Aged Wine

When Strength Concedes to Experience

Chapter 1 by grdean216 grdean216

It's a gray day.

Nothing stands out from the ordinary.

You knew moving out into the suburbs was a mistake as soon as you signed the papers. But "Jace Tyreson never backs away from a fight," or so you keep telling yourself. House arrest isn't so bad, you try to tell yourself. Your food is delivered to you on time, the TV and computer work, and for the most part, your needs are pretty much taken care of for you. At least you don't need to wear one of those garish ankle monitors. Still, the situation itself is an insult.

Maybe you could've seen this coming, maybe not. You were never all that great at reading women, isolated as you were growing up. High school was a bit of a shock, and given your lack of socialization, the logical thing to do was retreat into yourself. And yeah, that painted you as kind of a weirdo. So did all the damn straight A's you seemed to get. You were slated for valedictorian for most of those four years. And then you discovered girls, and got distracted by one that just didn't work out. You knew it wouldn't, but you did it anyway, in a mixture of desperation and the hope that a little experience would make it easier to establish that connection in the future.

Boy could you not have been more wrong. Turned out she was just as weird as you, which was why you stayed together for almost two years, despite your lack of sustainability. Probably the one thing you had going for each other was sheer physical attraction, but it was just a matter of time before the lack of conversation on dates and lack of things in common tore you apart, and so it did. You wish you could say that it made you stronger, more confident, but you failed to keep your momentum going, so months and eventually years passed without any further experience.

You should've known it was too good to be true, that a girl like that would be so interested in you off the bat. But I mean, come on, who could've predicted that she'd turn out to be the kind of backstabbing witch you only read about in stories? Not you, oblivious as you are to the inner workings of the female mind.

You sigh, forcibly snapping yourself from the memories and focusing instead on the raindrops dragging down your window. It doesn't take long before the sight and the overall depressing mood of the day begins to drag you down again, so you move back to your bedroom and lay back-first on the bed, wishing to high heaven that this would just be over, so you could actually move on with your life, to prison or back to college. At this point, either one looks palatable compared to your current circumstances.

You're still reminiscing over and silently bemoaning your woes ten minutes later when it happens.

It's firm, but gentle. Just loud enough to catch your attention--and nearly send you rocketing toward the ceiling. It takes a few seconds for you to realize what's going on, and when you do, a quiet sigh comes from your throat. You stretch stiff limbs and them to move, padding yourself over to the front door one floor down, right below your bedroom. It takes you a second to figure out how to work the lock on the door, given how few times you have to open it in the course of a day, but when you do, it's to a sight both welcome and unwelcome.

Standing at roughly your height (a little above, if wearing heels, which she is) is a firm, curvy brunette with dark auburn highlights in a shoulder-length bob. The laugh lines on her face are plain as day, but that could just be because she's smiling at you.

The friendliness of her expression and the concern in her eyes are almost enough to convince you she's something, anything other than an undercover cop assigned to keep you from running.

"Mornin', Jace," she drawls in a slight Aussie accent.

How do you respond?

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