The One You'll Need

By Tyler Foran

The character of Thomas Murdock was first introduced in Tyler Foran's second book Falling Home as the guitar player in the Coff Rock scene. Tom has gone on to bigger and better things since that time, like being signed to a major record deal for example. But, as Tom has a chance at making it big, he's willing to throw it all away to be reunited with Elise; Tom's true love. With Elise in California and Tom in Lawson City, he decides to pack a backpack and head out west on a cross country road trip in his car.

Follow Tom on his love fueled journey of hope to be with Elise again, be there for every bump in the road in this, the conclusion to the Lawson City trilogy, The One You'll Need!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781329993822

Book preview

The One You'll Need

The One You’ll Need

Nobody ever dares to write the true story of love.

-Benjamin Gibbard – "Williamine"

Contents

1

ONE AND A HALF

2

3

4

5

The Story of Elise

The Story of Elise Cont.

6

7

The Story of That Person from Nebraska

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

Epilogue

Though The One You’ll Need is based on actual events, the characters featured on the following pages are works of fiction. The names may have been changed and many of the events may have been dramatized. Lawson City may very well still be a made up city. May.

Written and edited by Tyler Foran 2016 ©

The character of Thomas Murdock was first introduced in Tyler’s second novel Falling Home as the performing musician in the Coff Rock scene. 

This concludes the Lawson City Trilogy.

The One You’ll Need

(a true story of love)

By

Tyler Foran

…

1

Standing outside in the darkness of what was the late afternoon of winter, wearing only a lightweight hooded sweat shirt to fight off the chill of wind gusts reaching minus double digits as far as degrees were concerned, Thomas couldn’t help but feel nothing.  He returned the screen frame over the window he had just closed and peered in one last time at what was now an empty house.  He narrowed his eyes to get another look into the kitchen set off into the right of the open room to make sure the note was still there; the keys, and the check for the last four months of his lease still lying out on the counter next to the sink for his landlord to find. 

He wondered just then how long it would take before she would come by to find out why he hadn’t mailed in his rent; probably sooner than later since he always made sure to pay at least a week in advance.  He was only a day away from when he usually mailed out the check.  The check he left however, guaranteed his landlord Tanya a majority share of his newly acquired moving expense allowance his record label gave him to move to California with.  His eyes broke from the kitchen and gazed across the living room just on the other side of the window at the empty space before him.  It looked larger than he had recalled while living there. 

A gust of wind blew around the scoops of his ears and into his eyes, drying them almost as quickly as it took the wind to move on its way and that brought Thomas back in line of focus where he needed to be.  He turned his head and looked at the moon to his left; he nodded to himself and took in a deep icy breath that would have made him cough had he not been so determined and successfully outside of the moment. 

He turned suddenly and made his way to the car parked out in front of the house, making long strides to speed up the journey.  The lot his car sat in was shared with an auto repair shop that left oil smells and other scents he couldn’t define lingering for the last year and half of living in that house.  Thomas climbed into his car and fired up the engine with a key turn of authority and pulled the gear into drive.  He didn’t check the street before entering it, forcing the person that was suddenly behind him to slam on their brakes—the driver cursing obscenities inside his heated truck.  The man thought about rolling down the window to show off his long, crooked and boney middle finger, but the thought of the cold brought worry of frostbite to mind.  The driver instead relied on his horn; first after the initial cut off and again when Thomas turned off the main road to go up the ramp heading west and eventually California, the same state on his license plate.

ONE AND A HALF

I made it a point to never break promises.  I decided to this shortly after moving away from Phoenix to California to escape an old life that was already withering me away through to the bone.  Now, when you’re young and naive like I once was, you could easily dismiss a silly word like promise.  You could easily settle on I did all I could and I will give it my best shot next time in hopes that I will produce different results.  I used to be that way, Hell, most of us were or still are at some point in our lives.  If you would just sit back and look at what could come from a broken promise, maybe even erase yourself from the equation and focus squarely on the person whom you are making said promise to and see just how much your broken words affect them, you might feel the same way as I do.

But though I suggest such selfless things, it’s only humbling that I’m referring to myself in the rearview of a promise pact made.  It’s not something I’m proud to announce to the world, it’s only the integrity in my being that feels the most sorrow from that broken promise.  And knowing your shortcomings can help you build on yourself as a better human being.

Why am I focusing on a word that others might not find such sincerity in?  Simply because without me making one significant promise; I wouldn’t be where I am today.

But before we get into a promise I kept, let me tell you about that promise I broke.  Snapped the damn thing into splinters—enough pieces to where you’d never be able to put it back together no matter how hard you tried.  But.  As you find—the vehicle of Life—for the most part; is not up to you to steer.   No, you’re just a passenger on a ride to an undefined destination. 

Her name was Ani.  Or Anastasia, if you went by her birth certificate, though her mother rarely called her that name.  Though, I always kept it in the back of my mind as one of the more beautiful of names.  I met Ani when she was only eight months old, she is the daughter of a girl I dated shortly after moving to Phoenix, her mother’s name is Alexandra. 

