Colton: Wordsmith Chronicles Book 2 (The Wordsmith Chronicles)

by Christopher Harlan

  5

  Colton

  I don’t know why I’m dreading this lunch with the guys.

  I know I shouldn’t be, they’re my best friends, after all. And they’ve been nothing but cool about the whole drama I caused. But for some reason I’m feeling guilty, especially since leaving the courtroom. And I know that I’m going to have to tell them what the judge said and I’m really not in the mood for it. Oh, well. At least I came bearing gifts. Well, one gift in particular. Sorry, Gray.

  We meet up at the Blue Bay again, only this time it’s for lunch instead of breakfast. Not that there’s much of a difference at a diner, anyway. This place is our own version of home base. I used to be really into history, and I remember learning that a lot of the planning for what eventually became the American Revolution happened in taverns, of all places. Just people sitting around, talking about forming a new country. The Blue Bay is our tavern, and we come here to plan our own little revolutions.

  When I walk in I get the usual greeting from Spiros and his father, and I wave back and smile politely. I see Mike and Gray across the room sitting in a booth. Mike and I make eye contact and I head over to see them. “What’s up, Al Capone?” Gray yells. As soon as I hear the sarcasm in his voice and see the look on his face I breathe a sigh of relief. For some reason I imagined them being angry at me.

  “Al Capone went to jail,” I joke. “Fucker died in there. Not me, I’m a free man.”

  “No shit?” Gray asks. “No prison time? How’d your crazy ass pull that one off?”

  “I’m still not sure.”

  It’s true. The whole thing feels like a weird dream, but I tell them the story of how I basically talked my way out of losing my freedom, and how the judge was a cool human being. Then I slip in the community service and therapy part. As soon as I tell them I have to see a therapist they look at me and start laughing.

  “A shrink? You? That’s hilarious, Colt.”

  “Yes, Gray. Me. I’d rather be a guy seeing a therapist than an unemployed writer who’s finishing his latest series from prison. Seems like an easy choice to me.”

  “I think it’s great,” Mike says. “I know it seems like a punishment, but you shouldn’t think of it that way. It’s a good way to get to the root of your issues.”

  I don’t like the smug tone in Mike’s voice, so I throw it back at him a little. “Just like you did after you beat up Everleigh’s ex-boyfriend?” My sarcasm stops the conversation dead in its tracks. I’m honestly not trying to be a dick, but Mike shouldn’t be preaching to anyone about self-control.

  “I shouldn’t have,” he says. “You’re right. I’m not lecturing you, man, I’m just saying that you should look at the glass as half-full and use this as an opportunity to make sure things like this never happen again. That’s all.”

  I feel like an asshole. “I’m sorry, dude. I didn’t mean to come at you. . .”

  He puts his hand on my shoulder and looks me in the eye. “We just want you to get better. Remember when you came to my place to help me?”

  “Which time?” I joke.

  “Exactly. Too many to count, brother. I want to pay it forward and be there for you. I’m just trying to be supportive.”

  “Me, too,” Gray says. “Last thing anyone at this table wants is for one of us to fuck everything they worked for up. We’re too good for that.”

  “Thank you. So, yeah, I have to see a psychologist. It sounds strange even saying that.”

  “Do you have someone?”

  “I actually texted this guy I train with at the dojo. He’s an ex-cop and a Jiu Jitsu instructor. I remember him saying his wife was this famous psychologist once after he tapped me about twelve times. I shot him a text before so that I could get her number.”

  “They let you choose your own therapist?” Gray asks.

  “Yes. It’s the one thing I have a choice in.”

  “Well, if she’s what you say then she sounds promising,” Mike says. “If she’s famous then she must be good at her job. Even though I’ve never heard of a famous psychologist.”

  “Her name’s Cordelia Summers. Her office is at her house in the city. I’m going to call and see if I can make an appointment for this week. Anyhow, is everything on for RAAC?”

  “Yup,” Gray says, touching my shoulder reassuringly. “We’re all set. We’re having copies of the anthology printed out now from Createspace and it goes live on Amazon soon. The cover looks great, by the way, I’m fucking psyched, dude!”

