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| Tweet Topic Started: May 1 2018, 08:15 AM (28 Views) | |
| Darcy Wells | May 1 2018, 08:15 AM Post #1 |
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Darcy was a man of action, that was what his mother always said. Sometimes it was said with laughter, sometimes it was said with frustration as she pinched his cheek. He was a man of action who hated to stand still...and yet, she was always surprised at how much he thought things through. That was the big thing, Darcy thought. Men of action rarely thought, men of action were men of action because they pushed forward. Darcy did that, but...well, sometimes he waited too. Not for very long, though. He'd always believed that opportunity favored the bold or that situations would change too quickly for someone to hem and haw over the idea that, well, was this really the best way to go about things? Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but nothing was ever going to get done if Darcy didn't move himself forward. It was something he saw plenty of people do – they hesitated and then they bemoaned the opportunity they'd missed, they tried to weigh the pros and cons but the cons got more and more exaggerated as they continued to think. He had always felt that unless the cons were too awful – someone got hurt, you were out hundreds of dollars (or even anything over twenty), you got hurt – it did nothing to try. Why not try out that new job, because the worse that happened was that you didn't like it and needed to find a new one. Why not try out that new class, the worst that would happen would be that it was tedious or boring. His mother had sighed over him so fondly and so tiredly most of the time, always saying he was going to give her gray hairs, but it was nice to know he seemed to have his life sorted out from a young age. She never had to worry about Darcy being the sort of person who would lose opportunities. If one passed him by, well, he would make another one appear. Darcy was a man of action and no one was going to stop him, especially not himself. He remembered lying next to his mom when he was younger, listening to her talk about the fact that sometimes she regretted not being more like Darcy, that she could have had such a different life if she had been like him. She couldn't change it now, though. Darcy's only real regret was when he graduated high school – what did he do with his life? It felt like since he had been a freshman, all the teachers and adults asked him what he wanted to be. High school, it seemed, was preparing for adulthood, which he didn't mind too much. He was going to be an adult longer than he was going to be a kid, right? It was best to prepare for that...but what was he suppose to do about his future? Adults had pressured him endlessly, asking what he wanted to be. They told him it was fine if he picked something that interested him – he liked running track, he could do that; he liked pottery, that was something; he'd done really good with shop class – but every time he had brought that up, he had been told no, no that would never do, It seemed like outside of his mom, everyone wanted to put him on a path. They would say he should do something that would generate him a lot of math – accounting, they said, but never listened when he said he was sucky at math – or something that would make him a respected member of society – a doctor or a lawyer, maybe, despite the fact that Darcy had zero interest in either of those. They were trying to herd him into things and he had refused. He had hated the idea because he didn't want to be stuck in some dead end job that made him unhappy for the rest of his life. He didn't want to wake up suddenly twenty years from that moment and realize he had wasted his life. There was too much pressure for that, too much push to decide right away. His mom had told him to do just enough to make the teachers happy, He just had to do enough to make them happy and not fail him, then he just had to think about what he wanted. He had felt far too young to be making these choices. He felt like the pressure was going to crush him and then he graduated high school and he had been thrown out to see. His mom had gotten him into college – he didn't have to decide what he wanted to do right away. He didn't have to start working towards his future. If he wanted to, he could just go ahead and take his generals and see if anything sparked his interest. If he decided that he wanted to work for a bit then go back to school, that was fine too. He was young, his mom had told him, and he was only going to be young for so long. It was his mom who had told him he had to enjoy his life. He'd heard a lot of his friends talking about how strict their parents were, how they were told that if they got through school they could do all the "fun stuff" later. Darcy's mom? She had held his face and said that once people graduated, though, their lives were caught up in paying debt. They didn't have time to enjoy life because they were suddenly onto the next stage of things – finding that career they were meant for and being a productive member of society. There was no time to enjoy anything because life was crushing sometimes. She had told Darcy to get out and enjoy things, do stupid things – spend money on something he couldn't really afford, go on a trip that he was sure would give him a story to tell. His mom had told him that he would have all the time in the world to make money and make smart choices, he only got to be young once. He got to be young and stupid and then he had to wait until his mid-life so he could have a crisis and do stupid stuff