Colton: Wordsmith Chronicles Book 2 (The Wordsmith Chronicles)

by Christopher Harlan

  “I know, you’re right. I need to find a way to keep a writing pace while I do all this other career shit.”

  “I was out to dinner with Harley and she told me I should get on a schedule.” The guy’s heads turn when I say that. “Didn’t tell me, really. She just suggested it as a cool idea because I’m having the same issues as you, just for different reasons.”

  “Woah, woah, woah. Forget all this publishing shit for a second. You went out with Harley? When? Why weren’t we told?”

  “Because we’re not fifteen year old girls, Mike.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Gray jokes. “But I agree with Mike. Can’t believe I’m just hearing about this now. How’d it go?”

  “It was great. We went to dinner, talked, hung out, kissed a little.” I throw in that last part super casually for effect. They take the bait and look at me with their eyebrows pointed up in the air. “Yeah, that’s right, and that’s all you fuckers are getting out of me. I don’t kiss and tell.”

  “Since when?” Mike asks.

  “Since I found someone I actually really like and don’t want to make her into a story I tell you guys over pizza and beer. Since then.”

  “Oh, shit,” Gray interjects. “You must really like her if you’re pretending to be a gentleman.”

  “What makes you think I’m pretending?” I ask.

  “Cause you’re a savage, Colt, and you know it. C’mon, we went to college with you, we know your history.”

  What they’re referring to is my. . .how do I say this. . .my friendliness with girls back in those days. I was an angry kid who drank, fought, and fucked way too much. It was a miracle I didn’t get into more shit than I did back then, or get expelled from school. But besides the drinking there were a lot of anonymous girls back then. Too many. And yes, I used to talk about my sexcapades the next day after a crazy one night stand. But that was a long time ago, and a different Colton Chase than the one sitting in this room right now. That Colton was a dick—someone without direction or purpose. This Colton is a professional, and a guy who’s falling for an incredible woman. She’s not a story, and she’s not up for kiss-and-tell discussions.

  “You said the magic word, Mike—history. Welcome to my present.”

  “Well I’m happy to see that you’re growing as a person. All of us are, even you, Gray.”

  Gray just sticks his middle finger up to Mike, accompanied by a ‘fuck you’ look.

  “Come on, you animals, let’s eat.” I herd everyone to my kitchen table to break bread. The pizza place by me is one of the best in Queens. I live in Fresh Meadows, which is a little area not far from Flushing and some other great Queens areas, and Fresh Meadows Pizza is the best I’ve ever had. Coming from a New Yorker that’s really saying something. The smell of freshly melted cheese, toasted crust, and garlic knots makes my stomach growl. “Dig in, boys.”

  We eat and shoot the shit for a few minutes, talking about some of our promotional strategies for the anthology, when we’re going to release it, and pre-orders for the signing. It feels good to be together with the guys. We all have our own gigs and our own lives, but there’s something powerful about us when we’re a team.

  There are a million small decisions to make about a book’s release that readers would never know or think about. From the outside it seems like you write a book, you upload it, and you’re done! In reality, even when the book is written, edited, formatted, and the cover is chosen, there are still whole laundry lists of tasks if you want anyone to actually read it. Teasers or no teasers? When to do a cover reveal. Pre-order vs. no pre-order. Wide release vs. Kindle Unlimited. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Thank God that we’re all on the same page with most of those decisions, and when we disagree it usually takes only a few back and forth exchanges to come to a group consensus.

  For this one, since we’re all involved, we have to agree on these things. But by the time the pizza boxes are near empty and the beer bottles are filling the empty spaces on the table we’ve made some good decisions without much disagreement. We’re going to release two weeks before RAAC, which is soon, so that readers can have a chance to actually read the book, which will up the chance that they want to order a signed copy. We decide to do a cover reveal this week, which Gray is going to run point on. With the cover reveal we’re going to post the pre-order sheet for the paperbacks for those coming to RAAC—which is most of our readers—as well as a general order form for those who can’t make it. When we finish dinner I’m feeling really positive about the signing except for one thing—I wanted to have my own book finished by then. I guess that’ll have to wait.

