by
This...is Jamar.
Written by Olivia Gaines
Edited by Teri T. Blackwell, Ed.S.
Davonshire House
Augusta, GA
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s vivid imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely a coincidence.
© 2016 Olivia Gaines, Cheryl Aaron Corbin
Copy Teri T. Blackwell
Cover: Koou Graphics
ASIN:
ISBN:
ISBN-10:
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means whatsoever. For information Davonshire House Publishing LLC, PO Box 9716. Augusta, GA 30916.
Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 10 9 8
First Publishing October 2016
Also by Olivia Gaines
The Slice of Life Series
The Perfect Man
Friends with Benefits
A Letter to My Mother
The Basement of Mr. McGee
A New Mommy for Christmas
The Slivers of Love Series
The Cost to Play
Thursday in Savannah
Girl's Weekend
Beneath the Well of Dawn
Santa’s Big Helper
The Davonshire Series
Courting Guinevere
Loving Words
Vanity's Pleasure
The Blakemore Files
Being Mrs. Blakemore
Shopping with Mrs. Blakemore
Dancing with Mr. Blakemore
Cruising with the Blakemores
Dinner with the Blakemores
Loving the Czar
The Value of a Man Series
My Mail Order Wife
A Weekend with the Cromwell’s
Other Novellas
North to Alaska
The Brute & The Blogger
A Better Night in Vegas (Betas Do It Better Anthology)
Other Novels
A Menu for Loving
Turning the Page
An Untitled Love
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my bibliophiles.
Thank you for holding me down all the while lifting me up.
This...is Jack.
By
Olivia Gaines
Table of Contents
This...is Jamar.
Chapter One- Sparks Flying
Chapter Two- Opening the Circuit
Chapter Three- Testing the Current
Chapter Four – Checking the Wiring
Chapter Five – Touching the Connectors
Chapter Six – Filling Out the Conductor
Chapter Seven – Powering Up
Chapter Eight – Charging Stations
Chapter Nine – Positive Charge
Chapter Ten – Flowing Current
Chapter Eleven – Static Electricity
Chapter Twelve – The Shocker
Chapter Thirteen – 40,000 Volts
Chapter Fourteen – A Break in the Current
Chapter Fifteen – The Shocker
Chapter Sixteen – Connected Wiring
Chapter Seventeen – Blown Fuse
Epilogue
Excerpt Farmer Takes a Wife – Book 3
Excerpt Wyoming Nights
About the Author
Coming Soon
Chapter One- Sparks Flying
“Holden Cimoc, you put that brick down, get out of my front yard, and go put on some pants,” Tallulah Strom yelled at him.
“No!” Holden responded childishly, slurring his words. “I am going to shatter your precious window into a million pieces just like you did my heart, you evil cock twister!”
Tallulah was beside herself in embarrassment. The neighbors were definitely going to notice a drunken, half-naked white man on her front lawn, holding a brick in one hand and a bottle of Jack in the other. It also didn’t help that he was screaming ugly names in her direction at the top of his lungs.
“Holden, come inside,” she said, taking a step towards him.
“No!” he said as he darted to the left, half stumbling, his bottom lip poked out. “And you can’t make me you ball busting broom rider!”
“Stop it this instant or I am calling the police,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Call them, dammit! I don’t care! I want the world to know the crimes you have committed against me and my heart. Everyone needs to feel the acidic blood that courses through your veins, you mean-mouthed Medusa,” he said as he collapsed on the front lawn. His legs folded like a drunken frog as he sat beside Ruddy, the garden gnome that she hated. A garden gnome that he put in her yard and seemed, at this low point in his life, to be his only friend. He held it closely, rubbing the pointy little head of the red capped brownie as tears threatened to end the fragile state that kept him tethered to the ground.
“Holden, we can talk about this, but you have to put on some pants, get off my front yard, and stop calling me names,” she said, moving closer.
