Winter Comes

[Suu]

Just sent what I had so far to one of the guys in the story.

[Suu]

Updated.

[Suu]

(I exceeded the post length, so here's the next part.)


The little pizza place in question was the atypical No-Name New York hole-in-the-wall corner joint with no AC and nothing but a big loud fan moving around the hot air inside. For $3 you could get a massive slice of pie and a can of Coke, and even though the place was perpetually packed, the line moves so fast you're in and out in a matter of minutes. I miss this place, dearly.

It was an odd hour though, so we were lucky enough to score one of the sticky tables in the corner of the restaurant, complete with all the fixings in glass shakers, which I was quick to utilize.

The grease dripped onto my thin paper plate from my oregano-encrusted slice of cheese as I attempted to fold it for easier consumption. The smell was intoxicating, and the pie was fresh, so it was too hot to eat as I felt my lips sear when the food touched them. I dropped the slice onto my plate with a "Fuck." And wiped my mouth of the burning grease. "Careful, better give it a few minutes."

Gabriel, the West Coaster, watched me in some sort of terror as I exhibited my finest New York pizza origami, and after several failed attempts, realized that he couldn't hold his slice properly without doing the same.

I couldn't help but smile a bit. I felt like I was witnessing a serious coming-of-age ceremony as he popped his proper pizza cherry.

"It's so...oily." He said, draining his piece in a similar manner as I did with mine.

"That's the best part!" My slice was already half gone, "Wait, you've been here for a week and you still haven't had pizza? Dude, that was my FIRST mission the day I moved in."

"I suppose I had alternative motives." He took a bite.

"I'd say...At least I know you got proper Chinese. Max and I made sure you made it to Wo Hop..."

"Ohmygod..." He interrupted, and finished swallowing before continuing, "Yeah, this is awesome. We don't get pizza like this in LA."

"Gabe...in life there are little things that everyone needs to experience at least once...And one of them is a real piece of authentic New York pizza. Congratulations." I slid him the shakers of oregano and red pepper. "Do it up."

"What does this do?"

"It creates a life-changing experience. I promise."

"Right on." He took his share of the condiments and we finished eating it what could only be considered a silent frenzy. Once we were both wiping streams of grease from our chins, he smirked a bit, and looked out the window.

"Well, when I was in New York, I was able to check out all the things everyone expects you to. I saw the Empire State Building, Times Square, a giant hole in the ground, amazing food, and amazing company. Especially Max's crazy and pretty, but slightly drugged out neighbor."

I wasn't sure how to take that. I felt my stomach dip a bit when he referred to me as 'pretty', but the drug bit caught me off guard. I actually felt my cheeks go hot and then ice cold in seconds. He looked up at me, and I looked away somewhat shyly. I wasn't sure at the time, but I know now that his intention to use his diatribe as a wake-up call worked. I needed help.

I still didn't remember how I got home. I did remember a few pills and lines of cocaine before I left the office at work though. What were those pills? Where did I go? I closed my eyes and sighed.

"I'm sorry." He said softly, "I...I didn't mean..."

"No, it's alright." I looked at the time on my watch, "I should get you back. You have a long flight tomorrow."

I stood up from the table and grabbed both of our plates to throw out before he could protest, and then slugged down the rest of my soda before standing up, not paying attention, and smacking right into the white t-shirt of my ex-boyfriend.

"Excuse me." I said quietly as I moved passed him, trying to pretend like I didn't see him.

"Excuse you indeed." Nick retorted.

I returned with a glare, "Sorry, I didn't mean to be in your pizza place."

"Well then, don't come back here."

"I won't."

"Fine."

"Fine."

"Bye."

I slid out quickly and made my way to the wall outside to wait for Gabe. I felt a tick run up my arm and into my chest, an itch that needed to be scratched. It wasn't the same thing, but I reached down into my pocket for a cigarette and retrieved one with trembling hands in attempt to sate the craving...the need...

