-Yeah, we're all adults here (Meaning over 18 for the literally challenged.)
Anyone who has read some of my other stuff, has seen me refer to a town called 'Laurel.'
This is the story of Steven Granger, and how he came to earn his place among the occupants of Laurel.
I have tried to make this story standalone, and I think that I have succeeded for the most part. But it is still related to the other 'name' stories.
This story is magical (magic is used)
This story has sex, and partially describes sex with a trangender woman.
-Buckle up-
Being lost in a small town is different than being lost in a large city.
In a large city, when you ask somebody where to find a place, they just smirk at you and move on. When you are lost in a small town and you ask a person about a place, they will not only answer you, but will show you.
At a second brush 'lost' wasn't the word I would have used to describe myself, 'confused' was more like it. I was looking for a lawyer's office and I couldn't for the life of me figure out where it was. The instructions were 'right across from the courthouse.' The courthouse had four sides, which didn't help at all.
I was standing at the corner of 'West Street South' and 'South Street West.' It had to be some attempt to discourage tourism by the founding fathers of the Town of Upper Wilmer. Another fun fact about the state was that the town of Wilmer was actually two hundred miles north of Upper Wilmer.
I had ducked into a local shop, which happened to be a front for a machine shop located elsewhere. A bubbly blonde in a suit was talking to a man dressed in overalls, and they both stopped their chatting when I walked in.
"Excuse me? I'm sorry. I need to be at one-thirty West South Street at one-thirty," I said. "But this doesn't look like the office of a lawyer."
The man in the overalls snorted. "See you later, Lisa."
"I'll help you," Lisa said. "Come with me."
When we were outside the shop, she latched her arm through mine. "I'm not from around here, either," she admitted. "But you are looking for one-thirty South Street West."
"Is there a difference?" I asked.
"There is to the residents," Lisa replied. "If I hadn't been looking to buy machine parts from Edgar back there, I'd probably still be looking for his shop."
"Where are you from?"
"I'm from Wilmer," she replied, half-smile on her face.
"Really," I grunted.
"No, not really. I come from a little town in North Carolina called Laurel. Not like Laurel Hill, we're in the mountains," Lisa explained.
"I've never heard of it, and I'm from North Carolina."
"We're here." Lisa indicated the door in front of us. "I'll see you later, Steven Granger."
"I didn't tell you my name," I said.
"No, you didn't," Lisa said. "Mind the step."
The door came open with a low groan, because it was being a hundred year-old monster. There was a small grade inside the office, and I felt it under my shoes as I walked in. "I'm here to see Pauline Crowley," I announced to the receptionist.
"She's at the courthouse, she'll be back in a moment," the receptionist said.
A moment turned into fifteen minutes. It took Pauline all of three minutes to tell me that even though my father had died in Upper Wilmer, that any paperwork would have to be settled in Zane, a city sixty miles to the south and east.
Feeling dejected, I left the office and ran into Lisa outside. My spirits totally lifted when I saw her. "Hello, again."
"Hi," she leaned over and gave me a kiss. "I take it you got some bad news?"
"Yeah, I have to go to Zane to settle my dad's final affairs. I hate the city," I replied.
"What are you going to do now?" Lisa asked.
"I'm going to wait for my daughter and go get something to eat," I pulled my cell out and looked at the screen. It was just now fourteen hours plus thirty. Hope wouldn't be back from wherever she went until fifteen. "Maybe something to eat first."
"Great, I know just the place." Lisa latched onto my arm and started leading me around the square. We ended up at the front of a very fancy-looking hotel. "Their room service is to die for."
"R-r-room service?" I stuttered.
"Yes." Lisa gave a gentle tug and I let her lead me into the hotel and to the elevators.
I was in a stupor when she led me into her room. "What are you doing to me?"
"Well, I'm about to give you a choice. Come over here."
We went to an open space on the floor and she knelt down. I knelt in front of her. "What now?"
"I have a confession to make to you, Steven. I've felt your presence for about a year now. It's really unusual for witches to sense their other halves across great distances, so you must be special."
"Thanks?"
Witch?
"Well, I didn't know exactly where you were, but your presence got clearer when I came to Upper Wilmer to pick up my machined parts. I have felt pieces of you: Your aunt, your cousins, and your father. Mostly their memories of you. The strongest memories were from your father."
"That doesn't sound right. My father..."
"He kept hoping that you would come, but nobody seemed to know how to get a hold of you."
"How do you know this?"
"I went to see him, your father. He was holding on to your memories despite the excruciating pain he was in. He couldn't speak because of the ventilator shoved into his throat. They had your father strapped down to the bed because he had tried pulling out the vent and feeding tubes earlier that day."