He rolled over on his side, the Jack spilling from the bottle as his tidy whities almost glimmered in the moonlight. She looked down the street to see living room lights coming on incrementally as neighbors roused to see what was happening on the street. Mrs. Moresy, her nosey neighbor, turned on her porch light as did old Mr. Hughes, who named himself as the Captain of the Neighborhood Watch Society. The Neighborhood Watch Society didn’t exist. Mr. Hughes created his own and named himself the captain. The only thing the man had caught in the last three years was a suspect stray cat and a random black dog that he thought was a thug from Atlanta.
Tallulah was uncertain how Holden had made it to her home, walking down the street in his drawers with a bottle of liquor with no one calling the police before this moment of drunken ridiculousness. If she could simply get him into the house, everything would be fine. Trouble was, he wasn’t budging.
“I want everyone in your pristine neighborhood to know who you really are, Dr. Tallulah Strom,” he said. “Yoo-hooo! Nosey Mrs. Moresy...hey, that rhymes...”
Tallulah took off at a sprint across the yard to stop him from saying anything else. Never had her yard seemed as large as it did right now because no matter how fast her legs moved, the distance between them seemed eternal. He needed to be silenced because he was making a spectacle of himself; moreover, he was going to draw attention to them. A few more minutes of his loud antics and he was going to go off to jail.
I just need to get him into the house.
Sheriff Roosevelt Hill rode down Butcher Street, taking a left on Candlestick and making a slow pass through Baker Street when the call came in. Not much happened in Venture, Georgia on a Thursday night, with the exception of a few college kids pulling a prank or a senior citizen wandering away from the nursing home. Usually they were found sitting on the front porch of the home where they had spent so many years raising a family, only to have it sold to a young couple who barely maintained the yards or cleaned the gutters.
“Sheriff Hill,” the dispatcher called. “We have a domestic disturbance over on Mulberry. Mrs. Moresy said Holden Cimoc is in Dr. Strom’s front yard in his underpants.”
“Roger that,” Roosevelt said. “I am in route.” He saw no need to turn on the sirens to wake the good citizens of the small town. Heaven knew they had nothing better to do than gossip. If he could solve the issue quietly without any buzz, it would be better for all involved.
He made a right on Sycamore, coming down Elm, taking a quick turn up Main Street into the newest subdivision of fancy homes thrown together with bubble gum and pressed wood, then making a quick left on Mulbe
rry. True enough, Holden Cimoc’s pasty white legs showed up like a candle in a dark room as he stumbled back and forth across the front lawn, holding a bottle, a brick, and a garden gnome that he obviously felt strongly about. He held the gnome to his crotch as he humped the surprised happy face which sat under the little red hat. Ruddy the Gnome’s face was frozen in horrified silence as Holden demonstrated how he felt he’d been treated by Dr. Strom.
Roosevelt pulled up slowly, no flashing lights, no fanfare to announce his arrival, observing the scene in progress. He stepped from the vehicle slowly, walking up to the pair, taking it all in. On this night, Holden’s intention with the gnome were unclear, but it was bordering on obscene and it needed to stop. Immediately.
“Holden...Doc,” he said.
“I am so embarrassed, Sheriff. He must have walked over here like this. I don’t see his truck,” she tried to whisper.
“Son, put the brick, the bottle, and the gnome down and step back,” Sherriff Hill said to Holden.
“No!” Holden hollered at the peacekeeper, his head weaving back and forth. “I am going to shatter that window like she did my life. Then I am going to pull down my pants and poop in her yard so everyone can see the shit that she has given me to digest. Everyone is going to know you, Tallulah...you testicular twirling twat twitcher!”
Roosevelt looked at Tallulah.
“That’s impressive, considering he is pretty drunk...you know, doing a tongue twister,” Roosevelt said to her.
“I am glad you are impressed by his grasp of alliteration. However, I will be more captivated if you can help me get his half-naked ass out of my front yard,” she said to the sheriff.