"You alright?" Gabe was suddenly next to me, looking concerned at my shaking cigarette pull.

"I'm fine, just...didn't want that. You know."

"Oh...Yeah."

I began to laugh nervously, because it helped hide the fact that I was growing paranoid and angry. This tended to happen when a craving hit. I didn't have any blow, so it wasn't about to get fixed anytime soon, so I had to bite the bullet and work through it.

"Fine...Fine fine fine..." Another drag, "Fine, just fine."

Gabe nodded slowly, "Okay, back home we go."

The walk home from the pizza joint back to 51st and Lex was long and remarkably quiet. What conversation Gabe and I had was limited, and mostly had to do with me giving directions.

"Cross here." I said, glumly, as we got back across Lexington Avenue. I looked up, wondering what time it was and if I could see the sun beginning to rise, but it was still far too early for that. My guess was about 3am at the latest.

"Hey." Gabe said softly, and walked in front of me, which slowed my trucking down to a trod and then eventual stop.

"Yeah?"

He gently took one of my hands and gripped it in his own. "Just want to keep up with you."

"Really, now?" Boys don't hold hands if they just 'want to keep up'. I learned that much in grade school.

He was still avoiding direct eye contact, "Yeah."  

We started walking again, this time with my hand in his, which was both slightly uncomfortable and yet amazingly relaxing at the same time. His touch brought me from a state of uncertainty and anger back to the ground. The drug cravings were gone.

We got back to the brownstone and I stopped on the landing before opening the door to the stairs out of habit to reach for a smoke.

"You don't need that." Gabe said, taking my hand again as I reached for a cigarette.

I didn't protest, and put the pack back in my pocket quietly. He didn't let go.

"So."

"So..."

"So, what are you going to do?"

"What do you mean?"

"With your life, Anna, with...everything."

"Um...I...gotta move to Rhode Island and get a job and..." I was confused. I expected a kiss, not a philosophy lesson.

"That's not what I mean." He maintained his grip on my hand, probably to make sure I didn't decide to avoid the question, "Your mood, your family. The drugs...you're going to die."

"I'm not going to die." I laughed in disbelief and tried to pull back and he just held on and got closer.

"Yeah, you are."

"Nope. I'm going to live forever."

"...with your name on a tombstone."

"I am invincible."

"You think so?"  He had moved from being outside of the bubble to well within my personal space now, I could feel the heat off of his body he was so close.

"I know so."

I don't know if it was pure unadulterated lust, something more real, or what, but I was pretty sure the kiss we could have had would have been epic had Max not opened the inner door and startled us both.

"What the hell are you two doing out here?"

"Talking." I said bluntly, and Gabe dropped my hand, though I was pretty sure Max saw. In fact, he told me he did after the fact.

"Right. Well, Gabe, you have to get to JFK at 7am so..."

"So there's no point in sleeping now?"  Gabe snapped, and backed away from me with his eyes to the ground.

Max looked at both of us, and deliberately if not dramatically raised an eyebrow. "Right. Well, I'm going back to bed." He turned around and sleepily made his way up the stairs.

I sighed, "We should go in. You need to get up early."

I reached for the outer door, but I was intercepted by Gabe's grasp yet again, and he spun me around, leaned me against the glass door with a relatively loud clatter, kissed me on the lips softly, and then pulled away. "Yeah, I don't want to be too tired for my flight."

It happened so fast I barely knew what he did, and he had already gently pulled me off the door and inside before I really fully realized that he had, in fact, just kissed me.

I locked the door as he started upstairs, not even waiting for me or looking back at me, just...on the mission. I wasn't sure what door he was going to go through once we got up to the third floor. The Mancusos' apartment started on the second, but my apartment was on the third, across from Max's room where he had his own access. Either way, he'd need a key, which I had and he didn't.

I followed Gabriel up the stairs, and as we got to the second floor landing, it was pretty obvious he had no intention of going into the main apartment, so that left my door or Max's. Naturally, I was silently praying for mine.

