Happenstance Circumstance

A v4 Story

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D/N
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Happenstance Circumstance

#1

Post by D/N »

She played her fingers along his back as he lounged topless on the couch in her apartment and Winnie slept on obliviously across the hall. She didn’t say anything to him, and he didn’t say anything back. She traced her initials on his skin, still well-muscled, pulled taut even though at 27 he was seeing his college athlete self recede further into the distance each day. She brought a hand up his neck to the fade haircut and the curls he still wore on top to add an extra inch or so to his height. He was distant. Janessa knew why.

He was watching a baseball game. Yeah, Janessa Alston knew why too. Her current man wasn’t too hard a book to read. The game and the guy in the pinstriped #31 she’d teased him about on their first date. He’d laughed it off; hell he’d said he liked a girl who knew enough about ball to recognized the name, but underneath she’d seen that chip on his shoulder, that bit of envy, and she’d seen it grow when he got stressed or angry at something. At those times you’d expect a guy like him to lash out but instead he seemed to go inside like a turtle. And do stuff like watch the game and build up that petty resentment to avoid the other thing, the thing that was really eating him. The Chattanooga thing. She’d know about his connection there too, wasn’t nothing wrong with Janessa doing due diligence on the guys she saw. Went both ways. She knew full well that he’d been warned before they got set up that “hey man, bitch has a 3-year-old, just so you know.” It was good for him, and good for her to know too. So that she could bring up Winter in conversation to him on her own time secure in that she wasn’t dropping a bomb that’d jet him straight on home. And he could have time to come to terms with dating a single mom, and telling her he was cool with it. And she could realize right then and there that he might be cool with dating a single mom, but anything more than that was right the fuck out so she’d better just enjoy him while she could cause this wasn’t gonna last.

So she knew about the whole Survival of the Fittest thing. But he’d never brought it up before, so she’d kept her mouth shut on that. Wasn’t like Winnie Alston who was kinda impossible to ignore.

So she still kept her mouth shut until the time was right, and figured that was probably gonna happen soon after the other Aaron Hicks finished striking out to strand two runners in the eighth and seeing that slight smile on her Aaron’s lips.

“You feed off his failure or something, babe?” she asked.

And he finally turned to her.. Paused and she could tell he was thinking on what he was gonna say. Was he gonna start with a joke? She guessed yes.

“Just thinking. Bout circumstances, I guess.”

No points.

“But fuck it I should be rooting for him, he gets enough name recognition and I can get a way bigger shitload of people thinking I’m him and comping me free stuff.”

There it was.

She smiled back.“Yeah cause you look so much the fuck alike, I confuse you myself-“

“Don’t make me do my white asshole ‘ah you all look the same to me’ Janey. Don’t make me.”

And it was funny and so fucking aggravating all the time because it was true. Aaron Hicks the Yankees outfielder was at least two shades lighter, four inches taller, and 40 pounds heavier than Aaron Hicks in her apartment. Aaron Hicks the Yankees outfielder looked like a 60% less handsome Derek Jeter and played like him too. Her Aaron Hicks, well, she liked to think he was more a wiry young Chadwick Boseman but that was just her entertaining her own fantasies thank you very much.

So she laughed and so did he, before she doubled back to the first thing he said.

“Circumstance?”

“Yeah. Circumstance. Coincidence. Whatever you wanna call it. Like you know he was actually just getting drafted by the Twins when I was in high school in Minnesota? What are the odds there? I mean, it sounds dumb but I was already wondering how we’d do it if we both became household names. Different sports but still, like would one of us have to use our initials? My middle name’s fuckin’ Quincy, fuck that shit. But it just seems like such long odds for stuff like that to happen.”

“Like Chattanooga right now too, you mean,” she said. There. She’d gone and put it out there. Figured she had to at some point. Cause she knew this wasn’t forever anyway. And may her dead religious grandma forgive her, she had to admit to herself she’d been real curious to know about it from the start.

“Yeah,” he said finally. “You find out yourself or someone tell you?”

“Both.”

“Not gonna ask who, don’t worry. It ain’t something I hide. Just something I don’t brag about. But yeah, circumstance. Unfortunate unforeseen fucking circumstances. Even more than you think you know. I’ll bet you know about St. Paul and me there. But… there was another one, too. Bet you don’t know about that.”

She caught herself almost holding her breath and she asked him and he and sat there in thought another minute before he told her.
Ugh never say never
Brayden Betancourt
Chris Passilidis
Adi Wheelwright
Fey Zelenka-Morrison

Always Remembered:
v7!
G080 - Nikki Nelson-Kelly - DECEASED Castles Fall in the Sand

v6!
B029: Aiden Slattery - DECEASED Get Off the Floor
G058: Kaitlyn Greene - DECEASED She Knew She'd Found Freedom

v5!
G038: Deanna Hull - DECEASED From Sea to Sky
B023: Jesse Jennings - DECEASED From Vision to Glory

v4!
G077: Andrea Raymer - ALIVE
B022: Imraan Al-Hariq - DECEASED
B006: Ricky Fortino - DECEASED
G036: Carly Jean Dooley - DECEASED

v3!
G045 - Eris Marquis - DECEASED
B104 - Jonathan Lancer - DECEASED
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Posts: 443
Joined: Mon Oct 29, 2018 10:15 pm
Location: Now you'll pay a dreadful penalty!

