Free Time Skip by Craig L. Seymour Page B

him good grades in college the way it had in high school. He had worked hard.
    Lovelle shared his good news with Trina before anyone else, even before he had got back to his hotel. She showed her appreciation of this gesture later by visiting him the first day she arrived home from school at the Thanksgiving break. They hadn’t spoken very much over that semester, and he had seen her on only one of her weekend trips home. And even though she never vocally expressed her discontent after their conversation, it had been clear right from the outset that there was a chill in their relationship. But now she was about to graduate, she would be back home to stay, and they were good again.
    With two areas of his life seemingly now under control, Lovelle finally felt like he could talk to Katie again. The good news provided him with an excuse to call, and his renewed sense of control in his life provided him with the ability. Still, when it came time to make the call he was nervous. As the phone rang his palms began to sweat. “Hello,” she answered.
    “Hi. Katie?”
    “Yes,” she said quietly.
    “Hi… this is Curtis.” he said tentatively, already wondering if this was a mistake.
    “I know who it is. I’ve been waiting for you to call.”
    “Then it’s okay?”
    “Of course. I told Trina it was.”
    “I know, but you might have said it because you’re too nice to tell me to get lost even though that’s what you wanted me to do.”
    “Well, that’s not why I said it. I said it because you’re my friend. I really missed you. I can’t believe you made me wait over a year to talk to you.” Her tone lightened, and so did his tension.
    They talked for two hours that afternoon. They caught up on just about everything. The only subject they didn’t touch was his feelings for her. They scrupulously skirted that topic, even as it hung over their conversation like a black cloud. At the end he promised her he wouldn’t wait so long to call again, and she informed him that she wouldn’t let him.
    That was the day Lovelle really started to let go of the past. He started to believe that time really does heal wounds, if you let it. And although he would never stop loving Katie, or stop grieving for his son, he could get on with life and find new people and things to be happy with. He realized that it was his obsession with retroactively preventing those wounds that was keeping them open. And it was his failure to control his future by sheer force of will that was now letting them heal. By giving in and acknowledging to himself that only dumb luck could hope to return these things to him, he was able to find some peace in the face of his loss.
    Other than the brief period after he started working with Katie, this was the best he had felt since he had begun this new life. Unfortunately it didn’t last. In early December he got a call. His background check results were in, and he was out. It turned out that one of his cousins, someone Lovelle wouldn’t recognize if he walked right through his front door, had disqualified Lovelle. A cousin, who had been completely out of touch with their family since the man’s mother divorced Lovelle’ uncle and moved with their two kids to Idaho, was wanted by the FBI. He had gotten into some trouble as a young man and spent some time in prison. There, he had learned a trade and made some new friends, and now he was a counterfeiter for the Aryan Nation. It was a double strike in the Fed’s book, and enough to keep Lovelle from getting the top secret clearance required to be an agent.
    “Sonofa…,” he yelled after he hung up the phone. “That Sonofa…,” he yelled again as he threw the cordless phone against his bedroom wall, spilling its guts onto the floor. He stood there for a long moment seething. He was literally shaking with anger. Then his mother burst in.
    “Are you all right?”
    She had never seen him like that. He was hardly prone to emotional outbursts, and he was