Fuck, Alex may still be in there.

I had my keys in hand before I got to the third floor door, which I opened, and, bracing for impact, waited for Gabe to just say goodbye and get to bed in Max's room. He didn't, he was waiting behind me as I unlocked the door to my own studio.  Was I really about to sleep with a guy I just met a week ago that has to go home across the freaking country within hours? Am I really taking that plunge into potentially irresponsible casual sex? Holy shit, I think I was.

No. I wasn't.
As I opened the door, Alex was there, waiting for me.

"You."

"Erm...Me?"

The 'older' brother stepped out into the main hall, and looked down at Gabriel and I both, a smirk on his face. "You can thank me later for house-sitting. I need to get back to where I need to get back to."

"Oh...right. I haven't seen you in months and you're ditching me again?" I made a fake pouty face, and Alex rolled his eyes.

"Clean up your shit, Ann." He said, and leaned down to give me a kiss on the forehead. "Fix your life. I'll see you again soon."

"How long?" I asked as he made his way to the stairs.

"Nine months."

"Afghanistan?"

"Yeah." He didn't turn back. "Don't think about it. I'll be fine. I'll be back before you know it."

He was down those stairs in a flash before I had a chance to say goodbye properly, which is probably an image that has been burned into my memory as clear as the night it happened. He was going to war. He was going to war without me, because I wasn't put on the stop loss, and I chose to sign out of the whole military experience. I did my time, I got my check, and if they pulled a PT or drug test on me before January, I was going to be in deep shit. Serving the country proud, Anna. Serving her proud...To this date, as I am putting this tale into words, the service never caught me under the influence of any drug. I often like to think they knew, but went with it, considering all the shit they put in our boys during previous campaigns, but most likely, I was lucky.

I turned silently and walked into my apartment with Gabriel following me. I felt the complete loss of any sort of passion or libido that may have been building, and tossed my keys on my kitchenette counter before going into my bathroom to pee. While I was in there, I scooped up my wet power suit, and my bathrobe that had been discarded before we left for Ground Zero, and put them up on towel hooks before heading back out into the main room where Gabe had made himself comfortable on my futon with a copy of Cosmopolitan.

"Uh, comfy?" I asked from the bathroom door. My sink was strategically placed right by the door so I was able to begin brushing my teeth and almost converse with him at the same time.
"This magazine is horrendous."

"Yes, it's for us whores who like to look good and fuck good, sweetie."

"First of all, you're not a whore. Second of all, the writing is atrocious. How they allow this stuff to willingly be printed on a monthly basis is beyond me." Gabe put the magazine down the coffee table, and looked up at me. He had that position, that, 'come take advantage of me' position.  Damnit. However, as I finished brushing my teeth and removing my bra through my shirt sleeve and approached the sofa, he sat up and gave me space. Double damnit.

"You should probably go back over to Max's room and get some sleep before you leave tomorrow." I said, reaching for my remote control.

"I already told him I wasn't planning on sleeping before I left. I can sleep on the plane."

"What if I want to sleep?" I forced my pouty face again and he laughed lightly.

"We can put the futon down and I'll let you sleep." He smirked, "I just don't want you to be alone tonight."

I felt that hot flush come over my face again, but he reacted quickly and leaned in, taking the sides of my face in his hands and pressing a hard, passionate kiss into my lips. Comedy ensued, and our glasses collided, making it instantly uncomfortable and both of us pulling back with an "Ow!" and then bursting into laughter.

"I think that was probably the nerdiest kiss I have ever had." I said, removing my Ralph Lauren's and rubbing the bridge of my nose.

Gabriel set his glasses down on the table, and I was about to do the same, only, they landed on the floor, because in seconds flat I was on my back. I wish I could say that this ended up exactly where you think it would, and that's with the two of us in the throws of what could only be described as wild passionate passion, but, I digress, and unfortunately have to state that my conscience kicked in.

