Oh Boy! (BL)

10 - Didn't See It Coming (1/3)

With no more than three fingers on my left hand, I could count the moments in my life in which I had been nothing but happy. The first moment happened on my fifth birthday. Mom had given me my first Pokémon edition as a present and I had spent three entire days with my Gameboy, Pikachu, and co. until I'd reached the Elite Four. And even when I lost like ten times against them, the smile had still been printed on my face. Moment number two had been when I finished reading Meadow for the first time in my impersonal Chicago bedroom. Before that day, most of my juvenile energy had gone to waste; I wasn't good at any sports – and it didn't matter that my father had dragged me to a ton of different sports teams - I always sucked. He didn't allow me to join the art club, even though I practically begged him to let me join, because...well, he thought drawing was something only girls would do. Without anything else to do, I had spent too much time in front of the TV. Then, one day, one of my father's patients - a renowned editor in Chicago - gave him Meadow as a sign of gratitude. My father accepted it politely but threw it into the bin the moment he came home. I don't remember why I happened to look in the bin, I just know that I was immediately hypnotized by the book's simple cover. Without a moment of hesitation, I had rescued Meadow, took it to my room, and had cherished it ever since.

My third moment of happiness happened right now, here, at a B&N bookstore in Bellevue; when I saw my long-time idol for the first time in real life.

His body trembling in obvious excitement, AOL shook C. C. Starling's hand and welcomed him to the event. Starling, whose neatly trimmed grey beard could not hide his confident smile, waved at his excited fans before accepting AOL's invitation to sit down in one of the two dark green armchairs. The two of them chatted casually for a brief moment before Starling opened the copy of Genesis X and read an excerpt to us. When he began narrating the words describing a world that had been born in his imagination, I closed my eyes for a brief moment, letting his warm voice take me away into another world. I liked the way his voice reflected the emotions of his characters and grasped the mood of the setting, and when his words slowed down, his volume lowered and the sentence ended, I opened my eyes the moment he closed the lid on his novel.

After a round of applause from the audience, Starling began to tell us about his life as an author. About the ups and the downs, the good times and the bad times. My chest felt tight when he revealed that writing was the last thing he wanted to do as a profession but that his late wife had encouraged him to pursue his dream. I had known that he'd lost his wife – all of his novels were dedicated to her in loving memory – but what I had not known was that he had also lost his son and daughter-in-law. At first, I couldn't understand why he shared this painful information with a room full of people who admired him but who were, in fact, strangers, but then he disclosed that two of Genesis X's supporting characters were inspired by the two of them. Characters without which the story would've taken a completely different turn.

C. C. Starling had just finished a story about his previous reading when a man strode past our rows with a confident pace. He was tall and edgy, his skin bore the pale color of European aristocracy, and the tailored dark grey suit that fit his elegant posture perfectly basically reeked of money. When he approached the interview setting, I noticed that a nervous veil of red was slowly covering Trevor's neck.

"Who is this guy?" whispered Clay next to me.

I shrugged. "I have no idea."

AOL extended his hand. "Mr. Thorne..."

"Mr. Starling!" The man flat-out ignored my guildmate's greeting, which caused AOL's face to lose all of its color at once.

"Oh, sh*t."

Startled by this sudden curse, I glanced to the right where Clay was staring at the screen of his iPhone. "What is it?"

He turned the device towards me. "He's the owner."