  When things wind down we sit around, full of Italian food and beer, watching some TV and just being guys. We’re all on our phones posting this and that—checking our sales and making social media posts like authors do obsessively. I check my notifications on Facebook and see that I’ve been tagged in a photo. It’s a picture of me being arrested with someone in my reader group asking if I’m okay and what’s going on. “Oh, fuck,” I blurt out.

  “I just saw it.” Grayson doesn’t miss a beat. “It’s in the Wordsmith group also. Fuck, will it ever stop with these pricks?”

  “What is it?” Mike hasn’t seen it yet but I show him on my phone.

  “It’s Roland.”

  “Rays? Fuck. Will these guys ever stop messing with us?”

  “I’m not sure,” I say, half annoyed and half disheartened by their continuous beef with us. “This is getting childish.”

  “Getting?” Mike asks sarcastically. “If you add in some dancing and lyrics we’re living in West Side Fucking Story. We’re gonna see these bitches at RAAC, what are we supposed to do? Start a brawl?”

  “That’s not sounding so bad to me,” Gray says. Mike and I both turn to him in shock. “Maybe Colton is rubbing off on me, but I’d love a piece of them.”

  “Relax, Gray,” I say. It’s weird to be the voice of reason.

  “No, fuck that,” he answers, jumping up and looking like he’s ready to fight right now. “These guys just won’t stop. They’re doing everything publicly to fuck with our careers. Rather than just coming up and confronting us like men, they’re acting like little girls posting everything on social media. I’ve had enough of this.”

  “Yeah, I know Gray, me too, and I’m the target here, so I have as big a right as any to demand some satisfaction, but that’s what got us here to begin with. I’m trying to be the better man. I need your help. Help me.”

  My words seem to calm him down. Gray’s used to me being the hothead—the bad boy who’ll start a fight with anyone who looks at me funny, and I disarm him by being reasonable and calm. Gray’s having enough issues on his own that he doesn’t need my shit to bleed onto him.

  “Colt’s right, Gray,” Mike adds. “We don’t need to get pulled down into the mud with these hacks. Their books suck. I’m saying that objectively. They have about a third of the members in their group that we have. They have no social media presence on their own except a small rabid fanbase of total weirdos, and they don’t even have the balls to take us on like men. I don’t know about you but I’m not screwing up everything we’ve worked for just to take a swing at them. Not worth it.”

  Gray takes a big, deep breath and sits back down on the couch. I can see him calming down. I’ve never witnessed him lose his shit like that, even for a few seconds like he just did. He’s the measured one—the papa bear of the group, the one who keeps Mike and I grounded when we let our bullshit get in the way of our lives and careers. But I can see that he’s pissed at all those Brotherhood assholes, and rightfully so. But I’ve never seen him ready to go like I just did. If Roland Rays had been in the room Gray would’ve gone after him, no doubt. Part of me is shocked and happy that he’s finally coming to his senses and calming down, but another part of me likes what I see. I like Gray the badass.

  “Then what do we do?” he asks, taking another deep breath. “We can’t be pussies and do nothing,
that’s not acceptable to me. But I get we can’t throw down with them, either. So, what do we do, gentleman?”

  A lightbulb goes off in my head and I smile. I smile big and long. I have an idea.

  No, scratch that.

  I have the perfect idea to get them back.

  13

  Colton

  I have a busy day ahead of me.

  Therapy in the morning, a Facebook live feed cover reveal with the guys in the afternoon, and a date with Harley at night. Deep breath!