"Gabe..." I peeled my face away from his for air and a moment of clarity, "I don't think...I don't think this is a good idea."

I could feel his hot breath sigh against my neck, but it was still followed by a couple of tender, soft kisses.

"You have to go home tomorrow. Across the country. I don't...I can't...I can't go all the way. Not unless I'm in a relationship."

Point of views most definitely change during your adulthood, but at this time, I made probably one of the only true adult decisions in my life.
"I'm sorry." I didn't push him off, in fact, I barely moved. "That and, I, uh...don't have...something." If anything, that would make more sense.

"It's okay..." he looked up at me, and smiled, "I was, you know, thinking of saying the same."

We sat up and composed ourselves, like two teenagers getting ready for one of their parents to come home. It was nearly four in the morning; I was losing him in three hours. What had just happened? Did I really just fall in love? No way, he's just a guy, like any other guy...

We put the futon down and I grabbed my bedding from a tub underneath. As we settled in and he put his arms around me, I realized something was different, and if I had the power or the money, or even the balls to speak up and say something at the point in my life to ensure that Gabriel would stay there with me forever, I would have.

I found myself drifting off to sleep as Gabe channel surfed, and would often lightly laugh and gently kiss my ear or neck. If there was ever a moment I felt pure unadulterated happiness, I think that was it.

When I woke up, he was gone.

In his place, one of the cards from my tarot deck that had been out on the table, with a sticky note on the back of it that simply read, "Until we meet again. –Gabe". When I turned it over, it was Judgement, with the image of the Archangel Gabriel blowing the horn and reanimating the dead.

If there was ever a moment I felt pure unadulterated sadness, I think that was it.

I must have listened to the album Spectators by Wolfsheim five or six times in a row. I felt like an empty shell, and couldn't grasp for the life of me why. How could some kid from the West Coast blow through Manhattan for a week and make such an impact on my life? It makes no sense. He doesn't know me, he doesn't know what I've been through, and yet, I didn't touch a single cigarette or pill that entire day after he left.

[Suu]

Last night I got shitfaced and Skyped with these guys.

I heard Alex and Gabe's voice for the first time since this night happened...we're all like grownup now and shit.

I have more written, I need to edit and post.

[Suu]

Updated.

[Suu]

Just another short update before I go to bed.

Also, with musical accompaniment!

The album Spectators had one song in particular that damn near killed me that day. Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU6jF8WJlDo

[Suu]

Max came over in the afternoon. To this day I have no idea why a fifteen year old would want to share company with a fucked up twenty year old, but at the time, he was seriously one of the best friends I had, and still is to this day.

"You alright, Sorella?" He often referred to me as the Italian word for sister.

"I'll be fine." I grumbled as I did my dishes.

"You guys like, totally banged last night, didn't you?"

His teenage vernacular made me wince a bit, "Um, no. No we didn't."

"Aha, sure." Max was quick to start going through my refrigerator for a snack.

"Dude, go bother your parents for food, I don't have shit."

"You need to go tell my parents you're moving out, you know."

"Fuck." I hissed, turning off the water and reaching for a towel, "And I need to call my parents and aunt as well so I can get moved out."

Max ended up leaving after making a sandwich from my leftover sauce and provolone cheese, and I settled down in front of my computer, who was aptly named Sephiroth at the time for all the stabbity death he issued on my work throughout art school. I still have the Sephiroth wall scroll I used to hang right over him, a tradition I never could shake, despite my age. Sometimes hanging on to little images of your past is cathartic.

Around six-o-clock, my Yahoo! Instant Messenger chimed, after being quiet all day.

"I'm home." It was Gabe. Safe and sound, three thousand miles away from where he was, in my bed, this morning.

Like any other enamored young lady, I jumped out of my seat, and started frantically typing, erasing, typing, and then finally all I managed to spit out in response was, "Hey you. How was the flight?"

"Long and annoying. As expected."