  I ran point on the cover image. Before all of my drama I managed to find the perfect custom image, and we all chipped in to license it. I’m good friends with one of the more popular cover models in the indie book world. “Me, too,” I tell them. “It’s beyond a pleasure to work with you two. I’m sorry I almost brought shit crashing down around us.”

  “Stop apologizing,” Mike commands. “Just get better. Get back to the gym, get to finishing your new book, go to therapy, and do whatever it is you need to do to get back on track. You’ve got this.”

  “Yes, sir!” I joke.

  The waitress comes and we order food. I’m starting to get my appetite back now that I know they’re not pissed. These guys really are my brothers—they’re not just business partners or random guys I write with, they give a shit about me. That’s a pretty incredible feeling. But I still have a lot of work to do on myself. After we get our food I decide to change the subject. There are other things going on worth talking about besides my legal bullshit.

  “How’s the wedding planning going, Mike?”

  “Ask Everleigh, I’m barely involved!” We start laughing, but I know it’s true. Mike’s not the wedding planner type. He’s the guy that shows up, says his vows, does some shitty dancing, and takes his wife on the honeymoon of her dreams.

  “I will. What’s the date again?”

  “It’s six months from now.”

  “Jesus, that’s fast,” Gray says. He’s right. I feel like they just got engaged.

  “Is that enough time to plan a wedding?” I ask. “I thought that shit took at least a year.”

  “Well I guess Ev’s on the expedited plan. Listen, I thought it was fast also, but what do I care? That just means I’ll be able to call her my wife six months sooner than the national average. Sounds good to me. And if she says six months, that means she’s already looked into it and it’s doable.”

  “Are you getting any Bridezilla vibes?” I ask, taking a bite of my food.

  “From Ev? Nah, not the type at all. Not even a little bit.”

  “That’s good,” I say. “It has to make shit worse if the girl is crazy.”

  “Speaking of crazy girls,” Mike tosses out. “What’s the deal with you and Harley?”

  Fuck. Me and Harley. I knew this was going to come up. I’m not even sure what to say, exactly. “I don’t know, man. I left her a voicemail and sent a few texts. Never heard back. Maybe she’s busy or something.”

  “Maybe she ghosted you,” Gray says, smiling. “Realized that she didn’t wanna date a fugitive from the law, so she cut her losses and blocked you.”

  “Very funny.” I know it isn’t that. It probably isn’t anything. I decide to change the topic. “I’m sure I’ll hear from her. But, look, I have something. . .” I grab the package out of my bag. I’m holding it, nervously, and it just lingers in the air with the other guys looking at it. “I have something for you, Mike,” I say, holding it in his direction.

  He looks at me and smiles. “Are you going to kiss me?”

  “You’re such a dick that I don’t know how to handle it sometimes.”

  “That’s what she said,” Gray jokes.

  “Here,” I say, handing it to Mike. “You deserve this. I know you’re making some money now with your book, so you don’t need me to get this for you, but still.”

  I hand the package to Mike, who looks at me and smiles. “You didn’t have to get me anything, man, you know that.”

  “I wanted to. Just as
a thank you.”

  “A thank you for what?” he asks.

  “For being there for me when I needed you. For not kicking me out of the group.”

  “Kicking you out? Dude, that was never even a conversation, don’t worry. I mean, yeah, we were pissed and all, but you’re a Wordsmith. You’ll always be a Wordsmith.”

  I breathe a sigh of relief. Not that I seriously thought the guys were going to ask me to leave the group, but still, it feels good to hear Mike say those words.

  “Mike can speak for himself,” Gray jokes. “I was ready to kick your dumb ass to the curb.”

  “Yeah, I bet you were, Gray.”

  We all laugh a little, and Mike finally starts to paw at my shitty wrapping job. “You might be worse at wrapping than I am! Holy shit.”

  “Yeah, well, I make up for it by being a better writer, so I guess we’re even.”

  “Oh, shit, burn!” Gray jokes.

  Mike smiles but keeps ripping at the paper. “It’s heavy! Jesus, what’d you get me, a brick?”

