Thursday, May 27, 2010

Prologue

The wind rose, grabbing her long, straight, dark hair and sending it whipping across her face like fingers reaching from the depths of the sea to pull her in. She dug her toes into the warm sand and turned her face up to feel the last rays of the late Spring sun on her face.

‘It won’t be like this’, she thought as she breathed the warm salt tinged air into her lungs and listened to the familiar sound of the evening crowds filling the streets along English Bay. ‘It won’t be as crowded, for one thing’ she added to her tally of changes her life would be undergoing in the next few days. That was something that wasn’t going to be easy for a girl born and bred in the hustle and bustle of a metropolitan city center. There wouldn’t be nightclubs and bars and festivals…well maybe festivals, she thought with a wry smile. She was willing to bet that any festivals would probably have something to do with cod and lobsters and not Shakespeare in the Park.

Still, she needed the new start. She’d been partying too hard, too long, with the wrong crowd. It had been fun while it had lasted but staying out all night and waking up with a blinding headache beside strangers was a pattern that was quickly growing old. Then there had been Damon.

Tabitha grinned as she thought about him, the big, goofy, childlike bass player she’d been…well, dating wasn’t exactly the right word for what they’d been doing. He was very sweet and well intentioned but the notorious party boy was nowhere near ready to settle into a life of domestic bliss. Not that she’d ever envisioned the whole white picket fence life for them but she knew she wasn’t going to find that kind of future while she was still running around with an overgrown boy, no matter how good he was in the sack.

When she’d come to that particular realization, she had begun trying to think of a place to start, because obviously staying in Vancouver was not an option, not with all of the temptations it held. That was when the call had come.

She hadn’t been that close to her dad’s side of the family so it was a surprise to everyone in the family, not just Tabitha, that her grandfather had left her his property. The only snag was, it was in a sleepy little coastal town in Nova Scotia, all the way on the other side of the country.

She hadn’t been there in years. Not since she’d been that quiet, brooding teenager who always wore black, her headphones glued into her ears and her nose always stuck in some book about werewolves, vampires and zombies oh my. She’d always felt like being sent to live with her dad’s folks had been some kind of punishment, and it probably had been, just for them and not so much for her. She could see now how her summers in that ho hum little village had probably been a much needed break for her parents. She just wished now that she had more memories of the place than the upstairs bedroom in her grandparent’s house with the reading bench beneath the bay window or the end of the dock at the lake where she’d sit, dangling her feet in the water, listening to Nine Inch Nails and painting scenes out of some Dickensian Horror Story.

Aside from delivering the odd packed lunch, she’d never set foot in her grandfather’s bait shop. It wasn’t a place for girls he’d said, and she’d never argued the point, after all, dealing with worms and whatever other creepy crawlies he kept there.

He’s probably thought she’d sell it, Tabitha thought to herself, and she probably would, after the summer was over. Because right now, she needed to get away and a quiet little town where there wasn’t any bars to line up shots of tequila on was probably a very good place to start.

“Thanks grandpa,” she said quietly, turning her eyes up to the darkening sky as the sun dipped below the horizon and the first few stars began to blink into existence. Then, tugging her black leather jacket closer around her, she headed home to pack.

________________________________________________________


“So what are your plans for the summer?” Troy asked his son as he helped him unload the few boxes of his things that he bothered to bring back with him for the couple of months he had off. If he really needed something, Sidney could afford duplicates of just about anything, so there wasn’t a lot he bothered to transport back to his house in Cole Harbor, Nova Scotia. Just a few cd’s, some memorabilia he wanted to add to his growing collection, and one or two books he’d been reading. It didn’t seem like much, he thought as he carried his one bag of clothes in through the garage. But then he thought of himself as a pretty simple guy who didn’t need much.
Plus, most of what he needed to get through the summer was already here.

“Not fucking much, if I can help it,” Sidney replied, putting the bag he was carrying down inside the door to the kitchen. He could put that stuff away later. He turned to head back into the garage to pick out a rod and check on the state of his tackle box. If it was one thing he was looking forward to right now, it was some alone time, out on the lake, just him, a fishing pole and his iPod.

