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Guilty as Charged
“Hurry up, Jay! I gotta catch a bus in thirty minutes!”
“What? Fuck off and call a cab.”
“If you don’t get outta the shower, not even the Concorde will get me to work in time.”
“Okay, okay!”
He finished washing his hair while she was on the phone. A moment later, she walked into the bathroom.
“I feel sorry for your brother, y’know?” she said in a casual tone, combing her wet hair.
Jim opened the shower curtain only enough to shoot a questioning look at her. Sean could stir many feelings in people, but sorry was certainly not among them.
Silvia nodded, smiling. “He must be hating my guts, being dragged along with you guys all the way here.”
He dropped the curtain with an ironic smile. “I didn’t drag’im along.”
“Maybe. But he wouldn’t let Jo come alone.”
“You got it wrong, woma
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No Return Any Given Friday
The silver sedan stopped at the hotel door right when Jo and the Robinsons walked out. Silvia got out and motioned for Sean to take her place on the passenger seat, signaling the other two to get in the backseat with her.Jim swallowed a scoff, seeing the way she avoided eye contact with his brother, and let her stuff him against the window.As soon as they drove back onto the street, Miyen glanced at Sean and nodded to his phone, plugged to the dash. “Pick some,” he said, turning his attention to the traffic again.Sean threw a punch to the backseat, to make Jim stop sinking his knees in his kidneys just to piss him off, and took a moment to look at the music options. Jo and Jim chuckled when he picked Eminem’s When I’m Gone.Miyen rapped along, nodding to the beat as he drove. Until he glanced over his shoulder and said, “Sil.”Jim turned to Silvia in surprise when she sang the chorus.“Yo
No Return Nothing Lasts Forever
It was so hard to believe, she would wake up in the middle of the night just to make sure he was really there with her, day in and day out, night after night. It was utterly different to anything she’d lived by his side, or everything she’d ever dared to dream. She soon noticed that feeling growing inside of her, like bracing herself in anticipation of she didn’t know what, but nothing nice. Like waking up to find him gone or something along that line.At the same time, she couldn’t help feeling none of it had any real meaning. It was like a season out of time. Coming home from work to him; the Sunday showing the Americans around; the family dinners, cooking with Jo while her brother and the Robinsons gamed their butts off. The conversations with Jim, looking always back and never ahead. The having sex all over the Black Rock when her brother wasn’t around. The telling each other I love you a thousand times a day.None of it would last and
No Return The Curse of the Syllogism
“So now you owe me.”Silvia frowned, suspicious.Jim smiled a little wider. “Now it’s your turn to gimme a couple of weeks, and come play my everyday woman in my everyday life. Not isolated in the middle of nowhere, not in the madness of a tour, not surrounded by your friends like frigging bodyguards, but my real everyday life. Don’t you think that’s the logical next step?”He would’ve loved to feel anything like laughing when he saw her gawk first, then gasp and frown again, as she still tried to believe her ears. He kept quiet, holding her gaping eyes with his mild smile, his fingers still toying with her hair.Silvia closed her eyes, breathing as deep as her racing heart allowed her to.He was right, of course.It was obvious that would be the logical next step for him.But everything had devolved into disaster with Pat only when she’d visited him in the US. When she wa
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No Return Word to the Wise
The boat floated in the broad quiet bay, the lake shores at both sides covered by thick woods that climbed up the steep slopes of the mountains.Jim grabbed two beers from the cooler and strolled back toward the stern, where Sean sat, determined to hold the frigging stick until he caught one frigging trout.The tour guide had noticed right away that his passengers were into fishing as much as he was into rocket science. He’d set their fishing rods, taught them the basics and let them be. He settled them at the stern and stayed near the prow, taking his time to pick the perfect fly for that perfect afternoon.Sean thanked the beer with a grunt, mustering his patience. Jim dropped himself on his camping chair, cap down to his eyes, and sprawled out, clearly intending to take a nap. Sean didn’t recall ever seeing him so easy and contented like he’d been over the last week. And it didn’t fool him for a minute.“She’s coming
No Return The Next Song
A ringtone Deborah hadn’t heard for a while woke her up at dawn on Saturday.“About time,” she grunted, picking up.Her move woke up Sam, that saw her sit up in bed.“Lend me your phone,” she whispered. “I need to write something down.”He did. Deborah didn’t ask a single question. She just wrote down what Jim was dictating from Patagonia and disconnected with a little smile. Sam understood their plans to spend a few days in Los Cabos had just been cancelled.“Some miracle request?” he asked.“Nah, just a few calls. But I’m gonna set the Department of State on fire if that’s what it takes to have that asshole kicking my ass again.”At the other hemisphere, Jim left Silvia’s passport on the bookshelf and went back to her room. Good thing the black beast had apparently decided to remove him from the risky guest category, and was sleeping with Tobias, instead of lying across Silvia’s doorway as it’d been the first nights Jim had
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It felt just so awful, the way the clock jumped back instead of moving forward as they crossed time zones to the west. And with every repeated hour of that endless night, Silvia felt she was losing all she knew and loved, to walk utterly alone into whatever the next days might have in store for her. She expected to feel that way, just like the irrational fear clutching and twisting her guts. She would’ve liked to be able to do something about her instinctive withdrawing into herself to muster her courage and breathe deep before such a leap.To make it worse, she felt oddly confined in that luxury seat that had her walled up like a baby pen. She could connect with the whole damned world, yet she couldn’t look straight at Jim on the next seat without bringing her feet down from the box under the TV shelf, sitting up and leaning in, past the ugly thing all around her head with more plugs and stuff, and the little counter between the seats.The moment she moved
No Return To-Do List
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