“Come on, Holden,” the Sheriff said. “Let’s go.”
“No!” he pouted again. “I am not leaving until everyone in this overpriced bubble finds out what this woman has done to me. She used me. She used my body and my loving as a weapon against me, and I am not going anywhere until I leave her vulnerable and open like she has done me.”
He said the words and reached his arm back to throw the brick, but the Sheriff grabbed his right hand. It didn’t matter to Holden since he was left handed; he chucked the gnome at the picture window front glass. The tinkling of the shards of glass echoed in Tallulah’s ears as the neighbors who had come outside to watch the debacle mouthed “ooohs” and “aaaaahs” at the breaking of the window pane.
“I don’t believe you did this, Holden Cimoc!” Tallulah said to him. She charged at him with her nails up, ready to claw Holden’s eyes out. The sheriff couldn’t believe it either as he released Holden to grab Tallulah and stop her from coming after the young man. Another thing they could not believe was that Holden Cimoc pulled down his underwear, squatted in her front yard, and dropped a deuce.
“Eeeeew!” Mrs. Moresy said as Holden stood up, pulled up his pants, and walked to the Sheriff’s car. As polite as daylight breaking over the horizon, he opened the rear door with some effort and took a seat inside with his bottle of Jack, which he emptied in one swallow, then passed out on the back seat.
“Well, damn,” Roosevelt said to her. Truth was, he could have done more to stop Holden, but he didn’t. Tallulah Strom was a ball buster. Holden had not lied about that fact. The Sheriff also had gone out with her once. In her mind, he wasn’t good enough for her since he punched a clock, so to speak. There were also three other men in town, whom she rejected for one reason or another, who sat in the local bar on Penton Street commiserating on what might have been. It made him feel warm inside that a young man like Holden took her down a few pegs by knocking her off her high horse.
“I will send a car over to keep an eye on the place tonight. I suggest you put in an emergency call to Vick over at the glass repair shop so they can get you a new window installed first thing in the morning,” he told her. He tapped the brim of his hat before walking over to his car.
“You like this, don’t you, Roosevelt?” she said. “You could have stopped him from doing this.”
Roosevelt’s face didn’t yield any expression when he responded to her, “It seems to me, you also could have prevented this by treating the man with some respect,” he told her.
In his mind were all sorts of jokes that would play out over the next few months, most of them at Holden’s expense. Knowing Tallulah as he did, she would play the victim and turn the town against the young man. He was a sharp kid with a bright future that was just dulled by a woman who was hard to love by any grown man’s standard. Most of the town knew of the relationship between Tallulah and Holden, but no one made a comment about it. Oh, there were opinions on it in the privacy of dining rooms and bedrooms before slumbering couples went to sleep, but openly, no one spoke of it.
“Doc, you may want to get that excrement off the grass. Human feces is a health hazard,” he said with a half-smile. “Have a good night.”
Holden awoke the next morning behind bars, confused and with an itchy butthole. His head hammered as if the pressure of the vein walls were pushing against his brain, vying for space. It hurt like hell and he could not focus on any one object. His stomach gurgled as he rolled to his side, crawling over to the toilet bowl in the cell as he upchucked what seemed like a swimming pool load of brown liquid.
“That would be the bottle of Jack you downed last night,” Roosevelt said to him.
His head hung low, almost into the bowl, as he hurled some more.
“If you think you are feeling bad now, you are only going to feel worse when I tell you that you will be charged with vandalism and destruction of private property,” Roosevelt said to him.
Holden flushed the toilet and sat on the cool tile floor, his head hanging to his chest. This is bad. I am in jail.
“Sheriff, what happened?” he asked.
“You got drunker than Cooter Woods, walked over to the Doc’s house in your underpants, broke out her front window, then pooped in her front yard,” Roosevelt said to him. “You also had an unwanted intimate moment with the garden gnome in in front of Mrs. Moresy.”
“No...no...no,” Holden mumbled.
