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    Hopes and Fears
    Hopes and Fears
    Hopes and Fears
    Ebook68 pages1 hour

    Hopes and Fears

    By Rowan Speedwell

    2.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    A spin-off of Finding Zach

    Brian McCarthy is a cynic who hates Christmas, doesn't keep in touch with his family, and likes quick hookups and faster goodbyes. The only real relationship he's ever been in was with the subject of his best-selling book, "Caged," a young man held hostage for five years. Unfortunately, it was entirely one-sided, since Zach was already involved with someone else.

    So the last thing Brian expects when he goes in for treatment for an injured knee is to develop feelings for his physical therapist. But Jerry seems intent on either avoiding Brian or demanding more than he is willing to give, and Brian doesn’t know if he has the courage to face his past to forge a future.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamspinner Press
    Release dateDec 1, 2010
    ISBN9781615817627
    Hopes and Fears
    Author

    Rowan Speedwell

    Rowan Speedwell is a cynic who believes in romance, an obsessive-compulsive who lives in chaos, and an introvert who loves to start conversations with strangers. Everything is fodder for a story, so be careful what you say to her. While not plotting either a novel or world domination (which will never happen because she’s far too lazy, but the world would be run so much better if she was in charge), she can be found reading, watching superhero movies, reading, and trying to avoid being bitten by her cat, Psycho. (Just kidding—her cat’s name is Pandora. Not kidding about the biting, though.) And reading. She loves history but hates historical novels, because people never get them right. Historical romances are okay because no one expects them to be remotely accurate. Her other hobby is buying craft supplies. Not doing crafts, just buying the supplies. Her favorite activity is untangling yarn snarls. She is a longtime member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. She has a website, www.rowanspeedwell.com, but is terrible about keeping it updated.

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    2.5/5

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    • 3/5

      Aug 9, 2018

      I wasn't sure if I even wanted to pick up this short story, because I really, really didn't like the character of Brian in Finding Zach. There, he came across as quite an opportunist who was looking to make a name for himself by forcing Zach to talk about his captivity in Venezuela before he was really ready to do it. And after reading this novella, I still don't like Brian.At least in this book, he does show that he had some remorse for what he did to Zach. I don't like that the author made it be Zach who was pushing to tell his story and do the talk show gamut, when it was quite obvious in Finding Zach, at least for most of it, that he didn't want to do that at all. He was put in a rock-and-hard-place situation and chose to tell his story, but if he hadn't received the pressure from Brian, I don't think he would have done it this way, at least not so soon. But, at least Brian DID show some remorse and even admitted that he was self-centered in his approach, so that was a positive.And the rest of my review should probably be hidden under the spoiler tag.First, I really don't like that Brian ended up with Jerry, who is David's ex (the one we sort-of met by phone in Finding Zach). Jerry seems like a really great, stand-up guy, and he was hopeful in that book that he had met someone who could be The One. Guess not. Even David, who was in love with Zach and had been in love with him for years, cried when he realized that Jerry was moving on past their break-up, because Jerry was such a great guy. And then Jerry ended up with Brian. Sigh. I just don't like Brian, and I don't think that they were good together - I thought that Jerry deserved better, and this novella didn't make me like Brian any more than I did in Finding Zach, so meh. Also, what were the chances that Jerry and Brian, two people who knew Zach and David, would end up meeting at all in Chicago? I have problems with super rare coincidences driving a story forward, and this was definitely a super rare coincidence.Finally, I felt like Brian was kind of a spoiled brat. The reason he despised Christmas was because when he was eighteen years old, a few weeks before Christmas, he came out to his family. And his family started treating him differently and were just too nice to him. Yeah, you read that correctly. His family, while trying to adjust to a big announcement, treated him too well, so he got pissed off and left and had pretty much kept to himself since and nursed a huge grudge against Christmas because of that. Give me a fucking break. Am I supposed to feel bad for him because his family treated him nicely? Would he rather have a family like mine, which stated in no uncertain terms that they would completely cut themselves off from me if I ever admitted to the fact that everyone knows already? Because I'll gladly trade him.There was also the instalove that comes inherent with these romantic novellas; Jerry and Brian were barely together a couple of weeks before they were throwing the "L" word around. Meh. I'm not feeling it.

