The Driving Force to Love (MXM) ✔

Chapter 6

Dean Axle Lance

I sat on my couch and watched the parade. I took a swallow of black coffee from my mug and then took a bite of the bagel spread generously with cream cheese. I hadn't bothered to get dressed yet. I managed to sleep until seven. Not really though. I still woke up at six automatically and I just tossed and turned in bed pretending I was asleep until seven.

Different brightly colored floats went by on my television screen and large balloons of various cartoon characters. In the background, families could be seen watching the parade from the sides of the street. Despite the large cartoon character passing by, I could only see the little girl who stared in complete awe. A familiar pang cut through my heart. I wondered what Vincent's face looked like at that age. I wondered if he watched parades and had that same expression. It was going to be his nineteenth birthday soon. I sighed and swallowed the rest of my coffee.

I went to the kitchen and filled my mug with more coffee. The voices of the commentators drifted to me as they talked about the various floats and occasionally made a lame joke that no one laughed at. It reminded me of Antonio and his jokes. I had laughed at his jokes. I hoped he contacted me again soon. Even if it was just to talk about the bikes.

The parade greeted me when I went back into the living room. I sat down, finished my bagel and coffee. When I was little, I would watch the parade with Mark. Jennifer would sneak over to watch it with us. My mom would find her only when she came to yell at us that it was time to leave to go to our grandma's house. Then she would yell at Jennifer and call her a slut even though she was only a child. Jennifer would run back home through the trailer park only to be yelled at by her parents for not fixing them food. That small time when we watched the parade in peace is the only happy memory of my Thanksgivings.

When the parade was over, I washed my coffee mug and then went into the garage. I picked up the metal dragon I was working on. It was almost finished. It just needed the details on the face. Making metal art was relaxing for me. I wasn't that good at it, but people seemed to like my art. When people in town found out I did it, I started getting requests. They tried to pay me at first, but I didn't want money. I earned money through the motorcycle shop. This was just something I enjoyed doing. I made them now to give away as Christmas presents. This one was for Richard. He was one of my regular customers. Like me, he had never been married. Unlike me, he was straight. There just weren't a lot of options for guys our age. And if you made it our age without getting married, women tended to think there was something wrong with you. Maybe there was. My longest relationship was with Jennifer and she had been married. Our relationship had started before she even met her current husband, but it didn't stop when she got married.

I focused on the detailing of the dragon's eyes. On the tiny scales along his face. The mouth and teeth. The nostrils. It was too bad I couldn't figure out how to get smoke to come out because that would be cool. It might not be safe though so it was probably better I didn't.

When I finished, I put it on the shelf with the rest of the metal art I had already completed. There was the rose for Sarah at the diner. Heather and her family got a whale. Frank and his new wife would get the bear. The Petersons would get the gnome. For some reason, they liked my metal gnomes. They requested I give them a new one each year.

I showered and got dressed. There was one diner open for those of us like myself who had nowhere to go on Thanksgiving.

"Hi, Dean," Sarah greeted me as I walked in.

"Hi, Sarah." It was her parents' diner. Her family had always spent Thanksgiving at the diner making sure anyone who didn't have a place to go could at least get a Thanksgiving dinner there. There had been a timespan of eight years that Sarah hadn't worked there. That was when she was married. She moved back and started working at the diner again when she got divorced.