The last time I’d see Anastasia was two years later, just a day before I packed up my UHaul truck and drove west to California.  It was heartbreaking to say goodbye, but what was more heartbreaking I thought, was I hadn’t seen her in four months at that point—I couldn’t.  Alexandra and I had broken up nearly a year before that day, and after a short time of me attempting to stay in Ani’s life, I found it much more difficult to be around her not knowing what future I had in her life if anything.  Her mother was already dating a guy at the time, and just like before, I had turned into the glorified babysitter.  A babysitter that could easily be fired than kept around until the babysittee was no longer a baby.  And I wasn’t going to let that happen to me, I had to somehow reach inside my pride and pull the tail and shove it right between my legs—making the conscious effort to walk away before it got any deeper than it already was.

I took a few steps onto a long concrete pathway that led to Denise’s house.  Denise was Ani’s grandmother, though you better not call her that to her face since she was much younger than you’d expect a grandmother to be; having Alexandra when she was fifteen years old gave her that ability.  Denise called and had invited me over to say goodbye; one last time to a little girl that had captured my heart at the time.  I had originally said goodbye months before, Alexandra and Paul (the new guy) staring on, her mother egging me on that I could still stay in Ani’s life—that it was my choice—but when that same person who lied and cheated on you tells you anything, you know better than to believe them.  So, I thought it best to end it then. 

As I approached the house, the door swung open and there; Denise stood with Ani in her arms, she was wearing a cute blue dress, her blond hair up in pigtails.  As I got closer, Ani looked out to see why they were outside and she locked eyes with me; before Denise could say ‘hi,’ or ask ‘look who it is?’ Ani was crawling out of her arms and sprinting down the sidewalk toward me, repeating the word daddy, which shook my legs and lightened by head: daddy, daddy.  She leaped into my arms and I nearly decided to stay—nearly decided to give it all up, get a new job close to Ani and far away from her mother.  I thought about all the things we would do, all the school plays I would see her go to while her mother was out at a nightclub with friends.  I thought about the dances she’d probably go to and the guys I’d have to threaten with bodily harm.  She kissed me softly on the cheek and looked at me again dead in the eyes, this time our noses touching.  Hi daddy.  She said with a smile just before she wrapped her arms around my neck again.  There are times in your life where you have to step out of the experience you find yourself in and make the conscious effort to preserve what would now be a memory before you let time change how you remembered it.  This was one of those times.  To have it perfectly photographed in my mind that at one point, a little girl loved me unconditionally, that she called me her daddy, and that when we were together; we could conquer anything. 

And it was in this small framed girl, the most adorable looking kiddo you’ll ever see; the same one I taught how to count to ten, how to say ‘please,’ how to give me a pound, (where you bump a fist with another person’s fist), it was this shroud of perfection that I broke my last promise to.  The promise that I would forever be in her life, to love and adore her, to fill her with love and risk everything to make her happy; the promise I made one night while her mom was out hanging with work friends and we were lying side by side in my bed, looking up at the ceiling, her head resting on my outspread arm; a promise I’m sure she was asleep for.  But to drive home the point, I proclaimed it to her not long after again through a customized bedtime story I made up and memorized—a story about the guiding light that was the North Star, one I named Anastasia. 

You see, I know her mother and I weren’t the best for each other at that point, but as long as I had Ani, it didn’t matter.  We could do anything together.  But as the months of her mother staying out late, being careless and all out treating me like I was the plague she was for me, I had to back out of it.  Had to.  Had I had stayed, I would not be where I am today.  Had I had just dealt with being treated like dirt, being disrespected and demoralized, I could have easily made Ani into a well adjusted, humble but strong woman.  I hope she’s happy wherever she is now, but more importantly, I hope Alexandra treats her like the joy in her life she was to me.

And that is it, the story of my broken promise.  The same broken promise that would propel me to be the person I am today—the person that moved 3100 miles away from the city of opportunity, just so he wouldn’t break a promise he made three years before to the love of his life.  My name is Thomas Murdock, and this is my story.

2

Tom arrived in front of his new apartment complex at approximately six o’clock in the morning.  He had stopped off and said goodbye to Denise in Phoenix the night before and had been driving ever since.  He found it liberating to finally have a stopping point on his trip.  Sure, he’d stopped at many gas stations during the peak of the gas price hike, but this stop was different.  It would be the final stop: his final destination: where the ‘X’ would be on his treasure map if he had one.  He had already dropped off his mother’s car (the one she let him take while his transmission slipping car he owned stayed in Arizona with her) in the parking lot of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant down the street. 

He killed the engine on the truck and sat in the silence for a moment; the truck parked on the street.  He was still wearing the same clothes from the day before.  The clothes he wore when he carried all of his stuff to the U-Haul truck under the exhausting sun of a hot July day in Phoenix, Arizona.  He took a deep breath and realized just how sweet the air tasted to him just then, and he took in a few exaggerated draws to be sure it was really as sweet as he thought it was.    

