Don’t read this until You have read Chapter One.

“Miss Fortune” Chapter Two: “Background”

Hollywood has it all mixed up.

They always dramatize how cool and sexy the quarterback is. He is always the one who takes the Head Cheerleader to Prom. He is always the one who makes it big.

But we had six different quarterbacks in our four years of high school. None of them knew the plays. They were all idiots and, if it wasn’t for Steve and me, we would have went o-fer all four years.

Don’t get me wrong! I’m not bragging about how good we were. Look it up in the papers! It’s verifiable!

Steve and I were connected at the hip! We were inseparable.  

And, on the field, we moved with a gracefulness that bordered on supernatural. When I meant to hit the hole to the left, he was already there with his helmet in the gut of the linebacker that wanted to rip my legs off. When I went up the middle, it was almost always over his back, after he had taken out the guy who wanted me to eat the football that was so important to our tiny little town.

 So, to be standing there with Steve holding a gun on me, and Debbie sprawled out on the bed like this seemed surreal. Totally stupid… Almost made me laugh.

Steve, being Steve, had his uniform pressed with creases so sharp that they would give you a paper-cut. His utility belt had the exact required accessories that the County Manual spelled out. The Beretta 9 mm that he held, pointed at my head, was undoubtedly oiled and cleaned per Owners Manual Specs. The badge on his chest was spit-shined and proudly announced his Deputy status in our dying little county.

But the look on his face scared me…

It wasn’t a Steve I had ever seen before. I have spent a lot of time with Steve. I had seen a lot of different expressions on his face! But this one… It was scary! There was fear, there was loathing, there was condemnation. There was also a bit of a tear in his right eye. I’m sure it was for her. For the fact that he could never have her now. But, more scary than anything else, was the rage that made me feel like he was going to pull the trigger on his department-issued automatic that would paint a picture on the wall behind me with my brains like someone had done to Debbie.

“Steve! It wasn’t me” I pleaded with him.

“Drop the gun or I WILL shoot!”, he commanded.

I knew him so well. I knew he would. I could actually see his mind replaying the Deputy’s Manual for an incident just like this. I knew he was following it step-by-step, just like he always did the playbook in high school. It didn’t matter that it was me. I was just another perp at this point and he would stick to the game plan and take me out like he did so many defensive players so that I could put six more on the board.

I threw the gun on the bed and will always remember how it bounced off her leg onto the floor.

I think back to that moment and wonder if my life would have been different if I would have just shot Steve through the throat and ran.

But I didn’t.

I have always wanted to write a novel. And I think I have a novel way to do it (pun intended). I am going to write a chapter and post it here and then have all of you tell me where to go with the next chapter. Game?

The title is “Miss Fortune”

Chapter One

I don’t know why I’m here.

I shouldn’t be here.

If there was a magic watch or a special clock where you could wind the hands backwards and reverse time, I would be rewinding as fast as I could.

But here I stood.

When she called me three hours ago, I sure as hell didn’t expect the two of us to end up in a seedy little pay-by-the-hour-motel-room together. Nor did I expect her to be dressed in the outfit straight off of page twelve of last month’s Victoria’s Secret catalog.

She lay on the bed in a pretty sexy pose. She looked very sexy too. Except for the hole in her head.

Right between her eyes…

Funny enough, she still had a smile on her face. It was obvious that she wasn’t expecting her life to end like it did when it did. She was expecting to put her latest lingerie acquisition to good use and somehow things took a left at Albuquerque.

Why I picked up the gun, I don’t know. I have watched way too many late-night TV shows to know that you never disturb the evidence at a crime scene. But there it was on the bed and I saw what kind of damage it had done to her gorgeous face. I saw the back-splatter on the wall behind the bed. I saw the paleness of her olive-colored skin and knew it was because of this weapon that looked intimidating and lethal. I picked it up in an effort to study it try to understand what it had done to the woman I loved.

That’s when Steve walked into the room.

Steve and I were best friends at one point. If you saw Steve, you saw me. If you called me to see what I was doing, Steve was there with me. He was the guy who blocked for me as a fullback and helped me set a State Record as a running back our Senior Year. I got all the glory and Steve always had a little resentment, I think, because of it.

It was either that or the fact that Debbie decided to marry me instead of him. He had proposed first and she turned him down. Then, when I came back from law school, I dated her again for about a year, and our wedding was the biggest thing Grange County had seen in 20 years.

Now, Steve and I looked at Debbie on the nasty little full-sized bed with the mess of brains and bone scattered all around her, and he pulled his gun from his holster and told me to freeze.

Where was that magic clock?