Colton: Wordsmith Chronicles Book 2 (The Wordsmith Chronicles)

by Christopher Harlan

  North was right on about the place. It’s a popular joint based on all the people in here, but not so loud that we can’t hear each other talk. I’m not usually the guy who takes pictures of his food for instagram, but this burger is something to behold. I check in at the place on Foursquare, and then I take a few strategic pics of my craft beer and jalapeño burger with colby jack cheese, maple smoked bacon, and a barbecue sauce. It’s a monster of a meal, and there’s no way I’m eating the fries or onion rings that it came with. You know a burger is a serious thing when it’s as tall as your head and comes with a steak knife inserted into the middle of it.

  “No way,” Mike says.

  “What?”

  “No way you finish that, Colt. There’s enough beef in that burger to rehabilitate a small Somali village.”

  “Well I know that you’re the expert on how much beef a man can fit down his throat, but I like my chances nonetheless.”

  The whole table erupts in laughter. That was an epic burn and Mike can’t do anything but laugh. He’ll get me back later, I’m sure. It’s what brothers do. Gray, on the other hand, goes positive on me. “I believe in you, Colt.”

  “Thanks, dude. See, at least one of my best friends has a good attitude.”

  “I think if you open up wide enough you can get all that meat in your mouth!”

  “Oh, shit,” North says, and we all laugh again.

  “Fuck, double burn,” I say. “I’m getting it from both ends.”

  Harley, crying while she laughs, grabs my arm. “Just stop,” she says. “Too many jokes.”

  I pretend to be offended and take a bite out of my giant burger. Bite might be the wrong word. It’s more like I try to get my mouth halfway up the mound of a burger but fail horribly, so instead I just bite a little bit off the bottom, which is mostly just a mouthful of grilled jalapeños and bread. “Shit, mouth’s on fire now, holy crap. Need water!”

  “Milk,” Gray says. “Water won’t do shit. You need the enzyme in milk.”

  “How do you know that?” I ask.

  “Does it matter?” Gray asks. “I know shit. You need some milk. Or, even better, stop being a pussy and just eat your spicy meat.”

  I take a defiant bite and look Gray right in the eyes as I do. We smile. It’s really been a great afternoon. I keep checking my phone to see all the social media activity surrounding today. It’s cool to look at because I get to see things that I couldn’t see from my vantage point today. Other authors I admire, tons of readers, lots of cool shit that I was blind to before. For a few minutes we eat, drink, and I even forget about the things that need to be addressed later. For a few minutes I have calm and peace of mind. It doesn’t last.

  I’m about fifty percent into my burger when I hear the yelling.

  “You motherfucker, I’m gonna fucking kill you!”

  I look up to see a very pissed off Roland Rays and KL Steiner standing just a few feet from our table, each of them looking like one of those Looney Tunes characters who are so red with anger that steam’s about to pop out of their ears. My side of the table is facing them, but North, G, and Brody turn around in their seats.

  “Oh, hey boys, what’s going on? Missed you today at the signing. What happened?”

  “Get up!” Roland screams.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Get up so I can beat your ass outside instead of doing it in front of your slut girlfriend.”

  At that point everyone stands up, and I mean everyone. The girls, the Wordsmiths, G, North, Sarah, everyone. It’s just the two of them, so I’m really not worried, but I’m amazed at the balls they have making a scene like this in a public place and threatening me, especially when they’re so outnumbered.

  North steps forward. “Now, now, boys. Nobody’s beating anyone at the moment. We’re all just having a meal here. I’m sure whatever you’re upset about can be worked out like civilized people.”

  “Fuck that,” KL says. “That piece of shit over there screwed us out of the best signing of the year, the one that could have turned our careers around.”

  “Oh yeah,” North says. “And how exactly did he do that?”

  It’s a question they can’t answer, not without incriminating themselves in front of a room full of people, some of whom no doubt have their cell phones out recording this. I decide to salt the wound a little.

