I probably got more comments on this chapter than I have in a while. It strokes my ego, what can I say?
Thank you guys!
“Get a load of this, Kylie. Someone let the camera roll while they were banging their girlfriend in there!” She chuckled at the thought of it, before focusing on the subject matter. “No, wait, crap! That’s us!” Mouth agape, she needed to hide the evidence.
This is perfect.
I am so proud of writing that.
Oh no, Phil... he better not ruin poor Tegan's happiness.
Dude's bound to. If not now, then later on.
Go Phil! I'm completely on his side on this.
Siding with
Phil is a pretty bold, risky move.
Hmm, I wouldn't mind seeing something happening to Keon if it's Phil's doing. I really like the arcade and club.
I wouldn't either, but not for this. For other things later on? Hmmm...maybe...
Somehow I'm not surprised that Phil is already plotting...
Wish I could say more but I now have the song "I Got You Babe" stuck in my head. Gee, thanks.
I did too, after writing that. It was that or trying to imagine something from my own catalogue sang as a loving duet. As if.
That kid was bad to the bone from the start. Of course he's plotting!
I am, too. Keon needs to back right the heck off with this "I'm your dad now!" crap. Just . . . dude, no, don't go there. Don't be That Jerk.
Yeah, the guy layered on a lot of things thickly. As if he was trying to hide some shames by stepping in as Super Stepdad (TM) before Heph's body was cold.
Ugh, I know right? I can sort of understand why Phil turned out the way he did.
Phil could have had the most loving nuclear family and still have turned out as the mega-baddie he grew up into. But this didn't help either.
And Tegan, having your boyfriend spend the night and have breakfast with the family, probably not a good idea when you have a small son.
Probably not, but my rationalization is that she really missed having those with her real, true soulmate and needed to pretend to feel that again. Still a bad idea, though. She's chock full of them!
Chapter 125: What's Yours
“I’m telling you, I have to stay with you guys.”
Phil ended up unloading his grievances onto one of his best friends, one Vernon Ball.
“You’re not getting the top bunk,” Vernon said.
“Aww, why not? I’m your guest.”
“That’s my bunk!”
Phil had a chuckle. “That’s funny, Vernon, thinking that something’s yours. I won’t settle for less!”
“We have another bed.”
“I will take my business elsewhere,” Phil said, turning away in a huff to mount his bicycle and ride home, away from his ungracious classmate.
Poor Phil, he was stuck at home. The disagreement didn’t seem to affect his friendship with Vernon much, though. They still played together during recess. And Phil ended up going to his house for a lot of playdates and supposed study sessions.
That wasn’t his mum’s worry.
Tegan, like many, did not particularly want to grow old. Why, she’d have to retire her favorite clothes for keeping some vague “dignity” into her elder years. It sounded vain, but she loved the dresses she owned as an adult. But it would be unfair to stay young, and not just for the sake of the other immortals’ feelings.
Keon could simplify things and say he was Tegan’s age. However, he crossed that penultimate bridge first, and on a different day. Perhaps embarrassed, he went to the pool to do it. Stole one of Annette’s cakes for the journey. After aging up, that sugar rush dulled the new back pains for a few minutes.
Those subsided better with an aspirin. Keon took himself to the dresser and did the best job a new family member of-sorts could do without Franco’s help. The haircut might have been a worse idea. Keon took a blade, held it an angle, and created new bangs for himself. Shaved the back of his head closer. Considering that none of the Waverlys chided him for it, he accepted his job. Even Tegan approved.
“You should have told me it was your birthday! I could have done something during my lunch break or something like that,” she said to him.
“I think it was nice without you anyways, but maybe that would’ve been better.” They were upstairs, in her bedroom at the time. “The others all wished me well. Four out of five of you approving, it ain’t bad.”
“Phil will come around. I mean, I hope he does. I don’t want him to be all mean and negative. He’s such a great kid otherwise.”
“He is, he is.”
“I just hope the Balls are treating him well right now.”
Erik Ball, meanwhile, ran away from Phil. What a young vampire would have to fear in another fanged kid was anyone’s guess. But at night, they could all play outside and pretend to be normal kids. Phil was starting to like them. In fact, Emma and the other adults in that household reported that Phil didn’t act like much of an evil little snot at all. He had a lot of energy, and loved games of tag. He loved catch and playing outside at all hours, and not just at night. He learned about their restrictions on sunlight after his first playdate there.
So Erik’s running away turned into a game of tag. And Phil gained some strong friends in them.
Not that long later, Tegan had to draft a guest list for her own birthday party. The venue was secured, as owning the lounge meant that the family always had a good place for parties. But guests, finding guests wasn’t as easy. She asked everyone in the family for relevant phone numbers. Even Phil produced one. The Ball household, as she could have guessed.