"Please don't...I already know this."
"Then feel it," Lisa reached out her hands and put them on the sides of my head. I felt pain and hunger and I couldn't breathe and pain. She let her hands down and looked into my eyes.
"What?"
"I gave you a taste of what your father had been feeling for days. He knew where you lived but couldn't share it with anybody because he couldn't speak and couldn't write. Ten-ninety Wolf Street, apartment six, Southstar, North Carolina."
"Are you here to exact some kind of revenge for me shunning him all these years?" I asked, tears rolling down my face.
"No, I wanted you to know why I helped him pass."
"You what?"
"I gave him the reassurance that you would be found and then he fell into his last sleep. As his soul eclipsed, I felt his thanks." Lisa reached out to me again. I felt just a wisp of happiness and an equal amount of regret.
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.
"Because I couldn't begin a relationship with you until I did. Rules. Now that I have, do you want to begin a relationship with me?"
"I don't even know you!"
"Remember what I said about other halves?" Lisa asked.
"Yeah."
"What movie did you think of right after I gave you those feelings?"
"Brainstorm," I said. "Some obscure movie..."
"You've been to the Wright Brothers memorial multiple times just so you could see what it looked like in real life. So have I."
"Interesting," I mused. "What do I think when I see your hair?"
"Jamie Dornan couldn't braid worth a shit," Lisa replied. "But you can."
"What else?"
Lisa blushed. "Let's keep the dirty thoughts to a minimum for right now."
"Why? Aren't we destined to be together?"
"I don't have my riding crop with me," Lisa stuck out her tongue. "What else? Walking, hiking, biking, sunrises? I know you like sunrises, Steven, you even have a sunrise app on your phone so you can see as many as you can."
She was good, almost too good to be true. I tried to think of my weirdest desire, and found it. Lisa stood up, shedding her suit jacket. She was wearing a white, sleeveless blouse, and you could see the black bra she had on underneath.
Lisa knelt before me, looking at the inside of her left arm. I tore my eyes away from her breasts to look at her arm. Tattooed there were eight symbols, and they were the same eight symbols I had tattooed on the inside of my right arm. Those symbols were the Stargate address for Atlantis, something that only a tremendous fan of the Stargate television series would do.
"I think I love you," I said.
"Just what I needed to hear. Let's eat."
"Huh?" I just couldn't understand her.
"Dessert later. I'm hungry."
Over a large salad, we traded barbs about our favorite TV series, and there were more than a few. When I teased her about being the perfect mate, she gave me a smile and said that I was hers.
"Am I, really?" I asked. "You've already admitted and shown me that you can read my mind, you could just be reacting to my thoughts."
"That is true," Lisa nodded. "What reason would I have for reading it in the first place? Maybe I really am interested in you."
"The last woman to say that..."
"I know. I can see that suspicion in your eyes."
"You're half my age," I scoffed.
"I'm going to tell you the truth. I am over eleven times your age," Lisa countered with a straight face. That's right, I am five hundred sixty years old."
"So if I cut your head off, you'll die?" I asked, half-kidding with my reference to the Highlander universe.
"Well, you'd have to get close enough to do that without me sensing your presence or intentions, but yes," Lisa nodded.
"What happens if you do sense me?"
"I zap the shit out of you, then you die. I'll die right after you in any case, I've never felt a soul so evenly matched to mine. Ever."
"That's both scary and humbling at the same time," I teased.
Lisa stood up and beckoned me over to the spot on the floor where we had been kneeling before. "Put up your hands."
I put up my hands and she mirrored me. Lightning passed between us, and the lights in the room dimmed.
"Are you doing that?"
"We are doing that, together. I wouldn't normally be able to affect anything outside my sphere of influence, which is ten meters or so. We're at two kilometers now, three. Ten kilometers, look, there is your daughter."
There was Hope, all right. She was making out with some kid in the Chain-Mart stock room. My anger at her caused me to pull away from Lisa.
"Holy fuck," I muttered. "Like mother, like daughter."
"Oh, she's married," Lisa whispered. "I'm sorry, Steven. I didn't sense that on you, I was more focused on what sexual positions you liked."
Lisa's admission made me laugh out loud. "Well, as you probably saw, I don't know all that many positions."
"All you have to do is say 'yes.'"
"Yes, Lisa."
Lisa asked me to drive her truck, a brand new Ford Explorer, to the Chain-Mart. The after-images of my connection to Lisa led me to a stockroom, where Hope was still making out with some kid, barely eighteen. "Hey, Hope."
