It was a hot July afternoon, and for Autumn, an unbearable one. Living in Sanford, just
outside of Orlando, the drive from the city was a long one without air conditioning. As
she was cruising down the highway in her 1986 Pontiac Sunbird station wagon, she
searched her glove box for a hair tie.

“Shit! Why can’t I ever find a goddamn hair tie? I should just cut this shit off!”

She slammed the box shut. She knew perfectly well that she wasn’t going to cut her hair.
After two years of growing it out, it was now past her waist line. It was naturally curly
and dark brown, almost black. If anything physical about her showed her personality, it
was her hair.

Fifteen minutes later, she pulled into her driveway, finding her parents sitting on the
porch in deep conversation, obviously upset about something.

“Hey, what’s up?” She asked as she shut her car door.

Her mother looked up at her, she had been crying.

“Honey, I think you need to sit down.”

Autumn did as she was told. Her mother turned and looked her in the eyes.

“Autumn, honey,” she paused as tears began to fill her eyes. “You’re adopted.”

Autumn starred at her mother as if she had been slapped in the face.

“W-what?”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I’m adopted?”

“Yes. I’m so sorr…”

“No. I’m adopted and you waited until I was 23 to tell me?”

“Well, we got a phone call today from somebody who was claiming to be your brother.”

“Wait! So you weren’t even going to tell me?!”

Autumn stood up and started to walk to her car.

“Autumn, wait!”

“No.”

“Autumn Lee!” Her father finally spoke.

“No, Dad…or Frank. Whatever. You guys have done some shitty things in the past, but
this is it. I’m done.” She said without looking.

She got into her car and started it.

“Autumn!” She heard her mother yell with plea.

She looked at her mother in disgust and backed out of the driveway. She put her car into
drive and sped off.

Autumn’s whole consisted of nothing but disappointed form her parents, but she never
thought anything like this would happen.


After driving around for almost an hour, Autumn couldn’t take anymore. She just wanted
to forget what just happened for the time being. She pulled into a pretty low key bar, just
outside of Sanford that she would always go when she needed to get away. Once inside,
she sat down at the bar.

“Sup A-Town?” Welcomed BJ, the bartender who had been sever her drinks since the
day she turned 21 and cherries since the day she could walk.

Autumn sighed, “Just the usual, B.”

BJ smiled lightly and nodded. He turned around and grabbed a cold Corona. He had been
talking care of Autumn since she was little. For some reason, he felt it was his job to take
care of her, because he knew her own father didn’t quite do enough for her.

He set her beer in front of her and moved on down the bar to help others, keeping one eye
on her.

Autumn grabbed the bottle and hesitated.

What am I doing? I can’t run anymore. I need to figure out what all of this is. I need
to know who I am and I can’t be getting myself all fucked up.

“You okay, A-Town?”

“I just…I need to go B, thanks. Talk to you later.”

She set some money on the bar turned around, finding herself face to face with a very
attractive, tall, blonde man with piercing blue eyes.

“Nick? What is your deal today? You keep going sharp.”

“I don’t know, Bri,” Nick said shortly.

“Well, focus, could you? This is the eleventh time we’ve had to record this song.”

Nick sighed and adjusted his headphones. The music started and Nick began to sing. As
Brian joined in, he could hear himself go sharp.

“Dude, fuck this. I can’t do this right now.”

Nick threw off the headphones and walked out of the booth.

“Nick! Wait!”

“No, Jay. I just…I just need to…go.”

He walked out of the studio and to his car, fumbling threw his pockets. He heard the door
behind him open as he unlocked his 2007 Dodge Challenger. He quickly got in and left,
glancing in his rear view mirror to see his band mates standing in the parking lot
confused.

A few moments went by before his phone rang. Nick grabbed it from his pocket. B-Rok.
He silenced it immediately and shut off his phone.

“I don’t want to deal with you. Not today.”


Nick sat as his table, finishing up his fruity pebbles, waking up himself up before the
recording session he had in less then an hour. It was about nine o’ clock in the morning
and Nick was exhausted from his late night partying with his friend Chris. He was about
to get up to get a glass of orange juice, when his phone rang. He smiled when he looked
at the ID.

“Hey, little bro’! What’s up?”

“Um, hey Nick. Mom hasn’t called you yet, has she?”

“Why the hell would she be calling me this early?” Nick paused for a moment. “What the
fuck did you do this time, Aaron? Or shall, I say ‘I’”

“Uuhm, you know that girl I’ve been seeing for a couple of months?”

“Uh huh, why?”

