The Long Road Ahead

By J.D. Fitzgerald

When your eyes meet, that's not love at first sight. It's when you can't bring yourself to look away, for you've captured the loving soul embodied through their eyes.

Fresh from his hometown of Lincoln, Ohio, and with a $10,000 scholarship under his belt, aspiring comic book artist Javon Norton attends his first year at Toronto State University. But there's one slight issue: The scholarship is...not quite ready. To prepare for the full grant, Javon must register for a scholarship program. While entering the doors of Mr. Harrison's art history class, someone catches his eye...

Photography student Mick Richardson can't resist his unquenchable thirst for adventure. To elevate his mind's eye, he applies for the $10,000 scholarship to Ohau, Hawaii. From the very beginning of his childhood, Mick's ultimate dream is to discover the hidden beauty of his birthplace, capturing the glistening waves of the faraway ocean, like a photo kept in his memory.

Coincidently, Javon and Mick are at the top of the scholarship list, matching them into a tie. To break it even, Mr. Harrison puts them up to task. In order to receive the $10,000 scholarship grant, they must each come up with an original project by the end of the week. As a friendly gesture, Mick invites Javon to a weekend getaway across central Canada to ease the tension between them. Javon is skeptical but seeing this as an offer he can't refuse, he accepts. 

What starts as a mild curiosity soon develops into something more...

Now Javon is caught in a friction: Embracing the tenderness of Mick's affections while holding on to what he worked so hard for.

Which begs the question: Is love more valuable than success?

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.D. Fitzgerald
• Release date: Jul 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223590231

J.D. Fitzgerald

ABOUT THE AUTHOR  J.D. Fitzgerald was born and raised in North Carolina. He has been writing short stories, novellas, and screenplays since the age of fifteen. He hosts a blog, https://thesto-riesofjdandivy.blogspot.com/, where he writes movie and tv reviews. His other hobbies in-clude interpretive dancing, researching astrology, and studying film and television history. Manhattan girls is his first novel in a series of books. He is currently working on the second novel which will come out later next year.

Book preview

The

Long Road

Ahead

By

J.D. Fitzgerald

Copyright © 2023 by J.D. Fitzgerald

All rights reserved.

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

Orchid Publishing, 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, scanned, or transmitted in any form, digital or printed, without the permission of the author.

Contents

Javon

Mick

Javon

When Two Souls Collide

What If

The Call to Adventure

Maybe?

All I Want Is To Feel This Way, The Evening Speaks, I Feel It Say

Possibly, Maybe

Love with A Proper Stranger

Javon

Breath in. Breath out.

Javon Norton stared out into the window, seeing the airport building from afar. He could feel his body shaking with nerves, his stomach turning in excitement. First of all, he had never been on a plane before. This would be his first experience of many.

Javon heard the bell on the intercom. Only twenty minutes until takeoff.

He needed to find something to clear his mind. His mom told him that a shot of vodka could calm his anxiety but Javon was far too young to be drinking. He was barely eighteen yet. But there was only one solution to even out his nervous knots. Javon reached to the side of his pocket to pull out a pencil and a notepad.

Whenever he sketched his drawings, he found it therapeutic. It was like getting lost in an uncharted wonderland, creating scenes from his mind on paper. Javon loved it. He loved it since he was a child. Furthermore, it kept him away from the reality he desperately wanted to escape.

Javon was born on the outskirts of Lincoln, Ohio. A desolate small town stuck in its old-fashioned ways. The dusty roads of the abandoned railroad tracks drifted into his memory. The busy streets of uptown filled with cafés, boutiques, candy stores, and antique shops. The AMC theater still going strong, playing their Saturday Afternoon Matinees. Javon delve into a deep reminisce as if the heavy clouds of the sky comforted into a world he knew so well. He was only five when he went to his first screening of Finding Nemo. Arriving at the AMC was like a treasure to behold and it reminded him of how his childhood wasn’t as bad as he thought it was. But the only takeaway was that he didn’t exactly fit in. Lincoln had a somewhat small population. There were very few black people. Not that race was the issue. Or was it? Javon could never tell. Lincoln had that distinction of keeping its mid-western hospitality yet deep down it was full of non-stop gossip. Yes, he did encounter some really rude white people, mainly girls from his school. But, nothing too extreme.

