When the Story Ends

chapter two

Ray Jennings, prolific writer, free spirit, and heir to the Jennings Consulting Firm. Though, he'd never tell you the latter.

Though they visited the town seasonally, the Jennings family moved permanently to Genevieve right after Ray was born after taking their shot at big city life in Trayton two hours north. Ray's parents wanted to make it big in the business world. They were smart and capable, but not all small businesses survived in Trayton. When they were forced to close their doors, they couldn't survive long in the city without a steady income. In Genevieve, the cost of living was much more doable for a new family.

Creative and innovative, the Jennings quickly went to work on their next project. Figuring they had plenty of knowledge on how to make a thriving business but just lacked the means to make one at the moment, they started offering that knowledge to the local Genevieve businesses for a fee. Their consulting firm took off quickly, as Genevieve and its businesses was in desperate need of a face life to compete with the ever changing tourist industry. They started making so much money that the didn't feel the need to start an entire new business, but rather stuck with what was working for them.

The first time I saw Ray was at a class his parents were offering for the local businesses. Something about keeping better finances. My parents attended the class even though they were veterans in the local business game at that point, but they always liked being innovative and learning new skills. Plus, Ray's and my parents had gotten acquainted with each other, running into each other at local events they both attended as pillars of the community. If they could support each other, they would.

Our parents had always been pretty close. My parents had only started the Gazette shortly before the Jennings came to town, and when my parents had heard about their new business they threw all the support they could their way. Because of that, Ray and I had found a familiarity with each other, but nothing that extended beyond the reach of those occasions that related to our parents' businesses. In part because his parents were grooming him for something much more far reaching than what my parents were grooming me for. He represented a complex part of the world I was barely getting a grasp on.

The other part stemmed from the fact that because of how his parents were raising him, we didn't run in the same circles in school. His being vast and far reaching, and mine practically being nonexistent. He was trained to make connections, to be welcoming and make friends with kids of parents that might have important business connections. While my parents were valuable friends to the Jennings, they weren't necessary vital business contacts for going bigger than Genevieve.

Ray and I didn't really start interacting until the summer before my junior year and his senior year. Ray had come to my dad earlier that year and begged him to give him a position on the writing staff, claiming he needed some sort of outlet for his writing. Against his better judgement, my dad brought him on. As much as he loved the Jennings, he always had a soft spot for Ray, believing his parents were suppressing a natural gift. He had a new desk brought in, right next to mine.

As he was getting settled in, he glanced my way. "Looks like we'll be seeing each other more often," he told me.

"I guess so," I replied. For a moment, I watched him unload his backpack onto the desk, brow furrowed. I wanted to ask him why he decided to come here, of all places, to find an outlet. As far as I knew, he was a creative writer, making journalistic writing seem like something he would steer clear from. But I decided that it wasn't any of my business; the less I knew, the better.

For the first couple of weeks that summer, we didn't interact much. That is, until we started getting assigned pieces to work on together. Normally, they wouldn't have two junior staffers working alone together, but most of the work we were given was small, a few minor interviews and pieces to work on, just to help pick up the slack.