“Erm, well…” Aaron paused for a moment. “Um, she’s pregnant. Well…was.”

Nick couldn’t believe what he just heard.

“She what? Wait. What do you mean by ‘was’?”

Nick heard nothing but dead air on the receiving end of his phone.

“Aaron?!”

“She had an abortion,” Aaron said softly.

Nick sat back down at the kitchen table.

“Dude, Aaron. I’m sorry…”

“And you think she would have came to me first,” he interrupted, ignoring Nick’s effort
to be comforting, “but no. She went to my mother. Not hers, mine. And do you wanna
know what that bitch said?!”

“What?” Nick said shortly, angry at his brother obvious lack of compassion in the
situation.

“She fucking said that our mother should pay for the whole damn thing, because
apparently it wasn’t her fault she got knocked up. Just mine.”

“Hmm...”

“Yea, dude. I don’t know…I’m so fucking done…oh, great. Mom’s calling. I’ll call
you later.”

“Kay, bye.”

Nick hung up the phone. ‘Bout goddamn time she calls his dumbass instead of mine.
Nick looked at his watch.

“Shit! I have ten minutes to get to the studio!”


Nick pulled into the parking lot to the bar he would always go to, in between Orlando and
Sanford, whenever he was in town. “Away from the crazies,” he remembered telling BJ,
the bar tender as he walked in. Lost in his own thoughts, he just about knocked over a
beautiful young woman with gorgeous long, curly hair and familiar green eyes.

“I…uh…I’m sorry…” Nick said blushing.

“It’s okay. I should have been watching where I was going,” Autumn said quietly with a
slight quiver. She began to walk away when she felt some one grab her arm.

“Well, well. I figured I’d see you hear.”

Autumn turned around in and was looking at the person her was now hurting her.

“And I figured I’d never see you here.” She pulled her arm away. “I told you to stay away
from me. In fact, I signed a little piece of paper that said for you to stay away from me.”

The man moved closer and whispered in her ear, “Like that’s stopped me before,” he ran
his hand up her arm and replaced his grip on her upper arm. Autumn shivered in fear.

“Get away from me,” she said through her teeth.

Nick sensed something wrong with this man.

“I want you to walk out of this bar without saying a word.”

“Hi honey! Who’s your friend?” Nick rushed over to her other side and put his arm
around her.

Autumn looked at the odd blonde man with confusion.

“I…uhm…” It clicked with Autumn. This man would get her out of the bar safely. “He’s
not…let’s go, baby.” She jerked her arm from the mans grip.

“You don’t know what you just got yourself into pretty boy. Stay away from her.”

“Oh really? Okay.” Nick smiled.

The man watched the two walk out of the bar and walked back over to his table.


“Thank you.” Autumn managed to say. She was shaking and Nick could see little beads
of sweat coming from her forehead.

“You welcome,” Nick hesitated for a moment. “I’m Nick, by the way.”

Autumn smiled slightly.

“I’m Autumn.”

“This is probably going to sound like a super cheesy pick up line, but you really look
familiar.”

Autumn laughed, “You don’t need a cheesy line to pick me up, you just saved my ass
back there.”

Nick smiled and blushed lightly.

“Anyway, I come here a lot. Even before I turned 21, my dad, er…Frank would bring me
with him and B would watch me and give me cherries while Da...Frank would go do
what ever he was doing that night.”

“Hm…yea, that’s probably it.”

A few awkward seconds went by.

“Look,” they both said at once.

Autumn laughed.

Nick smiled, “Go ahead.”

“Um, okay. Would you like to uhm…Go get some coffee, maybe? It’s better for you then
this stuff.” She pointed at the bar.

“Yea, I’d like that,” he smiled. “How about the Green Leaf?”

“Let me give you my number. I have to stop be my house and pick up a few things. Do
you wanna meet there in about an hour?”

“Sounds good to me,” he said reaching for his phone. “Oh, I shut it off. Hold on.”

Autumn smiled, “Its cool.”

5 New Voicemails

Yea probably, Nick thought.

“Okay, what’s your number?”

“555-5685”

Nick smiled, “Cool, I’ll see you in an hour then!”

“Yea, see you then.”

Autumn smiled and walked away, slowly turning around.

Nick waved and watched her walk to her car, looking around to make sure that man
wasn’t around.

What a day…

Nick opened his phone to check his voicemail, but answered Brian’s phone call instead.

Dammit.

“Hello?”

“Dude?! What are you doing?!”

“I just have a lot of shit going on right now.”