  Reveals are fun because everyone gets a quick glance at what you’ve been working on for a long time. Covers are work. Covers are decisions. Covers are everything when it comes to selling your book. Choosing not just the right model but the right shot is everything. And, like they say, you only get one chance to make a first impression. I know our readers are going to love ours, but it’s still nerve racking to put your carefully designed cover—the image that’ll be on your book forever—out there for judgement. Fingers crossed. We’re going to do the reveal later when we’re together, but right now I have my next therapy session, and the last one before RAAC.

  I’m going to need all the sage-like wisdom that Dr. Summ. . .I mean Cordelia has to offer me. I was the calm one the other night, practically talking Grayson off the ledge, but inside I’m screaming. Gray may be sick of their bullshit, but it’s me that they’re actually coming after. It’s my career they’re putting in jeopardy. It’s my name on the line. And he was right—we do have to see them at RAAC soon, and I’m not looking forward to it. That’s not what it’s supposed to be about. It’s supposed to be about the fans and the readers. It’s supposed to be about our careers and making the Wordsmiths into a legitimate brand.

  It’s another beautiful day when I arrive for my second head-shrinking session. I should stop thinking of it like that. Cordelia’s really cool and really good at her job. She went out of her way to make the first session easy for someone who has a bad impression of therapy. Hopefully that’ll happen again today.

  This time out Cordelia doesn’t use her Jedi-mind powers and meet me outside at the exact moment I arrive. I have to knock on the door like a normal person. The air is starting to take on the feel of summer—real summer—and in New York that means oftentimes crippling heat, humidity that would rival the intensity of the Amazonian basin, and weather alerts on the six o’clock news telling you to stay indoors, if possible, with your air conditioning on. The heat isn’t at that level yet, thank God, but it’s gently creeping towards it, so much so that I can feel the faint stickiness that New York humidity brings with it by the time I reach the top step leading up to Cordelia’s Brownstone.

  It really is a beautiful piece of architecture, and it helps demystify the whole feeling of being in a doctor’s office. I just feel like I’m visiting a friend at her house, only she’s brilliant and is going to help me with my problems. The metaphor fades slightly when I remember that I’m being compelled to be here under the threat of prison, but I’m going to try to forget all that and make the best out of it like everyone keeps telling me to do. She greets me after I knock, and offers another one of her huge, positive smiles that puts me at ease.

  “Hey there,” she says, reaching her arms out to give me a hug.

  “Hey. Time for round two, huh?”

  “Spoken like a guy who writes MMA books.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I say, catching myself. “I do that a lot. I guess you’re probably analyzing why I always use fighting metaphors.”

  “Actually I’m analyzing why you’re so distrustful of psychologists, but we sort of addressed that already. Let’s move on to. . .to round two. Come in.”

  We make our way into her office and I take my patient spot in her oversized chair. She really does a good job of keeping her personal and professional lives separate, even though they both exist in the same house. Walking from the front door of her amazing Brownstone into her office I pass picture after picture of her and Calem. The house is warm, with a definite woman’s touch, and I get a sense of Cordelia the woman. But as soon as we pass over that threshold I’m in a therapist’s office—a nicely decorated one, but a therapist’s office nonetheless. She changes as well. Not so starkly as to make it weird, but enough to let me know that we won’t be chit-chatting about bullshit until I’m walking back towards her front door again.

  “So, Colton, tell me,” she says, crossing her legs and making eye contact from behind her desk. “Why do you think you assaulted KL in that bathroom at the restaurant?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean exactly what I asked. Why did you hit him?”

  At first the question doesn’t make sense, which should probably tell me something about myself right there. I try to answer, but I hear how it sounds as soon as I start talking. “I hit him because he disrespected one of my best friends.”

  Cordelia raises an eyebrow. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “Sure it does,” I say, hearing a little bit of the twenty year old in my voice. “It answers it perfectly.”

  “No,” she comes back at me. “My question is why, of all the multitude of reactions you could have to having your friend disrespected, did you choose physical violence? And that, you actually haven’t answered yet.”

