t if people are good or bad. What matters is, if they’re trying to be better today than they were yesterday. You asked me where my hope comes from? That’s my answer.” Please, please, please watch The Good Place! I guess it’s one of the best, if not the best, sitcoms ever.

Mystic Pop-up Bar

Major lesson: Grudges are the heaviest to carry/ the art of letting go

One word to describe this k-drama? HEARTWARMING. With only 12 episodes, this k-drama was able to provide me comfort and healing. I did not actually expect much from this as I only watched it because of Yook Sungjae but what I failed to realize is that this kdrama’s approach to storytelling will be heartwarming. The plot is pretty simple for a fantasy drama: a woman, Weol-ju, runs a pop-up bar in order to fulfill her mission of settling the grudges of 100,000 people but as the years went by, it became difficult for her to have people to open up. When people fail to open up about the grudges they are holding, then it will be difficult for her to help them in solving their problems. And since it is taking her way too long to finish her mission, she was given an ultimatum of having to finish her mission within a month – good thing is she found two people to help her with the case: the afterlife police agent Gwi and the human with special ability of making people open up to him just by having a slight physical contact with them, Kang Bae. I love the way these three main characters complemented each other and I sometimes wish that I was given the chance to be a customer at the Mystic Pop-up Bar not just to have them help me solve my grudges but because sometimes, all we need is people who will listen to us.

As mentioned, Weol-ju’s mission is to help people settle the grudges they are carrying and she makes it happen by having people go inside her pop-up bar, let them tell their stories to her and then she will eventually offer them a special drink (which she disguises as an alcohol) that will make them fall asleep so she can enter the dream world and do her work in settling the grudge. While watching this drama, I can’t help but wonder: why do people drink when they have problems? For someone who never drinks and is not interested in drinking, I’ve always been curious of it. They said that alcohol tastes bitter, so I don’t understand why it seems to be helping people in dealing with their problems? Some say that by drinking, it helps them escape their reality for a while. I did some research about this topic and according to Origins Recovery, alcohol contains anxiolytic properties which means that it helps in inhibiting stress or anxiety. As for the bitterness, I heard from someone that as time passes by, the bitterness become sweet unlike life itself in which as time passes by, it becomes more overwhelming. I guess drinking really helps people to take a pause from the absurdity of life despite its bitterness as well as the headache that follows after drinking. Moreover, who am I to judge people who rely on drinking when their life becomes a mess when I also have my own ways, sometimes self-destructive, of finding an escape from this horrible world that we live in? After all, when life gets too tough, we all just want an escape – even though it’s temporary.

With every episode, Weol-ju and her squad helped people settle their grudges and each time they do, it makes me feel emotional. This show makes me realized that all of us are carrying grudges we don’t talk about and when we do not have the avenue to vent it out, then it eats us up alive. All of us are no stranger to struggles, but it is important to be strong and courageous. We can choose to struggle alone but asking for help does not mean you are weak.

Let me end this blogpost by putting my favorite line from Weol-ju: “No matter what’s making you suffer right now, things will settle and pass eventually. Hang in there until then, and you’ll find yourself stronger”

x,

TinaMae

[notgonnarememberthis]

find your way (back to me) - chapter eleven

I was initially going to hold back on this update until Sunday but y’all already know my impulse control is nonexistent and with the encouragement of new friends (hey naomi and elena!!) I had to go ahead and post. Tried something a little new with this chapter and it focuses a lot on Malcolm and I learned I actually like writing in his POV a lot so that’s new. It also features more Edrisa bc I love her and she’s my best friend’s absolute fav so I had to do them some service after the help with the last chapter which got some of my most insanely complimentary comments. Like one of y’all really commented how I wrote Martin well and I didn’t stop smiling the entire day. That’s fucking insane. Hope y’all enjoy the update and are staying safe!

Gil steps out of the room, exhaustion settling into him. Immediately Ainsley sits up leaning forward with her elbows on her knees.

“How is she? Is she ok?” The drive back from Claremont had been the worst. Jessica had jumped with every siren sounding and in New York? It was a lot. Ainsley held her hand the entire time while Malcolm rocked, his brain firing off at a million miles a minute. Nobody said a word but it was Jessica’s silence that was the most concerning to them. 

What the hell happened in that cell?

“She remembered what happened, didn’t she?” Malcolm casts a glance at Ainsley who doesn’t meet his gaze. Gil can only shrug.

“She still hasn’t said anything but something in there definitely got to her. I called Dani and JT. They agreed to be the new details until we can sort out why she got so uncomfortable when we passed the guards on our way out and the drive home.”

“We should go get mom’s things.” Ainsley says. “She only packed clothes. She left all of her products and things she’ll probably need. Who knows how long this stay will last, we should at least make her comfortable.” But she shifts her eyes to the door where Jessica was sleeping, or at least pretending to. She feels guilty for leaving her twice, it’s written all over her face.

“I’ll go.” Malcolm offers. “I feel like we missed something that night. It’ll give me a chance to look again.”

“Hell no.” Gil protests immediately. “I’m not comfortable with you going alone.”

“I’ll bring a detail.” His retort is interrupted by the sound of movement from the other room, like someone shifting around in the bed. Jessica is listening and for whatever reason, she doesn’t like that.

“We can go tomorrow. Right now I want all of us under the same roof.” Malcolm tips his head back, annoyed then rises again with an idea.

“What if I bring Edrisa? She’ll be able to help me look around and we’ll be back before you know it.” No more sounds of ruffling interrupt so Gil has to give in.

“Fine, but I want updates. And if you get even a whiff that something is wrong you two get the hell out.”

“Deal.” Gil sighs as Malcolm rushes off to text Edrisa.

The Whitly’s are going to be the death of him.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

“This is so exciting.” Edrisa practically bounces with every step up the driveway. “I’ve never actually got to be a part of the actual investigation.” She pauses, a thought interrupting her excitement. “Should I have brought something to defend myself?”

Malcolm smiles, her enthusiasm is refreshing after his day. Honestly, part of him just wanted to talk to her to get some of the weight of the world off his shoulders. For a brief moment this case isn’t a killer threatening his family. It’s just him and Edrisa. “Edrisa, we’re just getting clothes.”

“Are you sure cause I have pepper spray in my car.”

“Yes I’m sure.” He holds the door open for her gesturing to enter. “And besides, you’ve got me.” She beams at that, her pep coming back in full force as she bounds to the kitchen. He follows with a shake of his head.

“Ok, so what are we looking for?”

“Well, my mother drinks tea like most people drink water.” He points to the cabinet where they usually keep it. “It’s her comfort but Gil doesn’t keep tea in the house.” If Edrisa is curious why, she doesn’t show it. His tone is enough and he’s absolutely certain she read the casefile from that night.

Tea was how the surgeon sedated his victims, Gil was almost one of them.

When Edrisa opens the cabinet her eyes widen. The shelves are stacked with bags of tea, neatly sealed with tight creases. “That’s a lot.” She chuckles.

“It’s everyone’s favorites. Chai for Ainsley, the black is mine. She has every worker’s favorites, I think she even managed to get JT’s but don’t tell him that.”

“My lips are sealed. Matcha is my favorite, by the way.” She winks.

“Oh, she knows.” He grins at the wide, starry eyed look she gets. She blushes and clears her throat before turning back to the task. “Mother’s is the earl grey supreme.”

“What’s the difference between that and the earl grey?”

“Honestly?” Malcolm shrugs. “Price, probably.” Often she falls into the trap of the more expensive the better, it makes for an interesting Christmas and a pain in the ass to get gifts for her when she just buys anything she could possibly want on a whim.

Edrisa stops for a second, her posture straightening, and then getting on her tiptoes to see better. Even from behind he can tell she’s got something on her mind. It’s confirmed when she reaches inside pulling out a smaller, black bag. His head tilts because his mother never bought small bags. Even for people that rarely passed through she wanted to make sure they were prepared. Then the label catches his eye, it’s a completely different brand then what she normally buys from. A brand he hasn’t seen in years.

The brand his father likes.

“Where did you find that?” He asks, on edge and looking out the door. The house is silent other than the two of them but that doesn’t mean that can’t change at any second.

“It was on the bottom shelf and it’s open. All the rest are sealed. Why?”

Just like that it all pieces together. 

His mother had asked him that night if he made tea. He’d told her no and that made her seem more agitated. At first he thought it was because the killer had made her tea, had been in her room. No, it was much more than that. With Freddy’s connection to Claremont, the ability for the killer to find her bedroom and the kitchen so quickly, and the tea that his father used to make.

“The surgeon. He knows who the killer is.” The rush of emotion the punches him in the chest makes him stumble back against the counter. Edrisa runs to him, one hand on his elbow to steady him. Her presence isn’t enough to tamper the anger thudding in his chest with every heartbeat. He knew. He knew when she was missing. He knows now that her life is being threatened.

He was the one who got her to remember.

“That’s why she’d gone to him. She recognized the tea and didn’t say a word about it. Why didn’t she tell us?” Anger clashes with sadness burning at his retinas. He shuts his eyes tightly pressing the heels of his palm to them trying to get himself back under control.

“Malcolm.” His own name sounds unfamiliar in Edrisa’s voice. She’d always called him Bright. Never Malcolm. “Let’s get her stuff and go. They’ll get worried soon.” Her calmness has him taking a deep breath and nodding. “Good.” She extends her hand to him, it’s an almost childish offer in its innocence. Her hand is something to ground him to the world. It gives him something different to focus on rather than his feelings.

Wordlessly, he takes her hand.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

When Malcolm and Edrisa arrive the house is more crowded than before. JT is by the doorway with Ainsley and Dani sharing the couch. Gil has made coffee for everyone, certain that it will be a long night all around. They all look relieved to see them but Gil reads it on his face before anyone else.

“You found something.”

“Hooooo, did I find something.” Edrisa lingers next to him, unsure if she should stay or go. She decides on the former when Ainsley scoots on the couch leaving room for her to sit on the end closest to where Malcolm still stood. “Is she awake?”

“Bright, is this a good idea?” Dani asks sitting up a little straighter. He notes that she’s in much more casual clothes, probably looking to rest before trading shifts with JT.

“Nope. But I think she knows who the killer is. And if I’m right?”

“Go. We’ll be right out here.” Ainsley nods, making the final decision.

He shifts the bag over his shoulder opening the door to the bedroom slowly. In the dim light streaming between the curtains he sees his mother sitting on the side of the bed, she’s got something in her hands but it’s too dark to make out.

“Mom?” Her head turns to him, her expression isn’t the blank unreadable one from earlier. No, she looks relieved that he’s back. The news twists uneasily in his stomach as he shuts the door behind him. “Can I ask you a couple of questions?” He doesn’t really expect her to answer. But when her breathing doesn’t pick up or really make any uncomfortable movements he takes it as permission.

He grabs a chair sliding it so that he can sit across from her. Closer he can see how tired she is. Her breakdown likely didn’t help but she definitely didn’t fall asleep at any point in time since she got back.

“Stop me if you need to, ok?” She blinks at him so he continues. “Why did you go see him?” He treads lightly, testing the waters first. An annoyed expression passes over her face but she doesn’t shift or startle. He digs in the duffel he brought along pulling out the bag of tea. “Is this why?”

When her eyes land on the bag she takes a shuddering breath, it’s confirmation enough. 

“This was the tea he used to make.” She blinks back the tears, correct again. “This is why you visited him. The killer made you the same tea, you knew he had something to do with all of this.” Her lower lip wobbles but she holds herself tightly wound. “He knew who did this.” The first tear that slides down her cheek makes him feel like the worst. “Do you want me to stop?” She shakes her head, almost imperceptibly. Her hand unfolds and in it is a crumpled note. He takes it, slowly as not to startle her into shutting back down.

Just like you like.

“Did the killer write this?” A nod. Malcolm takes a breath trying not to be frustrated that she kept this from them. Had they known they would have questioned his father so much sooner. The information she knew, it’d be common knowledge. “Thank you.” He says instead, taking her hand and enclosing it in both of his. She’d held his shaking hand like this countless amounts of times, her fingers stroking the back of his hand in the same way he mimics now. “I need you to tell me what he told you.” She starts, but doesn’t pull away. “Please.”

Her voice is deep, more tonal than he’s ever heard come from her. He almost thinks he imagines it. It’s too low to understand what she says.

“What?”

“He’s a cop.” Her eyes meet his, glassy from unshed tears. He smiles at her sadly, too caught up in the fact that his mom is back before the gravity of her words hits him full force.

Oh.

Shit.

[btsslowburnfic]

Chthonic Love Chapter 3

Series Summary: Greek AU Yoongi/Hades x You/Persephone.  The Olympic Lord, Namjoon kidnaps you as a "gift" for his brother, ruler of the Underworld. Lord of Death: Yoongi.

Previous Chapter: Chapter 2

“Dear Hoseok,

I am sure you are quite worried about me and so I firstly want you to know that, all things considered, I am ok. Zeus brought me to the Underworld and Lord Yoongi has been a very gracious host. I’ve heard you lost a bet? I need to know what in Olympus happened so I can disentangle myself from any terms you have entered me into. Maybe now you’ll listen to me when I tell you to stop messing with the Olympians.

--Persephone”

You folded the letter and looked around for an envelope. You didn’t see any on the desk so you left and walked over to the door. You opened it and poked your head out to see if Yoongi was out there, but he wasn't. Feeling disappointed and not really wanting to go back to your cold, boring chamber, you turned back into the office. It was much warmer there than the rest of the castle. You appraised the room once more; you tried to remember what all you had heard about Lord Yoongi before today and you realized: not a whole lot. He seemed nice enough, just lightly annoyed that you were here. But if someone had dropped a person off in your house unexpectedly you would also be irritated.

You walked along one of the many bookcases and pulled out a few different books, perusing their covers. Some seem to be journals and you put those back, not wanting to be rude. A few of them have musical notes written in them, you turned your head towards the back of the office, noticing the Lyre and Harpsicord one again. Yoongi must play at least one of them. You continue to browse the shelves, finally finding a small book labeled, “Underworld Compendium.” You take it over to the pile of furs you had made earlier and settle in for some reading.

In the beginning there was Darkness. Before the brothers were Kings of the Realm, they were slaves to their father: Cronus. Cronus, not wanting to share any of his power, swallowed each of his sons, keeping them in interminable darkness and pain. Finally, their mother was able to spare a child: Zeus. Zeus led the charge against Cronus and the other Titans, and in his surprise, the enslaved children were accidentally released. The Titan Wars were waged for decades: Olympians versus Titans. Finally, Cronus was destroyed. The realms were divided amongst those sons who fought in the Titan Wars. Namjoon, who the mortals worship as Zeus, wanted Olympus and ascended to his throne with great fanfare and a feast that lasted for 40 days and 40 nights. Jin, Poseidon, enjoyed splashing in the waves and playing with the animals of the sea. Yoongi, Hades, traveled down from Olympus, through the Earth, Through the sea, and arrived at the Underworld.

GEOGRAPHY

The Underworld is comprised of many subsections. At the center of it lies the Obsidian Palace. Hewn into the very core of the Underworld, it is a sight to behold, visible from Erebos all the way to Oceanus. Surrounding the Obsidian Palace is the Desert of Sorrow, bordered by the Stygian Sea to the South….

You yawned and sat the book facedown on the furs. You found the book interesting, you really did, but between the warm fire and the crying earlier, your eyelids grew heavy. You decided to lay down for just a moment and before you knew it, Hypnos was proverbially knocking on your door.

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

Yoongi had left you to write your letter in private. He’d deliver it to Charon either tonight or tomorrow. To his surprise, he wasn’t as annoyed by your presence as he thought he would be. He started to wonder when the last time he had talked to a person? He occasionally would speak to Penthos, but considering every day was the same, there wasn’t really much to say.

He walked down the hallway and heard voices speaking in a hushed tone.

“Don’t worry about it, I’m sure she’ll be leaving soon. She seems so nice. I don’t know what your problem is.” It was Lethe.

“She just walks in and acts like she owns the damned place,” Yoongi heard Penthos harshly retort.

Lethe laughed, “She’s a Goddess. The fact she didn’t disembowel you for speaking to her without being spoken to is really something. It’s clear you've never served in any other courts before. While Lord Yoongi is a quiet God, he’s a million times better than most of them.”

Penthos sighed, “I suppose you’re right about that. I’ll see you later.”

Yoongi waited a few seconds and then rounded the corner, he put his hands on his hips, “Lethe, Just the person I wanted to see.”

Lethe froze at first, clearly surprised. After a few seconds, she turned around, bowing slightly, “Yes, my Lord?”

“What room did you end up taking Lady Persephone to?”

“Uh…” she faltered for a moment, wringing her hands.

“I know you didn’t actually put her out in the furthest corner of the palace. It’s fine.”

She let out a deep breath, “She’s staying in the room with the quicksilver door. And I’m sorry she wandered around the castle. I didn’t know if she was supposed to stay in her room or if I was supposed to lock her up. Even though I don’t have a key. I really should have asked first but I didn’t,” Lethe rambled.

“Lethe, it's OK . She’s not a prisoner here, it’s fine.” Yoongi gave a rare smile to reassure her.

“Ok, thank you sir.” she visibly relaxed. “Do you need anything?”

“Just make sure Lady Persephone is comfortable while she is staying here. I’m not sure how long she will be staying, but consider yourself her attendant while she is here.”

Lethe was visibly surprised, “Yes, m’lord.”

This is what I get for complaining that things were too boring. He thought to himself.I’m just glad she’s calmed down. Crying women terrify me. Yoongi continued down the hallway to the furthest wing of the castle. He approached a large set of Enchanted doors. He raised his hands to the sigils and unlocked them. You can’t be too careful. He crossed the antechamber, twisting through another hallway, and finally down a staircase he hadn’t used in decades. He conjured a blue flame to light his path. The air had turned heavy and acrid in the absence of any fresh air. He continued until he arrived at the bottom of the staircase where the floor was dirt. He took a few steps into the small room which connected to the catacombs through various tunnels. He waited several moments before he heard the scratching sound begin against the wall. The sound came closer, accompanied by a clicking noise.

A voice that sounded like something being stretched uncomfortably over a wringer called out in the darkness. “Lord Yoongi. It’s been so long. What does the Lord of the Underworld require?”

Yoongi looked almost bored as the creature climbed closer; its hundreds of black eyes reflected his blue flame.

“Hello Arachne. How are the catacombs?”

“Such a kind Lord. Asking Arachne about the catacombs. This is why you’re my favorite.”

“The catacombs?”

“Fine my Lord. You know we keep the others down here. Its is our privilege to serve the Underworld.” she replies in her raspy voice. Dozens of smaller spiders have started to enter the chamber. Arachne’s children crawl over the walls, eager to catch a rare glimpse of the ruler of the underworld.

Yoongi turned his gaze back to Arachne’s eyes, “Clothes, Arachne. I need dresses. Nice ones, suitable for a Lady.”

The creature let out a cacophonous sound like gnashing teeth. “Oh? Is there a Lady of the Underworld now? I haven’t sewn a wedding dress in centuries.”

Yoongi sighed. He hated dealing with Arachne. Being a gossip is what caused Athena to turn her into a spider in the first place. “No Arachne. Just a visiting Lady who didn’t pack enough. A few normal dresses. No wedding dresses.”

He heard a small wailing sound and watched her pincers quiver, “But I want to make beautiful clothes again. The Underworld needs a Lady for me to dress, and then children to dress. I’ve taught my children to sew, did you know that?” Arachne sounds almost human again as she becomes increasingly excited.

“No. No.” he holds his hand up, glad the darkness is hiding his red cheeks, a mixture of embarrassment and anger coloring his face. He’s becoming sick of others telling him he needs a companion. “Just normal dresses. That’s all”

He heard a collective whining sound from all the spiders, “Very well Lord Yoongi, what colors should they be.”

Yoongi was already turning around and walking towards the door, “You’re the stylist not me. Nice normal dresses Arachne!” He went back up the stairs and straightened his jacket once he arrived on the other side of the locked doors. Arachne would have those clothes done in no time. The poor Spider-Woman had nothing else to do, just decorating the Underworld’s cave system with things people would never see. Yoongi had invited her to come up to the main part of the palace when she first arrived, but she had balked saying it was “too bright” and that “nobody wanted to see a monster.”

He wondered what you were up to. He imagined you had probably finished your letter and were poking your head around the castle some more. He found himself smiling as he walked up the staircase to his office. He opened the door and saw you fast asleep in front of the fireplace. He brought his hand to his mouth and entered the room as quietly as possible, not wanting this moment to end. He tried to decide if he should stay or leave. Instead he found himself just staring at you. You were very pretty. Not in an unnatural way like the other Goddesses he had met, just pretty. He walked across the room and saw You were clutching a book. He knelt down to see what book you had ended up with. Yoongi gently removed it from beneath your arm and ran a finger down the spine. “Underworld Compendium.” A good book. He should know, he wrote it. He grabbed a scrap of paper and marked where you had it open and sat it down next to you.

He walked over to his desk and saw the letter you had written your brother. He imagines that it said “Please come rescue me, I’m being forced to stay with a monster and pretend to be nice to him.” He really wanted to look but knew he shouldn’t. He heard you stir a little and watched you throw an arm over your eyes. Yoongi raised a hand towards the flames, dimming the lights in the room. He looked at the letter again and decided to read it. He took a breath and flipped it open. He read it quickly. It’s a very short letter. He propped his elbows on his desk and held his head in his hands for a moment. He was also eager to see what your brother’s response would be. He thought about writing his own letter but somehow “you fucked up and now I own your sister,” seemed like a bad idea. His nose twitched. He smelled a faint floral scent and looked up. Flowers had started to bloom in a bowl on his desk.

“What the hell is this?” he asked. He heard a faint moaning come from in front of the fireplace, another flower bud appeared. Yoongi felt his face grow warm. He tapped on his Hourglass, watching the sand swirl.

He pulled out one of his journals and began to write in it. He became lost in his own thoughts for a while, the crackling of the fireplace and your light breathing the only sounds. It was soothing in a way he had never felt before.

When he looked up again his desk was covered in flowers. He laughed lightly and heard you start to awaken.

You stretched your arms above your head. Where were you again? You felt the warm fire on your back and slowly opened your eyes. You saw Lord Yoongi sitting at his desk. His eyes flicked over towards you and you suddenly felt very embarrassed. “Sorry. I meant to just rest my eyes,” you said as you sat up. “I hope I didn’t snore too much.”

To your shock he laughs, his deep voice echoing. “Just a little bit. You did make quite the garden here though,” he gestures to his desk which is covered in chrysanthemums.

