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Radio
DJ Dylan
Morgan enjoys
small town life in Marietta. Unlike his longtime girlfriend and
globetrotting photojournalist Casey Michaels, he’s never been
tempted to spread his wings. Until an east coast job offer at a major
radio station catches his eye. He considers taking the position, but
then Casey calls… She’s coming home.
After
years of wandering the globe, Casey
Michaels is
tired and needs a break and while she didn’t plan on coming home
for good, the idea is starting to grow on her. All she wants to do is
spend time with her forever boyfriend, Dylan. But all she meets is
suspicion as everyone waits for her to pack up her suitcase once
again. To convince Dylan she’s home for good, she plans a grand
gesture–a photography show celebrating Marietta life. And then, the
phone rings. She’s needed in London…
Excerpt:
Chapter
One
Casey Michaels hated airports.
Once
upon a time she’d considered airports exciting, a place of magic to
transport her to places she’d only ever dreamed about. They were
the first stop on a new adventure, a journey on a road she’d never
traveled. These trips meant she was doing something with her life,
something more than just settling to be a girl in a small town where
the most excitement she could expect was working for the local
newspaper and covering the yearly rodeo or the Easter egg hunt in the
town park.
No
thanks. She was meant to do more, to be more than a small town
newspaper journalist. And she was. She now worked for Real Time
Magazine as their photo journalist as well as contract journalist for
a few online publications. Her photos and articles had won a few
awards, gained her some notoriety which helped to gain attention to
the issues she focused on in her travels.
It
used to be that instant she stepped into an airport her body buzzed
with excitement, the hairs on her arms would rise, and any sadness
she felt about leaving Dylan behind disappeared.
That
wasn't the case anymore.
She
didn't enjoy people watching while sipping her coffee.
She
didn't enjoy lugging her carry-on through security and having to
expose her life to strangers.
She
especially didn't enjoy the lengthy flights and monotonous food
offered on the flights, the cramped seats and smelly seat mates who
didn’t understand the use of deodorant.
As
much as she hated to admit it, that excitement she used to feel when
getting to leave for a new trip, it wasn’t there.
In
fact, the idea of another trip exhausted her.
Which
told her one thing. It was time to run home for a break. As much as
she didn’t want to settle in Marietta, it was still her safety net,
coming home to her family and to Dylan.
For
the umpteenth time since leaving Nepal, Casey searched her pockets
for her cell phone before remembering she'd lost it. The panic of not
having her phone was still there but quickly erased by a sense of
freedom. Without the phone no one could contact her. That meant no
repeated emails and text messages asking if she was okay, why did she
leave so quickly, when she was coming back and what about the
project.
Truth
be told, she ran away as fast as she could and wasn’t ready to look
back.
Coming
home, Casey had hoped the layer of fear, anxiety and panic that
threatened to bury her would go away. Wishful thinking apparently
because it was all right there, haunting her, taunting her.
One
wrong step, one wrong word, one wrong look and she’d fall apart,
splinting into tiny little pieces.
She
was a wreck.
She
knew it.
Casey
breathed in deep and let the fact she was home seep in.
Coming
home meant she could heal. She couldn’t fix all the mistakes she’d
made but she could try.
She
wasn’t sure how though. The woman she’d been the last time she’d
been home had disappeared.
Casey
Michaels had become the one thing she had always hated.
She
was weak. Broken. Damaged.
While
she waited for her luggage to arrive, Casey searched the waiting area
for an available phone. She needed to call her dad to let him know
she’d arrived.
She
held her breath as the phone rang.
“Hello?”
Tears
welled up in Casey's eyes as her father's voice came over the line.
"Dad?
It's me I'm here. I'm home."
"Casey,
love finally. Your mother and I've been sick with worry. Your flight
landed hours ago in New York. You're okay, right? Anything you need?"
Casey
took a minute to push back the tidal wave of tears.
“Actually,
Dad, I’m here. Home.” She cleared her throat. “I lost my cell
phone somewhere in the Kathmandu airport, I think. Or on the plane.
I'm not sure.”
“You
lost your phone? It’s password protected right? Dylan talked about
keeping your information safe when it comes to phones last week on
the radio. Have you contacted the phone company yet? They need to
track it or kill it. Wait, your mother has the information here
somewhere, why don’t we call for you?”
And
this was one of the many reasons she knew coming home had been the
right decision.
“Yes,
there’s a password on it and I’ll take care of it, don’t worry.
But thank you.”
“I
just don’t want someone taking your identity, that’s all. You
need to be careful.”
“I
know.” It didn’t matter she was a grown woman who travelled the
world for her career, in her father’s eyes, she was still that
little girl who was afraid of the dark and spiders.
“So
where are you?”
“Here.
My flight just landed and I’m waiting for my luggage.”
“You're
here? Honey, she's home.” Her father yelled out to her mother.
Casey
had to fight back a sob as she heard her mothers squeal of
excitement.
“My
baby’s home?” She heard in the background.
