Can you call something an oral history if it’s in someone’s mind? An oral mental history.
Hi. Hola. Bonjour.
(I don’t know how to spell bonjour, and the spell checker thing offered ‘bourbon instead, which I know is wrong, but I was tempted to put anyway.)
Now that we got the greetings out of the way, here’s some fiction! Some of this is in One Little Lie, and some of it is extra.
I don’t think you need a lot of background information to understand this scene, but just in case, Ryan and his dad are going to build a barn. Maybe. Ryan’s dad is trying to teach him things, and because Ryan is Ryan, it’s not going great.
~~~
It was a nice spring afternoon. My father and I stood outside in the light with nothing around to provide shade, but the sun felt nice on my skin. We were out back on our property, surveying the spot where our old barn used to be. Did this count as exercise? I was totally going to count this as exercise.
My dad’s family used to have their own farm, but it took a lot of work. The Miller operation used to be family owned and run, so there wasn’t a big budget to hire new staff with once the number of family members dwindled. Grandpa came from a bigger family, but Dad only had a brother who didn’t live in the area anymore. I was an only child, and Mom had died when I was young.
We didn’t have livestock anymore but that could change once we had a barn again. Dad had traded favors with a bunch of guys he knew to help knock the old structure down after he, Luke, and me attempted it ourselves, and he paid a crew to remove the remains.
There were some supplies at our feet like a big sketch pad, pencils, a tape measurer, and even a freaking protractor that was metal and different from the one I had to get for school. My dad owned a protractor. I really needed to mock him for that.
Before I could, he turned to me and asked, “So what’s the first thing we should do?”
“Go inside and order a pizza?” I suggested even though I didn’t have much hope the answer would be yes.
Dad sighed, though it was more for show than out of true annoyance. He had a pretty high tolerance for annoyance, which he had me to thank for. “I’m going to force this knowledge into your brain one way or another,” he informed me. “So you could at least cooperate.”
Learning about blueprints and construction probably wasn’t the worst idea in the world. I already had some experience as I built a dunk tank for a science project, and there were all kinds of engineering jobs out there in the mythical Real World for science nerds like me that might require these skills.
Still, being totally obtuse made this way more fun for me. I feigned obliviousness. “It’s a barn. Build a big square and put some dividers in it, how hard could that be?”
Dad smacked me lightly on the head. “You can’t even understand how dumb you sound right now.”
Father of the Year, right there.
—
, but I read it a million years ago and didn’t write a review then. I have the worst memory in the world, and I have better things to do than sitting here wracking my brain for the details. Okay, I might not actually have better things to do but that still doesn’t sound fun. What I remember is that I liked the book.
Gay Paranormal Romance 