  “Yeah, boys, how’d I do that?”

  They’re literally turning red with anger. The manger of the place comes over when he sees the commotion and goes right up to Roland and KL. “Gentleman, I’m going to have to ask you both to leave.”

  “Oh, they’re not gentleman.” Harley couldn’t contain herself. She looks like she’s ready to fight. Before they get shuffled off Roland looks right at her, then back at me, then at her again. “Hey, whore, shut your fucking mouth. I guess you didn’t get a look at that envelope I gave you yet, did you, Colt?”

  She pounces forward at the insult, and only the table, and the large men on the other side of it, stop her from grabbing Roland. I’d love to see that fight. All of my money would be on Harley. The owners and some of the guys from the back push Roland and KL out the front door, all the while they’re threatening me and telling me that this isn’t over, like a bad movie. They’re right. It probably isn’t over, but this round goes to the Wordsmiths.

  Grayson and Mike turn to me. “What the fuck was all that?” Gray asks.

  “Nothing,” I say. “Just them being assholes again. You believe the balls on them?”

  “How did they even find us?” I look at Gray, not sure how myself, and then I roll my eyes when I realize it’s actually my fault. “Fuck, I geo-tagged an Insta post and checked in on Foursquare when we got here. It’s linked to Facebook so they literally had the address from my post.”

  “I’m not shocked by anything, anymore,” Mike says. “What were they talking about, Colt?”

  “Not now,” I say, looking him right in the eye. “Later on. I promise.”

  “Well, boys, that was exhilarating!” North is smiling even though everyone else looks bewildered, including the ordinary people who were in the middle of enjoying an early dinner when they almost got to witness an all-male, romance author brawl, if that’s even a thing.

  Everyone sits back down, one at a time, but Harley grabs my arm. She looks worked up, anxious, like she’s still full of adrenaline. “Colton, what envelope?”

  Shit. I was so ready to fight a second ago that I forgot he even said that. The envelope. The pictures. I didn’t want to address any of that, but I guess I have to now. “Not here,” I tell her. “Let’s take a walk.”

  “All right.”

  I take out some money and leave it on the table to cover my meal and Harley’s. I grab the owner and ask if Roland and KL are still outside waiting for us, but he tells me that they drove away angrily after they got kicked out, so we walk out the front door. Outside it’s hot, really hot. The July heat pulsates and surrounds us, the sun beating down causing tingles on my skin and exacerbating the sweat that was already there from what almost happened in the restaurant. We’re not two steps out the door when she asks me again. “What fucking envelope, Colt?”

  “Relax,” I say, not liking her tone.

  “Don’t tell me to relax. What was Roland talking about? And why did he keep calling me a whore?”

  Here we go. I didn’t have an actual plan for how I was going to talk to her about this later. There’s no ideal way to discuss this whole envelope thing, but I sure as hell didn’t want to do it like this—in the blazing sun, after a near-miss brawl, and with Harley worked up and in fight-or-flight mode. But here we go anyhow. I don’t still have the photo with me, but I took a picture on my phone at the hotel before the signing. I open my screen and scroll through my pictures.

  “Let’s walk.” We cross the street and slowly start walking the blocks surrounding the restaurant. It’s a nice little town, filled with cool shops and restaurants. On any other day I’d have time to enjo
y it, but right now everything else is just background to the drama that’s about to unfold. “Who’s this?” I ask, not addressing the envelope comment at all, just handing her my phone.

  “Where did you get this?” she asked.

  “Roland,” I tell her. “That picture was in an envelope he handed me last night after we ran into them at dinner.”

  “Wait, he just handed you an envelope with a picture of me in it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you didn’t ask him any questions? Or tell me about it right away when we saw each other?”

  I’m not sure why, but for some reason her questions and her tone are rubbing me the wrong way. She sounds like she’s pissed at me, when I’m the one who’s still waiting for an answer. “Before I answer you questions, can you answer mine? Who is that guy, and why are you with him?”