“Yes...yes...and yeah you did,” Roosevelt responded. “I think if the gnome could talk, he would press charges against you, too.”
Holden looked like a small child sitting in the floor with grass stains on his legs and underwear while he moaned in embarrassment.
“How did I get here?” he mumbled to himself.
“In my squad car,” Roosevelt responded.
“No...not in your car. How did I get here...to this point in my life? Eight months...eight months and she turned me into a drunken blathering idiot,” he said in a defeated voice.
“That is nothing; you are now going to be the laughingstock of the town,” Roosevelt told him. “The garden gnome community is probably going to put you on their watch list, too. What you did to that gnome wasn’t right, man. It just wasn’t right.”
“You are not helping any, Sheriff,” Holden said.
Roosevelt looked at his desk. The sheriff’s office was small with only two holding cells reminiscent of the Andy Griffith show. Roosevelt stared at the young man sitting on the floor. His gaze went back to his antiquated desk to stare at the framed picture of himself, his sister, his brother-in-law Daniel, and Jamar, a young man building a town in Wyoming.
Maybe I can help Holden.
“Holden, your contract with Smithy just ended last week, right?” he asked.
“Yes. Smithy didn’t renew my contract he said because of some morality clause. Evidently Tallulah has convinced the town that I am an amoral bunghole. Why do you ask?” Holden wanted to know. His head was hurting. “Can I get some water and a couple of aspirin?”
“Sure,” Roosevelt said as he dispensed water into a paper cup for his prisoner. “I was thinking...it’s going to be a couple of months before this all blows over and dies down. Everything you do now is based on service calls and bids, so technically you could get away for a while, right?”
“I guess,” Holden ans
wered, accepting the two tabs. “Thanks,” he said to Roosevelt, taking the two aspirin and downing them.
“My sister, you heard about her, she is out in Wyoming. She married a nice man and they are building a store,” Roosevelt smiled fondly at the memory of his trip there. “Well, they could use a good electrician. Matter of fact, Jamar—that is the young man who is building the town—could probably keep you in enough work to last you a year if not longer.”
“Sheriff, are you suggesting I run away?” Holden rubbed his face, which felt extremely warm.
“No, I am suggesting you load your truck and start driving towards a new morning of hope and purpose. You need to see something new, do what you love, and clear your head. I would also consider it a personal favor as well, if I knew it was you taking care of my sister’s store,” he said.
“But won’t I have to come back for court for busting her window?”
“I tell you what we’re gonna do, Holden. I’m gonna call Vick at the glass shop and find out how much that window is going cost. You pay Vick and I see that she doesn’t press charges,” Roosevelt said. “I can’t speak for the gnome you molested.”
Holden ignored the jab. “Wyoming though?”
“The drive out will clear your head,” Roosevelt said. “The heavy work load will help you clear your heart.”
Holden stared at the door. He half-expected Tallulah to walk in and reduce him to a pile of ash with harsh words on his childish behavior. As much as he wanted to choke some sense into her, he knew the Sheriff was right. He needed to leave town for a minute.
“I love her so much it hurts all of my inside parts,” he confessed to Roosevelt.
“Yeap. You loved her enough to shit in her yard,” Roosevelt told him as he unlocked the cell to let Holden out. “I will take you home, we will call my sister, and you will go wash your ass. Hopefully, you can be on your way real soon. Don’t let the grass grow under your feet on this one.”
He didn’t.
Holden Cimoc lived an uncomplicated life with little focus on material things. He never knew if that was because he was raised by hippies or if he just didn’t need much to be happy. The past few months he had spent more time at Tallulah’s home than he had at his own apartment. The only arguments had been about his touch of OCD and the need to rearrange small things so that the rooms flowed more smoothly. He smiled at the thought of the huge argument which happened when he reorganized her cabinets. The clothing at her place was all the pieces that she’d purchased for him, leaving all of his clothing still at his apartment.
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