that way. That was his mom, though, always thinking about things like that. He liked to think that was why he was so balanced; she hadn't really restricted him from much and had encouraged him to get stuff out of his system. It was one of those things that had made everything almost boring. Drinking had never been taboo in his house – his mom had let him try beer and she had said 'well you're going to try it some day' and 'just do it at home if you have a taste for'. Smoking had just been followed with a 'well then you're doing your own laundry because I hate the smell'. Curfews were flexible so long as he texted to let her know where he was and wake her up when he got home. There was no such thing as "not in my house", it was all "be smart, be careful, understand why I worry". Maybe that was why the party had seemed so banal to Darcy when he had gone. He wouldn't say he was necessarily popular – in college, he didn't think anyone was popular – but he had his friends and his friends seemed to think he was chill enough to go to a party thrown by a mutual friend. Except the party had seemed like everyone was shedding these sudden rules; they were celebrating being adults and that meant they were drinking and smoking and Darcy found it wasn't really all that it was cracked up to be. He had gotten sighed at multiple times in the evening because he had said he was good with just a beer and had no interest in getting smashed as hard as some of the others. If they wanted hangovers, that was fine. Maybe that was why he had been able to notice the going on in one of the corners – he hadn't really thought anything of it. It had just looked like a boyfriend and a girlfriend arguing; plenty of parties had it, it wasn't so out of place. But the fact of the matter was that the girl hadn't been arguing, she had looked small and nervous and the man had looked big and intimidating. He was almost going to leave it alone...until he saw the man slap her. It didn't look like a very hard hit, a hit that wasn't hard enough to warrant much notice from anyone else but Darcy felt himself reel back in anger. Arguing was one thing, he supposed, he could ignore that, but this? He had stormed over, not really thinking about the consequences. Not even when he drew back his fist and decked the guy. He hadn't thought of any consequences at all even as he had turned to the woman and said he would have felt more comfortable if she went with him outside for a bit if she was okay with that. He supposed that was how he had wound up side with a woman smaller than him sitting on a low wall just outside of the house. At least that dickbag hadn't come storming out. Edited by Darcy Wells, May 1 2018, 09:32 PM.
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| Emerald Lewis | May 14 2018, 10:59 PM Post #2 |
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Emerald had never thought her life was going to end up this way. In all of her dreams of where she would be, it was something greater. Thinking on it now, a lot of it was fuzzy, though. Had she wanted to be some kind of blushing bride? Had she wanted to be a doctor or an actress? When she tried to remember her childhood dreams it felt like there was a cloud over them because those were wiped out and gone now. They were like images that you had drawn in the fog of a mirror. They were there still, waiting to be revealed again, but they would fade away at a moments notice and leave just a blurred and distorted image behind for you to stare at. She knew that she hadn't wanted to be working as a waitress in a diner, though. She knew that she hadn't wanted... this. The problem was that 'this' was so vague and all-encompassing at the same time. If someone had asked her what 'this' was she would just gesture around her because she didn't quite know. She was uncomfortable and yet she couldn't really put a finger on the reasons for that discomfort - or so she told herself. Maybe it was mostly because her family disapproved of her life. She had loved her family and grown up happy with them. Her father would call her his little dreamer and tap her on the nose, her mother would sing in the kitchen when she was cooking and washing dishes, her younger sister would stick out her tongue as she worked on her latest bit of homework. Life had been great growing up but it all felt like some sort of distant dream now. She didn't see her family much anymore and when she did it was always an awkward affair, full of long silences and sad looks from her mother. Emerald did her best to try and push through it but she wasn't as blind as everyone thought she was. She wasn't as dumb as some people made her out to be, it was just that she very purposefully avoided talking about things so she didn't have to think about it. She wasn't stupid enough to not realize that it had all changed with Topher. He had swept into her life like nothing she had ever seen before. He was handsome, he was a man going to college, a little bit older than her, wise to the ways of the world. When he smiled, he smiled and you felt like the whole world was smiling along. When you were in his good graces, life was wonderful. It was just that he'd had some bad times in his life. His childhood hadn't been the best. She had met his parents and they certainly were nothing like his own. Silent, sullen and mistrustful of anyone around them in a way that made you excuse yourself quickly so they wouldn't keep watching you to see you do something wrong. And his girlfriends? She had heard plenty of stories about girls who put their work or their school ahead of him, plenty of stories about one of the girls who would sneak out constantly