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Back Down to Earth
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No Return Pictures of You
She found Jay already dressed, filming the havoc they’d wreaked around the room. He turned his phone to her, but Silvia threw a towel over her head to hide her face. On the way to her bag, she dropped the shirt he’d lent her on the phone. “You’re not taking a shower?” she asked, rummaging through her duffel bag for underwear. “I’m two hours away from a hot tub.” Jay removed the shirt from his phone. “Shit. This stinks, you keep it.” He knew she hadn’t noticed the logo of his band on it, and he wanted her to keep it and find out later. A little souvenir. She caught it and threw it in the plastic bag with the rest of her laundry. When she turned around to put on her panties, he paid attention to the discreet tattoo under her left shoulder for the first time. A symbol and a feather. “Chinese?” he asked, touching it. “Japanese,” she replied, doing the button fly. “What does it mean?” She heard the sound from his phone and scowled at him from over her shoulder. He’d just taken a pi
No Return Puzzle
A man was before the counter, signing a credit card ticket. He was a couple of years older than Silvia, and as they came down the creaky stairs, she couldn’t find any physical resemblance to Jay in him. His eyes were dark as coal under his peculiar eyebrows, naturally straight and coming down in a perpetual frown, from where the prominent nose sprouted to shadow his face down to his pointy chin. He looked serious and distant, even cold. His tone was curt as he thanked the owner. However, a bright smile just like Jay’s transformed his tough face when he heard their footsteps and turned to look up at the stairs. He nodded hi at Silvia, his quick scan making her feel naked for a moment, and forgot about her to turn to Jay. “Done, bastard. Let’s get the fuck outta here.” Looked like the constant cursing ran in the family. Jay rested his hand on the small of Silvia’s back and faced the man, smiling. “This is my big brother Sean,” he said, holding t
No Return A Name
Silvia breathed deep when the bus huffed to a stop by the platform.There it was.Within minutes, she would leave behind all the wrongs she’d been through there. And all the good things as well. But since wrongs had been many more, and much more significant, she couldn’t feel down about leaving that godforsaken fold of the world to never come back.She went back to the truck with the brothers to fetch her luggage, and busy hanging her rucksack from her shoulders, she missed Sean’s face when he learned that the four-figure guitar now belonged to his brother.The man with the serious frown cracked a quick smile to wish her a safe trip.“Thank you, Sean.” She hesitated. “May I ask you one last favor?”Sean hesitated too, before replying with a curt, cautious nod. Silvia’s thumb pointed at Jay, waiting two steps away with her duffel bag and a little smile.“His inner bastard is begging
No Return Some Indie Tale
Sean waited for his brother to open a beer and sprawl on the passenger’s seat. “Well?” he asked then, keeping his eyes on the road. “Well what.” Sean turned off the music and smacked Jim’s cap off of his head. “Speak, dude.” “Later.” “No fucking way. We still have an hour to the ranch and I’m all ears.” Jim picked up his cap and put it back on, down to his eyes. “Fine, shoot.” “Jay? Seriously? You gotta be kidding.” “I thought she was kidding about not recognizing me. But she almost had a heart attack when I showed her my driver license just now.” “How did you meet her?” “Two days ago, when I got to the bus station.” Sean frowned. “Wait. You told me yesterday morning you’d found a fan to look after you.” He glanced at Jim and scoffed at his poker face. “You were talking about her? And she didn’t recognize you?” He let out a dry laughter. “Oh, man, this is too much!” Jim brought h
No Return More Than a Name
The bus cruised down the Interstate while Silvia struggled to untangle her earphones. Finally she was able to plug them to her phone to play some music. And she had another fit of shaky giggles when she heard the beginning of Save Your Soul, and Jim Robinson—Jay, for Christ’s sake!—sang in her ear.Good Lord, it was just too much. How come such a thing had ever happened? Was it even possible? How could she spend all that time with Jim Robinson and never realize it was him? And what on God’s green earth was he even doing there, in the middle of nowhere, in that rural area north of Fargo, North Dakota?Later on, back home, Paola would help her see that what had happened was simply impossible to expect or even imagine.“I mean, we know Brad Pitt came here to ski, and Roger Waters came for some fly-fishing, but you wouldn’t expect to find them at the groceries’, right?”Yeah, she was right. And
No Return What Later?
The brothers were welcome at the Miller ranch with a quick lunch, served by Jo and her bunch of friends, who left her to take care of her boyfriend in order to buzz around Jim like summer flies.Like they’d known Jim for years, nobody had even looked at the master bedroom of the big old house, keeping it for him. So he let the girls stalk him for at least an hour before taking possession of his room, to spend another hour in the hot tub.Sean and the others didn’t wait for him to get their rehearsal started. Jim eventually found his way to the library, where they’d set the improvised studio, and joined them. They noticed he didn’t feel like focusing on their regular routine, and spent the next hours mostly jamming.Over dinner, Jim decided he wanted a proper welcome party. The midnight bells from the old clocks all over the house got lost in the loud music and the loud voices.Jim was standing on top of a table, directing his frien
No Return Trout Gone Whale
It was like those fishers boasting about their catch. The first time they told the tale, they would put their hands one foot apart. “It was this big!” they’d say about the size of the trout they’d caught. The second time they told the tale, their hands would be two feet apart. “It was this big!” A week later, they had harpooned down Moby Dick single-handedly and even saved Captain Ahab. That was how the Jay Affair kept growing out of any proportion. Silvia wasn’t sure who she could share the story with. Yeah, Paola, sure. Especially because Paola would help her turn Moby Dick back into a regular trout. But until she could sit down with her friend, she didn’t feel like sharing the story with her little sister and her other friends. Coming home felt like a ton of rocks lifted from her shoulders. Gosh, she’d missed her siblings, her dog, her house, her town. She still had some days of her vacations left, and she f
No Return Regular Me
The video opened to Jim’s smiling face filling the screen. “Hey, there! Here I am, at the Miller ranch, and it finally stopped raining! Let me show you around.” He moved the phone away from his face to show a large rustic kitchen that was a complete mess. “Oops. Cleaning lady’s day off, I’m afraid.” He approached two women that worked at the sturdy wooden table in the middle of the room, their backs turned to him. “Hey, girls!” Both women turned to him, saw he was filming and waved hi at the phone. Jim put his arm around the older one, an African-American beauty in her forties, that shrugged Jim away when he kissed her cheek. “Meet Deborah Golan, the supreme commander of this mess of an army,” he said. “She also works as our full-time guardian angel.” Jim went to the other woman, a pretty girl in her late twenties, her dark hair very short over the back of her neck and almond dark eyes. “And this is dear Jo, my wa
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