“Honey, it’s a strict thirteen-plus venue,” she said. “Besides you, but it’s my birthday and all I want is for my son to be there. I had to fight your grandpa for that.”
“Trent and Vernon are thirteen,” Phil said.
“Tell them to get their best suits, then. Okay, darling?”
As it turned out, Tegan didn’t have to worry about two teens adhering to her dress code. They dressed like charming young gentlemen. Phil didn’t complain about having to wear a tux either. Bryant managed to get in, which Tegan understood. She didn’t close down the whole lounge and their drinks
were to die for. He could have had the decency to find a blazer. In fact, she would have lent him one.
And as it turned out, it was the last time she ever had to see him. A little angry upon his entrance, Tegan told him off only for him to produce his one-way plane tickets for Starlight Shores. They had the official watermark of Bright Lights & Smog Airlines printed in the corner. “I can’t leave without one last Deathflower Drops, can I?” he said.
“Point taken, Mr. Moreno.”
It turned out that he was a tolerable drunk, certainly better than old Annette. In fact, Bryant would have left the party without Tegan ever mentioning his presence to me if she didn’t have to justify him in her party pictures. This chapter is not about Bryant.
No, this is just the story of a woman growing older.
She blew out her candles, maybe wishing for a placid elderhood. Those young years wore her down; I’m shocked as to how long it took for her to get her first grey hair.
So this is a part I feel for. Tegan needed a turning point away from the turmoil, for however long us younger ones could keep her away from it. It would have been nicer to hit her at a younger age, but the chance for it stood so close to her. But like with many big decisions, Tegan needed some expert advice.
But first, piano. Only after Tegan found a new dress for her old age, though. Only after she brushed her hair back into a proper, dignified bun. But yes, piano. Derrick, the pianist at the time, was a true gift to Twinbrook. He studied under Hephaestus back when he worked at the theatre. Somehow, Derrick surpassed his mentor. Even Phil stopped to appreciate it.
After she unwrapped gifts and said her good-byes to her beloved guests, Tegan took to calling her travel agent. It was a business trip, first off: they drafted plans for a study on the potential of growing plums in Simnation. They weren’t a native crop there. France had plenty. That meant that Tegan needed to dust off her passport and find the best, healthiest plums in France. And by find, she meant grow. Considering that they grew on tall trees, that could take years. She could hide some magic in her suitcase, though.
Tegan walked up to Franco one morning, as he slouched in a dining chair with the newspaper and a cup of coffee. “Grandpa, can you do something nice for me?” Tegan asked, in a sickeningly-sweet voice.
“Sure, Peapod. Finding the right sapphire necklace has been tough,” he said.
“Forget about that, and take me to France instead. Just the two of us.”
“Are you so deprived that you think of business trips as a gift?”
“But we can make it a fun trip. Together. I want some precious memories with you that don’t involve broken noses.”
“True, I’d kill for that as well,” he said. “Let me get the tickets. I have a lot of good karma over there in France, as you know.”
“Ah, for the love of God, I forgot how blinding this French sunlight was.” Franco squinted his eyes and grumbled, as Franco tended to do. “Still, we’re here. For how long?”
“As long as it takes to grow plums,” Tegan said.
“Goodness! We’ll need to fly Annette out here to keep the two of us alive for that long, and I don’t need her being an idiot in France.”
“No, we have some magic!”
“What magic?” he snarled.
“Grandpa, you’ve never worked in the garden. We have our magic over there,” Tegan said. “Let me just get my bag out. It’s in there.”
She took a large, leathery egg out and put it down on the lawn, to the side of the house. Franco raised a brow. “Wait, that’s how dragons are made?”
“Never seen Annette hatch one?” Tegan asked. “I haven’t either. They last for a long time. She said that Shark did the last ones, and I never met him. But yeah, she gave me a dragon egg. Should hatch soon.”
Franco expected her to follow him into the garden to pose for portraits, but Tegan still stood by her egg. “Peapod, what are you doing? It will hatch, just as you said.”
“Hey there, cute little eggy!” Tegan waved at it. “I can’t wait to raise you as my own.”
“Tegan!”
“Come on, have some fun with these things,” she said.
Two days later, Tegan got a hatchling as green as Phil’s favorite shirt. It perched on her arm and looked up with her with the love and eagerness reserved for one’s own parents.
“Franco, how many of your friends like green? I’m trying to think of names for him,” Tegan said.
“That’s how we do it now?” he asked.
“Well, the purple one we have at home is named Harwood 2.0...he dressed in purple, right?”
“Those family photos don’t lie.”
“So, anyone you know?”
“I’m sorry, Peapod.”
“Fine. I don’t know anyone either, other than Phil, but I don’t want to upstage him.”