“You’ll come up to the house for dinner tomorrow?” his father asked, as if his one and only son might actually disappear into his big, empty house for the entire summer and never see his family who, after all, only lived ten minutes away.

“I will. Hey, Taylor has her permit right? Tell her to come down and get me,” Sidney grinned at the thought of his younger sibling being old enough to drive. There were a lot of years between the two of them but they’d grown pretty close, despite his living most of the year hundreds of miles away.

“Sure, give your mother a heart attack on your first day back,” Troy snorted, patting his son on the back. “She’ll be worried sick that she’ll loose both of you on the highway,” he added, not looking worried in the least. Sidney was a careful driver, if a bit easily lost and distracted but most of his teammates said he drove like an old woman and he was willing to bet his little sister was probably much the same. It came from the laid back way people had here at home; after all, there was no point in rushing anywhere. “Will any of the boys be coming up?” his father asks, almost like he can’t bear to give his son time and space on his own, an ongoing battle between father and son.

“Maybe, in a week or so, we haven’t made any specific plans,” Sidney replied with a shrug. “No one was really in the mood to talk much when I left.” That was all that needed to be said about that. The less that was said about the way the season had ended, the better as far as he was concerned and for once, it looked like Troy was going to actually leave it alone too. His father usually wanted to debrief, at length, so Sidney was prepared to take advantage of his father’s unusually jovial mood to slip his leash and toss his first cast of the year.

“So, dinner tomorrow right?” his father pointed at him with his big thick finger and Sidney nodded, wishing the bear sized man away. He wished he’d never told his father to retire. It had been a moment of weakness, feeling like he owed his parents for something. Most of his teammates didn’t support their families. They bought them houses, sure and cars too, but they didn’t pay them as if they were full time members of some kind of personal entourage.

That made Sidney smile. He wished he had an entourage like the one the show was named for, but who, his own age, wanted to hang out with his dad full time? That and his dad was a lot more like Ari Gold than he was say…Johnny Drama. No, that was Max’s role, Sidney thought as he went back to going through his tackle box.

The last time he’d used it was when he’d brought the boys up last summer, which explained was there was a crushed beer can inside of it and not much more. His memory was a little fuzzy of that particular weekend but he seemed to remember his tackle box turning into more of a cooler at some point, probably after Max had dared Tanger to eat some of the crickets….

Oh well, he thought, shutting the old metal box and grabbing his favorite pole. He’d just have to stop at the bait shop on his way to the lake.

11 comments:

  1. I can't wait for more! This seems like its going to be good. Loved Sidney's POV

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  2. Could I be more excited? Probably not.

    I would like to analyze every little line that I think you have filled with suggestion and foreshadowing, but the prologue is too early to start ranting. :)

    I can't promise my comment will be quite as contained through chapter one!

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  3. Yay for days! I laughed out loud thinking of Max as Drama. Except Max gets way more girls. :)

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  4. AWe can't wait to see where this one goes!

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  5. i seriously could hardly read this cause i was sooooo excited for this new story!

    i cant wait to read what you have in store, and for sid to be the good guy!! =)

    plz update soon, i want them to meet asap!!!

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  6. Eeeeek. I'm so excited for a new qfd story!!!!

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  7. soo happy...love ur writing...and sid =] too much excitement tonight..winter classic comming to pittsburgh..new story!! i dont know how im gonna get to sleep.

    can wait for more!!!

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  8. He already sounds like a great guy...well in my opinion. I'm excited, to say the least!

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  9. Please update soon.

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  10. oooh! its only the beginning and i can't wait to read the next chapter!

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  11. I feel like I'm a little late onto this one... and I can already see how Tabitha and Troy are going to clash. 60 followers already - that's testament to your great writing! Hopefully this one will be a nicer, less arrogant Sid than the last one, can't have Max stealing her away again!

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