Arson by Estevan Vega

Author:Estevan Vega [Vega, Estevan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Young Adult, Horror, eBook, intrigue, Romance, bestseller, suspense, Arson trilogy, 5 star review, 5 stars, thriller
ISBN: 9780615543338
Publisher: Stonehouse Ink
Published: 2009-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

Joel sat in front of the blank computer screen, watching the blurry cursor appear and disappear. He took a sip of beer and placed the bottle beside countless books, ones that read,Overcoming Your Demons and Kicking the Habit Old School: A Guide to Cold Turkey Freedom. Their covers looked almost as uninteresting as their titles, and it didn’t help matters much that he didn’t believe half the trash he read. Much of it he forgot almost instantly, and whenever Aimee asked him to recite to her a passage that moved him in some way, he usually recited verbatim the first line of each book. Lame.

He could feel his eyes glazing over. Why on earth was he in front of a computer screen when he should be out hunting for a job? Securing his family. Trying to type out a sermon after months of isolation and self-judgment proved complicated to say the least. All inspiration seemed lost. Was that his conscience or his wife’s scratchy voice piercing his eardrums, spilling words of disapproval?

Oh, to be young again. To be in love. In a time when life was easier, when Aimee’s mouth tasted of sweeter things than deprecation. Joel took another sip. How long had it been since they had embraced for real, how long since they were intimate? Perhaps it was too painful to recall. It might as well have been failure plastered across the screen in big block letters. It belonged on a billboard with his worn-out face beside it. Writing sermons had never been this hard. But he couldn’t keep a stray thought even if he focused. First, he tried to bullet them, using coherent notes. He had enough mental baggage to write twenty volumes of self-help jargon, but nothing seemed to come out when he put pen to paper or finger to keyboard. Emery’s often gentle suggestion that he start taking a deeper interest in technology had revolutionized the way he put a sermon together. In fact, with her expertise and his… Forget it, Joel. It was another lifetime, another world. Not this one. Here he couldn’t even get a simple paragraph down. Nothing.

Joel stared at the cursor of the document until it became his own thoughts, wandering, disappearing, and reappearing again only for a moment. He longed for something of meaning, anything. He typed one question out. Do better men exist? He saved it to his desktop and powered off the machine.

Cracking his knuckles, Joel reclined and took a long swig, frowning at the taste. He’d made such a mess of everything. Nearly ruined a marriage he’d spent years trying to build. Aimee, she was still so beautiful. He loved to watch her from the bed while she was in the shower, her shadow dancing against the glass with the bathroom door creaked open. But maybe he’d be stronger if she were more supportive. If she didn’t critique everything he did every day. Didn’t he love his family? He’d made his mistakes, but he was a good man.

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