“Why not Jules? Probably never told you about Jules, but he dated uncle Shark way back when. I don’t even know what color he liked, but I always felt bad for Shark. He outlived Jules by a few years, and yes, I always felt bad about that.”
“Sounds good. Like a fitting tribute,” she said, giving Jules 2.0 a pat on the head.
After getting her plum saplings in the ground, Tegan put Jules 2.0 to work.
“Come on, come on,” she whispered, as Jules took a flight into the air, in a cloud of green smoke. “I need some juicy plums.”
As it turned out, she got rich, nectar-quality grapes too. Some seeds must have fell on the ground and taken root. Her saplings, further away, started to grow into mature trees. She saw how much rougher the bark looked. Her dragon needed to rest, but she repeated the process whenever she could until trees of ripe plums begged for harvest. After that, she needed to get back to Twinbrook as soon as could, before they went bad.
She finished the harvesting on an afternoon, with the next flight to Twinbrook scheduled for the morning after. It left her and Franco with little to do but what Tegan actually set out to do with her grandfather.
“I know you like good nectar, grandpa,” she said.
“And I won’t make a fool of myself on it either. Neither will you,” he said. “I have been hankering for another tasting session at the nectary.”
“Exactly.”
She poured the first few glasses, which were just to loosen them up before their tasting began. Tegan chose a good nectar for their warmup: Lavoie Orchards, 2078. Franco thanked her for her good taste.
“Oh, Belizaire Vineyards, how the mighty have fallen. Gross!” Franco moaned and groaned over his bad glass of nectar to taste. But that was the curator’s fault.
“I know, they were so good back when I got married,” Tegan said. “And that wasn’t long ago at all.”
“Apparently the vineyard changed hands a lot over the last five years. Last real heir ran off, discovered punk music, what a shame. Whoever is running operations needs a piece of my mind.”
They got to try one of the prized bottles from the 2065 batch by Giroux Grapes, which made up for one bad swill of nectar.
After finishing the session, the two sat down and relaxed. Although buzzed, they were as sober as Annette was on her sober days, which meant total lucidity. That was good for Tegan, who wanted an honest conversation.
“So you’re the only one in the family who’s remarried,” she said.
“So I am, so I am,” said Franco.
“And I heard the story. You got divorced. I never met auntie Hannah, but I knew you loved her, I know you did.”
“She’ll always be my love, Tegan.”
“But, would you remarry, if it was possible?”
“Never.”
Tegan sulked in her chair.
“What’s wrong for you, though?” Franco asked. “Plenty of widows remarry.”
“You know I loved Hephaestus. Heck, I still love him so, so much. I miss him every day, and I always wish we had more time. It felt like we did. But now...I shouldn’t be having these feelings. Like, you can’t just fall in love with someone else and feel the same way, can you?”
“This is about Keon, isn’t it?” She nodded. “Then stop overthinking it and marry the man.”
“I just...just...look, mum keeps going on about how after we’re done with this, we get our loved ones back. And what will I say to Heph after that? I’ll have two lovers, and I know what my choice would be, but imagine the hard feelings. With both of them. I’m betraying Heph with this, and I’m offering Keon just some second-rate garbage. I hate that! I want to be loved for a while, you know?”
“Believe me, I know, And I’ll never have to face that,” said Franco. “But Hephaestus, mad at you? Peapod, I’ve known him since before he was born. I adopted that kid. And I know that for years and years and decades, he loved you beyond what I’ve seen anyone else express as love. And because of that, I know he approves of this, right from his seat watching us from the afterlife. I even talked with him about this once. He wanted you to be happy above all else, even if your heart took a sharp turn anywhere else. And you’re simply putting this on hold for someone who’s such a kind man.”
“You...you think he’s kind?” Tegan asked.
“I watched him grow up too. Keon turned out great...he was always that way, but I’m glad you have him in particular,” said Franco. “And you should stay with him, if you’re feeling that in your heart.”
Tegan got up from her seat and grabbed her grandfather in for a hug.
“Oh grandpa! I just needed to hear it from you, that’s all,” she said. “You’re just so wise and sober.”
“Only the former right now,” he muttered. “But I think we need to pack our bags for the flight tomorrow.”
“Alright. Back home.”
And after a pillow fight, her new chapter could begin. Maybe she could think about Phil’s too.
Word Count for this chapter:
2,466Word Count so far:
267,835Edited on 3-19-2015. Forgot an image because that tends to happen when you're updating at God-knows-when-O'Clock.That is really the last you'll see of Bryant. I thought that him at the park was the last, but I was reminded that he ended up crashing Tegan's elder birthday too...and behaved. I probably wouldn't have mentioned him at all if he dressed up for the event.