"Well, at least you didn't crash?"

"Yeah, there is that."

Tell him you miss him! Tell him you love him! Tell him before he signs off with this:

"Well, I'm tired. I'll talk to you later."

And that was it. That was all he had to say to me after last night. I was beyond confused and actually somewhat angry. I reassured it was because he was, in fact as he said, tired, and that he didn't have a lot of energy to chat. I mean, understandable, right? I left it at that.

And for the next few days, all of our correspondence seemed just as limited. It was beyond frustrating. I became obsessive-compulsive about watching my instant messengers. It was a horrible distraction from my packing, so I had to enlist Max to help me get everything ready to go in boxes and bins up to the hour when my aunt was to show with the pickup.

At this point, I wasn't even sure where everything was going to go in my parents' house. I was hoping I'd at least be able to stay on Long Island again with my aunt, but she had converted the guest room into her office space, which, considering her profession, was a dungeon setup. Needless to say, my futon wasn't going to fit next to the cage and rack of whips.  

We loaded up the truck with ease, I didn't have a whole lot of stuff, and the biggest items were essentially the futon and my computer desk, both which were easily disassembled for space utilization.

It was time to say goodbye to Manhattan.

My experience in New York City is probably one that made an important permanent change on my life. Aside from the drugs and boys, it had transformed a naïve Florida girl into a hardened young woman of the City in a matter of weeks. My southern accent had started to dwindle and my tone of voice was harsher and angrier. My patience had been grated away and I could only sleep with traffic lights in my window. I didn't block the box and only crossed at crosswalks. I hated seeing license plates from New Jersey and knew the best place to get a slice for a buck in Midtown at midnight on a Sunday. This came at the price of stress, and lack of sleep, and waking up at the Skylight Diner on West 34th at 7am wondering how I got there.

Yep. Nearly three months of my life I would never get back, but I would probably not trade for any other experience in the world.

After saying my goodbyes to the Mancusos, and a tear-filled stoner session with Max, we hit the road, and all of the traffic that comes with it. An hour later, we were finally passing Yankee Stadium and preparing to merge onto the Cross-Bronx when I lit a cigarette for my aunt, passed it her way, and then lit one for myself as we were finally able to go over fifty miles-per-hour.

"You know..." My Aunt started, "Your mother's gonna kill you when she sees you smokin', love." Her Long Island accent was heavy. Heavier than what I was used to with my parents.

"Yeah well...She has no damn room to talk." Mom has smoked Newports since she was twelve. I can't think of a better way to ensure death than with that particular brand of cancer stick.

"Where was Nick?" My aunt continued onto another topic quickly, "I figured he'd see you off."

"Um...there is no Nick."

"Ah."

"Yep." I took another long drag off the Marlboro Light.

"Let me tell you somethin' about men, Ann," My aunt began, pausing to take a puff from her cigarette and keep her eyes on the road as the interstate started opening up before getting on the New England Thruway. "They fuckin' suck. They find ways to make you miserable, and then they try to fix it. The only thing men can fix shit is with powah tools. Get yourself a vibrator. They pay for themselves faster."

That's my aunt, the voice of reason.

We rounded the corner of Long Island Sound and, on cue when we crossed the state line into Connecticut, hit dead stop traffic.  

"Oh you gotta be fuckin' KIDDING ME." My aunt protested. "Fuckin' bullshit. Always. It's a goddamn Sunday too! I swear, if this goes all the fuckin' way to Bridgeport we may as well turn around and take the goddamn ferry."

I stayed silent. The delay kept me from getting home and dealing with the parents. The delay gave me time to think about him, three thousand miles away.

My aunt reached into her purse and pulled out her pack of smokes. She was clever; she used cigarette tubes and a tobacco injection machine to roll her joints. That way when you're on the road, you can smoke a doob and most onlookers won't know the difference, even if they smell it. They say the filter kept out the THC, but I disagree, pot was pot at this point, and heavy traffic was a great excuse to get high.