You blush “Sorry, it happens sometimes. My powers sometimes do their own thing when I'm sleeping or sick. Fortunately, other than making people sneeze, it’s not that bad.” He clearly doesn’t know the meaning behind flowers and you hope he doesn’t look it up any time soon.

You stood up, rubbing your hands up and down your arms at the loss of direct heat from the fireplace.

"it's fine I uh," he runs his tongue along his lower lip, "just didn't know flowers could bloom in the underworld. I've never seen them here."

You laugh a little, "Well apparently they can when the Goddess of Spring is here. Speaking of, when is the next time Charon will be arriving?"

Yoongi moved the hourglass on his desk and looked into it. To you it appeared as though nothing was happening, the sand suspended in between the top and bottom, but he appraised it carefully as though he was reading it.

"Soon," he stood up, pulling his shirt down straight. He pulled an envelope out of the desk drawer and placed your letter inside.

You walked over to the desk to gather the flowers. “Sorry, I’ll just--”

"No. Leave them." he said

You thought maybe he would say more about it but he doesn't. He walked to the back corner of the room and grabbed a cloak.

"Can I come with you?" you asked him

"You don't trust me to deliver it?" he responded harshly.

You feel sad that that's what he thought, your gaze traveled to the floor, "No. I just saw the sea earlier and it looked pretty. And I really don't want to be alone in this giant Palace."

His features immediately softened. "Oh. Ok. Hmm. Hold on." he walks over to you with his cloak and puts it around you, carefully fastening it below your neck. "Here. It's colder out there than it looks."

"Won't you be cold?" you asked in disbelief at how quickly his moods could change.

He shrugged and picked up your letter. "I'm used to it. Don't worry about me."

"I can just stay here…"

"No, let's go." he said and opened the door, motioning for you to go through it. 

 NEXT  CHAPTER

[hqolympia]

chicago’s very own 𝐎𝐋𝐘𝐌𝐏𝐈𝐀 𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐕𝐄 has been spotted on madison avenue driving a chevrolet corvette z06 , welcome ! your resemblance to 𝒃𝒂𝒓𝒃𝒂𝒓𝒂 𝒑𝒂𝒍𝒗𝒊𝒏 is unreal . according to tmz , you just had your 𝒕𝒘𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒓𝒅 birthday bash . your chance of surviving new york is uncertain because you’re 𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒄𝒊𝒔𝒊𝒗𝒆 , but being 𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒍𝒆 might help you . i think being a 𝒈𝒆𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒊 explains that .  3 things that would paint a better picture of you would be 𝐦𝐢𝐝𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐰𝐧 ,  𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐳𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐧 & 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 𝐟𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐭 𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 . 

hi ,  peachy !  my  name’s  char  &  that  smile  of  yours  is  making  my  heart  melt !  🥺 allow  me  to  introduce  u  to  my  fren  over  here !

full name :  olympia  giselle  hargrove

nickname :  oly ,  pia  (tho, the latter one is reserved for her grandmother)

date of birth :  may  22nd , 1997  (23) 

birth place :  chicago , il

sexual orientation : pansexual

occupation :  competitive diver

labels :  the  crimson  /  the  icarian

𝐢.  𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍

one :  picture a little girl with bright blue eyes, pigtails bouncing with every step she takes as a grin makes its way upon her face . she seems happy ---- and in the moment she truly is, despite the fact that the people she needs the most, her parents, are a few thousand miles away and aren’t here to see olympia say her first words or take her first step. she is too young to understand --- honestly, too young to even think about the reasons why they left her.

two :  she is a little bit older now, a full-on eleven years old --- taller, thinner and, most importantly, rowdier. she has quite a few friends, although they all seem to be having picnics with their barbie dolls and sleepovers dedicated to watching princess movies whereas olympia wants to run around and jump all over the place. the girls just don’t seem to match her energy, the boys aren’t exactly welcoming towards her, having this stupid, “ew, but you’re a girl!” mindset. she just wants to find something for herself, something that will keep her interested for longer than three hours ---- that something turned out to be diving.

three :  it’s a few years later, and now she’s standing at the 10m platform. it’s her last dive, and she needs to get it exactly right to win the gold medal. olympia would honestly be lying if she said her legs weren’t shaking because of how nervous she was --- but there’s a camera right in front of her face, therefore she has to keep it together. she turns around, takes one last breath, and then she’s up in the air. fifteen seconds later she’s fully submerged into water ----- and fifteen minutes later she has tears coming out of her eyes. she did it. she’s the world champion now.

four : it’s exactly a year later, and a lot has changed. olympia finds herself in the sunny city of rio de janeiro where she’s come to compete in her first olympic games --- which is exactly what she’s always been meant to do, judging by the name her parents gave her. except this time she’s nervous for an entirely different reason --- she’s now a successful athlete, this season’s leader and the one to watch out for. she’s the reigning world champion, for god’s sake, so she has to prove every single person out there she didn’t win on an accident. a lot of things seem to be going wrong; from oly flubbing her first dive to her coach coming up to her before her final one to say that her parents have showed up at the arena. eventually she finds herself in the same exact position as she did back in Russia ---- her palms are sweating, her legs are shaking, but there’s no turning back. the only way is down, so she has to dive one way or another. a jump, two somersaults, a twist ----- she’s back in the pool, and as she immediately drowns in the roar coming from the audience, tears start coming out of her eyes. she did it again. she’s lived up to her name.

five :  ever since she got back home, her life has completely changed. interview after interview, a campaign after a photoshoot, an event after the other ---- all of that mixed in with her training routine has it ups and downs. her schedule keeps her busy yet there’s something missing. she’s looking everywhere in the hopes of finding that missing piece, and at some point she feels like she’s found it in the face of a stranger who ends up in her bed that night. it brings her a sense of serenity, that lasts a few weeks ---- but olympia knows it’s all too good to be true, and it’s proven to be that way as she stumbles upon a certain page on a random night. it doesn’t seem real at first, but when she spots a tattoo on the girl’s ribcage, a realization hits her ---- she’s plastered all over porn sites, and that particular video featuring her has generated a few million views in a span of two months. she doesn’t remember the night at first due to her drunken state, but she recognizes her bedroom, particularly a personalized louis vuitton gym bag sitting in the corner. details like that help her piece the night together, and from that point on there’s nothing but fear of it all coming out and ruining her career.

𝐢𝐢.  𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀

basically ! this intro is all over the place so here are some bullet points to get u up to speed !

oly was born in chicago but grew up and spent most of her time in toronto with her grandmother, since her parents were setting up their business overseas. they were coming by to visit her maybe once or twice a year, so she isn’t as close with them.

she is a competitive diver (a quite decorated one bc .... why wouldn’t she be 🥺🥺🥺)  representing canada bc of her upbringing despite the fact that she now lives in new york (she moved here in 2017, after the rio olympics)

astrology wise, she is a gemini sun cancer rising .... so sorry to all of u for this

her placements mean that she is quite creative, capricious and may appear manic sometimes --- but really she is just downright STUPID bc she is always trying to get her ass into trouble. like, you can’t even imagine how many times her coach had to drag her out of the mess she got herself into ... 

she is very much about having sympathy for others and helping them and whatnot, but unbeknownst to her, these tendencies can be explained by the “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” mindset. she has to keep her act straight, so getting onto someone’s bad side isn’t in the cards for her --- god knows what kind of shit she may end up in now that she’s a part of ... this world of glamour and fame, u kno?

olympia also really loves to talk, preach, argue --- just do whatever to be heard

in her free time (the time when she doesn’t feel like wreaking havoc tbh) she usually cooks deserts (vegan banana pudding? blackberry sorbet? key lime cheesecake? u want it, u got it!), reads books (painted veil by somerset is her ultimate FAV) and ... drives around town whilst listening to some cheesy music 🥺 

other than that her usual routine consists of training, clubbing and messing shit up due to the chaotic stupid personality !

𝐢𝐢𝐢.  𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒

i promise this intro won’t be that long ... after this ! 🤠🤠🤠these are just the few ideas i can get off the top of my head so ... there’s always room for brainstorming ! :-)

𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐓 𝐂𝐑𝐎𝐖𝐃 / close friends --- everybody needs some sort of a support system in their life, and oly is no exception to this rule. she’s never really had a big family, therefore she’s always surrounded herself with people in the hopes of filling the empty space in her heart. and honestly, if it wasn’t for these people, she would’ve quit diving right after winning the olympics, moved to the suburbs of toronto and just lived a quiet life --- but the pride for her friends just gives her enough motivation to move further and become better.

𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐍𝐄𝐑𝐒 𝐈𝐍 𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐌𝐄 / best friend --- we all have that someone who’s impossibly close to us; who we cannot imagine our lives without. the bond is so crucial to them both parties that it feels as if there’s never been a moment without each other. the general public and tabloids, though, feel as if there’s more going on and will not stop nagging them about the details.

𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐋𝐘 𝐃𝐄𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐃 / friends drifted apart / exes --- as weird as it is, oly is very much a yolo person. in addition to that, she has a ton of love and devotion for every single person she’s ever had in her life no matter what happened between them or what caused them to drift apart. though, her ever-changing nature is known to drive people away which, tbh, happens to be a blessing and a curse -- it helps oly sort of “filter” through her circle of friends, but then again, if someone enters her life, they leave and undeniable impact on it. therefore, she misses whoever left her life more than they could ever imagine.

𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐘𝐁𝐎𝐃𝐘 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐒 𝐘𝐎𝐔 / rival (?) --- olympia isn’t perfect in any way, shape or form. she knows that, but most importantly, the public knows that and will not stop critiquing every little thing that she does. this person, though, is the exact opposite - the public LOVES them to the point where even olympia’s parents would probably say things like “ugh, i wish you could be more like that!”. this makes the relationship between the two quite ... strained. because as much as olympia may love them as a person, there’s always this lingering sense of jealousy that just enables her petty side.

𝐢𝐯. 𝐎𝐎𝐂

ok so ! if you’ve reached this part of my intro ... i cannot thank u enough bc this ?? this is long as HECK but i wanted to actually try and describe the kind of muse i envision in my head. i love u all a latte & if u feel like plotting w/ my dumb kid, leave a like on this post or feel free to mssg me on discord under futurenostalgias#1692 🤠sidenote tho: i’ll probably get to the mssgs in a few hours seeing as i have a few assignments to complete and i’m sorta braindead ... love u , cannot wait to write w/ u ! xoxo ur friendly neighborhood trash char  

[lady-une]

Hidden Pain

Eeek here it is, the story I had written in hopes to put a smile on my lovely @tears-of-orphans face. It was supposed to be a fluff story but went to angst town real quick. Please just know this is a/u for Kiseok, well I hope it is. I know I am not alone with worrying about whats going on with him. The pressure to put out new music is probably super overwhelming for him and I really hope he has someone there to help him not become consumed with everything. Trigger warning for excessive alcohol use. I may have drawn from my personal experience with dealing with someone who has a drinking problem. I made a moodboard so maybe that will cheer you all up. Enjoy, and please leave me a comment or send me an anon with your thoughts. They really do help me grow as a writer.

You have been away from Kiseok for over a year, you know something is wrong but he shut you out. Coming back home this isn’t what you expected to find, will he ever open up to you?

Word count: 49946

Theme: angst

Rating: Mature, alcohol abuse

Pairing: Simon D (Kiseok)  x Reader (F)

“The number you have called is unavailable, please leave a message after the tone.”

Clicking the end button, I ended my millionth call to Kiseok. Being away from home for a year has been hard but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. My sister who moved to the states was in a horrific car crash with her family. Her husband had died in the accident leaving her to care for their twin daughters alone. My sister was in a coma for two months because of the swelling on her brain, when my mother got the call we both rushed to the states to be with my sister. After some time my mother went back home while I stayed here to care for my sister and nieces. The whole time being here I tried to stay in contact with my friends back home but it’s hard being on different time zones and caring for the girls and my sister.

Kiseok and I had met about two years ago at a club, I was there with my friends as was he. We had run into each other literally, well I had. In my buzzed state of mind I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings while texting a friend with one hand and holding my drink in my other hand, I didn’t even notice him until it was too late. My fruity drink ended up all over his silk button up and my ass ended up on the ground. When my brain had finally caught up to what was going on I had jumped up and started to brush off his shirt and of course not paying attention that I was brushing a little too low until he grabbed my hands. When I had looked up his face he had a caring smile on it but I could see a little pink to his cheeks. I apologized a million times over and over but he brushed it off as if there was no problem. I offered to pay for the dry cleaning but he said not to worry about it but if I wanted to make up for it I could take him out to dinner instead. We traded numbers that night and it was the start of our friendship. I didn’t know who he was as I spent most of my time at the hospital doing my residency and I feel like that’s what made our friendship special to him, because he was just a normal person in my eyes instead of a hip hop artist.

Kiseok had always been this charismatic person who could brighten up any room with his laughter and jokes. He was also the person you could go to with a problem and he would try and help you solve it the best way possible. But he is human after all and like any other person he has his downside too, like not allowing other people to help him with his problems. He always had this way to hide his issues so that no one would know. He says he doesn’t want to burden other with his problems so he doesn’t like to share them. So when I started to notice him pulling away right before I left I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t have enough time to try and figure out what was going on before I had to get to my family. I would text him or email him every chance I could get. He would respond that everything was fine or he wouldn’t respond at all. His social media posts started to dwindle down as well before stopping all together. We had no mutual friends and I didn’t know the guys from his label that well either, honestly, I don’t even think they knew about me. I had no one I could call to check up on him and it was making me really uncomfortable.

When I woke up this morning to the news that he had wiped his Instagram clean the dread I felt at the pit of my stomach started to spread more. Something was really wrong and I was starting to feel uneasy. Yes he was starting to show up more on other people’s videos or in pictures with other people but there was something off about it. I was going to figure this out but I just needed to get back home to do it! Thankfully that’s exactly where I was going, my sister had decided to move back home with my nieces to be with the rest of our family. In 12 hours I will be home and able to physically check in with him, I just hope he didn’t forget about me.

Picking my phone back up I opened up my Instagram and went into my DMs, the ones I had sent him said seen but no reply as did the one I sent Jay Park. Of course that one wouldn’t get a reply as I know I’m probably coming off as a crazy fan but I was desperate to get some kind of response. Closing out of the app I opened up my text messages to him, all of them read but none replied to. Letting out another sigh I sent another one.

y/n: Kiseok, I am coming home. I don’t know what’s going on with you but please know that I care about you and I am worried. As soon as I get things settled in at home I am going to stop by, I hope you are there.

Finally we are boarded onto the plane, the ride was like any other one I have done over the years. Food was served, movies were watched, naps were taken. But the dread I had been feeling in the pit of my stomach was always there. Once we landed we went to my family home and I helped get everyone settled in. My parents asked me to stay for dinner but I told them I had an urgent matter to get to and rushed out the door. It was late and I had no idea if Kiseok was even home with how busy his schedule was.

The cab pulled up to his apartment building and I thanked the driver before paying and shutting the door. Pulling my jacket closer to myself to keep out the cold wind I walked up to the building, I had only hoped he hadn’t moved in the year I was away. Taking the elevator up to his floor I started to feel my heart beat faster and my hands began to sweat. I wiped my hands on my pants as I approached his door. Taking a deep breath, I pushed the doorbell, I listened to the sound and waited. There was no answer. I rang it again with no response. Putting my ear up to the door I strained to listen for some kind of sound coming from the other side of the door but heard nothing.  Pulling my phone out of my jacket I dialed his number and put my ear to the door to hear if his phone would ring from the other side, again no sound was heard. All of the emotions I had been feeling for the past year just came rushing to the front, turning my back I slid down to the floor and let my head fall onto my knees. For the first time in a year I cried. I cried for not being able to stay in contact with him, for knowing something was wrong and for not being able to do anything. I felt utterly hopeless.

After sitting on the floor outside his door for a few moments I wiped my tears and stood up. Walking to the elevator I felt tired, as if all the emotions had zapped my energy. Just as I was about to push the button the doors opened. Looking up slowly and I saw him, there on the elevator stood the one man I desperately needed to see. We both just stood there looking at each other before the elevator tried to shut the door on him. His hand reached out stopping the door causing it to open back up. I moved to the side as he stepped off and came to stand next to me.

“What are you doing here?”

“I said I was worried and told you I was going to come over. Didn’t you get my text?”

“I didn’t think you would actually do it.”

“I was worried.”

“Don’t be, I am fine.”

“No you’re not, I can tell by just looking at you.”

“Wow, that’s so nice of you to say after not seeing me for a year.”

“Don’t do that, don’t twist my words Kiseok.”

“Just go home y/n, its late.”

“Not until you tell me what’s going on!”

Kiseok turned from me and walked over to his door before entering in the passcode, he opened the door and before it could shut locking me out I ran up to it and put foot in the door. The weight of the door was heavier then I remembered and the pressure from it caused me to hiss out in pain. Kiseok turned his head quickly when he heard me hiss and dropped the bags he was holding onto the floor.

“You fool, why would you do that.”

He opened the door allowing me to walk into his apartment slowly. I took my shoes off and slipped on the guest slippers before slowly stepping my way to his couch. Sitting down I was able to take in his apartment, it was the same as it was before I left but just a little dirtier then it was in the past. Kiseok came and sat on the coffee table in front of me before he reached down for my foot and placed it in his lap. He took my sock off to see the beginning of a bruise forming on my foot.

“Why would you do that, you know my door is really heavy.”

“I didn’t want to get locked out.”

“You really shouldn’t have come.”

He stood up and grabbed a pillow from the couch before pulling the coffee table closer and placed my foot on top of the pillow. I followed him with my eyes to his kitchen to see him grab an ice pack from the freezer and a dish towel. He returned to me and placed it on my foot causing me to hiss out again from the pain and coldness.

“That will teach you to try and keep a door open that is heavier then you.”

“Well if someone would answer my calls and texts I wouldn’t have to just randomly show up here and try to be stop your door with my itty bitty foot.”

He scoffed and smiled, “You do have the smallest feet I have ever seen.”

“So are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

The smile he had on his face instantly dropped as he turned and walked towards the bags on the floor. He lifted them and brought them to the kitchen taking the contents out, some instant ramen, rice, soju, and beer.

“Are you expecting company?”

“No why?”

“You were never one to drink alone, you never have booze in the house.”

“Things change.”

“I can see.”

I stay silent as he puts a pot on the stove to boil his noodles and cuts up some extra some stuff to put in his food.

“You know I can help, you always loved my noodles.”

“You’re hurt, just sit there.”

When he finishes cooking he put everything on a tray and brought it to the couch. I thanked him for the food and we ate in silence. I take the time to look at him closely, he has lost weight which wouldn’t be a problem if he wasn’t already a smaller framed man. He also had deep dark circles under his eyes, which isn’t uncommon for people who work late at night but these were too extreme. After he finished his meal he started opening up the soju and beer making himself a drink.

“So how are things? How is work?”

“It is work, nothing new really.”

I finish my meal and placed my bowl on the coffee table and turned to him.

“You can lie to me all you want but I know something is wrong. You have been pulling away since before I even left. Then you go MIA on social media along with our own conversations. I am worried about you. I know you hate to open up to people but please Kiseok tell me what’s going on. Let me in!”

“Why? Why are you pushing so much! I am fine and I can handle things on my own. I think you should leave.”

I can feel the tears pricking at my eyes and I put my sock back on my foot before standing. Kiseok is in the kitchen making himself another drink as I reach the door. Just as he opens the door under the sink to throw away the can I get a glimpse of all the empty soju bottles and various other empty bottles. I stop putting my shoes on and hobble my way over to him pushing him out of the way to take the bin out. Smashed beer cans and soju bottles have filled the bin up so that other items have started to flow out of the bin. I look up at him surprised, of all things I wasn’t expecting this.

“Kiseok what is this?”

“I am a grown man, if I want to drink I will.”

“There is drinking and then there is excessive drinking, this is too much. When did this start?”

“Just go y/n.”

“No!”

Kiseok grabs my arm and roughly drags me to the door before he opens it and pushes me out causing me to fall before he throws my shoes out as well. The door is slammed shut and locked. The tears are streaming down my face as I crawl to the door where my shoes are I put one on and then move to put the other one on. I cry out in pain as I try to push my injured foot into the shoe, in my frustration I hit the door cursing its existence.

“Stupid fucking door.”

Reaching for the handle I help myself to my feet before placing a hand on the door, the one person I am worried about the most is just on the other side of this door but he mind as well be on another planet. I say a soft goodbye before turning and hobbling towards the elevator.

Over the next two week I make multiple attempts to get in touch with him by either calling or stopping by his house. He continues to ignore my attempts which I would have let slide since he has been on more videos and in pictures with the other members of AOMG but in a recent video you could see him slurring his words and you could tell he has lost more weight. It wasn’t just me now, his fans were starting to notice and were leaving comments of concern on posts of him. As much as I wanted to spend my time trying to figure out what was going on with him I had to get back to my life which meant work. Prior to coming back I was able to talk to the hospital who I previously worked for and they were able to give me back my old job. The only down fall was I would be stuck on night shifts until a day spot were to open back up.

It was my second week back working a night shift. I was exhausted from all of the people coming in. We were one of the largest hospitals in Seoul and were known to house high ranking officials on top of celebrities. Standing at the nurse station I was looking over some charts just as a call came in about a VIP patient arriving by ambulance, they had an ETA of 2 minutes. I along with another doctor rushed to the ambulance bay just as they were pulling in. The ambulance staff jumped down and rolled out the patient and began shouting off the stats of the patient but I couldn’t hear a thing they were saying because there on the gurney was Kiseok.

“Dr. y/n!”

“Yes?”

“Did you hear anything I said?”

“No I am sorry.”

The other attending doctor grabbed my arm, “Pull yourself together!”

We grab the gurney and rushed him inside then transferred him to a hospital bed inside a secluded area of the emergency room. The other attending doctor was getting him hooked up to the machines and checking his vitals, I had the paperwork and stepped out to find his guardian. Just outside the door pacing back and forth was none other than Jay Park.

“Are you Jung Kiseok’s guardian?”

“Yes.”

“Can you please tell me what happened?”

“I hadn’t heard from him all day so I stopped by his place to check on him and found him unconscious. I tried to wake him but he wouldn’t wake up so I called for an ambulance.”

“It says here that he stopped breathing on the transport here. Do you know of any medical conditions we should be aware of? Any heavy drinking or drug use?”

“No he doesn’t do drugs, he isn’t usually sick. He hurt his foot earlier this year but that should he healed.” “What about drinking, he smelt of liquor.”

“Yeah he has been drinking a lot and I have been trying to get him to stop but he won’t listen.”

“I see.”

Jay who was looking down this whole time lifted his head up and glared at me.

“Don’t say that! He is a hardworking man!”

I stopped writing down everything and glared right back at him.