    Book preview

    Hopes and Fears - Rowan Speedwell

    Hopes and Fears

    I HATE Christmas. I really do. People hear that and they’re all oh, you don’t really hate Christmas or you’re just depressed, take a Xanax or something. Well, yeah, it depresses me, but I really, really hate it too. Hate everything about it: the crowds, the Muzak carols, the forced jollity, the fact that you can’t stop at the grocery store to pick up a fucking bottle of white wine without having to plow through three hundred people waiting to check out with carts piled high with too fucking much stuff. Americans eat too much the rest of the year; the holidays bring pigging out to a whole new level. The whole Norman-Rockwell-Currier-and-Ives crap. Peace on Earth, good will toward men. Fa-la-la-la-la. Hate it.

    Except fruitcake. I do love fruitcake. Kind of ironic, isn’t it?

    But the red and green? Come on, people—red and green is a horrible color combination. It’s like purple and yellow. Or blue and orange, although considering my current city of residence, that combination is okay. They’re Bears colors, and I do love me some football. And the Bears can be a pretty decent team, some years. But red and green? Yuck.

    Admittedly, Christmastime in Chicago can be pretty. The city does a nice job of decorating downtown—a little heavy on the fairy lights, but that’s okay. But the crowds are still there, and drivers are even crazier than usual, and by mid-December we’d gotten a dumping of snow, which turns quickly into ugly gray-and-brown slush and ice. Considering that by the time I’d gotten to the physical therapy place I’d already been soaked by a city bus, slipped on some ice and wrenched my bad knee again, and stood in the cold for twenty minutes waiting for another bus—cold, wet, and miserable—it was amazing I wasn’t postal by the time I got to the RehabiliCare place on Michigan. I was close, though, and for a minute before going in, I stood on the sidewalk across from the skating rink in Millennium Park and thought about picking off the determinedly cheerful skaters one by one. I closed one eye and pointed my finger. Bang. Bang. Bang. Insane Journalist Slays Forty Before Being Wrestled to the Ground. Film at Ten. Not Eleven, though that’s how the joke is supposed to go. Because I was in the Midwest now. Central Standard Time. Everything an hour earlier—I guess because the farmers have to get up earlier? Except I’d been living here nearly a year and hadn’t seen a farm yet.

    I was procrastinating. I really didn’t want to walk through that door, into more weeks of therapy and pain. Shit. I sucked it up and limped inside.

    They were playing ’80s rock on the speakers, not Christmas carols, for which I was decidedly grateful. The place was done in soothing blue and cream, nothing cold, nothing harsh, and nothing red and/or green. The sole concession to the season was a blue-and-silver snowflake hanging on the wall behind the front desk.

    A perky dark-haired girl smiled up at me. Hi, she chirped. How can I help you?

    I have an appointment for an evaluation, I told her. Brian McCarthy.

    She did something on the computer in front of her and said, Oh, sure, here you are. Have a seat. Jerry will be with you in a minute.

    I limped over to the row of chairs by the window and sat down. There was a copy of Chicago Magazine on the table; I picked it up and flipped it open to an article about a salmonella scare in eggs. No big surprise, that. Too much unregulated food processing goes on in this country, and the FDA doesn’t have the time or resources to deal with it…. I recognized the train of thought that usually led me to taking on some damn story or other and shut it down quickly. I was here to teach, and that was it. I was done with investigative journalism, at least for the next year or two.

    Brian? a voice said.

    I glanced up and into a pair of chocolate-brown eyes fringed in the thickest, darkest lashes I’d ever seen on a guy. You don’t think of brown eyes as sparkling, but these were, reflecting the wide, white grin. Hi. I’m Jerry Abruzzi.

    I took the hand held out to me and shook it. Nice grip; solid and strong, but despite the obvious muscle development in the arms, no muscular posturing, no tough-guy squeeze. Just solid. Brian McCarthy. I stood up, put too much weight on the knee, and winced.

    His hand closed gently around my elbow. Okay? he asked.

    Yeah. I slipped on the way over and twisted it again.

    He made a face and said, "Crap. That sucks. Well, we’re not going to start with any actual therapy today. It’s just an eval so we can figure out where

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