My parents were well aware of my marijuana use at this point. They were smokers themselves and didn't mind terribly as long as I got safe bud. The other drugs, however, weren't going to sit so well. I know my aunt knew that I would more than occasionally roll my face off. Nick and I had spent a weekend out on the North Shore with her and decided to take some tabs and go to the beach at night. That was a bad roll for us both, we developed paranoia instead of euphoria, and we ended up getting lost trying to find our way back to the house. It was pitch black, and MDMA tends to do interesting things to the brain with changes in light and dark. I still know remember how we got back.

I rolled a lot. It had gotten to the point where if I wanted a decent experience I needed to take more than one pill to satisfy my need. This was going to make the next few weeks without it a living hell. I wasn't sure what to expect as far as withdrawals go, but I knew they were coming. The thought of being without my synthetic happiness put me almost immediately into a sweat, and I could feel the jabbing at the back of my brain for another pill or line or something. I couldn't. The Archangel told me I was going to die.

It was a five-hour trip from Midtown to Narragansett, only two hours longer than it should be. I suppose we got off lucky. We pulled into the driveway and honked the horn. It was cooler in Rhode Island than it was in New York, so when I got out of the truck I got a bit of a chill. My parents threw open the garage and my mother nearly tackled me with her hug. Instead of the usual 'I've missed you so much!' and 'I love you!' exclamations you're expected to receive after returning home from a significant time period away, the words my mom spoke were quite unexpected.

"We have a problem."

"Um...hi? What problem?"

My father chimed in, "Your sister is being less than cooperative about you moving back in. She refuses to let you put anything in her room, and she's being extremely difficult."

My sister was fifteen, and had just tasted the freedom of having her own room for the past year. She was the youngest, she was spoiled, and frankly, she was an absolute bitch. I could hear her howling from inside of the house. I couldn't make out words, but the sound was unmistakable. It would require a rocket launcher to open that door, and taking her as a prisoner of war in order to even get my tub of clothes into her demesne. Awesome.

"Soooo..." I paused. I had a truck full of stuff that needed a home. Preferably soon. It was cold out.

"So we cleaned out a storage closet upstairs that's in the living room next to the stairs. We already have your drafting table and a garment rack in there. We figure you can put in your bookshelf and computer desk and you should be okay for now."  Sure, my dad seemed to have everything worked out.

"And, where am I sleeping?"  They appeared to have left the futon out of the equation.

"Well, um...for now, the sofa. You can keep the sofa in the garage downstairs until we manage to work something out with your sister."

My aunt stepped in, "Bullshit, it's your house, don't let your damn kid walk all over you like this."

"She managed to barricade her door somehow." My mom grumbled, "I have no idea what she put in front of it, but she's climbing in and out of her window to the deck to get in the house. So, we locked the back deck door. Then she started running up and down the back steps and coming through the front door and the garage, so, we locked those doors too. Hopefully she doesn't have to go to the bathroom anytime soon."

"Seriously, P?" My aunt crossed her arms, "Where is she? I'll beat'er ass."

My brother came running downstairs, "I blocked her window from the outside and now she can't get out of her room at all. That's why she's screaming."

"Why did you do that?" My dad bellowed, "It's only going to make her more mad!"

"Maybe she'll just scream herself to sleep?" My brother had the right idea. J had a way of exhausting herself through temper tantrums since she was old enough to use them to her advantage.

"What's in front of the door?" I asked.

"Just tubs of clothes. If she passes out, we may be able to push really hard and get it open, if not, maybe you can slip through the window and move them." My little brother went from being almost a foot shorter than me to over six foot tall and beefy during my last year at school. There was no way he could get into one of the windows.

"In the meantime, we need to get this shit inside, start unloading into the garage and we'll just figure it out as we go along." My dad said, intent to be the slave driver as always.

I walked around and offloaded the crate that had my computer in it from the bed of the pickup. "I'm bringing this upstairs." I stated, walking past my parents with the first load.

