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Canvas Blues, Fantasy, fantasy romance, Fiction, gay romance, LGBT, long-reads, Love, M/M, Mystery, Novel, prose, reading, Romance, Short Fiction, Writing
CANVAS BLUES
Vignettes Regarding the Artwork of Brendon Kotes
LVIII: Yesteryears
A bust went down that September. Late. Humidity giving a last hurrah as it burned across the growing corn fields and shivered burgeoning pumpkin patches. Cops swarmed Ol’ North Main like ants on a sugar spoon, wrapping cuffs about old and young alike with little regard to uncles and grand-daddy’s.
Casey got picked up. Fourteen years old, drunk off canned beer with a stolen fifty in his pocket. Taylor L. got picked up too. Taylor Lee Barry got pushed through processing, then yanked at the very last because grand-daddy came in roaring like a fury, spouting about bad choices and last chances.
No one came to yank Casey out at the last second.
Brendon had the audacity to think it all unfair. He’d been more worried about Casey getting out and dodging his father’s belt rather than being mindful of a future more dreary and far more difficult for his friend.
“Glad you’d skipped that night,” Casey muttered a few weeks later, bitter over his arrest and the subsequent crack-down his father had instated via police requirement. “Was messy and ugly. Didn’t think I’d ever see so many cop cars in my life.”
“…and your dad?” asked Brendon tentatively.
Casey shrugged. They lay across his bed, the comforter a worn blue and the pillowcases mismatched, yet both with a soccer emblem on their surface. “He’s still an asshole, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“How long is he enforcing house arrest?” Continue reading