“I know he is a hardworking man, but I am having a hard time believing you have done all you could to help him. He has been pulling away for well over a year and now he is like this? Where have you been that he was able to get this way? What have you been doing exactly to pull him back?”

Jay stepped back as if I had physically slapped him, the look of shock was evident on his face.

“Do you know Kiseok?”

“Yes I do. Now if there is nothing left I am going to get back in there and figure out what is wrong.”

Walking back in the doctor and nurse were watching his vitals as they drew blood for the labs.

“How is he doing?”

“He is having trouble breathing and his body temperature is low. What did the guardian say?”

“He said that he has been doing some heavy drinking and they have tried to help but I doubt it.”

“Another celebrity throwing their life away.”

I snap my head towards my fellow doctor, “Don’t say that shit, leave if that’s the way you are going to look at this.”

“Do you know him?”

“Yes but we haven’t seen in each other in a long time.”

“Maybe you should..”

The alarms of the machines cut off his sentence, Kiseok started to shake violently on the table. We rush to turn him onto his side and to keep his air way clear, we administered some medication and got the seizure under control.

“This is alcohol poisoning.”

I nodded my head, “We need to test his liver and check the rest of his organs to make sure there is no damage.”

The rest of the night we ran tests and checked everything, none of his organs were damaged and there was nothing done to his brain from his seizure or from when he stopped breathing. Once we had him stable enough we moved him to a private room on the VIP floor and brought up Jay. Jay sat down on the other side of the bed from me watching Kiseok.

“It was alcohol poisoning, thankfully there was no damage to his organs.”

“Will he be ok?”

“Yes he will, but he can’t be drinking like this.”

“Will you make sure the staff does not release this to the media?”

“Are you serious right now? Your best friend could have fucking died and your worried about the media catching wind?”

“I just don’t want him to have any problems.”

“Bull shit! If you didn’t want any problems you would have stopped this from getting out of hand!”

“If you knew things were getting like this where the fuck were you y/n? Your standing there placing all the blame on me, but I don’t see you do anything!”

“Because I wasn’t even in the fucking country! I was taking care of my family in the states but the first thing I did when I got back was go to him! I have been trying to get in touch with him this whole fucking time but he has been ignoring me! I can’t do shit from across the fucking ocean, so don’t try and place this on me Jay!”

“Wait, are you y/n who had to go take care of a sister who was in a car accident?”

“Yes.”

“I see, listen I am sorry for yelling. Kiseok told us about you, he was really upset when you left.”

“If it wasn’t an emergency I wouldn’t have left like that, but I had no choice. I called him and texted him all the time but he cut contact with me.”

“He said he didn’t want to burden you, but I am not going to get into that. This is something you need to talk to him about personally. Listen I have to go and check in with the other guys, call me if something happens.”

Jay stood and walked out the door leaving me there rather speechless. For someone who said they cared for Kiseok he didn’t really act like it. I checked him over once more before returning back to the ER to finish out my shift. Once I clocked out I went back up to Kiseok’s room and pulled a chair to his bed and sat down.

“Kiseok please just let me in.”

Laying my head down on the bed I closed my eyes only wanting to rest them.

“Y/n?”

I opened my eyes and sat up letting out a yawn.

“Kiseok, are you ok?”

“What are you doing here, why am I here?”

I rolled the chair over to the machine and checked his vitals before pulling my pen light out and checking his eyes.

“You were brought into the ER last night unconscious and you had a seizure while in the ER. How are you feeling, do you have any pain anywhere?”

“Wait you work here?”

“Yes, I was working the night shift last night.”

“Then why are you here? Why aren’t you at home sleeping?”

“Because I couldn’t leave until I knew you were ok.”

“Y/n….”

“Kiseok I get that you don’t want to burden me with your problems but you aren’t. I care for you and this whole year has been hard being so far from you when I knew something was going on. I have been worrying this whole time about what was going on with you but you wouldn’t say anything. Jay said you have been drinking heavily for a while now and you won’t listen to him about stopping. You had alcohol poisoning last night, you stopped breathing! If Jay had not showed up you could have DIED Kiseok!”

My hand was grasping his bed sheet and by the time I was done talking my voice was nearing shouting volume. The tears were falling down my face again landing on my hands. Just the thought of him not being here any longer was too much to bare. Kiseok pulled me to him and wrapped his arms around me. I grabbed onto his hospital shirt and sobbed into his chest as he rubbed my back and tried to calm me down. When the tears stopped and I was nearly out of breath I pulled away, looking up at Kiseok I noticed he was also crying. I reached my hand out to wipe away his tears as he did to mine as well.

“I am so sorry y/n, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Please don’t shut me out, don’t suffer alone Kiseok. I am here for you, I am always here for you no matter what.”

“You just had so much going on with your residency and then you had to rush off to your family. I didn’t want to add my shit to everything you were dealing with.”

“The whole world could be falling apart and I would still find time to listen and help you, just as you would for me.”

“Can you forgive me for acting like such an ass that day?”

“As long as you stop drinking and tell me what is going on so I can help you.”

“Deal, I don’t ever want to see you cry like this because of me.”

Kiseok finally opened up to me about his struggles. He has been struggling to put out new music, no matter how much he tried he just couldn’t find the inspiration needed to put together his music. He felt pressure not only from the fans about getting new music but from his fellow members of AOMG. Everyone had put out new stuff and was doing amazing but here he was only being featured on tracks while it has been ages since he released something new from himself. The pressure to put out something amazing and captivating was just too much for the perfectionist that he was. He started to drink slowly just to deal with the stress but eventually it grew and got out of hand. It was to the point that he was drinking to even get some sleep and drinking at the studio and after performances. He wasn’t even eating enough because he was so depressed. All I could do was sit there and hold him as he let all the worries from the past year flow from his mouth. It was like once he started talking the dam was opened and everything flowed freely.

“Did you even try and share your concerns with Jay or the others?”

“No because everyone is doing their own thing.”

“Kiseok you need to learn to lean on others when you need it.”

“I know.”

“As soon as you are released from here I am going with you home and taking all the booze out of there and stocking your fridge up. You need to eat more food that isn’t loaded with unhealthy stuff.”

Kiseok grabbed my hand and held it in his, “I am happy to have you back y/n, I was such a fool to cut you out. I have missed you so much.”

“If it wasn’t an emergency I would never have left, I only ever wanted to be here with you.”

After a few days in the hospital Kiseok was discharged and ordered to refrain from drinking and to take part in outpatient treatment for his drinking problem. Just as I promised I went with him back to his apartment and cleaned up everything making sure there wasn’t a drop of alcohol in there. I spent the rest of the afternoon prepping meals that he could easily cook or cooking the meals in advance and putting them in the freezer for him to cook later. He sat across the counter from me munching on some food and cracking jokes. His whole attitude had changed, he didn’t look so upset and angry as he was before. He still had a ways to go and would be talking to a therapist about his stress and concerns. He didn’t want to at first but I convinced him that a therapist would be the best way to go so that he didn’t fall deeper into depression.

“I have to head to work now, Jay said he would be here to get you in a little bit. I was thinking that maybe after I finish my shift I could swing by and check on you.”

“You know you don’t have to.”

“I know but I want to, besides we both work nights mostly so it’s not like you won’t be up anyways.”

“If you are coming from work then you mind as well just crash here.”

I looked down at my feet feeling the blush creep up across my face. Kiseok grabbed one of my hands with his as his other came to my face lifting it so he could look into my eyes.

“I don’t want to spend any more time away from you, having you around makes me feel better. I feel happier when I am with you. For the first time in a long time I feel like writing some music. So when you get off work please stay here with me.”

Looking into his eyes I bit my lip and nodded yes causing him to smile.

“You better go before I keep you here, you have no idea what you do to me by biting your lip.”

Kiseok dropped his hands and I turned to leave stopping just as I grab the door. Taking a deep breath, I turn back around and quickly walk up to him and step on my tippy toes to press my lips to his. Before he has a chance to react I quickly walk out the door. Leaning my back against the door I place my finger to my lips as I hear him laughing from the other side of the door. With the thought of coming back to him I left for work. Things were going to get better I knew it.

[imagineclaireandjamie]

Thank you, @bonnie-wee-swordsman, for the outrageously perfect song suggestion!

Read the other chapters here.

Our Story

At some point, they start ignoring time.

Claire, whose career so closely monitors the rhythms of human life, stops wearing a watch at home. The digital clock, which rests on a bedside table, is turned away like a spurned guest. A 45-degree angle now arrowing through the black, its numbers an indecipherable mist of light on the wall.

And for his part, Jamie skirts the church on his morning walks. The chimes, echoing from the stone bell tower, are a reminder of something there will never be enough of.

They recognize this for what it is: denial, out of fear. They are afraid of what they’ll see when they wear the watch, pass the church, if they allow the digital clock to stand guard over their dreams: the digits changing, the minutes out-pacing their steps. And they are afraid—perhaps even more so—of what they will not see: an immobile hand, a blank screen. Time stopped, time run out.

If this is truly denial, they tell themselves, then so be it.

It’s the small things that go first. The plot of a favorite film distorts, then takes the shapes of plots from other, less favored films. The frozen aisle moves with every grocery shop, its location found not by memory, but by the increasing chill in the air—goosebumps down skin, the body shaken. And a childhood pet, though long dead, lives and dies in the span of a single day. The joy and grief of it all, so fresh, that Jamie reaches for a shovel, upends the earth to bury a ghost. (Adso sits at his feet, though it’s a different loss he mourns.)

Eventually, the disease consumes other things. Dates: Is Geordie’s birthday on the 20th or the 21st? Directions: Is their new house on Jefferson Street or on Bond? The inertia of Jamie’s life slows with the disappearance of such landmarks, everyday values made so identical that he does not know where to put his faith, his love.

On an afternoon in July, Jamie volunteers to pick up one of Claire’s prescriptions. It is 2PM when he arrives at the pharmacy, approaches the counter with a tied and twisted tongue. Something about the pharmacist—so self-assured in his pristine lab coat—unnerves him into forgetfulness.

“A Dhia. One second,” Jamie says, fumbling through his pockets. He pulls out the receipt he’s put there and reads the reminder note on its blank side. (He cannot attribute the uniformly written letters or the passionately-crossed ts. His, or someone else’s?)

“Fraser,” he finally says. “I’m picking up a prescription for Claire Fraser.”

This is the first time Jamie has forgotten her—she, who is his world, and who is also half of himself. Suddenly, he is desperate to hide his embarrassment, for an enclosed space in which he can trap his wife’s name to prevent it from flying away. The white paper bag, passed to him and labelled just for her, feels wrong in his hands, now dirtied by the betrayal he has just committed.

Jamie does not return the way he came, but drives. By sunset, he does not know where he is, or how he has come to be along this stretch of foreign homes. Here, there is only the lingering sense of his shame—the very thing that has propelled him forwards, keeping his foot pressed adamantly to the gas pedal.

In a moment of panic, he wonders if one of these homes is his. If that driveway, curtained by the beds of purple petunias, should look familiar. But no, this land is flat—and he has the image of a hill, there should be a hill, he lives on a hill, he is sure of it. (He is, in fact, approximately two miles away from that hill.)

Jamie pulls over and shuts his eyes. Says, Focus. Says, Breathe. These are the recommended mantras, but while they have soothed him before, they are failing him now. The path to the phantom hill does not emerge from his mind, revealing itself, but remains at the end of a dark and winding tunnel. No focusing, no breathing to coax it out of hiding.

To call for someone would be to acknowledge the child he is slowly becoming, and by this fact alone, the action becomes unthinkable. Reprehensible. Instead, he repeats Claire’s name to the silver dollar in the sky because that, at least, has returned to him and stayed.

As if summoned, she appears out of the darkness: her blue Ford now behind him, and she behind its wheel. And this—this car, he knows. Remembers well. The scratch on its left side, from a fallen pine bough. The car seat for a grandchild whose photographs are attached to the visor: a mouth covered in icing, a head grazing a penciled notch on a doorframe.

She approaches, slow-footed, and leans through his open window. It is her smell that reaches him first. Then her voice. Then her face—now floating in front of his—dissipates the remains of his confusion. Finally, Jamie breathes.

“Hi,” she whispers, smiling weakly.

“Hi,” he whispers back.

There is, he notices, so much tenderness in her—despite the circumstances, despite him. Him: a grown man who cannot remember his own address, but who can see, so clearly, the Coke stain on the Ford’s floor mat. And her—a grown woman wearing only her robe and slippers, but out in the middle of the night, to look for him.

“Now I may be mistaken,” she says, “but I believe you’re supposed to inform the seeker when you intend to hide. Otherwise that’s an unfair advantage.”

“I’m just trying to keep ye on yer toes, Sassenach,” he says softly, looking at his lap. (The phrase “remotely interesting” appears from nowhere, but—why?)

“Thank you for finding me, Sassenach,” he says instead, and Claire puts her hand on his arm. “You didn’t have to.”

“Well, I did consider letting your other wife come get you. Oddly enough, I can’t seem to reach her. Must be cavorting with one of my other five husbands.”

They both stifle their laughs, chastised by the quiet and the precariousness of their situation; all that it implies. When Jamie sees Claire’s crooked incisor after she lowers her hand, Jamie feels overwhelmed. By his love, by his gratitude. By his luck that she has found him again and again and again.

“So,” she says, gesturing towards her car, “Finder’s keepers?”

When the Ford pulls ahead, Jamie follows. He keeps his eyes on the silhouette in the driver’s seat—the messy curls, the hand that adjusts the rearview mirror (to see him better)—as his wife, Claire Fraser, leads him home.

Claire familiarizes herself with the facts. They are as follows:

In 1901, a man named Karl Deter admitted his wife to a mental institution. Throughout the previous decade, he told the doctors, her condition had worsened, and he feared he could no longer provide adequate care. The woman’s name was Auguste Deter, and she would die five years later at the age of 56. Auguste’s symptoms— memory loss, mood swings, delusions, and insomnia—would become the hallmarks of a then-unknown disease. It would be discovered by her doctor, Alois Alzheimer, shortly after her death.

During her examinations, Dr. Alzheimer would test Deter’s recall. When prompted to repeat his questions—and her subsequent answers—hours later, Ms. Deiter could rarely remember their conversation. One day, upon forgetting her own name, she had simply stated: “Ich hab mich verloren.” I have lost myself.

In the United States, an estimated 5.5 million people currently live with Auguste’s disease. Of these, only 200,000 are, as she was, diagnosed before they turn 65—the age bracket which delineates the standard cases from the “early onset.” Though advancements have been made in the past century, Alzheimer’s is still incurable. The fatality rate is discouragingly high.

When Claire thinks of Auguste and these statistics, it is hard not to feel betrayed. To not demand, fist raised, for remorse or an admission of error. We’ve made a mistake.

And when Jamie loses his professorship, or searches fruitlessly for the misplaced items of his imagination, it is hard to believe that this is where their story has gone. That he, her husband, should be among the 5-percenters and she, his wife, must stand idly by.

And when Jamie—driven by a rage he cannot place—smashes a plate against the counter, it is hard to not to want a piece of that nameless fury. To not take some of it for herself and direct it at their fate, the unluckiest of the unlucky, when there is nothing left.

And it is hard, of course, not to feel hateful when he stumbles over her name.

But then, of course—she loves him.

(Oh, how she loves him.)

While Claire sleeps, Jamie goes to his desk and falls into his chair, eager. This chair, a ratty and thrifted thing, has outlived all the other ratty and thrifted things they had purchased after the big house fire. Its cushioned back, as textured and as worn as his own, never hurts his scars when he leans into it, gazing out the window to the Blue Ridge mountains.

He is here to write and to remember.

But the sentences, which had roused him with such insistence, do not come now that he is waiting, ready for them. They have withdrawn in the advent of his intention, sunken in the murky bog of his disease.

Slow, so very slow, to resurface.

While Jamie sleeps, Claire goes to the balcony. A notebook in her lap, a pen that fills the pages. She works her hand into an aching cramp, and it throbs, throughout it all, like a heartbeat.

This has become her usual routine: Jamie wakes, goes to his desk, returns frustrated, then sleeps. Claire listens for his slowed and measured breaths, then rises. That notebook, that pen. That heart, needing more room than her chest can ever give it, forcing itself into her wrist, into her hand.

Not everything on these pages is hers to claim—eggs fried on steaming asphalt, a baby fist pressed to a horse’s mane—but she claims them anyways. An imposition, she knows, Jamie would not mind. And so she takes his stubborn sentences, feeling the pull of her responsibility, and gives them life. Knowing, without having to ask, what needs to be said.

Claire dreads coming home tonight. This night, which is no different from all the others, save for the extra weight she’s given it. Her footfalls, made heavier. The wind, more oppressive. Her awful certainty, like a stone in a pocket underwater.

This night, their anniversary.

It is not the date itself, or Jamie, that she dreads returning to. Even the absence of him, that slow but increasing degeneration, is not what keeps her inside the car, so reluctant to climb the hill.

Rather: it is the absence of herself, in him. Her disappearance somehow made complete in the hours she’s been away, at work.

What if, she thinks, Jamie has forgotten? What if she walks into the house and he looks up from his chair, bewildered? As if to say, “Who are you?” As if to say, “Do you belong here?” As if she had not been the one to discover that chair among the third-hand junk—that very chair from which he is looking up, so bewildered?

These thoughts are always on her mind, but they are more pressing now. The 27 years of their second marriage demand remembrance, enraged at the possibility of her nonexistence. More so than ever, she could not bear his forgetting—no, not on this night. Their anniversary.

As Claire walks towards the house, she sees her. Before the porch—a girl, face shadowed by twilight and raised to the sky. By the looks of her dress and unscuffed Mary Janes, she has come here with a purpose, but that purpose has been abandoned for the fireflies around her head. Her small hands reach out to cup the air, willing the constellating lights into the valley of her palms. Two golden flickers descend, then are sheltered. She moves closer, peeking at the light between the black crack of her thumbs, which she widens and narrows, widens and narrows. Awe, and a command: Stay, stay.

“Mandy,” Claire finally calls out, and her granddaughter looks up. That original purpose slides across her face, though her hands—curved in a prayer-like steeple—still hold the light. (She is five years old and beautiful.)

“Grama!”

“What have you got there, baby?”

Mandy whispers, “Firebugs.”

Her eyes are those of a mother looking at her child. Like Claire’s own, right now, as she looks at her granddaughter. All this wonder in the evidence of something good.

“You’re not s’posed to go inside,” Mandy says eventually, not lifting her gaze. “I’m s’posed to tell you that. Grampa isn’t ready just yet, but Mom will say when it’s okay.”

“That right? And what exactly is he doing in there?”

Mandy giggles, “Secret.” And quiet again, she says, “Do you wanna hold them?”

“I’d love to hold them.”

“You have to be very, very gentle.”

“I will.”

“You can’t squash them.”

“I won’t.”

“You can’t let them go until I say so.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Okay,” Mandy says. “Okay, okay. Ready?”

“Ready.”

And when the bugs have been safely transferred into her care, Mandy hovering at her waist, Claire feels: Wings like timid kisses against her skin. The cloud of her dread, receding slowly. The promise of—what, exactly? (Hope, she thinks.)

“Is that grandma out there with you, Amanda?” Bree calls from the porch. “You two can come in now!”

Mandy ignores her mother, asking, “Do you think they’re married?” then, “They seem to be very, very married to me.” And because her desire is so plain in her eyes, fixed wholly on these things she has come to love and is so unwilling to lose—stay, stay—Claire keeps her hands closed. 

“I think you might be right,” she replies, and they remain there, silent on the path. The bulbs illuminate each other’s faces and the night.

(Hope: Even in the oncoming darkness, there are these lights worth cupping in the palm of one’s hand.)

He is waiting for her in the doorway, smiling.

He has not forgotten.

They move together, swaying and colliding and fumbling. Jamie’s steps are too clumsy, Claire’s overcorrections too extreme—their own bodily melody, so out of sync with the music. They laugh more than they dance, holding each other up as they shuffle around the room.

“Yer terrible at this, Sassenach.”

“You’re the one with two left feet.”

“Two left feet, my arse! Ye canna take a step without missing my toes.”

“Such wonderful toes. How’s a woman to resist?”

Having fulfilled their duties as supervisor and watchman, Bree and Mandy have returned home to Roger. In their wake is an assortment of dirtied dishes (the meals prepared by Jamie), low-burning candles (purchased and lit by Bree), and scattered confetti on the floor (courtesy of Mandy’s decorative genius). James Taylor sings quietly from speakers which, like the rest of the living room furniture, have been pushed into the corner to avoid unwanted damages. On the mantle, a new blue vase sits flanked by a 25th anniversary card—though the five has been crossed out and replaced by an effusive, bright red seven. Apparently, Jamie had told Claire, “the fools at Hallmark dinna celebrate 27th anniversaries.” That’s why, Claire had told Jamie, she “used her artistic gifts to make something homemade.” (Her masterpiece: Two stick figures holding one heart.)

There’s something in the way she moves

Or looks my way, or calls my name

“Did you know,” Jamie says now, still swaying, “that this is the song I listened to after our first night? I put on ‘James Taylor’ after you left, and I couldna stop thinking about you in that hideous sweater wi’ the—penguins, was it? And the wee sparklies?”

“Is that what you’re thinking of right now? Me wearing an ugly jumper in 1989?”

“Aye, but can ye blame me? It’s a hard thing for a man to forget. Verra impressionable. Perhaps offensive.”

“As I recall yours had a Father Christmas with some vomit—”

“It was beer. And maybe a bit of fondue cheese.”

“As I was saying: vomit in his cloth beard. I’ve had nightmares ever since, and they’re all on your conscience.”

“Well, that was my intention, Sassenach. I wanted you thinking of me while you were in bed.”

Claire laughs, kissing the bottom of his chin before he rests it atop her skull.

“I stand by that jumper,” she grumbles into his shoulder. “A bloody good find.”

And I feel fine anytime she’s around me now

She’s around me now

Almost all the time

They continue dancing until she asks, “So what else are you thinking about?” and Jamie sighs.

“A few things,” he says. “One, that I’d like to see ye in that jumper again. Two, that I’d also like to see you in nothing at all.”

“Sadly, the jumper met its tragic end in the big house fire. May it rest peace.”

“Aye. Gone too soon.”

“But the second thing—well. I think that could be arranged.”

Jamie smirks, tucking an errant curl behind her ear.

“Mostly though, Sassenach, I’m thinking that I’m thankful.”

“Oh?”

“For you. For the fact that there are things I dinna remember, and others that will be lost, too…But that one, the moment I first saw you—I dinna think that will ever go away.”

Every now and then the things I lean on lose their meaning

And I find myself careening

In places where I should not let me go

Jamie begins to sing along, off-pitch but endearing all the same. Claire hums with him, pressed close.