His parents were Millie and Joe. Millie was a former good-time girl who came from a Haitian background. She was a beautiful, pleasantly plump woman with light-brown skin and mid-length curly-coarse hair, usually straightened. As a teenager, she would hang out with her friends at Hank’s pool hall down on Cattawa avenue where the drinkers and smokers would crash at the local bars close by. That’s where Millie met Joe. She was seventeen while he was twenty going on twenty-one. This was around the time Joe started working at Clark Manufacturing, a factory plant that specializes in auto parts. Joe was tall, handsome, and dark-skinned with a bald head. He was muscular in his younger years with a promising football career but he dropped out soon afterward, taking odd jobs after school to support his family. Just like Millie, he came from a strong island background, his family having been deported from Jamaica since the late 80s. So as the oldest of four siblings, Joe had to make a lot of sacrifices.

Mille and Joe developed a mutual bond, learning about their family heritage and the hardships of building a better life. Soon after that, their relationship had grown deeper. Javon was conceived eight months later. While still pregnant, Millie enrolled at a community college, studying medical administration while Joe worked extra hours at Clark to save up for an apartment. For the next couple of years, they lived paycheck to paycheck, living in the slums of project housing. Eventually, their careers were on an upswing. Joe was promoted to supervisor at Clark while Millie finished college and got a job as a medical receptionist. And as the months of fall and winter rolled by, they were able to make a budget on their savings to purchase a mortgage. They moved into a two-story house painted blue, right near Montcleave avenue. It was a quiet suburban neighborhood with wide-open spaces and lush green meadows. Javon was four years old at the time and was happy to play in his own surroundings. The house he called home was miles and miles away now…

Javon, for the most part, had a pretty normal childhood, unlike most of the black kids who never quite had the same nuclear family structure that he was accustomed to. On top of that, he spoke very proper and had proper ways about him, aggravating the black kids from the broken homes. They never gave Javon a hard time but they sort of alienated him, usually whispering behind his back on certain occasions. Though, the white kids were no better. Some of them were nice. At least, Javon thought so. He was never sure what their intentions were when it came to befriending someone of a different race. At the back of his mind, the majority of these kids probably had a racist grandma or grandpa that rubbed off on them. This was a small town, after all. The white girls saw Javon more as a pet than a friend, this tag-along kid they like to parade around for their own amusement. The white boys didn’t care to give him any attention and would usually act standoffish around him. To be sure, Javon was this slightly effeminate boy with a quiet disposition, who kept to himself at lunch, occasionally drawing doodles on his sketch pad. He was never good at interaction and when he did interact, he would come off as socially awkward and say very few words.

In high school, things got a little better; still the same but better. Though, Javon was lucky enough to have a few friends along the way.

Kelly was one of those good friends. She was a statuesque beauty of bi-racial descent, having moved in at the Capetown Apartments, which was right around the corner of Montcleave. She had long shoulder-length raven hair with a side bang decorated in blue highlights, a punk, alternative style that made her stand out, and seductive almond-shaped brown eyes that made every boy fall into her whim. Kelly was known to have a wild streak. It was due to having strict parents who came from a military background. Her dad left the family when she was seven years old, prompting her mom to work various jobs to support her and her younger brother, Sam. Kelly’s mom tried to put restrictions and tried to have some level of authority to keep her line, but it never worked. Kelly was an unapologetic wild child and any punishment her mom placed on her made her even more rebellious.

Hanging out with Kelly was…an experience. There was never a dull moment and