  “You sound like a psycho boyfriend, you know that?”

  That one pushes a button. I don’t mean to, but my instinct isn’t to diffuse situations, it’s to hit back when I feel like I’ve been hit. “Well I’d have to be a boyfriend to be a psycho boyfriend, wouldn’t I? Last I checked we hadn’t really defined what we even are to one another.”

  She looks at me angrily, like what I’ve said hurt her. “Is that how you want to play this right now? By questioning you and me?”

  “Why can’t you just answer the fucking question, Harley!”

  She stops walking when I curse and raise my voice. “Ok. I’m done. This is where you stop. I’m going to keep walking. And don’t ever fucking speak to me like that again, Colt.”

  I’ve used the expression ‘storming off’ in books a million times, but I’ve never fully understood the meaning of those words until I see Harley walking away from me. You can see the anger in her body language, and before she’s even out of my sight I feel an overwhelming feeling of regret as to how this all played out.

  Shit.

  24

  Colton

  I get back to the hotel an hour later, sweating and probably dehydrated. The sun is starting to come down, but it’s still light enough for me to find the way back. I look like I just finished a triathlon, the sweat literally dripping from my brow down my face, and my clothes look like someone pushed me into a pool. I’m sure people are looking at me, but I don’t notice. Every person is just there, like an extra in a film you don’t notice, and every sound around me is just white noise. I’m living in my head, rerunning that scene over and over, wondering where exactly things went so wrong.

  Was it me? Was I supposed to handle that situation differently? Why wouldn’t she just tell me who that guy was and be done with it? I don’t have any good answers, of course, and I texted Harley three times while I was walking. Unsurprisingly she didn’t respond. I was pissed at the time, but there was truth to what I said to her. I don’t even know what we are, so I don’t understand the fight we had. Is she my girlfriend, and we just broke up? Are we just friends with benefits who like to talk? I know I shouldn’t need a certain term to describe who we are to one another, but sometimes those terms help clarify situations.

  I get back up to my room and throw myself on the bed. I’m probably soaking the sheets right now but I don’t even care. I text the guys that I’m back and less than a minute later I hear a knock on the door. I should have known that was going to happen. “Yo, Colt, let us in, man.” I peel myself up off the bed and open the door. Mike and Gray are standing there, looking a little concerned. “Well you look like dog shit.”

  “Is it my turn for an intervention? Am I the new Mike?”

  “Wow,” Mike answers. “I don’t know about the intervention part, but if you were the new me I think you’d be done with your book by now and selling out at your part of the table.” I don’t laugh. I’m not in a laughing mood. “I’m joking, man. Jesus, you must be in a mood.”

  “A mood doesn’t describe it. I don’t even know what I am.”

  “Let me help you with that one,” Gray says. “You’re gross and you need a shower. I don’t think there’s any argument there.”

  “None.”

  “Good,” he says. “Then go do that. We’ll wait. I can’t smell you while we talk.”

  “All right.” I don’t fight at all. I let Gray be my mom for a second and tell me to go clean myself off. Ten minutes later I get out, dry off, and put on a shirt and shorts. Gray and Mike are in the room watching old 80’s sitcoms on whatever weird channels this hotel has. Perfect Strangers is on in the background, and as I wonder what the hell happened over the last few hours, Larry Appleton and Balki Bartokomous do the dance of joy in the background on mute.

  “Better?” Mike asks.

  “Cleaner, at least.”

  “I can’t believe you walked all the way back here. Why didn’t you just text one of us, we would have picked you up.”

  “I needed to clear my head a little. At least that’s what I thought I was going to do. Really what I did was get some good exercise, but I still don’t feel great.”

  “Can you fill us in? I’m not sure exactly what’s going on. Why did those jerks confront us at the pub? And what happened afterwards?”

  I answer them backwards, careful not to reveal anything that Harley told me about her past. I tell them what was in the envelope they saw Roland hand to me, and how Harley wouldn’t talk to me about it once I confronted her.