She has the power to go where no else can find me

Halfway through the third refrain, the lyrics—once confident—tumble out of his mouth, muddled. He has forgotten some of the initial sound of her: Claire, drinking coffee on that morning-after. Three Sweet n’ Lows ripped open in one swift tear. I only use two and a half—do you want the rest? And then Claire, beside him, a week later. The winter-bleached Royal Mile and the squelch of her boots as they passed through Carfax Close. Stay with me tonight?

In the silence, Claire feels something come apart inside her, and so she holds Jamie tighter, finishing the lyrics that he cannot.

If I’m well you can tell she’s been with me now

She’s been with me now quite a long, long time

Yes and I feel fine

(Before he takes her to bed, she will ask him: “What if we went back?”)

He finds the notebook five days before they leave for Scotland. One sentence, and already he understands. Claire has placed him here without his knowing, while he sleeps. Joy, anger, sorrow, relief—all of him and all of her, mingling in the space between two lines.

Over 50 pages filled by now, but there are things he feels he ought to add, like: A hand clasping a bare throat, snow all around, and—singing. An invitation directed at his lips, Do you want to come in?, and gold pooled on the floor. Ghosts, too, watching from a church balcony; the acknowledging tilt of his wife’s chin.

With these thoughts in his mind, Jamie takes up his pen, inserts his own truths and imaginings in the spaces Claire has left behind. He tucks each one inside a pair of parentheses, like secrets shared between two people. 

(Like gifts wrapped up in so much history.)

[thisisheffner]

Trace Cyrus confirms Metro Station reunion, new music in 2020

When Metro Station first started, they created a neon-emo music phenomena, gaining massive mainstream attention with their track “Shake It.” The infectious dance anthem made its debut on our iPod shuffle playlists in 2007, and we almost guarantee it’s still a song you revisit.

But Metro Station were more than studded belts, straightened bangs and skinny jeans. Since the band’s official breakup announcement in August 2017 and their final album, “Shake It” has remained a scene staple and a go-to sing-along at every Emo Night.

Read more: My Chemical Romance reveal new symbols alongside return merch

Metro Station are certainly ready to shake things up again. AltPress exclusively chatted with Trace Cyrus on what’s next for the pair and why 2020 is the time for the band to reunite.

Metro Station have really been stirring some stuff up in the scene in the last couple of weeks.

TRACE CYRUS: Yeah, we randomly just got back together [and] started working on the music. That’s the reason I’m in Los Angeles now. I came to work with Mason [Musso] and just restart this Metro Station thing. I think a few years ago, I just got so burnt out on the touring side of music that I just wanted some time off and to get my personal life together. And now it’s just things like TikTok and Spotify and all these new things that didn’t exist before have made “Shake It” and Metro Station take off in a whole new way that we thought would never happen. It’s really, really cool, and it just inspired us to want to get back together and make new songs. Yeah, it’s nothing that we really planned. I just called up Mason one day and told him, “Let’s get the studio,” and now we’re working on it.

It’s no secret that everybody who’s in the music community knows and loves “Shake It.” It was wild because we’ve been noticing a lot of artists are returning or getting back together lately. 

You know,  I saw a couple of comments of people using that comparison. But we’re not getting back together because we’re seeing other bands trying it like that. We’ve just been inspired by the streams and how much love Metro Station are still getting after all this time. Like, I think “Shake It” got 26 million streams just on Spotify this past year.

That’s insane. You haven’t toured or released new music in over two years.

No, we have not at all. And we haven’t been promoting it in any way. Like, never pushing Spotify or any of these new apps that came out. It’s just our fanbase is still out there somewhere, and they’re searching for us. So we just want to give them what they want.

Do you think things such as Emo Night continuing to play “Shake It” is helping to keep scene music alive?

I think so. I think that Metro Station got to a point where things like “Shake It” became so popular for us that it almost became uncool that we were the guys that sang “Shake It,” because it became so mainstream. And then enough time has passed that this new generation of SoundCloud rappers have made emo cool again. It’s something that I thought was going to be made fun of forever for being this little emo scene kid and the younger generation has completely come back around and made what I was doing years ago completely relevant and cool again. And they all have respect for me for what I was doing back in 2007, 2008, 2009, because I was ahead of the curve then. So it’s just really cool.

Read more: My Chemical Romance soundcheck hints at potential reunion setlist

Have you ever had any new emo rappers or other artists hit you up to sample any Metro Station tracks?

We’re in the talks, [but] I don’t want to put any names out. We’re in talks [about doing] a rap feature right now for our first single. But I don’t want to say. But I think it’s gonna get people excited.

That’s super exciting to hear. So obviously, Metro Station are getting back together.

Actually, Mason just left. We were in the studio here in Calabasas, and we just finished our third song back together in the past week. So it’s been going really good.

When are you anticipating to start releasing new music?

The goal is for me to come back here after I get to spend the holidays with my family and then shoot our first music video and just put a single out to the world. Most likely be like, “Here’s our first song and video and then album on the way.”

That’s incredible.

It’s awesome because the chemistry me and Mason have in the studio has just always been there from the first day we met. You know, we went in the studio and made a song together when we were 17 years old. And I hadn’t seen or spoke to Mason in over two years. And I just came up to L.A. and, you know, within a few hours we had made a whole new song that we are so excited about that we feel I can make another stamp on the music industry. So when you have a chemistry like that with someone, it’s just awesome. When you get back in a room and you realize nothing changes.

Read more: Frank Iero reveals the MCR reunion clues in front of us all along

That’s awesome. What sound are you going after? Is it going to be what we know from Metro Station, or is it going to be completely new and adapted?

No, we’re trying to go back to our roots. It’s definitely that more upbeat dance vibe. With the last stuff we did when we got back together a few years ago, I feel like we were trying to experiment and do different things. We did a full acoustic project and just different things we typically wouldn’t do. I think we’re to the point where we just want to give the fans exactly what they want to get. It’s not about making songs that we want to hear or we like. I think as artists, we start to do that a lot of times [and] our opinion starts to mean more than what the fanbase or the rest of the world’s opinion is. And right now, we just want to give people what they want and really have those top 40 upbeat dance tracks that, you know, you can rock out to.

I did a little digging on your personal Instagram, and I noticed that over the last six months, you’ve been sharing old photos and talking about old tours and Myspace. Are you planning on changing your look to match that aesthetic?

No, those pictures are just fun to look back [on]. It’s funny, though, because my mom genuinely wants me to grow my hair back out like that, but she’s an ’80s rocker chick, you know? She still wishes that Mötley Crüe and Guns N’ Roses was around. What I did then, it was kind of my own twist on that because that was a lot of stuff I was inspired by growing up. Like, that’s what I feel like the scene kids were. We were taking a version of what was done in the ’80s and adding our own twist to it with a lot more tattoos and a little more crazy piercing stuff.

So yeah, that’s just that’s a part of my past, and I’m blonde now. My hair is short. I’m a completely different person. Like, it’s just funny to go back and post those pictures and look at it because shockingly, it was one of the most successful times of my career. But it’s something that I can’t help but look at and laugh, you know? It was me experimenting and finding myself as a man and getting to know myself. But somehow it just worked at that time in the place in the music industry. It was a fun time, though.

Read more: Top 50 emo songs of the decade that defined the 2010s

It is fun to look back on it. It’s interesting. Metro Station were a massive band who were revolutionizing the emo scene style.

We were just young. You know, we wrote the first record when we were 17 years old. The album came out very shortly after that as soon as we turned 18. And I just think that people, they were also in their awkward phase and learning to be who they were, and they got to grow with us. And it was cool. We came out at a time where most of the bands I was touring with, I was younger than everybody. So I think that we just came out at such a young age, [so] we really connected to the young teenage generation. It was a really good time. And I think it was just cool, too, because it was so different from what anyone in my family was doing and what anyone would have really expected me to do. And I think that shock value of me being a Cyrus and being related to Miley and things like that, I think it surprised people. It really did. And I think just everything together just worked. I don’t know how it did, but it did. Like, I still look at the plaques on my wall of Metro Station and what we did, and it blows my mind at times because we didn’t have a game plan. We didn’t go to my parents for help asking what to do when it came to getting a manager or a record label. We just made songs, put them on Myspace, and because of Myspace, it changed the rest of our lives forever.

Yeah, absolutely. Without Myspace, do you think you’re gonna be able to reach your fanbase in the same way?

I don’t know. I think the blessing and curse about a song like “Shake It” is you always want to do better than that and beating that song or getting more plays or more sales or whatever it is. It’s something that we might not ever do again. And it’s something that I realized I need to stop obsessing over and [something] I’ve already left my mark with. I’m just trying to not obsess as much about always trying to do better than I did at that point in my life and realize that I might never have a hit that big, and that doesn’t matter, you know? I just want to make music, and the true fans that stick around and want to hear it—that’s great. And I truly believe that I can perform and play concerts for the rest of my life, even off the music I’ve already done.

Read more: Can you pass this ridiculous My Chemical Romance trivia quiz?

You said you’ve recorded a couple of songs together. When are you anticipating the first single to be released, and can you tell us anything about it? The title or what it sounds like?

I really don’t want to give it away. I think that this song that we just wrote is going to hit it home so perfectly with everything that’s going on in pop culture right now and what’s going on with the younger artists and stuff. And I think this song we’re about to do is really about to open a lot of ears and get a lot of people’s attention. That’s all I’m gonna say.

Fair enough. I know we’re all really excited to hear it.

We’re really excited. Like I said, the first song Mason and I did, as soon as he left and I got the mix, I played it hundreds of times, and I just got that feeling that I would get with old Metro Station songs and just them being so infectious, so you have to keep it and replay, replay, replay.

Read more: My Chemical Romance reunion began with “jam sessions” in 2017

How have your family and friends reacted to the new music?

I honestly haven’t played anybody anything. I’ve been in L.A. the past week, locked up in the studio, and other than some of our business people we work with, I haven’t played the music for any family or friends yet.

It’s kind of nice because you have a little secret, and it’s all yours right now with Mason.

Yeah, it’s cool. I feel like me and him are at a really good place. Unfortunately, we’re both 30 years old now, which sounds crazy, but wisdom truly does come with age. And when we get back together, we talk about the old days when we were 17, 18, 19 and just the drinking, the drugs, the party life…Our keyboardist Blake [Healy] was older than us at the time. He was like 25. And we met him, and we were like 17. And we were just saying yesterday, like, “If [only] we would have listened to him…” Because he was logical. He had his head on straight, and we were young, we were wild and we didn’t care about anything but having a good time. And, you know, once you grow up, you realize [things] about safety, money, and priorities. You realize being a rock star [and] being on top of the world doesn’t always last forever.

The post Trace Cyrus confirms Metro Station reunion, new music in 2020 appeared first on Alternative Press.

This content was originally published here.

[inkyardpress]

Read a sneak peak of IF THERE’S NO TOMORROW

PROLOGUE

I couldn’t move, and everything hurt—my skin felt stretched too tight, muscles burned like they’d been lit on fire, and my bones ached deep into the marrow.

Confusion swamped me. My brain felt like it was full of cobwebs and fog. I tried to lift my arms, but they were weighed down, full of lead.

I thought I heard a steady beeping sound and voices, but all of it seemed far away, as if I was on one end of the tunnel and everything else was on the other.

I couldn’t speak. There...there was something in my throat, in the back of my throat. My arm twitched without warning, and there was a tug at the top of my hand.

Why wouldn’t my eyes open?

Panic started to dig in. Why couldn’t I move?

Something was wrong. Something was really wrong. I just wanted to open my eyes. I wanted—

I love you, Lena.

I love you, too.

The voices echoed in my head, one of them mine. Definitely mine, and the other...

“She’s starting to wake up.” A female voice interrupted my thoughts from somewhere on the other side of the tunnel.

Footsteps neared and a male said, “Getting the propofol in now.”

“This is the second time she’s woken up,” the woman replied. “Hell of a fighter. Her mother is going to be happy to hear that.”

Fighter? I didn’t understand what they were talking about, why they thought my mom would be happy to hear this—

Maybe I should drive?

Warmth hit my veins, starting at the base of my skull and then washing over me, cascading through my body, and then there were no dreams, no thoughts and no voices.

CHAPTER ONE

Thursday, August 10

“All I have to say is that you almost had sex with that.”

Scrunching my nose, I stared down at the phone Darynda Jones—Dary for short—had shoved in my face five seconds after walking into Joanna’s.

Joanna’s had been a staple in downtown Clearbrook since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. The restaurant was kind of stuck in the past, weirdly existing somewhere between big-hair bands and the rise of Britney Spears, but it was clean and cozy, and practically everything that came out of the kitchen was fried. Plus it had the best sweet tea in the entire state of Virginia.

“Oh man,” I murmured. “What in the world is he doing?”

“What does it look like?” Dary’s eyes widened behind her white plastic-framed glasses. “He’s basically humping a blow-up dolphin.”

I pressed my lips together, because yep, that was what it looked like.

Whipping her phone out of my face, she cocked her head to the side. “What were you thinking?”

“He’s cute—was cute,” I explained lamely as I glanced over my shoulder. Luckily, no one else was within hearing range. “And I didn’t have sex with him.”

She rolled dark brown eyes. “Your mouth was on his mouth, and his hands—”

“All right.” I threw up my hands, warding off whatever else she was about to say. “I get it. Hooking up with Cody was a mistake. Trust me. I know. I’m trying to erase all of that from my memory and you’re not helping.”

Leaning over the counter I was standing behind, she whispered, “I’ll never let you live that down.” She grinned when my eyes narrowed. “But I understand. He has muscles on top of muscles. He’s kind of dumb but fun.” There was a dramatic pause.

Everything about Dary was dramatic, from the often abhorrently bright clothing she wore to the super-short hair, cropped on the sides and a riot of curls on the top. Right now her hair was black. Last month it was lavender. In two months it would probably be pink.

“And he’s Sebastian’s friend.”

I felt my stomach twist into knots. “That has nothing to do with Sebastian.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re so lucky I actually like you,” I shot back.

“Whatever. You love me.” She smacked her hands down on the counter. “You’re working this weekend, right?”

“Yeah. Why? Thought you were going to DC with your family this weekend.”

She sighed. “A weekend? I wish. We’re going to DC for the whole week. We leave tomorrow morning. Mom can’t wait. I swear she actually has an itinerary for us, like which museums she wants to visit, the expected time in each one, and when we will have our lunches and dinners.”

My lips twitched. Her mom was ridiculously organized, down to labeled baskets for gloves and scarves. “The museums will be fun.”

“Of course you think that. You’re a nerd.”

“No point in denying that. It’s true.” And I had no problem admitting it. I wanted to go to college and study anthropology. Most people would ask what in the hell would you do with a degree in that, but there were a lot of opportunities, like working in forensics, corporate gigs, teaching and more. What I wanted to do actually involved working in museums, so I would’ve loved a trip to DC.

“Yeah. Yeah.” Dary hopped off the red vinyl bar stool. “I got to go before Mom freaks. If I’m five minutes past my curfew, she’ll call the cops, convinced I’ve been abducted.”

I grinned. “Text me later, okay?”

“Will do.”

Waving goodbye, I grabbed the damp rag and ran it along the narrow countertop. Pots clanged together, echoing out from the kitchen, signaling it was close to shutting down for the night.

I could not wait to get home, shower off the scent of fried chicken tenders and burnt tomato soup, and finish reading the latest drama surrounding Feyre and the fae courts. Then I was moving on to that sexy contemporary read I’d seen people talking about in the Facebook book club I lurked in, something about royals and hot brothers. Five of them.

Sign me up for that.

I swore half the money I made waitressing at Joanna’s went to buying books instead of filling my savings account, but I couldn’t help myself.

After wiping around the napkin dispensers, I lifted my chin and blew a strand of brown hair that had escaped my bun out of my face as the bell above the door rang and a slight figure stepped inside.

I dropped the lemony-scented rag with surprise. A breeze could’ve knocked me flat on my face.

For the most part, the only time anyone under the age of sixty came into Joanna’s was on Friday nights after the football games and sometimes Saturday evenings during the summer. Definitely not on Thursday nights.

Joanna’s made its bread and butter off certified AARP members, which was one of the reasons why I started waitressing here during the summer. It was easy and I needed the extra money.

The fact that Skylar Welch was standing just inside Joanna’s, ten minutes before closing, was a shock. She never came in here alone. Never.

Bright headlights pierced the darkness outside. She’d left her BMW running, and I was willing to bet she had a car full of girls just as pretty and perfect as her.

But nowhere near as nice.

I’d spent the last million years harboring a rabid case of bitter jealousy when it came to Skylar. But the worst part was that she was genuinely sweet, which made hating her a crime against humanity, puppies and rainbows.

Tentatively walking forward like she expected the black-and-white linoleum floor to rip open and swallow her whole, she brushed her light brown, blond-at-the-end hair over her shoulder. Even in the horrible fluorescent lights, her summer tan was deep and flawless.

“Hey, Lena.”

“Hey.” I straightened, hoping she wasn’t going to place an order. If she wanted something to eat, Bobby was going to be pissed, and I was going to have to spend five minutes convincing him to cook whatever she wanted. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing much.” She bit down on her glossy bubblegum-pink lip. Stopping next to the red vinyl bar stools, she took a deep breath. “You’re about to close, aren’t you?”

I nodded slowly. “In about ten minutes.”

“Sorry. I won’t take long. I actually wasn’t planning to stop here.” I silently added a sarcastic Really? “The girls and I were heading out to the lake. Some of the guys are having a party, and we drove past here,” she explained. “I thought I’d stop by and see if...if you knew when Sebastian was coming home.”

Of course.

I clenched my jaw shut. It should’ve been obvious the moment Skylar walked through those doors that she was here about Sebastian, because why else would she be talking to me? Yeah, she was sugary sweet, but we didn’t operate in the same circles at school. Half of the time I was invisible to her and her friends.

Which was okay with me.

“I don’t know.” That was a lie. Sebastian was supposed to come home from North Carolina on Saturday morning. He and his parents were visiting his cousins for the summer.

A twisty pang lit up my chest, a mixture of yearning and panic—two feelings I was well acquainted with when it came to Sebastian.

“Really?” Surprise colored her tone.

I fixed a blank expression on my face. “I’m guessing he’ll be back this weekend sometime. Maybe.”

“Yeah. I guess.” Her gaze dropped to the counter as she fidgeted with the hem of her slinky black tank top. “He hasn’t... I haven’t heard from him. I’ve texted and called, but...”

I wiped my hands along my shorts. I had no idea what to say. This was so incredibly awkward. Part of me wanted to be a total bitch and point out that if Sebastian wanted to talk to her, he would’ve responded, but that just wasn’t me.

I was the kind of person who thought things but never said them.

“I think he’s been really busy,” I said finally. “His dad wanted him to check out some of the universities down there and he hadn’t seen his cousins in years.”

Someone out in the BMW slammed on the horn and Skylar looked over her shoulder. My brows rose while I silently prayed that whoever was in the car stayed in that car. A moment passed, and Skylar tucked bone-straight hair behind her ear as she turned back to face me. “Can I ask you one more thing?”

“Sure.” Not like I was actually going to say no even though I was picturing a black hole appearing in the diner and sucking me into its vortex.

A faint smile appeared. “Is he with someone else?”

I stared at her, wondering if I lived through a different history of Sebastian and Skylar.

From the moment she moved to Clearbrook, population meh, she’d attached herself to Sebastian. Not that anyone would blame her. Sebastian came out of his mom’s womb stunning and charming everyone around him. Those two got together in middle school and had dated all through high school, becoming the King and Queen of Coupledom. I’d resigned myself to the fact I’d have to force myself to attend their wedding at some point in the future.

But then spring happened…

“You broke up with him,” I reminded her as gently as I could. “I’m not trying to sound like a bitch, but what does it matter if he’s with someone else?”

Skylar curled a slender arm across her waist. “I know, I know. But it matters. I just... Have you never made a huge mistake?”

“Tons,” I replied drily. The list was longer than my leg and arm combined.

“Well, breaking up with him was one of my mistakes. I think, at least.” She stepped back from the counter. “Anyway, if you see him, can you tell him that I stopped by?”

That was the last thing I wanted to do, but I nodded because I would tell him. Because I was that person.

Eye. Roll.

Skylar smiled then. It was real, and made me feel like I should be a better person or something. “Thanks,” she said. “I guess I’ll see you at school in a week or so? Or at one of the parties?”

“Yep.” I fixed a smile on my face that felt brittle and probably looked half-crazed.

Wiggling her fingers goodbye, Skylar turned and walked toward the door. She reached for the handle but stopped and looked over her shoulder at me. A strange look crossed her face. “Does he know about you?”

The corners of my lips started to turn down. What was there to know about me that Sebastian didn’t already know? I was legit boring. I read more than I actually talked to people and was obsessed with the History Channel and shows like Ancient Aliens. I played volleyball, even though I really wasn’t that good at it. Honestly, I would’ve never started playing if it hadn’t been for Megan conniving me into it when we were freshmen. Not that I didn’t have fun, but yeah, I was as stimulating as white bread.

There were literally no hidden secrets to uncover.

Well, I was scared to death of squirrels. They were like rats with bushy tails, and they were mean. No one knew that, because that was super embarrassing. But I doubted that was what Skylar was talking about.

“Lena?”

Jarred out of my thoughts, I blinked. “What about me?”

She was quiet for a moment. “Does he know you’re in love with him?”

My eyes widened as my mouth dried. I felt my heart stutter and then drop to the pit of my stomach. Muscles locked up in my back and my gut churned as that wall of panic slammed into me. I forced out a wheezing-sounding laugh. “I’m...I’m not in love with him. He’s like a...like a brother I never wanted.”

Skylar smiled slightly. “I’m not trying to get up in your business.”

Sort of sounded like she was.

“I saw the way you would look at him when we were together.” There was no bite to her tone or judgment. “Or maybe I’m wrong.”

“Sorry, you’re wrong,” I told her. I thought I sounded pretty convincing.

So there was something that I thought no one knew about me. One hidden truth that was just as embarrassing as being afraid of squirrels but completely unrelated.

And I’d just lied about it.

CHATPER TWO

I lived about fifteen minutes from the center of downtown Clearbrook, in a neighborhood that was within walking distance of the elementary school where I used to spend my time daydreaming. The streets had a mixture of small and large homes and all sizes in between. My mom and I lived in one of the medium-size ones—a house that Mom could barely afford on her own with her insurance-agent salary. We could’ve moved into something smaller, especially now that Lori had gone away to college and I’d be doing the same in a year, but I didn’t think Mom was ready to let go of the house. Of all the memories and all that should have been instead of what was.