“That’s nice Nick, you always have ‘shit’ going on. Ever stop to think that you’re not the
only one with ‘shit’ going on.”

Nick could feel his face grow hot.

“What Brian? Did Baylee get ketchup on you new fagmo pink shirt?”

“No Nicolas! It’s Kevin. And if you wouldn’t have ran out of the studio like a bat out of
hell, you would know too.”

Nick sighed and slammed his car door shut.

“Well BRIAN, what is it?! What does KEVIN have going on that can possibly be worse
then MY problems?”

Nick heard nothing on the receiving end.

“Hello?” Nick said with irritation.

“Kevin talked to his mom today and…” Brian paused again.

“Their cat died? What Brian? Jesus Christ.”

“Dammit Nick! Why can’t you be a grown adult for more then two Goddamn seconds?!”

Nick was stunned. Brian rarely used the Lord’s name in vein.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

Brian sighed, “He has a sister.”

“Um, no he doesn’t.”

“Um…yes. He does. Ann was too young when she had her, so she gave her up for
adoption.”

“Are you serious?”

“Ya man. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but Kevin needs us right now. We’re
all meeting at Denise’s in a half hour, can you be there?”

“Yea, no problem.”

“Okay, see you then.”

Nick hung up the phone.

“Shit!”

He opened his phone back up and searched through his phone book.

Autumn

He pushed the dial button and it went straight to voicemail. He waited for the beep.

“Hey Autumn, its Nick. Look something came up and I have be somewhere in a half
hour. One of my friends is going through something right now, and I need to be there for
him. If you want, we can meet up later tonight or sometime tomorrow morning. Um, call
me back. Bye…”

Nick threw his phone in the passenger seat and sighed.

“What else? Seriously…”

Nick pulled out of the parking lot and drove toward town.

Hey everyone! I just wanted to apologize for the delay! I just got done with my best friend's wedding. I was the Maid of Honor, so I was pretty busy! I'll have the next chapter out soon! Thank you all very much for the wonderful feedback! Love ya!

*angie lynn*

“I…uh…I’m sorry…” Nick said blushing.

“It’s okay. I should have been watching where I was going,” Autumn said quietly with a
slight quiver. She began to walk away when she felt some one grab her arm.

“Well, well. I figured I’d see you hear.”

Autumn turned around in and was looking at the person her was now hurting her.

“And I figured I’d never see you here.” She pulled her arm away. “I told you to stay away
from me. In fact, I signed a little piece of paper that said for you to stay away from me.”

The man moved closer and whispered in her ear, “Like that’s stopped me before,” he ran
his hand up her arm and replaced his grip on her upper arm. Autumn shivered in fear.

“Get away from me,” she said through her teeth.

Nick sensed something wrong with this man.

“I want you to walk out of this bar without saying a word.”

“Hi honey! Who’s your friend?” Nick rushed over to her other side and put his arm
around her.

Autumn looked at the odd blonde man with confusion.

“I…uhm…” It clicked with Autumn. This man would get her out of the bar safely. “He’s
not…let’s go, baby.” She jerked her arm from the mans grip.

“You don’t know what you just got yourself into pretty boy. Stay away from her.”

“Oh really? Okay.” Nick smiled.

The man watched the two walk out of the bar and walked back over to his table.


“Thank you.” Autumn managed to say. She was shaking and Nick could see little beads
of sweat coming from her forehead.

“You welcome,” Nick hesitated for a moment. “I’m Nick, by the way.”

Autumn smiled slightly.

“I’m Autumn.”

“This is probably going to sound like a super cheesy pick up line, but you really look
familiar.”

Autumn laughed, “You don’t need a cheesy line to pick me up, you just saved my ass
back there.”

Nick smiled and blushed lightly.

“Anyway, I come here a lot. Even before I turned 21, my dad, er…Frank would bring me
with him and B would watch me and give me cherries while Da...Frank would go do
what ever he was doing that night.”

“Hm…yea, that’s probably it.”

A few awkward seconds went by.

“Look,” they both said at once.

Autumn laughed.

Nick smiled, “Go ahead.”

“Um, okay. Would you like to uhm…Go get some coffee, maybe? It’s better for you then
this stuff.” She pointed at the bar.

“Yea, I’d like that,” he smiled. “How about the Green Leaf?”

“Let me give you my number. I have to stop be my house and pick up a few things. Do
you wanna meet there in about an hour?”

“Sounds good to me,” he said reaching for his phone. “Oh, I shut it off. Hold on.”

Autumn smiled, “Its cool.”