#2

Post by D/N »

What Aaron Hicks most remembered about his visit to Texas Southern wasn’t how sweet the recruitment pitch was; wasn’t how much those girls fawned over him; wasn’t how sketchy the whole thing was in retrospect and how he shoulda fucking seen the NCAA shitshow coming down the line; if this was what they did for middle of the road recruits like him can you imagine what they did to better ones? It wasn’t that he’d made up his mind that this was the place the minute that recruiter whose name he’d long forgotten slipped him some cash to have a good time and the key to the room he’d crash in overnight since he was fixing to get smashed at the campus bar with some fine ladies. It wasn’t that sense of disappointment that he knew he’d never get a spot with a real top program to start and was settling with the FCS, and it wasn’t even those first moments after he stumbled out of bed with a hangover and ending with and that first realization what had happened back home. It was the knock on the door and what he’d felt then.

Janessa had to laugh. “They actually give you a girl, Aaron?”

“Nah, I think they drew the line on straight-up pimping girls out. At least for me. If I was a four-star, might’ve been different. I coulda maybe picked one up. Good thing I didn’t. But uh, yeah must’ve been like eleven or so I finally dragged myself out of bed. I knew I had to be out by like noon but I think I was like whatever. I’d take my time, shower, see if I could find any aspirin lying around. But uh… funny thing I did notice my phone was buzzing and was like fuck it. Wasn’t till I came out of the bathroom and rung again I picked it up.”

His Blackberry was stymied with calls from all over the place of course. Pretty much every family member, acquaintance, friends back home, y’know, besides all the ones that couldn’t. His parents’ goddamn lawyer had called. The one that happened to call just as he was picking it up was Brad Dolson of all people. Brad had been the Bayview’s quarterback. He was a junior, and he wasn’t that smart a guy. But he’d been the best they had.

The Huskies didn’t throw it much.

He’d been a buddy, though. Maybe a follower more than anything, and he’d been such a fuckin’ klutz and occasional spaz that Aaron found himself questioning more than once why the senior members of the team put up with him as much as they did, so of course Brad Dolson was the guy to call him up and freak out when Aaron actually picked up the phone and mumbled something indecipherable.

Aaron couldn’t remember what Brad had said back, but it was something along the lines of:

“Holy shit dude you’re alive! What the fuck man! Where are you?”

“Wha…?”

“Dude, Aaron, it’s Brad! It’s Brad Dolson! Why the hell haven’t you picked it up?”

“Why the fuck you callin’, man—”

“Everyone’s calling!”

And Aaron checked his phone and saw that yes, about a few dozen more missed calls than he’d been expecting. Good thing he’d never bothered to set up his voicemail on that thing.

“What the hell’s going on?”


And of course Brad couldn’t communicate it. He stammered something about the school and the trip and it happening and he’d probably mentioned SOTF but Aaron hadn’t registered it. Finally Brad screamed at him to turn on the TV like they were in a sitcom or something. Aaron turned it on and he remembered it was National Geographic or the Discovery Channel or some shit.

“TURN IT TO A FUCKING NEWS STATION!”

So he’d flipped around. And then he didn’t remember much for a few more minutes. After he hung up on Brad, the phone jangled again. Aaron turned it off. He stared at the TV long enough to get the gist of things and maybe flipped to another channel to confirm it and then turned that off too, he thought so; and maybe he threw up, but he didn’t think so.

But he remembers at some point there was this explosive knock on the door.

“That’s what I remember most. I just totally froze. I’m… I’m pretty sure my dick shrivelled up so much was the only reason I didn’t piss my pants.”

He looked at Janessa. She didn’t know if it was a joke or not, so she didn’t laugh. It wasn’t.

“Cause I was convinced, I was a hundred percent positive that it was those terrorists coming to grab me. People still weren’t sure how it all worked back then. I think for one of the other times they actually grabbed a bunch of kids not on the trip, I’m not sure. But I wasn’t thinking about the other times, I’d never paid any attention. But I knew full well right there. It was a bunch of guys with fucking AK-47s and they were either gonna shoot me for missing the trip or drag me out of the room and onto a helicopter or something and drop me off on that island. And that door kept banging, and they started calling my name and I just stood there, didn’t say nothing, didn’t grab anything to defend myself, just stood there in my fucking boxers and waited.

“Good thing I hadn’t been on that trip. No way I’d have lasted to the rescue.”

He’d stood there for almost five minutes until Tyler Adebayo, coaching assistant with the Texas Southern Tigers Football team, managed to find a key and open the door.
Ugh never say never
Brayden Betancourt
Chris Passilidis
Adi Wheelwright
Fey Zelenka-Morrison

Always Remembered:
v7!
G080 - Nikki Nelson-Kelly - DECEASED Castles Fall in the Sand

v6!
B029: Aiden Slattery - DECEASED Get Off the Floor
G058: Kaitlyn Greene - DECEASED She Knew She'd Found Freedom

v5!
G038: Deanna Hull - DECEASED From Sea to Sky
B023: Jesse Jennings - DECEASED From Vision to Glory

v4!
G077: Andrea Raymer - ALIVE
B022: Imraan Al-Hariq - DECEASED
B006: Ricky Fortino - DECEASED
G036: Carly Jean Dooley - DECEASED

v3!
G045 - Eris Marquis - DECEASED
B104 - Jonathan Lancer - DECEASED
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