It probably would’ve been for the best for all of us if we had moved, but we hadn’t, and that was a flood under the bridge now.

I pulled into the driveway, passing the used Kia that Mom had parked on the side of the street. I turned off the engine and breathed in the coconut-scented interior of the decade-old silver Lexus that had once belonged to Dad. Mom hadn’t wanted it, and neither did Lori, so I ended up with it.

It wasn’t the only thing Dad had left me.

I grabbed my bag off the passenger seat and climbed out of the car before quietly closing the door behind me. Crickets chirped and a dog barked somewhere on the mostly silent street as I looked over at the larger house next to ours. All the windows were dark and the limbs of the thick maple in the front swayed, rattling the leaves.

A year from now I wouldn’t be standing here, staring at the house next door like a bona fide loser. I’d be away at college, hopefully at the University of Virginia, my top choice. I was still going to carpet-bomb other colleges in the spring just in case I didn’t get in on early admission, but either way, I would be gone from here.

And that would be for the best.

Getting out of this town. Moving away from the same old same old. Putting much-needed distance between the house next door and me.

Tearing my gaze away from the house, I walked up the flagstone sidewalk and went inside. Mom was already in bed, so I tried to be as quiet as possible as I grabbed a soda from the fridge and made my way upstairs to take a quick shower in the hallway bathroom. I could’ve moved into Lori’s bedroom at the front of the house after she left for college. It was larger and had its own bathroom, but my bedroom had privacy and it had an amazing second-story deck that I wasn’t willing to give up for a multitude of reasons.

Reasons I didn’t want to think about too much.

Once inside my bedroom, I set the soda on the nightstand and then dropped the towel by the door. I pulled my favorite sleep shirt of all time from the dresser and slipped it over my head. After turning on the lamp on the nightstand and flooding the bedroom with soft buttery light, I picked up the remote and clicked on the TV, turning to the History Channel with the volume on low.

I glanced at the scribbled-on world map tacked to the wall above my desk. The map to everywhere I planned on eventually visiting. The red and blue circles drawn all over it brought forth a grin as I grabbed a massive red-and-black hardcover from my desk, which was pretty much used only to stash books now. When we first moved in, Dad had built shelves lining the wall where the dresser and TV were, but those bookshelves had been overflowing for years now. Books were stacked in every spare place in the room—in front of my nightstand, on both sides of the dresser and in my closet, taking up more room than the clothes did.

I’d always been a reader and I read a lot, usually sticking to books with some sort of romantic theme and a classic happily-ever-after. Lori used to make fun of me nonstop for it, claiming I had cheesy taste in books, but whatever. At least I didn’t have pretentious taste in books like she did, and sometimes I just wanted to...I don’t know, escape life. To delve headfirst into a world that dealt with real-life issues to open my eyes, or a world that was something else, something completely unreal. One with warring faes or roaming vampire clans. I wanted to experience new things and always, always, reach the last page feeling satisfied.

Because sometimes happily-ever-after existed only in the books I read.

Sitting down on the edge of my bed, I was just about to crack the book open when I heard a soft rapping coming from the balcony doors. For a split second, I froze as my heart rate spiked. Then I hopped to my feet, dropping the book on my bed.

It could be only one person: Sebastian.

After throwing the lock, I opened the doors and there was no stopping the wide smile from racing across my face. Apparently there was also no stopping my body either, because I propelled myself through the threshold, arms and legs moving without thought.

I collided with a taller and much, much harder body. Sebastian grunted as I threw my arms around his broad shoulders and practically face-planted on his chest. I inhaled the familiar fresh scent of detergent his mom had been using since forever.

There wasn’t a moment of hesitation from Sebastian as his arms swept around me.

There never was.

“Lena.” His voice was deep—deeper than I remembered, which was strange, because he’d been gone for only one month. But a month felt like an eternity when you saw someone nearly every day of your life and then suddenly didn’t. We’d kept in touch over the summer, texting and even calling a few times, but it wasn’t the same as having him here.

Sebastian hugged me back as he lifted me up so my feet dangled a few inches off the floor before he settled me back down. He lowered his head as his chest rose sharply against mine, sending a wave of warmth all the way to the tips of my toes.

“You really missed me, huh?” he said, fingers curling through the wet strands of my hair.

Yes. God, I did miss him. I’d missed him way too much. “No.” My voice was muffled against his chest. “I just thought you were the hot guy I waited on tonight.”

“Whatever.” He chuckled against the top of my head. “There was no hot guy at Joanna’s.”

“How do you know?”

“Two reasons. First, I’m the only hot guy that ever steps one foot into that place and I wasn’t there,” he said.

“Wow. Real modest, Sebastian.”

“I’m just speaking the truth.” His tone was light, teasing. “And second, if you thought I was someone else, you wouldn’t still be attached to me like Velcro.”

He had a point.

I pulled back, dropping my arms to my sides. “Shut up.”

He chuckled again. I always loved his little laughs. They were infectious, even when you were in a bad mood. You couldn’t help but smile.

“I thought you weren’t coming back until Saturday,” I said as I stepped inside my bedroom.

Sebastian followed. “Dad decided I needed to be back for the scrimmage game tomorrow night, even though I’m not playing. But he’d already worked everything out with the coach. You know how Dad is.”

His father was the stereotypical football-obsessed father who pushed and pushed and pushed Sebastian when it came to playing ball. So much so that I was downright shocked when Sebastian announced that they would be out of town while there was football practice. Knowing his dad, I bet he had Sebastian up every morning at the butt crack of dawn running and catching.

“Your mom’s asleep?” he asked as I closed the balcony doors.

“Yeah...” I turned around and got a good look at him now that he was standing in the light of my bedroom. As embarrassing as it would be to admit, and I would never admit it, I completely lost my train of thought.

Sebastian was... He was effortlessly beautiful. It wasn’t often you could say that about a guy...or about anyone, to be honest.

His hair was a shade somewhere in between brown and black, cropped close on the sides and longer on the top, falling forward in a messy wave that nearly reached dark brown eyebrows. His lashes were criminally thick, framing eyes that were the color of the deepest denim jeans. His face was all angles, with high cheekbones, a blade of a nose and a hard, defined jaw. A scar cut into his upper lip, just right of a well-formed Cupid’s bow. It had happened our sophomore year during football practice, when he’d taken a hit that had knocked his helmet off. His shoulder pads had caught him in the mouth, splitting the upper lip.

But the scar fit him.

I couldn’t tear my gaze from his basketball shorts and a plain white T-shirt as he glanced around my bedroom. When he was younger, back in middle school, he’d been tall, all arms and legs, but now he’d filled out in every way, with muscles on muscles and sculpting that rivaled Greek marble statues. Years of playing football would do that to a body, I imagined.

Sebastian wasn’t simply the cute boy who lived next door anymore.

We’d been doing this for years, ever since he figured out it was easier than going to my front door. He’d head out his back door and come into our backyard through a gate, and then it was a short walk up the steps that led to the balcony deck.

Our parents knew he could get to my bedroom this way, but we’d grown up together. To them—and to Sebastian—we were like brother and sister.

I also suspected they didn’t know the visits occurred at night. That hadn’t started until we were both thirteen, the first night my Dad was gone.

I leaned against the door, biting the inside of my cheek.

Sebastian Harwell was one of the most popular guys in school, but that wasn’t surprising. Not when he was gorgeous. Talented. Funny. Smart. Nice. He was in his own league.

He was also one of my best friends.

For reasons I didn’t want to examine too closely, he made my bedroom appear smaller when he was in it, the bed too tiny and the air too thick.

“What in the hell are you watching?” he asked, keeping his voice low as he stared at the TV.

I looked at the screen. There was a guy with bushy, crazy-looking brown hair waving his hands around. “Um...Ancient Aliens reruns.”

“All righty, then. Guess it’s less morbid than the forensics show you watch. Sometimes I worry...” Sebastian trailed off as he faced me. His head tilted to the side. “Is that...my shirt?”

Oh. Oh my God.

My eyes widened as I remembered what I was wearing: his old freshman practice shirt. A couple of years ago he left it over here for some reason or another, and I kept it.

Like a stalker.

My cheeks flushed, and the blush raced down the front of my body. And there was a whole lot of body on display. The shirt hung off one shoulder, I had no bra, and I fought the urge to tug on the hem of the shirt.

I told myself not to freak out, because he’d seen me in bathing suits a million times. This was no different.

But it was.

“It is my shirt.” Thick lashes lowered, shielding his eyes as he sat on my bed. “Wondered where that went.”

I didn’t know what to say. I was suddenly petrified, plastered to the door. Did he think my wearing his shirt to sleep was weird? Because yeah, it was kind of weird. I couldn’t deny that.

He threw himself down on the bed, then immediately sat up. “Ow. What the hell?” Rubbing his back, he twisted at the waist. “Jesus.” He picked up my book and held it out. “You’re reading this?”

My eyes narrowed. “Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”

“This thing could double as a weapon. You could hit me over the head with this thing, kill me and then end up on one of those shows you watch on Investigation Discovery.”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s a bit excessive.”

“Whatever.” He tossed the book to the other side of the bed. “Were you getting ready for bed?”

“I was getting ready to read before I was rudely interrupted,” I joked. Forcing myself away from the door, I slowly dragged my way over to where he was now stretched out on his side, lying there like it was his bed, cheek resting on his fist. “But someone, no names mentioned, is now here.”

His lips kicked up at the sides. “Want me to leave?”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so.” He patted the spot next to him. “Come talk with me. Tell me everything I’ve missed.”

Ordering myself not to act like a complete dork, I sat on the bed, which wasn’t easy because of the shirt. I so did not want to flash him. Or maybe I did want to flash him. But he probably didn’t want that.

“You haven’t missed much,” I said, glancing at my bedroom door. Thank God I’d closed it already. “Keith’s thrown a couple of parties—”

“You went to them without me?” He pressed his hand to his chest. “My heart. It hurts.”

I grinned at him as I stretched my legs out, crossing them at the ankles. “I went with the girls. I didn’t go by myself. And so what if I did?”

The grin went up a notch. “Did he have any down by the lake?”

Shaking my head, I tugged on the hem of my shirt as I wiggled my toes. “No. Just at his place.”

“Cool.” When I looked over at him, his lashes were lowered. His free hand rested on the bed between us. His fingers were long and slender, skin tan from being outside all the time. “You do anything else? Go out with anyone?”

I stopped moving my toes, and my head swung back toward him. That was a random question. “Not really.”

An eyebrow rose as his gaze lifted to mine.

I quickly changed the subject. “By the way, guess who stopped in at Joanna’s tonight, asking about you?”

“Who wouldn’t stop by asking about me?”

I shot him a bland look.

He grinned. “Who?”

“Skylar. Apparently she’s been messaging you and you’ve been ignoring her.”

“I haven’t been ignoring her.” He reached up, knocking the flop of hair off his forehead. “I just haven’t been responding.”

A frown turned down the corners of my lips. “Isn’t that the same thing?”

“What did she want?” he asked instead of answering.

“To talk to you.” I leaned back against the headboard and grabbed the pillow, thrusting it into my lap. “She said... She asked me to tell you that she was asking for you.”

“Well, look at you, doing as you’re told.” He paused, his grin increasing. “For once.”

I chose to ignore that comment. “She also said she thought breaking up with you was a mistake.”

His head jerked back and that grin faded. “She said that?”

My heart started pounding in my chest. He sounded surprised. Was that a happy surprise or bad one? Did he still care about her? “Yeah.”

Sebastian didn’t move for a second and then shook his head. “Whatever.” His hand moved lightning fast, snatching the pillow out of my lap. He shoved it under his head.

“Help yourself,” I muttered, tugging the shirt back up my shoulder.

“Just did.” He smiled up at me. “You have another freckle.”

“What?” I turned my head to him. Since I could remember, my face looked like it got hit with a freckle cannon. “There is no way you can tell if I have another freckle.”

“I can tell. Lean over. I can even show you where.”

I hesitated, eyeing him.

“Come on,” he coaxed, hooking his finger at me.

Inhaling a shallow breath, I leaned toward him. Hair slipped over my shoulder as he lifted his hand.

That grin was back, playing over his lips. “Right there...” He pressed the tip of his finger to the center of my chin. I sucked in air. His lashes swept down. “That’s a new one.”

For a moment, I couldn’t move. All I could do was sit there, leaning toward him with his finger touching my chin. It was crazy and stupid, because it was just the softest touch, but I felt it in every cell of my body.

He lowered his hand to the space between us again.

I exhaled a shaky breath. “You are... You are so stupid.”

“You love me,” he said.

Yes.

Madly. Deeply. Irrevocably. I could come up with five more adverbs. I’d been in love with Sebastian since, jeez, since he was seven and brought over the black snake he’d found in his yard as a gift. I don’t know why he thought I wanted it, but he’d carried it over and plopped it down in front of me like a cat bringing back a dead bird to its owner.

A really, truly weird gift—the type of gift one dude would give another dude—and that pretty much summed up our relationship right there. I was in love with him, painfully and embarrassingly so, and he mostly treated me like one of his guy friends. Had since the beginning and always would.

“I barely tolerate you,” I said.

Rolling onto his back, he stretched his arms out above his head, clasping his hands together as he laughed. His shirt rose, revealing his flat lower stomach and those two muscles on either side of his hips. I had no idea how he got them.

“Keep lying to yourself,” he said. “Maybe one day you’ll believe it.”

He had no idea how close to the truth he was.

When it came to Sebastian and how I felt about him, all I did was lie.

Lying was another thing Dad had left me.

It was something he’d also been so, so good at.

CHATPER THREE

It was too early for this crap.

Standing behind Megan, I was hoping I could just blend into the wall and be forgotten. Then I could lie down and take a nap. Sebastian had stayed till three in the morning, and I was way too tired to do anything remotely physical.

Coach Rogers, also known as Sergeant Rogers or Lieutenant First Class Jerk Face, crossed his arms. His face held a permanent scowl. I’d never seen him smile. Not even when we made it to the playoffs last year.

He was also the ROTC drill instructor, so he treated us like we were in boot camp. Today was going to be no different.

“Hit the bleachers,” he ordered. “Ten sets.”

Sighing, I reached up and tugged on the tail of my hair, tightening the ponytail as Megan bounced around, facing me. “Whoever finishes last has to buy the other a smoothie after practice.”

The corners of my lips turned down. “That’s not fair. You’re going to finish first.”

“I know.” Giggling, she tore off toward the indoor bleachers.

Reaching down, I tugged on my black practice shorts and then resigned myself to death by bleacher.

The team hit the metal seats. Sneakers pounded as we worked our way up. At the top row, I smacked the wall as expected. If we didn’t do it, we’d be starting all over. Back down I went, gaze focused on the rows in front of me as my knees and arms pumped. By the fifth round, the muscles in my legs burned, along with my lungs.

I almost died.

More than once.

Once it was over, my legs felt like jelly as I joined Megan on the court. “I’d like a strawberry banana smoothie,” she said, her face flushed pink. “Thank you.”

“Shut up,” I muttered breathlessly as I glanced over to the bleachers. At least I wasn’t last. I twisted back to her. “I’m getting McDonald’s.”

Megan snorted as she fixed her shorts. “Of course you are.”

“At least I’m eating eggs,” I reasoned. I’d probably have a hell of a lot toner legs and stomach if I got that smoothie after practice instead of the Egg McMuffin and hash brown I was planning to do bad, bad things to.

She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think those kind of eggs count.”

“That’s sacrilegious to even utter.”

“I don’t think you know what that word means,” she replied.

“I don’t think you know when to shut up.”

Tipping her blond head back, Megan laughed. Sometimes I wondered how we’d become such close friends. We were polar opposites. She didn’t read unless it was flirting tips in Cosmo or the weekly horoscopes in the magazines her mom had around the house. I, of course, read every book I got my hands on. I was going to be applying for financial aid, and she had a major college fund. Megan ate McDonald’s only if she’d been drinking, which wasn’t often, and I ate McDonald’s so much I was on a first-name basis with the lady who worked the window in the morning.

Her name was Linda.

Megan was more outgoing than me, more willing to try new things, while I was the person always weighing the pros and cons before doing something, finding more cons than there were pros to almost every activity. Megan seemed years younger than seventeen, oftentimes acting like a hyper kitten climbing curtains. She was downright goofy half the time. But what seemed like cluelessness was only surface deep. She was an ace at math without even having to try. On the outside, she appeared to take nothing seriously, but she was as bright as she was bubbly.

We both planned—or hoped—to get into UVA, prayed that we’d get housed together and strived to give Dary the hardest possible time, with love, every day of our lives.

Deciding I was going to order two hash browns and eat them right in front of her face, I cut in front of her as we walked to where our captain was waiting.

Practice was grueling.

Since it was preseason and a Friday, it was all calisthenics. Lunges. Squats. Suicide sprints. Jumps. Nothing made me feel more out of shape than these kinds of practices. I was dragging ass by the time we wrapped up, sweating in places I didn’t even want to think about.

“Seniors, I need you guys to stick around for a few minutes,” Coach Rogers called out. “Everyone else can head out.”

Megan shot me a look as we lumbered to our feet. My stomach ached a little from the sit-ups, so I concentrated on not bending over and crying like a teething baby.

“Our first game is a couple of weeks off, as is our first tournament, but I want you all to make sure you realize how important this season is.” Coach straightened his cap, pulling the bill down. “This isn’t just your final year. This is the time that scouts will be coming to the tournaments. Many of the colleges here in Virginia and surrounding states are looking for freshman players.”

Pressing my lips together, I loosely crossed my arms. A volleyball scholarship would be sweet. I wanted one. Was going to gun for it, but there were better girls on the team, including Megan.

The likelihood of both of us landing positions at UVA was slim.

“I cannot stress how important your performance will be this season,” Coach droned on. His dark gaze lingered on me in a way that made me feel like he’d noticed just how crappy my sprints had been. “You’re not going to get a do-over. You’re not going to get second chances to impress these scouts. There isn’t a next year.”

Megan’s gaze slid toward mine and her brows lifted about an inch. This was a wee bit dramatic.

Coach went on and on about good life choices or something, and then he was done. Dismissed, our group made our way toward the remaining burgundy-and-white gym bags.

Megan bumped her shoulder into mine as she reached to grab her water from the top of her bag. “You kind of sucked today.”

“Thanks,” I replied, mopping the sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand. “I feel so much better after hearing that.”

She grinned around the rim of the bottle, but before she could respond, the coach yelled out my last name. “Oh crap,” Megan whispered, widening her eyes.

Swallowing a groan, I pivoted around and jogged over to where he was standing near the net we often had to repeatedly jump in front of. When Coach used your last name, it was a lot like your mom using your full name.

Coach Rogers’s neatly trimmed beard was more salt than pepper, but the man was fit and more than intimidating. He could run those bleachers in half the time Megan could, and right now he looked like he wanted to order me to do another set of ten. If he did, it would be RIP Lena.

“I was watching you today,” he said.

Oh no.

“Didn’t look like your head was in practice.” He crossed his arms, and I knew I was in for it. “Are you still working at Joanna’s?”

Tensing because we’d had this conversation before, I nodded. “I closed last night.”

“Well, that explains a lot. You know how I feel about you working when you have practice,” he said.

Yes, I did know. Coach Rogers didn’t think anyone who played sports should work, because work was a distraction. “It’s just during the summer.” That was kind of a lie, because I planned to work weekends during the school year. I needed to keep my McDonald’s fund fluffy, but he really didn’t need to know any of that. “I’m sorry about practice. I’m just a little tired—”

“A lot tired by the looks of it,” he cut in with a sigh. “You were forcing yourself through every set.”

I guess I wasn’t going to get credit for that effort.

He lifted his chin and stared down his nose at me. Coach was a beast during practice and the games, but most days I liked him. He cared about his players. Really cared. Last year, he organized a fund-raiser for a student whose family lost everything in a house fire. I knew he was against animal cruelty, because I saw him wearing ASPCA shirts. But right now, in this moment, I did not like the man at all.

“Look,” he continued, “I know things are tight at home, especially with your father... Well, with all of that.”

Clenching my teeth until my jaw ached, I fixed a blank expression on my face. Everyone knew about my dad. It sucked living in a small town.

“And you and your mom could use the extra cash—I get that—but you really need to look at the big picture here. Take these practices more seriously, dedicate more time, and you can up your playing this year. Maybe catch the eye of a scout,” he said. “Then you get a scholarship. Less aid. That’s what you need to be focused on—your future.”

Even though I knew he meant well, I wanted to tell him that my mom and I and my future were really none of his business. But I didn’t say that. I just shifted my weight from one foot to the next, picturing the greasy hash brown in my head.

Oh my God, I was going to smother that baby with ketchup.

“You have talent.”

I blinked. “Really?”

His expression softened a bit as he clapped a hand down on my shoulder. “I think you have a shot at landing a scholarship.” He squeezed gently. “Just keep your eye on tomorrow. Work for it, and there’ll be nothing standing in the way. You understand?”

“I do.” I glanced over to where Megan waited. “A scholarship would be... It would help a lot.”

A way lot.

It would be nice not to spend a decade or more after college working myself out of student-loan hell I’d already been warned about.

“Then make it happen, Lena.” Coach Rogers dropped his hand. “You’re the only person standing in your way.”

* * *

“I don’t care what you say, Chloe was the better dancer!” Megan shrieked from where she was perched on the edge of my bed. I expected her hair to rise and turn into snakes at any given moment, to snatch out the eyeballs of anyone who disagreed with her.

Okay, maybe I was reading way too much fantasy lately.

“We seriously can’t be friends if you disagree!” she added vehemently.

“It’s not a question of who is a better dancer, but I personally think you’re going with the ‘blondes have to stick together’ route.” Abbi was sprawled on her belly on top of my bed. Her hair was a mess of tight, dark curls. “And honestly, I’m Team Nia.”

Megan frowned as she threw up her hands. “Whatever.”

My phone rang on my desk, and when I saw who it was, I sent the call to voice mail without even thinking twice.

Not today, Satan.

“Y’all really need to stop watching reruns of Dance Moms.” I turned back to my closet and restarted my search for a pair of shorts to wear on my shift. Smothering a yawn, I wished I had time for a nap, but Megan had come over after practice and I had only about an hour before I had to head to work.

“You look tore up from the floor up,” Abbi commented, and it took me a moment to realize she was talking about me. “Did you not sleep last night?”

“Wow. Thanks,” I responded, frowning. “Sebastian came home last night, so he stopped over and stayed for a while.”

“Ooh, Sebastian,” cooed Megan, clapping her hands. “Did he keep you up all night? Because if so, I’m going to be upset that you didn’t mention this earlier. I’m also going to want details. All the dirty, juicy details.”