5 New Voicemails

Yea probably, Nick thought.

“Okay, what’s your number?”

“555-5685”

Nick smiled, “Cool, I’ll see you in an hour then!”

“Yea, see you then.”

Autumn smiled and walked away, slowly turning around.

Nick waved and watched her walk to her car, looking around to make sure that man
wasn’t around.

What a day…

Nick opened his phone to check his voicemail, but answered Brian’s phone call instead.

Dammit.

“Hello?”

“Dude?! What are you doing?!”

“I just have a lot of shit going on right now.”

“That’s nice Nick, you always have ‘shit’ going on. Ever stop to think that you’re not the
only one with ‘shit’ going on.”

Nick could feel his face grow hot.

“What Brian? Did Baylee get ketchup on you new fagmo pink shirt?”

“No Nicolas! It’s Kevin. And if you wouldn’t have ran out of the studio like a bat out of
hell, you would know too.”

Nick sighed and slammed his car door shut.

“Well BRIAN, what is it?! What does KEVIN have going on that can possibly be worse
then MY problems?”

Nick heard nothing on the receiving end.

“Hello?” Nick said with irritation.

“Kevin talked to his mom today and…” Brian paused again.

“Their cat died? What Brian? Jesus Christ.”

“Dammit Nick! Why can’t you be a grown adult for more then two Goddamn seconds?!”

Nick was stunned. Brian rarely used the Lord’s name in vein.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

Brian sighed, “He has a sister.”

“Um, no he doesn’t.”

“Um…yes. He does. Ann gave birth to her just after his dad died. She said she was too upset about the whole situation, so she gave her up for adoption.”

“Are you serious?”

“Ya man. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but Kevin needs us right now. We’re
all meeting at Denise’s in a half hour, can you be there?”

“Yea, no problem.”

“Okay, see you then.”

Nick hung up the phone.

“Shit!”

He opened his phone back up and searched through his phone book.

Autumn

He pushed the dial button and it went straight to voicemail. He waited for the beep.

“Hey Autumn, its Nick. Look something came up and I have be somewhere in a half
hour. One of my friends is going through something right now, and I need to be there for
him. If you want, we can meet up later tonight or sometime tomorrow morning. Um, call
me back. Bye…”

Nick threw his phone in the passenger seat and sighed.

“What else? Seriously…”

Nick pulled out of the parking lot and drove toward town.

Autumn pulled into her driveway for the second time that day, only this time; her parents
weren’t there to greet her. She sighed and got out of the car. On her way up to the door,
her mother walked out of the house. Autumn fixed her eyes at her feet.

“I don’t want to talk to you right now,” she said walking past her mother without looking
at her.

Autumn went up the stairs to her room and grabbed her suitcase. She threw in some
clothes and toiletries and zipped it shut. When she turned to walk out her door, her father
was standing in her way.

“I’m sorry we didn’t tell you.”

Autumn glared at him.

“Excuse me,” she said pushing her way around him. “I’ll be back in a few days to get the
rest of my shit.”

Her father turned to watch her go down the stairs, wondering if she would really come
back.


A half hour later, Autumn arrived at the Green Leaf. She looked around the parking lot,
but didn’t see any signs of Nick.

“Maybe he’s inside,” she said quietly to herself.

Autumn walked into the coffee shop and look around as she made her way to the bar.

“Hm.”

Autumn sat down and waited for the girl behind the counter to finishing ringing up
another order.

“Just a water for now, thank you.” She said when the girl came over.

Autumn turned around and looked around the shop. Her wondering gaze fell on a short
red headed girl at the other end of the bar.

“I know, Mom!” The girl laughed. “They actually believe me!”

The girl paused as her mom spoke, chuckling slightly.

“Yea, I know. I’ll get all can out of the kid if he wants me to keep quiet about it.
Heh…okay, bye.”

Egh, people suck. Autumn thought to herself as she watched the girl walk out of the shop.

“Here you go. My names Bobbie, and whenever you’re ready to order, just let me know!”

“Will do, thanks.”

Where is he? Autumn pulled out her phone to check the time and noticed it was off.

Well, shit.

She turned her phone on and noticed she has three new voicemails.

“Of course.” She said allowed.

The first two were from her mother, and the last one was from Nick.

Well that’s nice. Autumn thought. At least he called.

“Hey, Bobbie?”

“Yea, Hun?” The girl said with a very familiar smile.

“Can I just get an Oreo Snowstorm to go?”

“Sure, that’ll be $3.75 and about five minutes.”

“No problem, thank you.”