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- Herausgeber: Bentockiz
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
It was labeled with a white sign out front though its lofty stature and dignity, brick veneer, a two-story front porch, chimneys at each end, marked it as the focal point long before the sign was legible. They walked up the wide front steps and stood on the broad porch. It was a joyful reunion with lots of wine to go along with the lasagna and garlic bread and salad and cheesecake.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Title Page
Early Heartbreak
Without Consolation
Angel Rupert
Early Heartbreak / 9th of series: Without Consolation / By Angel Rupert
Published 2023 by Bentockiz
e-book Imprint: Uniochlors
e-book Registration: Stockholm, Sweden
e-book ISBN: 9789198847185
e-book editing: Athens, Greece
Cover Images created via AI art generators
Table of Contents
Title Page
Introduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Introduction
Through books we come into contact with everything important that has happened in the past, analyzing also current events and putting our thoughts together to predict the future. The book is a window to the world, acquiring valuable knowledge and sparking our vivid imagination. It is a means of entertainment and is generally seen as a best friend, or as a slave that carries together all valuable information for us. The book is a friend who stays together without demands, a friend you call upon at every moment and abandon when you want.
It accompanies us in the hours of boredom and loneliness, while at the same time it entertains us. In general, a book does not ask anything from us, while it waits patiently on a dusty shelf to give us its information, to get us out of dead ends and to travel us to magical worlds.
This may be the travel mission of our books. Abstract narration, weird or unconscious thoughts difficult to be understood, but always genuine and full of life experiences, these are stories of life that can’t be overlooked easily.
This may be the start of something amazing.
Chapter One
In congratulation and celebration, Barton treated Zach to dinner at their favorite steakhouse in nearby Beech Grove. It was a cloudless weeknight in late June and the college town—Beech Grove was the home of a large branch of the state university system—rested in deserted dormancy between semesters. It seemed Zach and Barton had the world to themselves, in more ways than just the empty village and quiet restaurant.
“Feel different?” Barton asked across the booth’s varnished pine table.
“Sort of.”
“How?”
“Like the prettiest girl in the school just said ‘yes’.”
“Yes to what? Holding hands? A kiss? A free feel?”
Zach laughed. “Getting a little carried away there, Bar.” He paused and thought a minute. “‘Yes’ to my invitation to the prom.”
“I thought you didn’t go to your prom.”
“I didn’t—wasn’t interested.”
“But now you are?”
“It’s a metaphor, Barton—you know, those little devices us writers use to make a point.”
“Maybe not. Sometimes I wonder if this Rebecca Coles infatuation is you fulfilling your missed high school fantasies—needing to parade the cheerleader around on your arm, have that visible affirmation.”
Zach flinched as if slapped. They’d not spoken about Becca for weeks. He’d not heard her name in Barton’s mouth for months, and no more than a handful of times ever. “I’m not sure what that has to do with having my story accepted.”
“Maybe more than you think. This is a milestone, Zach—a hard-earned and richly deserved accomplishment. Milestones are a cause for many responses, including weighing the past and considering the future. You’ve got some choices coming up.”
“Worldly pleasures or artistic rigor?”
Barton laughed—they knew each other too well. “Doesn’t have to be ‘either or’, just ‘now and later’.”
Zach studied his mentor across the table. He didn’t resent being manipulated into this corner—he recognized it as Barton’s right as his teacher and mentor. Part of him actually enjoyed the debate, whatever its encroachments on his privacy and independence. No one else had ever been willing to bring to light of day the hard questions he confronted inside himself all the time. That he could speak such hard questions aloud, and wrestle over their meaning and answers with another of such intelligence and insight (and strong opinions) seemed to him a rare if perilous gift. “I know I have forthcoming choices. Believe me, I know. But I’m not prepared to so clearly delineate my options, or my life.”
“You proposed the delineations.”
Zach laughed. “Seated at the feet of the master.”
“I would only say there’s a time to emphasize work and there’s a time to emphasize love.”
“What if the world gives you both simultaneously?”
“Then choose well.”
“I thought you said the delineations weren’t so clear.”
“I lied.”
Zach shook his head slowly but smiled throughout the gesture. He raised his glass of bourbon. “In thanks to the one who in many and various ways helped bring me to this auspicious moment.”
Barton held his glass tight to the table. “Even if fraught with choice?”
“Most especially because it’s fraught with choice.” He paused then added, “A choice accompanied by loving guidance.”
That freed Barton to lift his glass, though he added while raising it to meet Zach’s, “And listening ears.”
Barry, the chubby and gregarious owner and head chef of the family restaurant, strode up to their booth and raised an imaginary glass and said in a loud voice, “Here-here,” then added in quieter tones, “What are we toasting?”
“Zach getting published,” Barton said.
“Life choices,” Zach added.
“Well, congratulations and good luck. Maybe I can enhance the celebration with some expertly aged and perfectly grilled prime beef!” He reached behind him and rolled forward a cart displaying slabs of beautifully marbled, carefully trimmed prime beef in three different cuts—New York strip, ribeye, and filet. “What’s your fancy?”
Zach selected ribeye and Barry slid his gleaming knife slowly along the top of the slab till Zach said “there” and Barry sliced off the designated cut. “Cooked how?”
“Rare.”
“Cool-center or warm?”
“Cool.”
Barry nodded approval. “Your first good choice in the rest of your life.”
“Of many, I hope,” Zach affirmed.
As they exited the restaurant in new languorous dark, Barton spotted a bearded, shabbily clothed man selling potted plants out of the back of a rental truck on the far side of the parking lot. He led Zach over there and they spent a few minutes looking over the sizable assortment of palm plants, ficus trees, and schefflera bushes in two-gallon plastic pots. Barton tried to engage the attendant smoking a cigarette while seated on a milk crate. “Any recommendations?”
The man looked at him with a hard stare, exhaling a long stream of silver smoke. “One good as the other.”
“But all good?”
“They’ll live,” the man said reluctantly, then added after a pause, “If’n you treat them right.”
“Isn’t that always the way?” Barton said.
The man didn’t answer.
Barton dragged a three-foot tall braided ficus from the middle of the dense display and set it aside. “What do you think?” he asked Zach.
“It’ll do well on your patio.”
“And in the fall?”
“I’ll help you move it into the living room.”
“I have a bleak history with house plants.”
“Maybe I can help change your luck.”
Barton nodded then said, “Pick one for yourself.”
“You sure?”
He nodded. “To remember the day.”
Zach smiled. He’d already identified his favorite—a ficus that was shorter and with less foliage than the rest but with a strong single trunk. He slid the pot beside Barton’s choice.
“That it?” the attendant said as he rose from his crate.
“For now,” Barton said, reaching for his wallet.
Barton’s ficus lived over twenty years, with Zach dragging in the ever growing tree and expanding pot (needing to use a hand truck in later years) every fall, dragging it back onto the patio each spring. It died one summer after Barton pruned it too radically.