Abbi snorted. “I seriously doubt there is any juicy or dirty details.”

“I don’t know if I should be offended by that statement or not,” I said.

“I just can’t see that happening,” Abbi replied with a lopsided shrug.

“I don’t know how you spend so much time with him and not want to jump on him like a rabid mountain lion in heat,” Megan mused. “I wouldn’t be able to control myself.”

I leaned my head back. “Wow.” My friends were kind of weird. Specifically Megan. “Aren’t you back with Phillip?”

“Kind of? Not sure. We’re talking.” Megan giggled. “Even if I were back with him, it doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate that fine specimen of a guy living next door to you.”

“Have at it,” I muttered.

“Have you noticed how hot people flock together? Like all of Sebastian’s friends—Keith, Cody, Phillip. All of them are hot. It’s the same with Skylar and her friends. Kind of like birds migrating south for the winter,” Megan continued.

Abbi murmured under her breath, “What the hell?”

“Anyway, I’m not ashamed of my not-so-friendly thoughts toward Sebastian. Everyone has a crush on him,” Megan said. “I have a crush on him. Abbi has a crush on him—”

“What?” shouted Abbi. “I don’t have a crush on him.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. You have the hots for Keith. My bad.”

I twisted halfway to see Abbi’s reaction to that and I was not let down.

Abbi lifted up onto her elbows, turning her head toward Megan. If looks could kill, Megan’s entire family would’ve just died.

“I might seriously hit you, and since you weigh, like, eighty pounds wet and I have about a hundred on you, I’m going to snap you like a KitKat bar.”

I grinned as I turned back to my closet and dropped to my knees, rummaging through the books and jeans on the bottom of the narrow closet. “Keith’s cute, Abbi.”

“Yeah, he’s hot, but he’s also the school bike and everyone has had a ride,” she commented.

“I haven’t,” Megan said.

“Me neither.” Finding the cutoffs, I snagged them off the floor and rose. “Keith has been trying to get with you since you developed breasts.”

“Which was, like, the fifth grade.” Megan laughed as Abbi threw my poor pillow at her. “What? It’s the truth.”

Abbi shook her head. “Y’all are crazy. I don’t think Keith is into girls darker than your lily-white asses.”

I snorted as I dropped into the desk chair. The back bumped into the edge of the desk, rattling the stack of books. “I’m pretty sure Keith is into girls of all skin tones, shapes and sizes and then some,” I said, bending over and grabbing the pens and highlighters that had fallen from the desktop.

Abbi huffed. “Whatever. We are not talking about my nonexistent attraction to Keith.”

I turned to Abbi. “You know, Skylar stopped into Joanna’s last night and asked if Sebastian knew I was in love with him.” I forced out a casual-sounding laugh. “That’s crazy, right?”

Megan’s blue eyes widened to the size of planets. Not Pluto...more like Jupiter. “What?”

Abbi was also paying attention. “Details, Lena.”

I filled them in on what Skylar had to say last night. “It was just really weird.”

“Well, obviously she wants to get back with him.” Abbi looked thoughtful. “But why would she ask you that? Even if it was true, why would you admit that to her, his ex-girlfriend?”

“Right? I was thinking about that earlier.” I toed myself around in a slow circle on the chair. “I’ve been around her a lot because of her dating Sebastian, but it’s not like we’re friends. I wouldn’t admit my deepest secrets to her.”

Abbi tilted her head to the side and looked like she wanted to say something but kept quiet.

“Oh! I almost forgot,” Megan exclaimed as she dropped her feet to the floor, clearly on to the next topic. Pink flooded her heart-shaped face. “I heard that Cody and Jessica are seeing each other again.”

“Not surprised.” Cody Reece was the star quarterback. Sebastian was the star running back. Friendship made in football heaven right there. And Jessica was, well... She wasn’t particularly the nicest person I’d ever met.

“Didn’t Cody try to get with you at Keith’s party back in July?” Abbi asked, rolling onto her back.

I shot her a death glare more powerful than the Death Star’s laser. “I had forgotten all about that, so thanks for bringing that back up.”

“You’re welcome,” she quipped.

“I remember that party. Cody was super drunk.” Megan started twisting her hair in a rope, which she’d loved doing since we were kids. “He probably doesn’t even remember hitting on you, but you better hope Jessica doesn’t find out. That girl is territorial. She will make your senior year a living hell.”

I wasn’t really worried about Jessica, because, logically, how could she be that upset over Cody hitting on me at a party when they weren’t even together? That didn’t even make sense.

Megan cursed, jumping to her feet. “I was supposed to meet my mom ten minutes ago. She’s taking me back-to-school shopping, which really means she’s going to try to dress me like I’m still five.” She picked up her purse and then her gym bag. “By the way, it’s Friday, and don’t think I’ve forgotten my weekly reminder.”

I sighed heavily. Here we go...

“It’s time for you to get a boyfriend. Anyone really, at this point. And a real one, too. Not a book boyfriend.” She walked to my bedroom door.

I threw up my hands. “Why are you so obsessed with the idea of me having a boyfriend?”

“Why are you so obsessed with me?” mimicked Abbi.

I ignored it. “You do remember that I had one, right?”

“Yes.” She raised her chin. “Had. As in past tense.”

“Abbi doesn’t have a boyfriend!” I pointed out.

“We’re not talking about her. But I know why you aren’t interested in anyone.” She tapped the side of her head. “I know.”

“Oh my God.” I shook my head.

“Heed my words. Live a little. If you don’t, when you’re thirty and living alone with a ton of cats and eating tuna fish for dinner, you’ll regret it. Not even the good tuna fish. The generic kind steeped in oil. All because you spend every waking minute reading books while you could be out there, meeting the future daddy to your babies.”

“That’s a little excessive,” I murmured, side-eyeing her. “And what’s wrong with generic tuna fish in oil?” I looked over at Abbi. “It tastes better than when it’s soaked in water.”

“Agreed,” she replied.

“And I’m really not interested in meeting my future baby daddy,” I added. “I don’t even think I want kids. I’m seventeen. And kids weird me out.”

“You disappoint me,” Megan stated. “But I still love you, because I’m that good of a friend.”

“What would I do without you?” I gave myself a twirl in the chair.

“You’d be a basic bitch.” Megan gave me a cheeky grin.

I pressed my hand to my heart. “Ouch.”

“I’ve got to go.” She wiggled her fingers. “Text ya later.”

Then she flounced out of the room. Literally. Head back, arms flailing and prancing like a show horse.

* * *

“Talk about basic.” Abbi shook her head as she stared at the empty doorway.

“I will never understand her fascination with my singleness.” I looked at Abbi. “Like, at all.”

“Who knows with her.” Abbi paused. “So... I think my mom is screwing around on my dad.”

My jaw dropped. “Wait, what?”

Abbi stood and planted her hands on her hips. “Yeah. You heard me right.”

For a moment I didn’t know what to say and it took a couple of seconds to get my tongue to work. “Why do you think that?”

“Remember how I was telling you that her and Dad had been arguing more lately?” She walked over to the window that overlooked the backyard. “They try to keep it quiet so my brother and I don’t hear it, but it’s been getting pretty heated and Kobe is having nightmares now.”

Abbi’s brother was only five or six years old. Rough.

“I think they’ve been fighting over her working so late at the hospital and, you know, why she’s working so late. And I mean late, Lena. Like, how often are there call-ins that make other nurses stay? Is my dad that stupid?” She turned from the window, came back over to the bed and plopped down on the edge. “I was still up when she came home Wednesday night, four hours after her shift would’ve ended, and she looked a hot mess. Her hair was sticking up in every direction, clothes all wrinkled like she rolled out of someone’s bed and came home.”

My chest squeezed. “Maybe it was just a rough night at work for her.”

She shot me a bland look. “She smelled like cologne, and not the kind my dad wears.”

“That’s not...good.” I leaned forward in the chair. “Did she say anything to you when you saw her?”

“See, that’s the thing. She looked guilty. Wouldn’t look me in the eye. Couldn’t get out of the kitchen quick enough, and the first thing she did when she got upstairs was shower. And the whole showering thing might not be abnormal, but when you add all of that together...”

“Damn. I don’t know what to say,” I admitted, twisting my shorts in my hands. “Are you going to say anything?”

“What would I say? ‘Oh, hey, Dad, I think Mom is slutting around on you, so you might want to check on that’? I don’t see that ending well. And what if, by a snowball’s chance in hell, I’m wrong?”

I cringed. “Good point.”

She rubbed her hands over her thighs. “I don’t know what happened between them. They were happy up until about a year ago and it’s just all gone to shit.” Pushing her curls out of her face, she shook her head. “I just needed to tell someone.”

I toed my chair closer to her. “Understandable.”

A brief smile appeared. “Can we change the subject? I really don’t want to deal with this longer than five minutes at a time.”

“Sure.” I got that more than anyone else. “Whatever you want.”

She drew in a deep breath and then seemed to shake out all those thoughts. “So... Sebastian came home early.”

That wasn’t necessarily the conversation I wanted to go back to, but if Abbi wanted to use me as a distraction, I could be that for her. I shrugged and let my head fall back at the same moment my stupid heart did a giddy little flip.

“Were you happy to see him?” she asked.

“Sure,” I replied, going for my usual bored tone when talking about Sebastian.

“Where’s he at now?”

“At the school. They’ve got a scrimmage game tonight. He’s not playing, but they’ve probably got him practicing.”

“You’re working this weekend?” she asked.

“Yeah, but this is my last weekend for a while, since school starts. Why? You want to do something?”

“Of course. Better than being stuck on babysitting duty at home and listening to my parents bitching at one another.” Abbi nudged my leg with her sandaled foot. “You know, I hate to even point this out, but do you think Skylar might’ve had a point asking—”

“About me and Sebastian? No. What? That’s stupid.”

A doubtful look crossed her face. “You don’t love Sebastian at all?”

My heart started pounding in my chest. “Of course I love him. I love you and Dary, too. I even love Megan.”

“But you didn’t love Andre—”

“No. I didn’t.” Closing my eyes, I thought about my ex even though I really didn’t want to. We’d dated almost all last year, and Abbi was right: Andre was awesome and nice, and I felt like a jerk for ending things with him. But I tried, really tried, even by taking it to the next level—the level—but my interest just wasn’t there. “It wasn’t working out.”

She was quiet for a moment. “You know what I think?”

I let my arms fall to my sides. “Something wise and sage?”

“Those two words mean the same thing, idiot.” She kicked my leg again. “If you’re not being entirely honest with yourself about Sebastian, then applying to UVA is a smart idea.”

“What does he have to do with UVA?”

She tilted her head to the side. “Are you saying it’s a coincidence that the one school that’s not high on his list is the one school you’re gunning for?”

Stunned into silence, I wasn’t sure what to say. Abbi had never insinuated that I was interested in Sebastian beyond being friends before. I was confident I’d kept that embarrassing yearning desire well hidden, but obviously not as well as I believed. First Skylar, who really didn’t know me, and now Abbi, who did?

“UVA is an awesome school and has an amazing anthropology department.” I opened my eyes and my gaze fixed on the cracked plaster of the ceiling.

Abbi’s voice softened. “You’re not...hiding again, are you?”

The back of my throat burned as I pressed my lips together. I knew what she was talking about, and it had nothing to do with Sebastian. It had everything to do with the missed call earlier. “No,” I told her. “I’m not.”

She was quiet for a moment and then said, “Are you really going to wear those shorts to work? You look like a low-rent Daisy Duke in them.”

* * *

At Keith’s. You coming out?

The text from Sebastian came just as I was pulling into my driveway after my Friday shift. While I normally didn’t pass up an opportunity to hang with Sebastian, I was feeling a little weird after the whole conversation with Abbi. Plus I was exhausted, so I was ready to climb under the covers and lose myself for a little while in a book.

Staying in tonight, I texted back.

He promptly replied with the smiling poop emoticon.

Grinning, I replied with Turd.

The triple dots appeared and then, You going to be up later?

Maybe. I climbed out of the car and headed toward the front door.

Then maybe I’ll swing by.

My stomach dipped as it twisted. I knew what that meant. Sometimes Sebastian snuck over really late, usually when something was going down at home he didn’t want to deal with...that something usually being his dad.

And I knew, I knew deep down, that even with all the years he’d been dating Skylar, he’d never done that with her. When something was troubling him, he sought me out, and I knew I shouldn’t have been thrilled about that, but I was. And I held that knowledge close to my heart.

I followed the low hum of the TV, passing through the small entry room that was overflowing with umbrellas and sneakers and the small table piled with unopened mail.

The glow of the TV cast soft, flickering light over the couch. Mom was curled up on her side, one hand shoved under a throw pillow. She was out cold.

Stepping around the love seat, I grabbed the afghan off the back of the couch and carefully draped it over Mom. As I straightened, I thought about what Abbi had told me earlier. I had no idea if her mom was cheating on her dad, but I thought about my mom and how she would’ve never cheated on Dad. The mere thought almost made me laugh, because she loved him like the sea loved the sand. He’d been her universe, her sun that rose in the morning and the moon that took over the night sky. She loved Lori and me, but she had loved Dad more.

But Mom’s love wasn’t enough. My and my sister’s love was never enough. In the end, Dad still left us. All of us.

And, God help me, I was a lot like my father.

I looked like him, except I was more of an...average version. Same mouth. Same strong nose that was almost too big for my face. Same hazel-colored eyes, more brown than any other interesting shade. My hair matched his, a brown that sometimes turned auburn in the sunlight, and it was on the long side, falling past my breasts. My body was neither thin nor overweight. I was somewhere stuck in the middle. I wasn’t tall or short. I was just...

Average.

Not like my mom, though. She was stunning, all blond hair and flawless skin. Even though life had gotten way harder in the last five years, she persevered and that made her all the more beautiful. Mom was strong. She never gave up, no matter what, even if there were moments where she looked like she just might want to pack it all in.

For Mom, our love was enough to keep going.

Lori got the blessed side of our genetics, taking after Mom. Blonde bombshell to the max, with all the curves and pouty lips to back it up.

But the similarities ran deeper than the physical for me.

I was a runner, too, and not the healthy kind. When things got too rough, I checked out, just like Dad had. I made an art form of looking toward tomorrow instead of focusing on today.

But I was also like my mother. She was a chaser. Always running after someone who didn’t even realize you were there. Always waiting for someone who was never going to come back.

It was like I ended up with the worst qualities of my parents.

Heaviness settled in my chest as I went upstairs and got ready for bed. This November would be four years since Dad left. I couldn’t believe it had already been that long. Still felt like yesterday in a lot of ways.

Throwing back the covers on my bed, I started to climb in but stopped when my gaze fell on the doors leading out to the balcony. I should lock the doors. Sebastian probably wouldn’t stop by, and besides, even if he did, that...that wasn’t good.

Maybe that was why no one else interested me

Why Andre hadn’t kept my interest.

Scrubbing my hands down my face, I sighed. Maybe I was just being dumb. How I felt about Sebastian couldn’t change our relationship. It shouldn’t. Putting a little distance between us, setting up some boundaries, wouldn’t be a bad idea. It was probably the smartest and healthiest thing to do, because I didn’t want to be a runner or a chaser.

I was moving off the bed before I realized what I was doing.

I walked over to the doors and unlocked them with a soft click.

Want more? Click here to order a copy!

[songwritingswift]

Ugh, that buzzfeed article... 

I’m putting this under a read more because I had a lot of thoughts about this. But basically, this article manipulates the facts to suit its opinions and much of its ‘evidence’ is based on pure speculation. We all make good decisions and bad, Taylor included, but any arguments against her should be based on truth.

I don’t even really know what to say. Taylor is flawed, of course she is, and she has done things that I don’t agree with, but this article is frankly ridiculous. To say that she has played the victim her entire career is a completely simplistic view of her. 

I’m going to go through this point by point. Hold on to your hats, people.

The Kanye West thing. Bloody hell. Everyone seems to have a different opinion on what happened here but as I understand it, Taylor was upset about the line ‘I made that bitch famous’, which West had not made her aware of. The idea that she was okay with but changed her opinion after the song came out is speculation as far as I can tell. Please correct me if there’s evidence of this but I haven’t seen anything so far. 

Now, while I think Taylor’s Grammy speech has a good message, I don’t think the timing was great. It felt more than a little provocative, but the article neglects to consider any view other than its own. While they interpret it as Taylor ‘playing the victim’, we interpret it as Taylor doing what she always does: turning her experience into something productive. There are different ways to view everything and my overwhelming view of this article is that it just pulled together everything that could be viewed as playing the victim, just to make a point.

Ugh, the VMAs. Again, there will always be different views on this. West has since said that he was making a point about racism in the industry but regardless of any good intentions, he humiliated a teenager in front of millions of people. He interrupted her receiving an award for her work and said that she shouldn’t have won it. That’s what he did. And he was apparently very remorseful for doing that, implying that he also believed he was in the wrong. As a person of significant fame, there were plenty of ways to make that point without creating a media circus that has done damage to both of their reputations. He was the one who did that; he put Taylor in the middle of that. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think you can play the victim if you actually are the victim. The article fails to recognise any of this. It describes it as ‘PR gold’ for Taylor, but answer me this: is there anyone on the planet who doesn’t try to make the best of bad situation? Can Taylor be blamed for that? And if her reactions were solely for PR, why did she refuse to talk about it? Wouldn’t it have been more PR savvy to do one big interview where she talked about how she felt? But no, she didn’t. She’s never done that. 

While her love of fairytales and happy endings might fit into the image of ‘white feminine fragility’, it’s also congruent with the dreams of millions of teenage girls across the world. Especially as teenagers, we are the subjects of our upbringings. Taylor was very fortunate in her upbringing so of course it has influenced her view of the world. Apparently the ‘notion of sexual innocence emerged’ when she wrote about Abigail giving ‘everything’ to a boy. Has Taylor ever said anything about that line relating to virginity? This is a conclusion drawn by other people. That doesn’t make it the truth.

The article picks out lyrics to support it’s own view, that Taylor is always the victim. Yes, she’s written songs about being treated badly. So has every other artist. Are they getting picked apart? No. And they neglect to mention any different viewpoint. They don’t mention any of the lyrics where she takes the blame: “So I start a fight ‘cause I need to feel something” from Cold As You, “me and my stupid pride are sitting here alone” and “all the things that I misread” from The Other Side of the Door, “stupid girl, I should have known” from White Horse. Or any of the lyrics where she builds other people up: “And every time you shine, I'll shine for you” from Jump Then Fall, “but I believe in whatever you do, and I’ll do anything to see it through” from Change, and “you've got a smile that could light up this whole town” from You Belong With Me. And the lyrics about how life is more than relationships: “But in your life you'll do things greater than dating the boy on the football team” and “back then I swore I was gonna marry him someday but I realized some bigger dreams of mine”. As human beings, we are multifaceted. We are the victims, we are the heroes, we are the bad guys. All of us. Taylor has written songs from many different positions and it is immature to ignore that.

When it comes Joe Jonas, I think it’s worth pointing out that she didn’t go on “primetime TV to assign the blame firmly to him”. She went on television to do an interview, something that all artists do, and she was asked a question about him which she answered. Maybe it wasn’t the best response but the article is twisting the facts to suit its agenda. And Jonas wrote a song called Much Better which would appear to be about Taylor (he implied it was about her in interviews): they’re on an even playing field in terms of fame and the platform to speak or write about that relationship. 

I’m not going to write about Better Than Revenge. Taylor has addressed this.

The public image of Taylor being constantly wronged by the many men she dates is one created by the media. Taylor has consistently pointed out that she has not dated as much as the tabloids say but they refuse to believe her and continue to spread rumours. And then she does what every other artist does: writes songs about her life. And again, the media speculates and spreads that speculation as fact. This is something no artist can control so to imply that Taylor can is unreasonable. I’m not saying that Taylor isn’t very skilled at publicity, she is. But the difference between her PR and the media’s obsession with her should be noted.

The narrative this article builds around a photo of Taylor sitting on a boat is laughable. No one knows the details of that moment but Taylor, and the media should stop pretending they do.

Regarding I Knew You Were Trouble, again, very few people know exactly what happened. Maybe she wrote the song and later related it to what had happened with Harry Styles, or she had the initial idea and finished it after they broke up. Taylor is the only one who knows that so we have to trust what she says about it. (By the way, it’s my opinion that the “British accent” during the Grammy Performance speculation should be abandoned. It didn’t sound like any British accent I’ve ever heard and I am British. I’ve lived in England my whole life.) The circulation of baseless rumours don’t do anyone any good.

But on Taylor’s shout outs at award shows (the VMAs for example), I’m not sure those were smart. They only stirred the rumours. Maybe that was the plan, maybe it was Taylor being a human being, feeling bitter, or impulsive. We’ve all done things like that, realised later that we could’ve handled something better. Guess what, Taylor’s human too. She just happens to be a human that has every move recorded and analysed a hundred times over. Oh, and she can’t control who the cameras pan to, by the way.

The article makes no mention of the media circus going on in 2013, how every magazine was spitting out hate. I don’t know about you, but it was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Everyone was hating her, just for living her life and writing songs. Have you ever seen that happen to anyone else? Have you ever seen that happen to a man? It seems to me that her sexism argument was well founded.

Can I also question this sentence: “By suggesting that the media’s portrayal of her dating life had been unfair and sexist, Swift was able to absolve herself of any blame for the way her relationships had been reported and perceived.” This seems contradictory to me. Surely, ‘the media’ is directly behind the way her relationships are ‘reported’, so how could she be to blame for that?

More dissections of lyrics. (Am I the only one thinking the interpretation of I’d Lie is odd? She’s listing the things she thinks are wonderful about a person. How does that make her obsessive?) It seems to me that the lyrics used are being taken out of context to support the agenda of the article, as they were earlier in the article. 

It is true that Taylor’s view of feminism seems to be somewhat limited. That is not surprising since she comes from a place of privilege. Feminism is about more than ‘girl power’ and she has made mistakes, but she’s learning, like all of us. We should all feel fortunate that our learning processes have not been so publicly analysed. I want to link to this article, because I think it is a much fairer evaluation of Taylor’s feminism and I couldn’t say it better. I do just want to make a couple of points about Taylor and the Women’s March though: it was likely logistically impossible for her to go (for her safety, something that would not have been disputed about anyone else), if she’d gone everyone would've complained that she was making it about herself (she can never win), and no one seems to be trashing other public figures who didn’t go or didn’t tweet about it.

Moving on to Bad Blood, I find the article’s argument to be pretty weak. They claim that she repeatedly changed the story, using three different quotes as evidence: “it wasn’t about a guy at all, but a woman in the industry who ‘tried to sabotage an entire arena tour’”, “that was about losing a friend”, and “I knew the song would be assigned to a person, and the easiest mark was someone I didn’t want to be labelled with this song”. To me, these all seem to be different parts of the same story.

