“You’re a student?” he asked.
“I am. I study at Hillard. I’m in my last year.”
“No kidding,” he chuckled. “That’s my alma matter. Is old Professor Oakes still there?”
I shook my head. “He retired early last year for his health. I was really looking forward to taking his introductory course to Old English.”
Chuck clicked his tongue and hummed, “It was a good class. You’d think rereading Beowulf would be boring, but he always used to do the voices to keep his students entertained.”
I had to tear my eyes away from Chuck when I heard the front door’s bell chime again. A group of four or five people entered, eagerly whispering amongst themselves as they shuffled into the space. There was only one older woman with the group, while the rest of them looked to be teenaged boys. They all wore shirts with The Last Remembering logos on them, obvious fans of Chuck’s work. Some of them wore thick rimmed glasses, others had full sets of braces on, but they all had greasy hair and pimply cheeks in common.
“Is that him?” whispered one of them. “The Charles Hill.”
“I’m breathing the same air as the Charles Hill,” gasped another.
“Hello,” greeted Chuck charmingly. “Are you all here for the workshop?”
“Yes, sir,” said another. “But before we start, I wanted to ask you about the Terranean Revolt in chapter seventeen of book three. Did Pangstar really shoot first? Or was that because the protagonist isn’t a reliable narrator?”
“Oh my God, Steven,” sighed one of the other boys. “This again? We all know David was drunk leading into the shootout. Of course, he wasn’t a reliable narrator.”
The weary middle-aged woman raised her hand. “I’m just here because I’m their ride. Do you have a restroom I can use?”
I pointed to the other end of the store and said, “Right over there, ma’am.”
The boys formed a circle around Chuck, looking up at him eagerly. They pelted him with questions, talking over each other in an enthusiastic clamor.
“What happened to Bildur after the space war?” asked one.
“I get that black crows were supposed to be symbolic, but wouldn’t a dark hound have been more fitting?” inquired another.
“Are you going to teach us about character building today?”
“Pangstar totally shot first, right?”
Chuck glanced to me and whispered, “Please save me.”
“I’ll keep setting up,” I giggled. “Wouldn’t want to keep your admiring fans waiting.”
2
Chuck
I had to admit that Lara took me by complete surprise. She was delightfully sweet, brainy, and beautiful. While I did my best to answer the group’s seemingly endless barrage of questions about my books, I allowed my eyes to wander about the bookstore. It was a quaint little thing, a little rundown in places, but charming, nonetheless. But I wasn’t interested in the store’s wide selection of fiction and nonfiction. What I was most interested in was one particular bookstore employee with beautiful chocolate locks and hazel eyes. She was significantly younger than Sandy, which admittedly did make me feel a little at odds with myself. I wasn’t normally into younger women. Up until a few months ago, I’d been so sure that Sandy was the only one for me. Since the divorce, nobody had really piqued my interest.
Not until Lara.
There was something different about her. There was a sharpness in her eyes, a level of attentive alertness that only the youthful seemed to have. She’d mentioned that she was in her last year of college, so I assumed she was about twenty-three or twenty-four. Lara was certainly a lot perkier than Sandy, full breasts and round ass making it difficult not to notice the fine curve of her waist and length of her gorgeously thick thighs. She was stunning, that was for sure, but a tiny voice that nagged me in the back of my head told me to hold back.
She was a palate cleanser for my eyes. After fifteen years of looking at the same woman, day in and day out, Lara was practically a breath of fresh air. She was soft-spoken, unli
ke Sandy who was always shrill and larger than life –especially in our later years of marriage. Lara was a lot shorter than Sandy, rounder in all the right places. My ex-wife was tall and sharp, practically a walking cactus with all her points. But most importantly, Lara didn’t frighten me. There was something welcoming about her, approachable. Sandy, on the other hand, made me question everything I ever did or said. In the years leading up to our divorce, she’d been distant with me. I had to double, sometimes triple check what I was about to say out of fear of setting her off. It was a relief to be away from her and near someone so different.
Lara probably wasn’t interested in me. I was used to bumbling young fans approaching me, tripping over their words in an awestricken state. Lara was cuter than most, far more electric and wittier, but a part of me believed she was just being polite. There was no way someone like her would ever be interested in a guy like me. She was interested in my writing, in the stories I had to tell, not the actual man behind the keyboard typing away. And besides, after how everything between me and Sandy went down, I just didn’t believe I was ready to move on. I’d moved across the country with Clarissa for a fresh start, for a new life away from all the toxicity of my failed marriage. I’d just left a relationship. There was really no need to jump into another.
When we moved to this city, I made a silent promise to myself that the only two things I would concentrate on were raising my daughter and focusing on my next big project. Financially speaking, I was all set. Thanks to the infidelity clause in our prenup, Sandy wouldn’t see a single cent from the royalty cheques. I actually did the math late one evening –possibly half drunk in a sad post-divorce stupor– and discovered that Clarissa and I could live comfortably for almost a decade before I even had to worry about writing another bestseller. But my mind was a restless thing, hands always eager to put words to empty pages. Even though it was an option, I would much rather work on writing another book than sit around and feel sorry for myself. If I didn’t keep myself distracted, my memories of walking in on Sandy and Carl, my ex-literary agent, would surely haunt me.
The writing workshop had an impressive turnout for a Wednesday afternoon. Out of the thirty seats available in my class, all but three had been filled. I stood by the front table Lara had set up for me and looked out at the sea of faces, soaking in details like a sponge. Aside from the little group of fanboys sitting directly in the front row, the rest of the class consisted of an older audience. The majority of them looked worn down with time, no doubt exhausted from a long day’s work prior to coming to my little get-together. After going over the basics of character development, it was time to put their newfound knowledge to the test.