The excitement of starting a new life had effectively turned off the realization that his clothes were soaked in body odor and dried with salty residue from the sweat of a hundred and ten degrees bearing down on him from the move.  It had only been three months since he downgraded from the two bedroom apartment that he once shared with Alexandra and Ani to the one bedroom apartment in the same complex before he was offered the job that required him to move out to California as a trainer/auditor at the corporate office of Gravity Music (a national retail store selling guitars, basses, drums, and more).  Gravity Music was by far his favorite place to work in his limited work history: starting his career in Tucson, Arizona; where he was born, and then relocating to the Phoenix location for a promotion before being offered the California gig two a half years after that. 

And now, during one of the worst economies in American history, he was moving to the second most expensive area of the country to live: Southern California.  Not only that, but he was making just a few dollars more than what he made in Phoenix, but it was a much needed change.  And with change, came opportunity.  And he wasn’t doing it alone.  He and a work friend, Cindy were embarking on a new chapter in their life, one that had them moving into a two bedroom apartment in California; neither of which had seen to that point.  A mission to leave all of the bad memories they had of Phoenix behind, and make new and hopefully better ones in their new life.

I thought about sleep for the first time since I left Phoenix.  Thought how wonderful it would be to lay in a sea of blankets, all cozy and just doze off for two months.  Two months because Cindy still had time left on her lease in Arizona, where I just simply transferred mine to the new place.  She somehow talked me into some kind of deal where I ended up paying a lot more.  Not sure how, but I’m going with it because; truth be told I don’t doubt we could end up dating.  I’ve always had a thing for Cindy, I’m not sure why but she’s certainly easy on the eyes.  We shall see.

Tom’s eyelids became heavy from fatigue.  There was only so much a human body could take before it throws in the towel, and Tom’s body had had enough.  He snapped his head back against the seat and fell asleep.

Fifteen minutes later…

A woman walks her dog down the sidewalk next to the UHaul truck, the dog lets out a sudden and unwarranted yelp that wakes Tom up.  He watches with bloodshot and narrowed eyes as the woman and the dog walk their way down the sidewalk further, not even taking into consideration their vastly disrespectful and tremendously unwanted wake up call. 

He was awake again, pulled into the riptide of uncertainty, the waves of leaving his old life in the past curling over his head before crashing down all over him.  The excitement diluted by the unknown filled into his ears first and down through the rest of his body, spraying a kick of adrenaline that reinvigorating him.  Though it was a nice feeling, he still had an hour and a half before the leasing office opened and there was no way to get his keys before then.  He wanted to go back to sleep—wanted to get more rest, but his boy was too awake to let him.  He climbed out of the truck and locked the door behind him, venturing out into what was his new neighborhood to kill time and to also survey all that could be found in walking distance surrounding him.

***

You don’t want to see the place first?  The leasing office woman asked while she scribbled something down on a piece of paper.

I mean, if you want to show it to me, you can.  But it doesn’t matter.  I’m already here.  He signed another page.  There’s no going back now.

She smiled at that.  Tom couldn’t help but search her face for some kind of hint of disgust on her face.  She was an attractive brunette, and her attractiveness was just enough to remind him of his lack of personal hygiene over the last couple of days.  But somehow, she seemed quite unaffected by it, instead, she went on with him through the whole process very professionally and friendly.  After the lease was signed, she took him across the complex to a first floor apartment.  The initial walk through was a breeze, Tom tried to pretend to be interested but in reality, all he was really looking forward to was that bed; the mattress he made sure to pack last for quick and easy access. 

She dismissed herself back to the office across the parking lot and Tom went back out to the street in front of the complex to grab the UHaul truck.  He put it in drive, and after a few forward and reverses in the middle of the road, he was able to turn the truck around and enter into the complex.  He backed it up nearly over a sidewalk that led to his new place.  He unlocked the lock and unlatched the door, slid it open and nearly fainted from joy.  He grabbed the mattress that caught his eye and carried it with him inside.  Tom slammed the mattress down in what would soon be his bedroom.  Before he could christen it with sleep, he sleep-walked his way back to the truck—locked it up and went back inside where he dove into the mattress and passed out. 

3

How may I help you?  Tom said into his headset—another day, another few dollars.  It was three months since he started his new job in California, Cindy was moved in and he was hitting every bump in the road when it came to the accounting part of his job, though he more than made up for it by excelling at helping people who called in over the phone to resolve their issues in the retail locations he represented.  

Hey, this is Elise from San Francisco.  Her voice was soft but squeaky; she sounded like she was smiling.

Hi Elise, what’s up?  He too was smiling.   His voice had risen an octave and it didn’t go unnoticed, another guy in his department, Ralph, stuck his head up and over the wall of the cubicle that separated them with a single eyebrow raised.

My boss is out on medical leave, and I don’t really know what to do here with this situation.  She admitted.  She went along to explain her issue and much to her surprise, Tom had a quick solution. 

Reviews for The One You'll Need

[bourbononwax · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was a wonderfully unique story that I couldn't stop reading. The ending wasn't what I was expecting, and that's a good thing. I recommend this one to anybody feeling lost or missing someone.