The article also implies that Taylor’s connection with her fans is about selling her music. Newsflash, that’s how the music industry works. All artists do this to some degree, but one of the reasons fans are so loyal to Taylor is because she does more than she has to. She has encouraging speeches at her concerts (that mean a lot to a lot of people, and no one gets to say whether that’s allowed or not), but she also follows people on social media, does a massive number of free meet and greets, sends gifts, donates money, and so on. The fact that she does these sorts of things when she doesn’t have to is what fans love about her. 

So much of this article twists the truth to fit its own agenda. It picks apart every mistake Taylor has ever made, ignoring everything else. It does have a few good points but they’re backed up by speculation rather than actual facts. Her feminism might be undeveloped but she has been an incredible role model for young people, especially girls, with her songwriting skill, her dedication to her passion, and being the head of her brand and business. One very simple example is the number of women who started playing guitar because of Taylor. With the state of world right now, especially in America, feminism is more important than ever, but it’s unreasonable to put so much of that responsibility on a singer when this is something that should be coming from everybody, our teachers, our parents, our friends, as well as our idols. I’m not sure why people love to hate her, and pick apart everything she does, but I’m tired of it. She’s a human being. Let her live her life and write her music. Let her mistakes be mistakes rather than PR stunts. Let her be a hero, let her be a victim. Allow her the courtesy we allow our friends: to be right, to be wrong, to be valid, to learn. Allow her to be herself, to be human.

[danithebookaholic-blog]

REVIEW! - Historical Mystery, Musical Memoir & Women’s Satire

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Historical Mystery, Musical Memoir & Women’s Satire

A new year, a new year full of books!

I took some time off with the holidays to enjoy family and to take a breather, something that I need to do time-to-time so I don’t get burned out, which can - and does - happen. Since I took that time for myself, I have quite the TBR list for this upcoming year! Some ARCs (advance reader copies) and some older ones that have been sitting on my shelf, or on my virtual Audible shelf, that are in the wings waiting to be picked up!

So, for this first review session of the new year, I have quite a smattering of different genres, everything from a historical mystery to a musical memoir and a women’s fiction satire!

So, without further ado, here are my reviews - and their wine pairings - of: 📚 Diane Setterfield’s Once Upon a River (2018 Historical Mystery) 📚 Amanda Palmer’s The Art of Asking; Or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help (2014 Musical Memoir) 📚 Sylvia Mulholland’s A Nanny for Harry (2018 Women’s Fiction Satire)

From one bookaholic to another, I hope I’ve helped you find your next fix. —Dani

Once Upon a River 

By Diane Setterfield

Publication Date: December 4, 2018 Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Fantasy

Synopsis:

A dark midwinter’s night in an ancient inn on the Thames. The regulars are entertaining themselves by telling stories when the door bursts open on an injured stranger. In his arms is the drowned corpse of a little child.

Hours later the dead girl stirs, takes a breath and returns to life.

Is it a miracle?

Is it magic?

Or can it be explained by science?

Replete with folklore, suspense and romance, as well as with the urgent scientific curiosity of the Darwinian age, Once Upon a River is as richly atmospheric as Setterfield’s bestseller The Thirteenth Tale.

Purchase:

Amazon / B&N / Kobo / Google Play / IndieBound

Review:

Looking for a historical novel with a bit of mystery? Then Once Upon a River is a great place to start! While I did have a hard time getting into this novel, once I finally got into the groove of the time period, I quickly became enamored with the story, staying up late and waking early just to get a few extra chapters in.

This early 20th-century tale is focused on one very mysterious little girl, who--in reality--no one really knows who she is. The mystery continues throughout the story (and even beyond), as the silent little girl is passed from home-to-home of those who claim she is theirs, even though none of them are truly sure.

Once Upon a River is one for my ‘favorites’ shelf for sure! It was intriguing and captivating, and the presentation of how all of the claiming families’ lives are intertwined with one another all because of this beguiling little girl was absolutely fantastic!

I pondered a long time over my final score for this wonderful book, only to finally decide on a 4.5 rating due to the slow beginning. Once you get passed that slow start, you will not be disappointed!

 Dani's Score out of 5: 📚📚📚📚🔖

Pair it with: Blank Stare Sauvignon Blanc

Pale yellow with a chartreuse tint, the wine opens with bright aromatics of lime zest, lemon, green apple and a touch of honey. The entry is refreshing with ripe pineapple and grapefruit, framed by a nervy backbone of satiating acidity. A mid-palate of white peach and a hint of pith melds seamlessly into a long, energetic finish of wet stone and key lime. Pair with a basil pizza.

Website / Facebook / Twitter / Instagram

Audio Book Review

The Art of Asking; Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

By Amanda Palmer

Publication Date: November 11, 2014 Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir, Music

Synopsis:

Rock star, crowdfunding pioneer, and TED speaker Amanda Palmer knows all about asking. Performing as a living statue in a wedding dress, she wordlessly asked thousands of passersby for their dollars. When she became a singer, songwriter, and musician, she was not afraid to ask her audience to support her as she surfed the crowd (and slept on their couches while touring). And when she left her record label to strike out on her own, she asked her fans to support her in making an album, leading to the world's most successful music Kickstarter.

Even while Amanda is both celebrated and attacked for her fearlessness in asking for help, she finds that there are important things she cannot ask for-as a musician, as a friend, and as a wife. She learns that she isn't alone in this, that so many people are afraid to ask for help, and it paralyzes their lives and relationships. In this groundbreaking book, she explores these barriers in her own life and in the lives of those around her, and discovers the emotional, philosophical, and practical aspects of The Art Of Asking.

Part manifesto, part revelation, this is the story of an artist struggling with the new rules of exchange in the twenty-first century, both on and off the Internet. The Art Of Asking will inspire readers to rethink their own ideas about asking, giving, art, and love.

Purchase:

Amazon / Audible / B&N / Kobo / Google Play

Review:

 I usually do not care for books when read by the author. When books are read by their author, the author is usually unaccustomed to reading out loud and so one or more of the following ends up happening:

Emphasis is usually given in the wrong places.

Its read in a monotone.

The pace is grueling-ly S-L-O-W.

So, when I saw that Amanda Palmer, the author or The Art of Asking, was the one narrating her book I almost passed it over. And I did for a couple months, but something kept drawing me back to it, and so I finally caved, and bought it.

Thankfully, Amanda did none of the bullet points mentioned above, and turns out, whatever kept drawing my attention to The Art of Asking was completely right in doing so. I loved this book, and I’ve talked about it (and suggested it) multiple times to multiple people since listening to it.

This memoir of Amanda’s life pre and intra-music business, is a powerful and eye-opening one that not only shows the reader into Amanda’s life, but millions of others. And if the reader looks closely enough, they’ll see into their own as well. And while this is not necessarily a ‘self-help’ book, it definitely can be taken that way.

I have always been one to shy away from asking others for things: a project, housework, money, personal issues, etc. I grew up in a family where we didn’t display our dirty laundry for the world to see, and therefore we didn’t ask for help to wash it, so to speak. But after listening to The Art of Asking, I have already found me asking myself, “Why can’t I ask for help with that? The worst that can happen is they say, ‘No.’”

Amanda’s book has helped me to see my own life, and many others’, in a whole new light. The next time I see a street statue or performer, I will take the time to stop and really watch them perform. The next time I see a KickStarter or a GoFundMe, I’ll take the time to really think about helping them, instead of automatically saying no. And the next time I see someone in a bad place, needing essential items to live, I’ll think, “WWAD?” (What Would Amanda Do), and proceed from there.

If you’re looking for unique perspective on life, needing someone to help you see the light at the end of the long dark tunnel, or are in need of some courage to ask for help, then I cannot recommend Amanda Palmer’s The Art of Asking enough. And, if you listen to the audio version of it (which I also highly recommend), you’ll get some fun--and different!--music to listen to as well! (I especially like the one about the ukulele!)

 Dani's Score out of 5: 📚📚📚📚📚

Pair it with: Bread & Butter Pinot Noir

This Pinot Noir boasts juicy red fruit. Think cherries and raspberries with a touch of cassis. Delicate hints of cedar and bay leaf balance the sweetness of the fruit, creating an enduring bouquet.  That luscious fruit bouquet continues onto the palate, where it’s joined by soft flavors of oak and savory notes. The rich mouthfeel is complemented by a long and beautifully smooth finish. Pair with wood smoked bacon.

Website / Facebook / Instagram

A Nanny for Harry 

By Sylvia Mulholland

Publication Date: August 19, 2018 Genre: Adult, Women’s Fiction, Humor

Synopsis:

 Workaholic attorney Kali Miller has it all—perfect husband, perfect house and on her way to partnership at her firm. And she’s about to have the perfect baby, to complete the picture. But doing it all turns out to be a lot harder than having it all. Baby Harry needs a nanny, so Kali can get back to work, and stay on track. Britta is blonde, beguiling and Swedish enough to make any new mom insecure. She dotes on little Harry but leaves most of the unpleasant chores to Kali. Worse, she seems to have some sort of “past” with Kali’s husband, Matt. As Kali continues basically juggling on empty and trying to do it all, insecurity and paranoia grab hold of her brain. Just who is this Britta Edvardsson anyway? And what does she want with Matt? And little Harry? Hilarious, hair-raising and at times heart-breaking, A Nanny for Harry is a story for all new moms, babies and those who love them.

Purchase:

Amazon / B&N / Kobo / IndieBound

Review:

 This quirky little tale was fun and witty, with a twist of mystery, but overall quickly became old and annoying. I enjoyed the overall end result of the story, but I did not enjoy the journey to get there. While most might find Kali Miller to be a funny, new-mother with all her worries and woes about her son’s well-being, I found her constant worry over her marriage to be annoying and to drag me down.

Kali never has a real reason to worry over her husband, Matt, and their nanny, Britta’s, relationship, and yet, because Britta is a beautiful young ex-model, she automatically thinks something is going on between them, and yet does nothing about it.I found this portion of the story to be annoying and tiring, Nothing good can come from a jealous woman, especially one as passive-aggressive as Kali.

Kali’s worry for her son, Harry’s, well-being is one I understand more, and slowly she begins to relinquish this. But her constant emotional roll-a-coaster from marital-worry to baby-worry to worry about losing her job--one she doesn’t seem too concerned about in the first place--makes me wonder if there is more than postpartum hormones going on.

One thing that I think A Nanny for Harry had going for it was the slight twist into a mystery at the end. Throughout the book you know there is something else there, something lurking just under the surface, but you don’t find out what that is until the end, and I’m happy it was there and finally addressed, no matter how quickly it was named and then excused.

In the end, I didn’t connect to the story, but I’m sure mothers--especially those with hot nannies--would connect to Kali’s woes quite easily. I, on the other hand, didn’t enjoy the journey to get to the end result. I did, however, like the taste of mystery waiting for me at the end; like a gift for suffering through all worry.

 Dani's Score out of 5: 📚📚📚

**Sorry, no wine pairing for A Nanny for Harry.

Have a book you’d like to suggest or one you��d like me to review? Please feel free to leave your comments down below.

[shenzhenblog]

The Truth : Starting-Up and Facing Failures

Hit play and listen to this while reading: Eye of the Tiger

Forward and share with all start-up founders, aspiring entrepreneurs and people who are looking start their own business. We deserve to know better and to know the truth.

Everyone writes about start-ups, entrepreneurship, starting a business, how to do it, but not many people tell you the dangers, the risks and the impacts you have to face when you ultimately fail. There had been sometime now that I keep hearing this slogan coming out of many Silicon Valley blogs and websites,

“Fail Fast And Fail Often”

these words capsulize the time of this new era which we are living in right now, the rise of the millennials. Gone are the days that it was everyone’s ambition to be a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer, we are now in a world where an entrepreneur is the coolest thing to be after the likes of young successful entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerburg (Facebook) and Steven Spiegel (Snapchat). These are the entrepreneurship miracles of our time, and they give us millennials, a new hope that we could someday also build such an empire of our own. But the truth being, not everyone gets to a billion dollar valuation, an IPO, or even funding, some don’t even get to make it past their first year, just like my company, LEPOULET.

Background Story

I been doing some form of business since I was old enough to remember, selling my toy trucks to my brother when I was 5, taking my Dad’s shaver and demanding he pays me to have it back when I was 7. My first real business venture was when I am 9 years old, I partnered up with my table buddy, Alastair P. and coughing out a few dollars of our little allowance we have back then to buy and sell little figurines, erasers, toys, rocket balloons to our primary school classmates. We slowly expanded our business to start selling to the older kids from the other levels as well, raking in a good profit for a 9 year old school kid. From then on, I was convinced that starting businesses is something I want and will do when I grow up.

My second venture was when I was 13 years old; I borrowed two hundred dollars from my dad and went out to buy boxes of party ribbon spray from a party supplies store near my home. I then hired my younger brother, cousins and had my dad drive us to Singapore’s busiest bar street, Clark Quay, on New Year Eve to sell them. We made two thousand dollars that evening and went to buy a big bowl of Haagen Dazs ice cream to celebrate. Let me tell you, that feeling was exhilarating!

Fast-forward 15 years later; having tasted these micro successes at a young age, I decide to embark on a bigger entrepreneurship adventure, opening my first restaurant on my 28th birthday with my buddy/business partner, StevC.

LEPOULET

Lepoulet, a new age rotisserie bar nested in the heart of booming Shenzhen, China, introducing French herb roast chicken paired with rice in an Asian twist. Till now, doing this was probably the most exciting and yet frightening time of my life. I quit my job in the luxury lifestyle industry, uprooted myself, moved to Shenzhen, China, devoted to a long distance relationship and embarked on quest of the great adventure of entrepreneurship.

It first started with an idea, then we went on to concept and design followed by the actual construction. Construction was a nightmare; it was delayed by 3 month when we clashed with Lunar New Year, the biggest holiday in China, this pretty much ate up all our capital. The restaurant finally opened on March 15th 2018.

I could say it was a little too ambitious and a little too ahead of its time. We had a good run and then ran right into a million other problems, and then, we failed.

Facing Failure

The closure of Lepoulet left me whole lot dirt to clean up and face, but also a lifetime of memories and experience. Lets face it, most start-ups fail, and over 70% of new restaurants shutter within their first year.

This is not my first time failing, I been rejected from college applications, jobs applications and girls, countless of times. For me, facing rejections and failure was extremely hard, there is too much in me of that Asian pride and the judgmental looks from my friends, family and mostly my parents certainly didn’t help. The cost of failure in Asia, especially so in Singapore was huge; the pressure, the labels, the comparisons between yourself and your peers, especially so with the introduction of social media where all your dirty laundry is aired to the public and all you see from everybody’s online lives just seems so, perfect.

I can tell you from experience, the first time failure happens, you are terrified, all your hopes, effort, aspirations are all sliding down the gutter into an endless pit of broken dreams.

The second time it happens, you are apprehensive, deeply concerned, but you know its not over until you say it is, until it is “pronounce dead by a certified doctor”.

The third time, the third is just another number in your book, you smile and it and say to yourself, “ lets get started on the fourth”.

1. Don’t Be Afraid To Fail

No one really cares when you do, there is just too much noise and distractions in this world and no one really cares about your failures, and how fabulously you failed. People are all failing around us, but yet no one really talks or writes about it because failure is boring. The biggest enemy here is in fact yourself, being able to face your failures, acknowledging it, accepting it and wear it like a badge of honor, a battle scar that you know will propel you to the next level.

2. Find Your Purpose

Life changes and adapts all the time. We all want different things in different stages of our lives, and it is important to know what your purpose is, what is meaningful to you and what matters the most. Find that and keep to that, your failures wouldn’t matter then, and success will come naturally.

3. Live Different Experiences And Meet Different People.

Try to live a different life, try to experience different things, go to different places and talk to different people. Your life experiences help mold and shape how we see and react to the world around us, it helps us grow as an individual and plus, it makes good stories.

4. Leave Your Comfort Zone.

I am not a fortuneteller, but yet I have safely for-told the fortunes of my family and peers before me. 7 years ago before I left for the United States, I told my mom that I am going to predict what my cousins and most of my friends in Singapore are going do, they are going to have a stable job, apply for a HDB (Singapore’s public housing), get married, have a kid, buy a car, and have a next kid, and upgrade to a private Condominium if income allows. Fast forward to 2017, seven years later, all these came true for my cousin, and it happening to my friends who are having their first baby now. Nothing is wrong with that life option, but yet, I do hear from a lot of them about regrets and how they would have, could have and should have done things differently. And now, 7 years later, I might still be single with no house nor children, but I have lived in Las Vegas, Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai, started 3 businesses and traveled around the globe, doing what I love and am proud of. Leave your comfort zone and be the fish out of the water, and live. If there is something you want to do, or dream of doing, go do it if you could, but stop making excuses and complaining about it later.

Failure is something to be prized and praised. Failure is feedback. Failure is moving forward. It’s conscious and exerted effort toward something you’ve never done before. It’s incredible.

To the brave souls who are struggling with failure right now, if your business failed, or is failing right now and don’t think you can go on, know that you are lucky to have your shot, something that many people didn’t even get the chance to. And with the experiences of heartbreak of a failed business, you are going to come out stronger and also know that you got me, Justin O if you ever need a shoulder to cry on justinyl.ong@gmail.com.

Just like how Rocky Balboa put it in his last movie,

“ It ain’t about how hard you hit.

It’s about how hard you can get hit

and keep moving forward.”

Don’t be afraid of failures and go for what you want whether is starting a business, a new relationship or new job. It is possible that you might fail or get rejected, but it’s more likely that you wont. Better to experience the brief, temporary pain of failure then to live forever with a sad regret for all the things you were too afraid to do in life.

So stop judging yourself and do it again, but this time, do it better.

Source: Justin Ong

  The Truth : Starting-Up and Facing Failures was originally published on Shenzhen Blog

[theconservativebrief]

Ralph Breaks the Internet is a picaresque, a joyous romp through the backwaters of the internet that nevertheless packs a powerful punch. At first blush, I’d say it falls just short of its predecessor, 2012’s wonderful Wreck-It Ralph, but maybe I need to see it five more times before saying anything so bold.

And when I say it’s a “picaresque,” I mean it. Like the novels that bear this genre label, it’s an episodic journey through an unfamiliar place, following a merry band of travelers as they visit various corners of said unfamiliar place.

At first, the adventures of ’80s video game villain Wreck-It Ralph (John C. Reilly) and ’00s racer game heroine Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) seem largely disconnected or plot-driven. But little by little, the voyage reveals itself to be plucking at unexamined emotional bonds between the two.

Perhaps the best-known American novel to fall under the definition of “picaresque” is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a veritable buffet of tropes from all sorts of genres in which Huck and his friend, the escaped slave Jim, float down the Mississippi. As they get deeper and deeper into the South, Jim faces more and more danger, and the humor slowly drains from the book. As the threat to Jim’s life increases, the story becomes about Huck having a moral reckoning with the institution of slavery he’s grown up alongside.

That is … not what Ralph Breaks the Internet is about, but it’s rather remarkable how closely it follows the same structure, as Ralph and Vanellope plumb the depths of the internet in search of a way to purchase a piece of hardware they need to fix her game back at the arcade where they both live.

They riff on eBay and social media and the dark web, and though the movie is crawling with brand names — whether the sight of a giant tower marked “Google” will fill you with delight or dread is open for debate — it’s much more interested in the internet as a place that binds us together than as any specific series of corporate entities. But it’s also interested in how the internet might bind us together too tightly.

Here are three things Ralph Breaks the Internet gets really right about the internet you’re reading these words on right now. (Alas, Vox does not make a cameo in the film.)

Ralph and Vanellope look out upon the wonders of the internet. Disney

For all its weird adoration of brand names, the first scene where Ralph and Vanellope find themselves online is a visual marvel that captures a feeling I haven’t experienced in 20-ish years: the way it feels to hop online for the very first time.

The two step out of their little wifi portal onto a platform overlooking a vast city, darting with traffic. Little Twitter birds pass along JPGs of Grumpy Cat. Amazon and Google tower over the landscape, but there are plenty of other areas to explore too. It’s at once Times Square reimagined in a digital space and a portal to a wider world. Ralph and Vanellope head down into the throngs to find their way to eBay, and the adventure is afoot.

Later, Vanellope muses that the internet seems disconnected from the day/night cycle of the real world; when you’re online, it feels like the sun is always up. And given that the movie is organized around a pretty strict time limit — after winning her replacement part in an eBay auction, Ralph and Vanellope have 24 hours to cough up the money to pay for it — this “always on” quality makes it a bit difficult to keep track of the story. But Vanellope is right, in the sense that Ralph Breaks the Internet captures that weird, buzzy feeling that comes from being online too long, from feeling like there are a million possibilities ahead and you haven’t even come close to exhausting them.

In some ways, this makes the movie’s inability to imagine the online space in a way that goes beyond a very direct representation of it a little disappointing. Yes, that big, bold city is a lot of fun to look at, but its architecture (which is built atop the very real electronic architecture that houses the internet) never quite conveys the wild, “anything can happen” sense of the internet at its best.

And even if the sequence when Vanellope meets all the Disney princesses (which has been heavily teased for months now) is mostly a lot of fun, the corporate synergy turned my stomach just a bit.

If you place all these gags in the context of Ralph Breaks the Internet co-director Rich Moore’s career, however, they make sense. Moore got his big break taking the piss out of pop culture on The Simpsons and Futurama, and the Wreck-It Ralph movies are among the few big-screen films to manage the same joke-a-minute, satirical snap of those TV shows.

The satire’s a little milder here — Disney’s not going to let him truly mock the princesses — but it’s easier to take the jokes about popular brands when Moore’s the one at the helm. He knows just how to lean into the unhinged nature of the web and speed through them fast enough to keep you from feeling too queasy.

Ralph and Vanellope meet a new friend named Shank. Disney

The script for Ralph Breaks the Internet (by co-director Phil Johnston and Pamela Ribon) was written years ago, which makes it a poor fit for, say, critiquing our current, slightly terrifying online world. But even if it were more up-to-the minute, it’s not as though Ralph and Vanellope would blunder down a dark alley and meet a bunch of 4chan Nazis or anything like that.

And the movie does capture the bleaker side of the web all the same, whether that simply involves Ralph seeing a bunch of comments making fun of him or going to visit the dark web, which promises all manner of salacious items for purchase, right down to a creepy, snake-like virus that looks a little like one of the robot squid critters from The Matrix.

Ralph Breaks the Internet doesn’t want to solely portray the internet as a scary place, but I was a little surprised by how dark the movie was willing to go, especially as it entered a third act that isn’t shy about poking at its heroes’ insecurities.