  “Just shut up and keep going.”

  He finally gets enough of the paper peeled to see the box underneath, and I catch the shock on his face. “Holy shit, man, are you kidding?”

  “Nope.”

  “Dude, you didn’t have to.”

  “I know that I fuck up from time to time, but I wanted to help make that situation that happened to you right. Apparently beating the shit out of KL wasn’t the answer, but maybe this will get me going on the right path. You can write your next bestseller on it.”

  I got Mike a laptop. And not just any old laptop, I got him a top of the line laptop—the one the guy at Best Buy took me to when I said I wanted the absolute best one in the store. Mike never got his stolen computer back from KL, so maybe this will help him as he writes the next great American romance novel. “Just when I think you can’t get any dumber, you go and do this. . .” I look at him and smile, knowing all too well the movie line he’s quoting. “And totally redeem yourself!” We used to watch Dumb & Dumber with Jim Carey and Jeff Daniels religiously in college. I give him a hug.

  “Enjoy it, man. Do great things with it.”

  “I will. You’re the man.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know.”

  “Now, you can do one more thing for me to make this the perfect day.”

  “Oh yeah?” I ask, interested in what he could be talking about. “What’s that?”

  “You could get out of here, take out your phone, call Harley up, and don’t stop trying until you hear back from her. Call it a favor.”

  “Alright,” I joke, loving the idea of calling her again. “I think I can do you that favor.”

  We finish up our meal and talk a little business. Besides my personal and legal drama we have some exciting Wordsmith stuff coming up—there’s RAAC in a little while, there’s the anthology, and what I’m really dying to do is finish my new book, The Gentle Art.

  “So the cover looks sick, Colt.”

  “Thank you, thank you. See, I told you I’d come through.”

  “I know you’re tight with Brody,” Gray says.

  Brody Charles is one of the most popular cover models in the romance industry. Tall, muscular as hell, and blond, he’s appeared on over ten covers this year alone, and over fifty in total. In the romance writing world, covers are everything—they tell you what the story is about, from the sensual love stories to the steamy erotica, and a good cover photo can make or break a book’s sales. I knew right away that Brody was the right choice to get our anthology noticed.

  “I’m tight with a lot of the models. Brody is just the most popular one, but there are others.” I tell them. A while back, when I thought my dreams of being a romance writer were just a bad dare we were all making together, I took a stab at modeling. It was a disaster. I did appear on one cover—some shitty sci-fi book that sold about five copies. I knew then and there that being a good looking guy wasn’t enough to be a successful cover model, but it was still a fun experience.

  “You met him through Greg, right?”

  “Yeah,” I tell him. “Greg’s the man.”

  G. Olden to his readers, and just good old G to his friends, Greg is a unique guy in this little world of ours. He runs a successful photography business that I get all of my cover images from, but he’s also an amazing writer who has one of the most diverse works of anyone I know. He writes male/male books, mostly, but he dips his toes in a bunch of genres, all of which are awesome. G was nice enough to contribute to the anthology, even though he’s not technically a Wordsmith. What he is is ripped as fuck. Seriously, the dude looks like Mr. Olympia, but he couldn’t be a sweeter guy. He was the guy who photographed me for what eventually became that book cover. Some hack writer I’ve never heard of licensed the image and I got a few hundred bucks. But the real value in that experience was meeting Greg and all the models he works with. Brody made the most sense for the cover of the anthology.

  “How many pre-orders are we getting?” Mike asks. Pre-orders are the life blood of signings, they just make everything easier. Our readers were foaming at the mouth when we announced this anthology, so we posted our pre-order RAAC link in just about every reader group and on all of our social media pages, trying to get as many copies sold ahead of time as possible.

  “So far we’re at 200.”

  “200! Holy shit!” I’m genuinely surprised. I shouldn’t be. I should be confident enough to believe in our success, but sometimes you have to see something come to fruition to truly believe it. Right now I couldn’t be happier because if we have that many pre-orders, then we’re doing something right.

  “Yeah,” Gray says. He’s been handling all of the orders and arrangements for RAAC. “We were at about fifty or so before Mike became a celebrity, and then we got a huge bump.”