to go be with her friends and who he was pretty sure had cheated on him. He was a bit of a damaged soul, as some might say, and Emerald had wanted to heal that. He deserved it, didn't he? He deserved to have someone who would be there for him, someone who would listen to him, someone who wouldn't do things like that to him. He deserved someone who understood him and would give him a life different from the one that he had grown up in and she had been determined that she would be the one to do that. Emerald had been in love and there was nothing that was going to stand in her way. Even when her family seemed disapproving, she figured it was just one more cross to bear, one more hill for her to climb in order to make sure that their lives together would be just fine. The thing was, though, that it had started to be different. That was a good word; different. At first, she hadn't minded the fact that he watched her like a hawk. He was being protective. He remembered what had happened to him before. He was just doing things he had learned from his parents. She hadn't minded the way that he talked about her job because he was right; working at a diner wasn't really anything amazing. He was going to business school, wasn't he? He was a smart man, an educated man, and his job was going to be important. Nobody cared about her little diner job because it was just a job anybody could get. Of course he needed her to pick up extra hours because he couldn't work as much with his classes. He was the man of the house, so of course he made the rules and she should follow them. He should make the decisions about where they were going, what they were doing with their money, where they would eat because that was the job of the man of the house and he always said she was too silly to really know how to make a decision. When it came to sex, she gave into him on what he wanted because he deserved it, didn't he? She wouldn't want to leave him wanting. Even when it came to the pregnancy that had come up she had let him have a final say in it because it was his child too and she couldn't make the only decision in it, right? Those were the things that she felt were just common knowledge, what everyone would think; it was just the right way to do things. He treated her decently enough didn't he? He took care of her. It was just that sometimes his jokes got a little rough and course and close to home; sometimes he would get mad at her because she didn't understand what he wanted or she had touched something she shouldn't. It was never like he got physical with her. The most he had ever done was grab her arm or give her a shove. People did that all the time when they were angry. It was normal. Tonight was different, though. She could feel it in the air, although she couldn't put her finger on why. Topher had been restless and irritated all night, had yelled at her for something that was so trivial that it shouldn't have mattered at all, and they had gone to a party where she didn't know anyone. She had been working all day, she was tired and the amount of alcohol that Topher was taking in was alarming. She had begun to worry about the very real fact that he was her ride home, for one, and the fact that he didn't seem to want to stop. Not only would it be far too dangerous for him to drive - and she couldn't drive, which he had laughed about before - but he might just give himself alcohol poisoning. The very real fear of that had made her go to him, just put a hand on his arm and tell him he should take a break, have a little bit of water and some snacks. It had been pure concern, but the response had been explosive. Topher had started yelling at her and all she could do was shrink in on herself a little because this was louder and harsher than he'd ever been. When the slap came, she almost didn't register it she was so shocked. Only the stinging of her cheek told her what had happened. He'd never hit her before and all she could do was stare at him with surprised and scared eyes. Then, out of nowhere, someone had practically flown across the room and hit Topher so hard that he'd been on the floor, blinking at the ceiling. Before anything else could happen, the other man had said in a soft undertone that he would feel better if she came outside with him. In his words, she read the underlying tone that said he didn't want her to be there when Topher got up mad. For once, she was well and truly scared and so she let the stranger steer her through the party and out the door. There was a small wall that ringed the house and he helped her up to sit on it before lifting himself there. They were silent, side by side, just barely touching. She peeked out of the corner of her eyes at him a few times. She had no idea who he was, but he had come in there like a knight in shining armor. He wasn't very tall, kind of a compact looking person, but he had a nice, strong jaw and gentle eyes and he felt very safe. "I'm sorry," she said, because he shouldn't have had to do that. Her voice wobbled and she could feel the tears building up as reality came crashing down on her. He'd had to step in and save her but this wasn't going to blow over. Topher would be even angrier and she would still have to go back home. The months of that knowledge poured out in the tears that she tried to hold back but spilled down her cheeks anyways as she sniffled. She raised a hand to wipe them away as best as she could. "It was very kind of you," she told him once she had a little better control over herself. "What's your name? I'm Emerald." Edited by Emerald Lewis, May 14 2018, 11:37 PM.
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8:37 AM Jul 11