25,59 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Bentockiz
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
They became again what in some ways they’d never stopped being, schoolkids, out on a snow day without a care in the world, only this time the snow day lasted for a week, their playground was the city with all traffic banned, all roads pedestrian walkways, and they had more snow to play in than they’d ever seen, piled to depths they would’ve never imagined possible.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
Ähnliche
Title Page
The Only One Responsible
Unjustified Changes
Angel Rupert
The Only One Responsible / 4th of series: Unjustified Changes / By Angel Rupert
Published 2023 by Bentockiz
e-book Imprint: Uniochlors
e-book Registration: Stockholm, Sweden
e-book ISBN: 9789198847031
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
Sean’s girlfriend Jen, Peter’s girlfriend Mona, and Jack’s girlfriend Stephanie all corralled Allison the minute she walked through the door and shuttled off to a bedroom down the hall for a little—well, a lot—of girl time around a bottle of sweet white wine and a bowl of chocolate-chip cookie dough (back before that indulgence became a popular fad). They were at a house party—the house belonging to Mark and Cheryl, Mark being the only other married member of Sean’s Plumbing basketball team—in Mattapan on a Saturday night in early February.
Ian had pulled a fast one and invited Allison without first running it by Zach. Zach had initially resisted accepting when Allison told him about the party over dinner earlier in the week, preferring to keep his basketball team world to himself (and worrying, just a little, that some of his extreme behavior might get inadvertently recounted to Allison by a fellow player, or one of their girlfriends, under the loose-tongued effects of alcohol).
Allison had responded, “You party with them all the time. Why can’t I join in the fun just this once?”
“I play basketball with them. We have a few beers afterwards.”
“You play basketball for an hour, then party the rest of the night.”
“We play for more than an hour, and the drinking is just an extension of the game.”
“Yeah, that’s what all the alcoholic beer-bellied oldtimers welded to their seats at the pub told their wives twenty years ago—‘we’re just having a few beers after the game’.”
That image registered powerfully on Zach’s mind—a little too powerfully for his own comfort and confidence. Was that really where he was headed on this? Had he fled the dead end of Dover just to find a substitute confinement in the backwater insular burbs of Boston? “If that’s what you think of us, then why do you want to go to a party with all those losers destined for beer-bellies and hollow eyes?”
“Because they aren’t there yet and I want to share in the fun before it’s too late.”
“What would ‘too late’ be?” He wasn’t trying to divert the conversation—he was genuinely curious what too late meant to Allison. It was a phrase that crept into his thoughts entirely too often for one all of age twenty-one (his birthday was two weeks ago).
“Zach, I don’t care about ‘too late’. I care about right now. I just want to live and have fun.”
So here they were at Mark and Cheryl’s—living (that part was incontestable) and having fun, or at least making a reach for it in this night and at this place.
Well, perhaps Allison was making a reach for it. Zach felt ill at ease and morose. Without the preface of on-the-court camaraderie and the euphoric effects of athletic exertion, the people around him in the mundane setting were all too reminiscent of his adolescent experiences—kids playing at being adults with their cans of beer and cups of wine (or, if they were really reckless, rum or vodka), talking about getting drunk last weekend as they got drunk this weekend, dreaming of an illicit roll on the mattress of some back bedroom with the latest focus of their hormonal craving. Though the faces around him were new, their average age a few years further toward adulthood (and thus a little more desperate in their searching, their more urgent longings), the dynamic was little different from Dover, and certainly no more hopeful or interesting. Was this really the end of the search that had started with so much hope and expectation six months before?
Mark (the host of the party) came over to where Zach was sitting in the corner of the crowded living room and sat on the arm of the chair Zach was trying to hide in. He tapped Zach’s beer bottle with his own. “To better tomorrows.”
Zach could nod agreement with that and took a long swallow of beer.
“It’ll be nice to get you back next week,” Mark said. In last week’s game, the one Zach had to sit out on suspension, Sean’s Plumbing had been beaten badly by Kennedy Dry Cleaning, a mediocre team that had taken advantage of Sean’s Plumbing’s lack of height and inside presence to throttle them and drop them into a tie for first place with Riley’s Pub.
“It’ll be good to get back. Not much fun sitting on the sidelines cheering.”
Mark nodded. “I know the feeling.” He’d played ball for Dorchester High, earning all-conference honors his last two years, but then sat on the bench for a year before washing out of Northeastern. He now worked as a salesman for a medical supplies company. He was the oldest guy on the team, a year older than Sean.
“Do you miss it?” Zach asked.
“Miss what?”
“Playing organized ball.”
Mark looked across the room. “Not really. All the rules are a high price to pay for the bigger crowds and attention.”
“The competition’s better.”
Mark turned back to face him. “I do miss that—guys taking their game seriously, trying to maximize their skills. Hard to find that intensity in rec league.”