Ralph and Vanellope meet a lot of fun new characters online — including Gal Gadot as Shank, who occupies an online racing game that catches Vanellope’s eye, and Disney regular Alan Tudyk as an old-fashioned search engine named Knowsmore. But it’s easy to see why Ralph keeps trying to turn back toward the arcade, where life is safe and predictable. To paraphrase Linus from A Charlie Brown Christmas, the internet hasn’t only gotten too commercial; it’s gotten too dangerous.

This marks Ralph Breaks the Internet as belonging to a specific subgenre of the picaresque, one that harks to old Hollywood — the story of two small-town kids who set out for the big city and find their friendship tried by what they encounter there. And it’s in that version of itself that Ralph Breaks the Internet ultimately packs its biggest emotional punch.

How is Vanellope not an official Disney princess? Disney

It’s really hard to talk about what ends up linking Ralph Breaks the Internet’s many loose ends in a third act that feels as bold and smart a story about what it means to live online as any we’ve ever come up with, because to do so is to spoil some of the story’s biggest twists. Suffice to say that if you’re at all familiar with the “two friends go to the big city” format, you’ll know that the big city will seek to divide them. And seeing Ralph and Vanellope realize they’re becoming very different people is legitimately heartbreaking.

But it’s everything that follows from that moment that pushes the movie to another level entirely, one that left me a little gobsmacked. Because ultimately, Ralph Breaks the Internet becomes a story about how entirely well-meaning guys can become toxic to their female friends, as well as a story about how hard it can be to realize that even the best of friends might have to take divergent paths to remain happy.

And the film realizes these themes on just about every level. Its script crackles with references to online toxicity (up to and including a pointed mention of a character who wants to “ride in on a white horse” — a nod to the idea of “white knighting,” when a “nice guy” tries, too aggressively, to come to the aid of a woman online). Its images depict how it feels to have all your vulnerabilities exposed for the world to see. And its themes connect in a way that will make sense to just about any viewer, young or old.

Ralph Breaks the Internet, like all good picaresques, meanders a bit during its journey, stopping to take several little detours that aren’t strictly necessary. Most of these detours are fresh and funny; a few tried my patience. But they’re crucial to what ends up being the film’s ultimate emotional effect. Ralph Breaks the Internet is a movie about how easy it is to forget that the internet is made up of people, sometimes even people you love, because it flatters you and batters you and deflates your ego, until you forget about anybody who’s not yourself.

Ralph Breaks the Internet is playing in theaters everywhere.

Original Source -> Ralph Breaks the Internet is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but for the internet

via The Conservative Brief

[mydaddisatan-blog]

an excerpt of schizophrenia

And if you ever told people about it, they would tell you it's simply noise in your head. They would fail to even attempt to acknowledge the different voices who are constantly screaming in your ears. They would turn their backs on the voices who make a home in the temple of your mind posing as the false god it's supposed to be devoted to. They are ruthless and never fail to make an appearance whether it be during the day when you can drown out the static in your skull or late at night when you lie awake occupied by only the hellish words pounding behind your eyes with nothing but complete silence to accompany you on the horrible journey of trying to find peace.

           This "noise" is something not many understand. In fact, lots of people try to deny the noise that plays in their head. And trying to be in denial  about the twisted CD track you have on a constant loop in your ears is perfectly ok, because sometimes the volume is only a dull whisper, and sometimes it doesn't bother you, but just when you think you've finally managed to turn off the imaginary radio in your cranium, the volume is turned up to its highest and  there's nothing but the heavy notes of vocal cords racking  painfully through your entire consciousness. And it's not just their many conversations that bother you, no you've learned that listening is easier then ignoring. It's that before, something like pressing a blade deep into your skin was an action you'd never take but now you couldn't deny the fact that the thought had crossed your mind more than once. Because maybe, actually listening to what was being said would calm the raging beast that was your own psyche.

           But trying to ignore the noise however, only lasts so long before it turns into a painful orchestra. The constant bang and crash of each syllable starts to weigh down on not just you, but the people who fall witness to your suffering. Trying to cope with the grisly symphony that some would consider calling insanity, day in and day out is next to impossible. The constant weight of each word spoken into your brain breaks you down until you crumble entirely under the unimaginable pressure of losing all self-control. The noise is just one of many phases involved with losing your grip on reality. Some people are lucky, their ties to the real world are sawed at a painfully slow pace whereas others have their ties snipped all at once. One day your fine and the next you can't tell what's real and what's not because at that point everything seems like a horrible nightmare you can't wake up from.

Your mind is no longer your own as the once unwelcome visitors decide to stay for good. Your body is not yours as it jerks randomly while you do nothing but watch in horror as your limbs move by themselves, as if possessed by some cruel demon taking your meat suit for a spin while you are just a guest along for the ride. Your emotions don't belong to you either. They are controlled by the endless amount of noise that takes refuge in your skull. How you feel starts to depend on how merciful they decide to be. But maybe this makes you lucky, because feeling numb entirely is better than trying to feel anything. Having normal emotions takes more effort than you have to offer. So, your expression is as flat as a tabletop and tone so dry it makes the desert look wet. Because if you can't even decide whether you're happy or feel like trying, then simply what is the point? Well, at least that's what they tell you. 

           It's scary when you get to this, so locked up and confined by the very walls you built to protect yourself. So, gone that you can't decide if drinking a glass of water is a good idea or not, or that you can't seem to process the simple instructions of folding clothes. So tired that walking to the bathroom is like a 3,000-mile trek all the way to China when its maybe ten feet from the couch you've planted your worn-out body on. You spend your days feeling confused because you have no idea what's going on. You look at your class mates and watch them take notes, but you can't understand why you're there in the first place, or you'd open the fridge only to find that you have no idea why you went in the kitchen at all. Your family and friends ask if you're ok, but in all honesty, you don't have an answer because you're not focusing on the question, no you're too busy trying to remember all of their names and which one is supposed to be your brother. They ask you to eat, but you just stare at the plate. Will go days without food because you don't "feel" hungry. Of course, you feel the sharp pain of emptiness in your gut, but hunger's something that starts to become less and less important. But then again, that's how most things seem to be, less important. Days are spent sleeping while nights are only for being kept awake by the buzz of words. And of course, so many people would say "why don't you get help?" "go see a doctor" "you're sick". And somewhere in the back of your mind you know this isn't normal, that something isn't right, that the doctor should be seen, but that small voice screams for help, desperate to be heard. But it isn't, the soft-spoken voice is to be ignored.  And it's so confusing because then the real question is asked, "why should you listen to any of them?" I suppose the only answer is in the end, you know that all of them speak some version of the truth, but only with their fingers crossed behind their backs. And it's so overwhelming, everything. You're so scared because everyone only shakes their head with a laugh and ask where your marbles have gone. They use words like crazy and insane in the same sentence with your name and that's made you wonder. It's brought up a valid point that makes you stop and really think for once. And then the only thing you've been allowed to feel is embarrassment because maybe you are crazy, perhaps it's just you with the voices. Just you and the hum of bitter words that say horrible things. You and a possessed body, you and feelings that were never really yours, you and the fading slivers of reality, you and a mind that is breaking. 

           But that’s the sick punch of reality because it's true.  That's what happens. You break, shatter, fall apart in the most beautiful way. You are nothing but an image of pure self-destruction. A wild beast confined by warm skin and human emotion trying to claw its way out of your chest. The horrific place we call our mind becomes ruins, devastated by the many demons that occupy it. Nothing seems to hush the noise, it grows louder with each day until it's the only thing left for you to hear. The only thing you can focus on. The noise so strong that you can't ignore the roar in your ears, they demand fiercely to be heard and will not take no for an answer. It's extremely frustrating because for once you'd like to be able to close your eyes and experience the beautiful silence you know exists but don't remember what it's like. You'd like to have a moment alone with just yourself and no unwanted eavesdroppers who press their ears to the inside of your skull in the hopes of hearing what you’re thinking. You open your mouth to scream for help, but the words are stuck, just the poisonous taste of "I'm fine" on your tongue as it forces its way out of your mouth. But you're not fine. You want help, but no amount of medication or doctor visits could silence the noise.

No,

Only the cool touch of metal to against your temple seems to grab their attention. They stop shouting once the barrel is firmly pushed to your head. The screaming has finally stopped, all that remains are gentle words of encouragement as your handshakes violently. That tiny voice in the base of your skull shrieks for you to stop, to think about what you’re doing, to not be rash and think about other people. But that’s just it, you are thinking about other people. You’re thinking about how they make you feel like an outsider, like a freak, like some crazy person. And for the next thirty agonizing seconds, you are the most selfish person you can be because you’re blaming them. You’re blaming every person who “failed” you by not making you feel good about your bad decisions. You blame and call them evil because they don’t validate your poisonous behavior of in denial regarding your sanity. You hate that they don’t cuddle you and tell you everything is going to be ok even though you know it isn’t because what you’re doing isn’t ok. You aren’t ok, and you won’t do a damn thing about it. So, you cry, you sob, you hyperventilate because you’re scared and angry and a million voices scream at you to pull the trigger, to take the easy way out of dealing with your problems. And you do.

           Because that’s reality. You don’t stop and decide to get help because the fear of being labeled insane and losing yourself to an unforgiving society full of peers if far worse in that moment then showing even the slightest sign of weakness and admitting you’re not ok. So, with a soft squeeze of your point finger, everything stops. And for once your body is yours. No more monstrous jerks in your arms or legs. The hot flash of pain in your skull beginnings to fade, as they say, the storm finally starts to pass and now there’s nothing but sunshine and skies full of false hope. And for a beautiful second, you can hear the deafening silence, and it's a gorgeous sound. A moment so beautiful, that you’ve been waiting for, for so long, you just want to cherish it forever because the relief in your ears is unimaginable. But then just as fast as it came, the moment is gone, but in some twisted way, the nightmare you've lived seems to turn into the most glorious dream because you belong to yourself, no one else, and the radio has finally turned off. 

a lil something i’ve been working on lately

[muzaffar1969]

http://ift.tt/2s5rlEh

Staying afloat in India’s food-tech storm is no easy feat.

The last few years have resembled a battleground for startups in the sector. They’ve been falling like dominoes. Food-tech funding has dipped drastically from $500 million in 2015 to $80 million a year later. Companies have been laying off workers by hundreds. Food-delivery platform Zomato logged a Rs 492 crore loss between 2015 and 2016. Meanwhile, Foodpanda India’s loss ballooned fourfold to Rs 142.6 crore the same year, the Economic Times reported.

But 2-year-old Mumbai-based Scootsy is on track to break even by December and is looking to become a self-sustained profitable venture soon thereafter, CEO Sandeep Das told Quartz.

Scootsy has 2,000 sellers across different categories ranging from boutique owners to booksellers to bakers, yet at least half of the listings are restaurants and kitchens. Of these 1,000-odd food providers, more than 60% exclusively deliver via Scootsy’s platform, Das says. (At the outset, Scootsy was meant to be a food-delivery service. It acquired the Meals on Wheels service so that it could learn from its mistakes. It changed to a multi-category model just before the launch, VCCircle reported.)

Scootsy isn’t just another yellow pages-like listing for every single local dhaba (roadside restaurant) and Chinese restaurant. The team curates offerings based on popularity, a premium reputation or—if the restaurant is not well-established—through tastings. And unlike other services that operate within a radius of three to four kilometers, Scootsy delivers food from up to 15 kms away. The company’s most impressive feat, perhaps, is its 60-minute delivery promise, no matter the distance. Das claims that orders have been delivered within the window more than 98% of time.

By selling premium products to hi-end customers with deep pockets, Scootsy has a shot at creating a unique brand that could garner enough loyalists. However, its exclusivity will likely restrict its reach. For instance, Scootsy claims that its average order size is Rs900($13.94). In India, where the average daily wage was Rs272($4.21) in 2014, that far exceeds what the masses can afford to pay. Whether Scootsy has a future beyond moneyed Mumbaikars is up for debate.

A growing food fiesta

The culture of ordering food online is picking up in India.

The 30% growth in its online food delivery sector between 2015 and 2016 far outpaced the restaurant industry’s 11% growth, according to a 2017 RedSeer report. Online delivery grew, as measured by gross merchandise value from a $120-million industry in India to $300 million over the same period, the consulting firm said. (GMV is often considered a window-dressing metric that exaggerates success, but still the big increase is still notable.)

Earlier, Indians who would order over the phone would send helpers and drivers to pick up. That required sparing change for an auto-rickshaw ride or burning fuel in the car. With other delivery services, there is often a surcharge for home delivery. With Scootsy, the customer does not have to foot any of the delivery cost, so technically, they save money.

“Our margins are on the bill value,” says Das. On average, Scootsy takes a 20% commission from the restaurant.

Restaurants don’t mind forking out a percentage of their earnings because delivery mitigates a lot of overheads that exist when you consume a meal in the restaurant. In some cases, they may have had to hire and pay delivery personnel anyway but lack the bandwidth to train them well. From a customer acquisition point of view, with Scootsy’s wide coverage, they can also have more people tasting their food who would otherwise not come to or order from the restaurant.

Flavored with experience

India is a price-sensitive market and nothing matters more than than a big discount—at least that’s the attitude in the startup sector thus far.

However, this mentality has made homegrown e-commerce startups bleed. Although a low price-tag can indeed lure customers, a lower price on your competitor’s site can make them switch just as fast.”If your whole formula is discounting, someday it will stop,” says Das. “You don’t build loyalty on discounts.”

But then how do you build it? Have the best supply, the best service, and even better price—not by discounting—by combining a few items into a bundle or offering exclusives, says Das. For instance, Scootsy sometimes sells exclusive bento boxes, sandwiches, and shakes from different outlets.

A rich premium shake made with chocolate & coffee fudge by Oh Fudge only for Scootsy customers! Get this shake here: https://t.co/K5M5ihEw6c http://pic.twitter.com/QZ2hvvlPdf

— Scootsy (@ScootsyIt) May 18, 2017

The strategy seems to be working. While its domestic competitors aim to ape and beat deep-pocketed giants like Google’s Areo and UberEATS, Scootsy is acquiring more than 10,000 customers per month and retaining 80% month over month, Das told Quartz. He says the platform may clock fewer orders than competitors like Zomato, but its huge order sizes make it a market leader in terms of GMV.

Uniformed delivery boys.

Another differentiating factor: For Scootsy, the doorstep experience is as important as the online—on its app, its website—and eating ones. “Earlier, the guy who had nothing better to do was given a brown color paper bag wrapped around a 50-day-old newspaper in a dirty plastic white bag. He would show up in bathroom slippers and looked like he hadn’t showered in the last three months,” Das says. “If you’re ordering food from the kind of restaurant we deliver from, food worth Rs5000, this guy needs to be presentable.”

Collectively, the scooter-riding delivery boys are labeled “a squad of knights in shining helmets available to your rescue” in the company’s Twitter bio. They are groomed through a training program at the start and monthly refreshers thereafter. They all don uniforms and are well-spoken. These things matter to elite, urban dwellers—Scootsy’s primary audience.

The premium market is limited

The food-tech scene is mostly thriving in major metros so far. The five Indian cities with the most online ordering accounted for more than 80% of total orders in the country. Basically, these are the places where people have enough disposable income to splurge.

Even as Mumbai starts to lose its mojo as one of India’s most dynamic startup hubs, Scootsy is doubling down on the city, continuing to add on new users. The platform says it has over 201,000 users, counting celebrity clientele like Alia Bhatt among them.

Scootsy adds “a new twist into this game where everybody else is chasing a huge customer base—they’re chasing a huge ticket size,” according to Deepak Menaria, chief idea farmer at the Lemon School of Entrepreneurship in Nagpur, Maharashtra. “There are always going to be few people who wouldn’t mind paying if they’re getting specific food from a specific brand,” he told Quartz, adding that delivery also helps people avoid the hassle of navigating congested routes, traveling for hours, and finding parking.

However, the premium audience is miniscule. “If they have to look at a sustainable model, it would more or less get restricted to ten to fifteen cities in India,” said Menaria. That could work initially. But over time, he believes the brand will have to “change or pivot” and stop riding on just the high-ticket size if it wants to tap into the market of 833 million rural Indians.

Menaria understands that having multiple verticals reflects a “risk mitigation plan” but he also believes that if food is the future for Scootsy, it should ditch its other products. And it’s something Scootsy maybe thinking of already as it pumps new money into food-related ventures.

What’s cooking on funding

Last month, Scootsy raised its first-ever funding round, worth $3.6 million.

With that, Scootsy is launching two new frameworks: one is Scootsy Express and the other—still unnamed—is a cloud kitchen of sorts. The former is essentially a digitized version of Mumbai’s dabbawalas (lunchbox carriers) with offerings from elite restaurants that will allow companies to pre-order corporate lunches. The latter follows a kitchen-based model of sorts, taking control of the cooking, packaging, and delivering food—a winning model as per Sandeep Murthy, co-founder of Mumbai-based Lightbox VC.

Basically, experts think that the food delivery services that just aggregate and deliver, instead of controlling the quality of food and being selective, are among the first to shutter. Scootsy doesn’t fully adopt that model and puts in checks and balances in place. Here’s how: Scootsy will pick a revered Delhi restaurant. Next, it will bring a chef from that eatery to cook in Mumbai for a limited period of time—say, a month. During this time, customers will get an out-of-city experience, getting a taste of something they would’ve never experinced unless they flew or took the train to Delhi. All in the same 60-minute delivery frame.

In the near term, the urban eater is Scootsy’s audience and Scootsy is looking to “work only in cities where we can generate certain order sizes,” says Das. In the coming months, Scootsy is looking to raise another round of funding. This time, the hyperlocal startup will expand its horizons to big cities beyond the borders of Mumbai. Next stop? Delhi NCR.

May 29, 2017 at 09:08AM http://ift.tt/2rvWqDW from Ananya Bhattacharya http://ift.tt/2rvWqDW

[aaronleong11-blog]

Dump Trump?

     Donald Trump has become our forty-fifth president of the United States. Many people do not trust Trump, many do not support him, many do not believe in him, and many have a strong hatred towards him. He is going to be our president whether we like it or not, so we must support him and give him a chance. We as citizens must also take responsibilities for our actions as well. Because one man can not change a whole nation, it takes everyone to help and contribute.

     Trump has no political background and is the most inexperienced president we have ever had in the United States, but I believe he has the potential in becoming a great president. Trump has some good ideas and will make this country better if he follows through with what he says. Some examples that he talks about are illegal immigration and America’s debt. He puts Americans first, and he is going to base his decisions on what is best for the United States. He spoke heavily about illegal immigrants and how we need to stop them from coming into our country. This is good because it will allow more jobs for Americans. A lot of people question Trump’s immigration policies and his ideas, and I get it. A lot of what he says is way too much and crazy, but he has the right idea. He wants to fix America first and take care of Americans first before non-Americans. In 2015, studies show that over 500,000 people were homeless in America and that is not including all the unemployed citizens. We as American citizens should be the first priority and that is what Trump is doing. The way he approaches it is unorthodox but in time he will start learning. Also, I think the main problem that people have is that Trump hates immigrants in general, but he does not have problems with immigrants, he has problems with illegal immigrants. Another problem in our country is the enormous amount of debt. With the help of Trump, he can get rid or decrease the amount of debt we have. He is rich, and his track record for financial success proves that he knows how to build a successful empire. With the U.S. trillions of dollars in debt, this is the sort of leader that might be able to turn it all around. Trump is a great negotiator, and despite his outrageous public statements in the recent past, he knows how to navigate complex deals and convince a wide variety of industries, businesses, and investors to do what he wants and to work with him to achieve his goals. Even Though some of the things he says is outrageous, he is not afraid to say what needs to be said. If there is something wrong, he will not hesitate to say something about it.

     Donald Trump is the president of the United States. He won because American citizens voted for him to be our next president. He even got votes from people and areas that no one thought he would get votes from. There has to be a reason why so many people voted for Trump. I think this is because Trump is genuinely a good guy, and people hate him because they judge him strictly about his past. I do not blame you. He said and did some nasty and terrible things. For example, a big issue was when he said, “grab her by the [explicit]”. That is a horrible and wrong thing to say and not in anyway a president should act. But people change, do they not? It is wrong to judge someone based on a past experience. Trump is a good hearted man. He does have a personality that does not show it as much, but he has a good mindset. For example, during his campaign, one of the things he would always say is “The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.” He is talking about all the people that are on the bottom of the economic system. He wants to help everyone and especially those who are “forgotten”. All the things he promises to do is to benefit not only the middle and upper class but also the lower class.

     Social media is a free place where people can speak their mind and say whatever they want. Therefore people can lie and twist the truth, and everyone who sees it will most likely believe it. The reason why people hate Donald Trump and do not support him is because of all the lies the media spreads about him. The media takes something Trump says and twist it to make him look bad. Trump has some good ideas about fixing this country but is misinterpreted because of the media. For example, during Trump’s campaign, the media would label him as anti-Mexican or racist. But this is what Trump really said: “The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems,” Trump said. “It’s true. And these aren’t the best and the finest. When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime; they’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” This is far from being a racist comment. He is saying how there are a lot of immigrants coming into our country illegally and stealing jobs and causing harm which is in fact, true. In 2014, There were 11.1 million unauthorized immigrants in America and fifty-two percent of them are Mexican. Of those 11 million, 8 million of them were in the workforce. Trump always says what is true no matter how bad it may sound. He does not say what we want to hear, he says what we need to hear. But the media takes it and tells everyone that Trump said “All Mexicans are rapists,” or “All immigrants are killers”.

     There are so many riots and protest happening in America and right now all of them are about Donald Trump. I believe protest and riots are never a good idea. Usually, they lead to violence, destruction, and most likely no change. Not all protest do not work some protest can make a change. For example, the Montgomery bus boycott or the civil rights movement. Protest can be very effective if you have the right heart and the correct mindset. Protest against Trump is just causing more havoc and strictly about hate. It is causing more controversy and more diversity and that is the last thing we need right now. We need to respect our leaders no matter how bad they are. Everyone has their own opinions and there will never be a time when everyone will agree on a single thing. Therefore, when we do not get our way, our first response should never be selfishness and anger. I believe, the main reason America is falling apart is because of all the differences. We always approach our differences with hate, not love and understanding, and with hate comes separation and with separation leads to corruption. Donald Trump is not going to ruin our country. The only thing that can ruin our country is us. Trump is going to be our president whether we like it or not and hating him and rioting against him will not change that and is just making it worse. We as citizens have to focus on one job and that is being the best person you can be. We have to love and put others before ourselves, and we have to strive to be less broken and come together as one. The way we are going to make America great again, starts with us.