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Once we settled in the rockers, we sipped our coffee in companionable silence while Timber explored and marked the yard. Luckily, remaining in my view.
For a second, I could see us sitting out here every morning together, sharing silence and the surrounding nature, while sipping on coffee before we both started writing for the day.
I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. I didn’t want to jinx it. I also didn’t want to be disappointed.
Chase was the first man in a long time I had any serious interest in.
Like Chase, I should look into attending therapy because I had to be nuts to take on him and his issues.
Unfortunately, the heart wanted what the heart wanted, no matter what the mind kept saying. Or warning me about.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Chase focused on the calm lake before us. “Tell me about him,” I urged softly.
He took a long sip of coffee and when he was done, he turned toward me with a furrowed brow. “Why?”
“I want to know you better and he’s a big piece of you.”
“I’m surprised you want to get to know me better after how I treated you.”
I lifted and dropped one shoulder. “Like I said last night, I understand how hard this loss is for you. Losing my brother was hard, too.” I added, “And unexpected.” What I assumed Thomas’s loss was for Chase.
It couldn’t be because of a long, drawn-out illness. His loss had been sudden with no time for Chase to mentally prepare.
“Have you talked to anyone?”
He turned to face the lake again, effectively avoiding my eyes. “The person I used to talk to is gone.”
“I meant a professional.”
“No. A therapist won’t undo what’s been done.”
Maybe not, but they could still help him manage his grief. “Sometimes it’s good to talk it out. My guess is that you’ve been keeping his loss close to the vest by not talking about him or whatever happened.”
He tipped his mug to his lips, guzzled down the rest of his coffee and placed his empty mug on the floor next to his rocking chair. Dragging his fingers through his hair, he watched Timber exploring the edge of the tree line.
His chest slowly rose when he took a deep breath and I almost fell right out of my rocker when he actually began to talk…
Of course, I listened.
“We met in our early twenties. I was a junior at Brown University and he was working a frozen custard stand on the boardwalk in Ocean City, Maryland, where me and a few of my buddies went for spring break.”
“He wasn’t also in school?”
Chase shook his head, but remained focused on Timber who was on the trail of some fascinating scent. “No. He struggled in high school so he gave up on going to college.”
He paused as if waiting for me to ask more questions, but I was doing my damnedest to keep my mouth shut and avoid asking a barrage of questions. Admittedly, a difficult feat for me. Especially when I wanted to know more about why Thomas struggled in school.
I had my guesses.
“We hit it off right away and practically spent all of spring break together. By the end of the week, I couldn’t imagine never seeing him again and it was the same for him, so we began a long distance relationship while I finished school. It was a struggle to be apart but we managed to spend most of my breaks and summers together…”
Chase went on to tell me the summer after he graduated, he wrote his first book while working a job he hated.
After Thomas read the first draft, he told Chase the world needed to read it, too. He insisted Chase had real talent and his words should be shared with others. That spurred him to query an agent and ten months later, after almost giving up on hearing back, he finally received a response.
The agent requested the full manuscript and after he read it, immediately wanted to represent him and also said that the big name publishers would be fighting over the book.
His agent was right.
It turned out his manuscript went up for auction, the publishing rights were purchased for an insane amount of money, including a six-figure advance, and his author career snow-balled from there.
He gave up his crappy job, and pursued his dream of writing full-time.
Some of this I already knew from searching online, but I let him tell his story how he wanted and at the pace he was comfortable with. Amazingly enough, I managed not to interrupt once.
That could have to do with me biting my tongue every time I was tempted.
“Thomas moved in with me as soon as I found a place after graduation. He always supported me both emotionally and financially while I continued to write. It didn’t take long until I made more than Thomas and could return the favor.”