  “Two points here,” Grayson says in his typically analytical tone. “First, this surveillance and picture taking needs to stop.”

  “I’ll tell you about that in a minute,” I say.

  “Okay. But more than just that, I think maybe you made a big deal out of nothing. Think of the picture he took of you. If you just showed that to a random person they might think the worst of you because there’s no context.”

  “I guess. But why wouldn’t she just answer me, then? All she had to was say ‘oh, him? Don’t worry, Colt, that’s my long lost cousin from Slovenia, we just found him on Ancestry.com and he’s here visiting. I was so overcome with emotion that I forgot to tell you—plus I wanted to let you focus on this big signing.’ Would that have been so hard?”

  “Where the fuck did you get Slovenia from in that little fantasy?”

  “Not sure,” I tell Mike. “First country that popped into my head.”

  “That’s weird, dude.”

  “Granted, Mike, but can we get back to the issue at hand?”

  “Which is your jealousy,” Grayson says. “Plain and simple. Let’s call it what it is.”

  “Yeah, it’s jealousy, I won’t lie. But I feel like she could have put it to rest really easily, and now I feel even worse about it than I did before.”

  “Can I interject before we go any further with this Harley thing?” Mike asks.

  “Interject away, man.”

  “Why were the Brotherhood so pissed at you? Why did they come at us like that in a public place, when they were completely outnumbered for a fight, and looking like total fools? They must have been steaming. What did you do?”

  I hold my words for a second until I know exactly how I want to phrase what I’m about to say. “I got justice, that’s all. I got justice and I didn’t use my fists to do it. You should be proud of me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I was thinking about how this thing keeps escalating between our two groups—the Wordsmiths and the Brotherhood. How, even after they jammed me up in this legal situation, they still keep adding insult to injury. It’ll never be even with them. I knew that fighting them would have my ass in prison, so I thought of a way to strike one last blow and be totally justified when I did.”

  “What did you do?” Gray asks.

  “It was at my last therapy session. As I was leaving I saw Calem and I told him a little something about the Brotherhood.”

  “What?”

  “That they’re thieves. Literally. I gave him the bullet points of all of our drama, but mostly I emphasized that it all began with him stealing your laptop. He
asked if I had proof, and I told him that you still had the receipt from when you bought it that had the serial number and everything, and that KL was so arrogant that he was probably carrying it around with him, which he was.”

  “Calem’s retired, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah, Gray, he’s very retired, but apparently he’s one of the best who ever served. The guy can get a favor from almost anyone in the Tri-state area, and some PD’s across the whole country. I told him we’d be here on this date, and that he might want to have the local PD look into an author who was traveling with stolen goods valued over $1,000 which, by the way, is grand larceny in most states. Calem just did his job.” I look at the guys and try to read their expressions. I’m seeing a mix of gratitude and frustration, and I’m not sure what they’re feeling. “Say something, guys.”

  “On one hand I see exactly where you’re coming from, and I’m really fucking happy that the police finally got involved in what went down at the signing, because they did commit a crime and were never punished for it.”

  “I sense a ‘but’ coming,” I say.

  “But on the other hand, I wish you would have told us, rather than gone on this vigilante mission where you timed it so that they couldn’t come to the signing.”

  “Don’t get offended by this, because the last thing I need is to offend another person I love, but this whole Brotherhood drama has been harder on me than you. I didn’t start it, I just struck back, and since then I’ve had the brunt of their shit pointed at me. Legal problems, social media pics, almost all of it is directed at me.”

  “We understand that, Colton,” Mike says. “We both do. I think what Gray’s trying to say is that even good ideas can be executed badly. Think of a book. How many great concepts for a book get messed up by how the author actually implements the idea? A lot. You wanting to stick up for me that night was good, but assaulting another man unprovoked is bad. Wanting to see KL and Roland brought to justice for their crime is good, but doing it like this. . .”

  “What?” I ask, getting a little annoyed. “How is this bad?”