“She's
home love. Our baby is home. Casey, you sit tight and I'll be right
back. Talk to your mother while I get the air running in the car. She
won’t go anywhere lately unless the inside of the car is cooled
down first. Hope you’re ready for the weather, we’re in the
middle of a heat wave.“
Casey
chuckled. Obviously her father forgot she’d spent months in Nepal
recently. If you wanted heat, you’d for sure find it there.
“Don’t
you be leaving me behind, you hear?” Casey's mom chided her father.
Casey
chuckled as she listened to her parents bicker in the background.
"I
miss you mom,” Casey said, the realization hitting her hard. She’d
missed her parents, her family, more than she’d realized.
“Oh
honey, I miss you too. I’m so glad you’ve come home. You know
your room is ready for however long you need it.”
By
now tears were coursing down Casey's cheeks. The sound of her mothers
voice broke what little strength Casey held onto and she turned so no
one could see her cry.
“I'm
glad I'm home too.”
“Was
Jordan okay with you leaving? Did he understand?” Her mom asked.
Casey
snorted. Did Jordan understand? That was a bit of an understatement.
More like confused, angry, troubled by her decision to leave.
He
felt betrayed. She didn’t blame him, but didn’t agree with him
either.
“Jordan
expects me back in a few weeks. He thinks all I need is a little bit
of home cooking, a little bit of Dylan and a whole lot of Marietta
before I come running back.”
A
few weeks wasn’t going to do it this time though. It’d been a
while since she actually took some time off, maybe now she would. At
least a month before she left again.
But
even then, the idea of leaving in a month was too much for her to
handle. She hated feeling like this.
“Well,
that man obviously doesn't know you very well, does he? As if a
little bit of Dylan was all you needed.”
Casey
appreciated her mother coming to her defence.
“Jordan
is only focused on the project. It's his life. I get that.”
Their
project was about the paper orphans of Nepal, rescuing children sold
as orphans or slaves. She’d met him years ago on another project
she’d been hired to cover in southeast Asia.
Casey
was a photojournalist, a visual storyteller through the lens of her
camera and her favorite subjects were families. Children, parents,
grandparents. She loved to tell the stories of the untold but over
the years, those stories had started to weigh on her heavily. She was
finding it more and more difficult to walk away from one project to
another and Nepal…Nepal broke her heart.
Literally.
“No,
of course it's not, especially after…well, we won’t talk about
that right this moment. I'm just glad that you're home. Your father
is honking the horn so you sit tight and we’ll be there as fast as
we can.”
Casey
returned to the carousel just as it started to move. She watched as
case after case slid down the conveyor belt and person after person
retrieved their bags. She prayed to God that her luggage was here and
not stuck in New York or god forbid, Kathmandu.
Her
life was in that luggage.
One
suitcase. One equipment case. One carry-on and her purse. For the
past 10 year that's all she owned.
She’d
often find things along her travels that she fell in love with and
would figure out a way to ship it home. Her mom once complained that
they had to move all her boxes down into the basement because there
wasn’t any room left in her bedroom. The last time she’d come
home for a brief visit, her mother hadn’t been kidding. Her shipped
items literally took up the majority of her parents’ attic.
One
day all of this would fill her house. Lamps, light fixtures, wall
hangings, precious limited edition books she’d found in off the
beat bookshops, paintings from artists no one had heard of but that
she fell in love with immediately and gifts from various families
she’d photographed.
There
were also quite a lot of things for Dylan. Gifts meant for his
birthday and for Christmas and for just-because day’s to let him
know she missed him.
Which
reminded her.
Today
was the perfect day to come home.
She
grabbed a cart for her luggage after it finally arrived and sat down
on a bench by the front door. She would have preferred to sit
outside, soaking up the sun, but the radio was playing and she waited
for Dylan to start speaking.
It’d
been so long since they last spoke. She played his last voice message
over and over during the long evenings when the loneliness hit the
hardest.
She’d
never loved another man like she loved Dylan.
He
was her soul mate. Her best friend. The one person she knew would
always be there.
They
lived such different lives however, that it never seemed right for
them to take their relationship to the next level. He wasn’t much
of a traveler and needed to stay close to Marietta for Josie. She
couldn’t imagine not traveling the world and the idea of being tied
to one place for the rest of her life was a chokehold on her soul.
One
day that would change and when it did, then it would be time for
them. She’d often been accused of being selfish, of taking Dylan
and their relationship for granted but she didn’t care what others
thought or felt. All that mattered was that this worked for the two
of them right now.
It
wouldn’t be like this forever, they both knew that. They also both
knew that when it no longer worked, they would sit down and talk
about what that meant. She couldn’t imagine never having him in her
life.
She
was the lucky one. She knew that. To have the man she loved wait for
her at home…he was one of a kind.
She
was really looking forward to seeing him, to being in his arms again,
to sit out on the back porch of his and say absolutely nothing while
saying everything at the same time.
She
couldn’t wait to surprise Dylan and tell him she was home. Maybe
just seeing him, being in those arms of his would be all she needed
to heal her broken heart.
Maybe.