"You DO know we don't have the internet, right?" My dad was quick to intercept me, "We figured since you were old enough and the one that's always on it, you could pay the bill when you got here."

"What?" I asked, "It's 2002, how can you not have the fucking internet?"

"Watch your mouth!" My mom started in, "Also, as soon as we get this shit in the house, the metal is coming out." She pointed at my face, "All of it."

My mother is bipolar. Severely so, but at this point in her life, she hadn't been officially diagnosed yet. This sort of magical mystery mood swing wasn't totally uncommon, but I had just gotten out of the car from New York. I was tired, I was miserable, I was starting to have really horrible cravings for drugs I didn't have access to anymore, I was just told that I would have to live like Harry Potter, and now I was told that my facial piercings needed to go in a matter of the first ten minutes of my residency in Rhode Island. You could imagine how well I took this.

"Fine." I walked right back to the truck, and put my computer back onto the bed. "I'm not living here. I still have money, I'll go back to New York and find something, or I'll see if I can go back to Florida and move in with friends of mine in Tampa."

"Anna, relax." My dad stepped forward, "We're gonna work something out."

"I fucking hate this place already." That would be the seminal, 'I hate Rhode Island' moment, there would be many more to come after that. "I don't know why I even bothered moving up here anyway. I can't stand any of you!"

There are few things that can probably hurt a parent more than saying to them that you hate them or can't stand them. They can take it from a teenager, but they didn't take it from me. I watched the pain on their faces appear immediately, and I knew I had made a huge mistake. At that time they didn't understand what I was feeling and what I was going through. I was depressed, I was hurting, and all they cared about was getting my futon in the garage. Fuck them.

My first weeks in Rhode Island were interesting. I fought off drug and internet withdrawals regularly with insomnia and pacing the floors at night looking for something in the house, anything, that would get me to sleep. First it was the Benedryl, then it was the NyQuil, and then it was the stash of Percoset I brought with me. My body was only happy if it was tuned up with artificial additives, and as long as I still had them within arms reach, I was going to take them.

Narragansett was quiet to the unsettling factor. In the summer it's a bustling resort town full of angry, fat tourists from Connecticut and New York who were looking for new beaches to pollute. In the fall and winter, however, it was a sleepy college town. There was very little of anything to do between my parents' house and the beach. I knew no one, had no vehicle other than my own two feet, and my funds were dwindling on credit card and cable bills. I needed a job, but I had no serious drive in looking for one. I was spending my time on the internet, pretending to apply for dozens of jobs online, talking to Gabe and Max and my friends from Florida, or, I was walking around the marshy surroundings taking in my first autumn since I was a toddler in New York.

I was finding solace in the foliage; it reminded me of myself. The transformation from monotonous green to fascinating shades of yellow, red, and orange in days was like my time in New York, and soon, they would be gone. The leaves would be gone, and it would be cold and dismal for months. I was going to die.

I didn't know what to expect from the Rhode Island winter. I hadn't seen snow since I was four, being that we left Long Island before the first snowfall when I was five. I didn't remember what it was like, how it felt and how to manage it. I didn't have proper outerwear, and I kept neglecting to purchase it. It just seemed like something I didn't want to deal with. I wanted it to stay fall forever. I wanted the euphoria I had those last few days in Manhattan back. That is the high I wanted to chase for the rest of my life. Winter, felt like permanence.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

This is great stuff, Suu, keep it coming! I'd like to say more about it, but at the moment, my brain is a bit mushy and it would come out sounding, well mushy, but I'm digging it, and I like hearing a bit of your back story.

[Suu]

...

Today I got word that my "eldest brother", Alessandro Dauzzano da Siracusa, mka, Robert, was killed in action overseas in an undisclosed location.

That is all.

[navkat]

I know I'm ressurrecting here but I wanted to say this series meant a lot...means a lot to me.

I hope you're able to go on with it sometime.