  I think about her words. I feel defensive but I also respect the hell out of Cordelia, even with just the few interactions we’ve had, so I take a minute to think about something I usually don’t—why I think violence is an answer to a problem. “I don’t know. . .I mean, I guess it’s always come naturally to think and act like that.”

  “In my line of work you learn that nothing is really natural. What we call natural is usually our way of saying that we don’t know where it comes from, so we think it’s always been there, but that’s not true. Were you a violent little kid? Get in trouble in school and that kind of thing?”

  “No, I was a pretty sweet kid, actually. Still am.” I smile but she doesn’t smile back. She’s totally focused on getting an answer from me. When I see that my humor isn’t breaking through I go back to thinking, like a kid whose teacher is staring at them, waiting for the answer to that math problem while the rest of the class stares.

  “Where did you learn to behave like that?”

  Learn. I never thought of it like that before, but I guess she’s right. No one is born violent or angry, we learn how to behave like that. Once I think of it in those terms, the answer jumps out at me like a hidden series of letters in a word search once you see their pattern. “Dad,” I say, breaking eye contact and looking down at the floor. “I learned it from Dad.”

  “Your father was violent?”

  “That’s a very nice way of putting it, Cordelia.”

  “Then tell me a not-so-nice way of saying it.”

  “My father was a piece of shit drunken, abusive asshole. Is that better?”

  “Depends on what you mean by better, but it’s definitely more descriptive. Was he abusive?”

  “Abusive, yes. But he was also just a violent man. He used to get into fights all the time, mostly at the bar, probably after he started mouthing off to the wrong guys or trying to cheat on my mom by picking up their girlfriends. He used to come home with black eyes, bloody noses, or clothes that looked like a wild animal tried to rip them up.”

  “And what did he do when he came home like that? What did your mother do?”

  “Dad? He just sat down in that fucking chair he had, the one that sat right in front of our old TV, and drank some more.” God my family life sounds pathetic when I describe it. “And Mom? She did what all abused women do—nothing. Whenever he’d come home in that state—which was often—she’d just calmly walk over to the freezer, get him an ice pack, and bring it over to him with a cold beer, fresh out of the fridge. I think that’s what freaked me out the most.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The calmness. How normal it was to have your husband come home drunk, filthy, and bleeding, and to just get him ice a
nd a beer like it was nothing. No screaming, no crying, and definitely never any questions about where he’d been. That was a huge no-no.”

  “That happens, Colt, you shouldn’t blame your mom.”

  “What happens?”

  “Like you said. Battered women are the number one sufferers of PTSD in this country—not soldiers like everyone thinks. The numbers aren’t even comparable. And oftentimes women in that traumatic situation have no out. They can’t leave, they’re afraid, and so instead of living in turmoil all the time, they just accept those kinds of things as what their life has become. It becomes the new normal, and faster than you might think.”

  “Jesus, that’s fucked up.”

  “It is,” she says. “But let’s get back to you. How did you see him be violent besides coming home with some bumps and bruises from bar fights? Did he hit you?”

  “Hitting sounds like he was disciplining me for something,” I say. “Not that I believe in that or would ever raise my kids like that, but a little love tap isn’t anything to call the authorities over. No. He didn’t hit, he beat. He wailed. He kicked and clawed, and talked to us through his fists when his drunken words failed him, which was all the fucking time. He was a martial artist. That’s the icing on the fucked up dysfunctional family cake. Not only did he hit, but he knew just how to hit most effectively.”

  “Is that how you got involved in martial arts?”

  “Yeah. I got beat up at school one too many times for dear-old-dad’s liking. I guess in his messed up mind he was the only one who was allowed to do that to me. Anyone else doing it was an embarrassment towards him.”

  “So he taught you how to fight?”

  “Yeah. He took me to classes but he also took me to the basement, and that’s where I really learned how to fight. Ironically, that’s where I actually learned how to fight back.”