When I Sixty Four Novels & Stories

“Maybe I’m too old for this shit.” I frowned. “You’re Forty-eight. Not sixty-eight.” He gave a short, hollow laugh. “You’re twenty-four, Ava. Fresh out of college, you have a whole life ahead of you. Bright, shiny future. I’m divorced. Burned out. Sometimes, I look at you and wonder why you’re still here wasting your time on me.” The words hit like cold water. My chest squeezed tight. I swallowed. “Because I want to be here.” He finally met my eyes. Something raw flickered in his.

"Sixteen." "Go on," I say and pick up my glass again. I suddenly realize I need the fog the alcohol brings as much as Angel does. She was fucking sixteen when she went to some dirty old man. I need to have a grip on the sudden burst of anger that's spreading through me.

“Have a seat. Do you need anything? Coffee? Tea? Wat—“ “I didn’t come to chit-chat.” She pushed her glasses up her nose and leveled me with her stare. “I got your latest email.” I winced. Another revise and resubmit. “Yes. I’m sorry about that. I—“ “I’m not getting any younger, you know.” She patted her scarlet hair. “I just turned sixty-nine last week.” “Happy birthd—“ “Thank you.” She smiled to take the sting out of her interruption. “The point is, I don’t want to reach seventy, seventy-five, eighty, still trying to get this dream off the ground.”

I thought about the word someday in a hospital waiting room. I thought about June, who was four years old and wanted to play the violin and was moving to Chicago where it snowed more than Denver. I looked at the open window. Already, I thought. Already.

A door. Then another. Then Astra's voice, muffled, saying something that contained the word *six fifteen* with the specific weight of a woman who had gone to sleep four hours ago.I lay in bed and listened to the building wake up around the discovery of round four and felt something in my chest that was warm and ordinary and entirely unrelated to anything that had happened in the last twenty hours.

It was the right kind of everything. End of Chapter Sixty-Nine

I was asleep in four minutes. End of Chapter Six.

"I'm still shocked, I can feel my heartbeat getting faster. Who would have thought I would see you after 10 years?" "Ah, yes," Bliss smiled, staring at the few stars glistening in the dark sky. She sighed, tightening her hold on the younger's arm. "So you're now 23 years old. I can still recall your innocent, doe eyes like it was yesterday, now you're already wearing glasses." Megan laughed, shaking her head. "I spent a lot of nights on my laptop, I'm an architect, you know? And not to brag but," she winked, "I'm really, really famous."

“But take it from me, your good buddy. Money makes the world go round. What good is your academic prowess? If I hadn’t gotten married, then you wouldn’t even be allowed in this hotel! “Those girls you looked down on back then? You can’t even lick their boots now. This is where I’m better than you because I’m marrying a good wife, and I can walk sideways in Cirrus. “But hey, don’t get discouraged. When you see my wife later, I’ll get you a job as a security guard at Jefferson Corp.” I stared at him coldly. The higher he preened, the harder he’d crash. Just then, my phone rang. The funeral wreaths had arrived.

Everything was just as it should be, and there were only a couple of things that occasionally bothered me. One was that in a few months, I would be turning thirty-seven. Yes, as it sounds, thirty-seven! And although I was very grateful to life for allowing me to get to where I was… That number sounded so ugly. I mean, in just three more years, I’d cross over into the fourth decade, I’d be forty, and I didn’t even want to imagine it. Ava, the forty-year-old. No! It felt like aging was coming at me faster and faster… And when I looked at Alex, I felt worse because he was still there, as handsome and perfect as ever.