  “Shut up, dude,” Mike answers back, looking embarrassed. “I’m hardly a celebrity.”

  “Well, in our corner of the world you’re the closest thing we have to it. Just embrace it, it helps us all.”

  “Fine,” he says. “As long as it helps all of us. I hope we all get bumps for our books.”

  Mike’s still bashful about his newfound success. We used to rib each other to see who got to the top of the mountain first, and in all honesty I assumed that it would be me. I know Gray thought the same. He has more books out than either of us, and he was always the most focused on the craft of writing and being an author. But it was Knight who got there before either of us, and I’d be lying if I wasn’t a little jealous. Before Michael got his Amazon number 1 bestseller tag for ForEver, I was the hot one in the group. It was my last book that had climbed higher in the Amazon rankings than any of their books ever had, yet I feel like I’m getting left behind. And I couldn’t be happier for Michael—truly—but I want to be as successful as him, and I want Gray to be also. Gray. He seems a little off, I can’t quite tell why.

  “I’ll drink to that,” I say, holding up my glass.

  “Is it time for a toast?”

  “Oh yeah, Mike, I think it is. Gray—you wanna do the honors?”

  “Hell yeah, I do. To the Wordsmiths!”

  “To the Wordsmiths!”

  We all take a drink, and the people at the other tables look at us like we’re nuts. I couldn’t give a shit. I feel good about finishing my book, but I’m also stressed as hell about this therapy thing. At the same time there’s what’s really on my mind. Or should I say who’s really on my mind. It’s time for me to take Mike’s advice and do him a favor. We all finish up our lunches and drinks and say goodbye. I’m going to see them in few days after I get copies of the book.

  Speaking of Good Will Hunting, I’ve gotta go see about a girl. . .

  6

  Colton

  My father was an alcoholic, which is a very clinical way of saying that he was a hopeless, abusive drunk.

  Alcoholic has a medical ring to it. It sounds like something a doctor would diagnose you with, something you’d call you
rself to explain away all of your terrible behavior, something that has treatments associated with it. Drunk, on the other hand, sounds exactly like what it is. A person who’s a piece of shit. An irresponsible, violent prick who loves the bottle more than he loves his family—someone so far down the road of addiction, and all that addiction brings with it, that there’s no reversal of fortune, no happy ending, only the inevitable and slow-motion conclusion of a life poorly lived. That was my father.

  That will never be me.

  Michael loves to tell people how we all met in college, which is true, but like all origin stories, it’s been a little bit fictionalized over the years. We did meet at NYU, and we were all lit majors, and we did meet up that night at a bar, where Michael suggested that we take the indie romance world by storm. But what he and Gray leave out when they tell that story is how Michael and I first met.

  Al-Anon is what they call it. I call it a bunch of bull, but it seems to comfort a lot of people who aren’t me. I’d been forced to go because my Mom was going at the time. She’s into sitting in a room with people going through the same thing as her, sharing war stories and having a good-old cry together. That was never my thing. When I’d hurt—and I was hurt a lot by that asshole—I preferred to be alone. I’m still like that, even now. The first real fight I ever had wasn’t with some kid on a school playground, it was with my dad. I was twelve. A long day at work and half a bottle of whisky made him a little less than patient with me, my sister, and my mom.

  He was a fighter—not professionally, but he had some amateur bouts, and he trained for years. He’s the one who put me into martial arts. Like everything else with my dad, it was a double edged sword. Martial arts gave me discipline, it gave me a direction, but it was forced on me. No son of mine is gonna be a total pussy, you’ve gotta learn how to fight.

  So I did.

  Ironic that all that training helped me protect myself and the women in my house against him.

  Anyhow, that’s how Michael and I first met. His father loved the bottle also, and we met at a random Al-Anon meeting our first semester in college, before we ever really knew one another. It was a total coincidence that we ended up in the same major, and it still blows my mind that we’re writing together, because on some level, I still think of him as my friend from Al-Alon with the equally fucked up father. Well, maybe not equal. My dad took the gold in the ‘fucked up parent’ Olympics.