Life's Curveballs Ch. 01

(*-*-*Author's Note: Just trying some new things from my usual work, this being more like a romance and on a modern-day setting. Anyway, no sex yet, just needed to lay on the setting and the story before moving onto the sex stuff later on.)

Looking back at it now, Elliot Sutton would have liked it very much if his life had been referred to as normal.

Ordinary.

Uneventful.

Normal, in this context, would have been comprised of a happy home made up by his hardworking father, Byron Sutton and his lovely mother Eliza, in the sleepy Pacific northwest town of Strathurst. Then ten-year-old Elliot Sutton couldn't want for more in his life, living with his family in a quiet little Oregon town in the middle of nowhere.

If only things had stayed that way.

Elliot was deemed by his peers as an unremarkable, not standing out from his peer nor wished to. He connected more with the people on tv than he did with the people beside him at school. Always, by some machination or other, has food on one hand while he'd watch from the benches other children play and simply be content at the nippy pacific wind flitting through the pine-filled mountains that lined the coastlines near his hometown.

His parents loved him very much. Never did a week go by where his father took him fishing or camping in the nearby woods and rivers. They'd share silence between them as they sat on the boat and would occasionally smile at one another. His mother would let him sit by her side as he watched her tend to her bonsai garden. His father would crack a joke that if he didn't chastise her every now and then, she'd fill their entire backyard with bonsai.

It was a happy home and Elliot never once gave a thought of what might the future hold. What would you expect from a ten-year old?

For the years to come, one memory was pinned on the front lobe of Elliot's mind. Once, his mother had asked what he wanted to do when he grew up. He thought for a moment before giving out his answer, shrugging as he did so: "finish school and graduate, I guess."

It was a typical reply and Elliot didn't know any better what to think of. It may seem boring but it was decent dream for a ten-year-old kid who only wanted to please his loving parents. His answer, was nonetheless, sincerely honest and his parents shared a wry smile at one another.

He didn't think much of what the future might hold. It was already known to him. He was certain of it. A thousand days went by and another thousand much like it would follow. Nothing was going to go wrong nor change. And that was all fine to him. He was, and truly is, an unremarkable young boy with a loving family.

But life, as Elliot would come to learn the hard way, likes to throw curveballs at times.

He remembered the day when everything changed. Down to the minute and mundane details that would forever be instilled in his mind. Stupid little things really. Ramiro McKnight was well into an inch of his finger picking his nose on the front seat to his left. Ruby Burton twirling the frayed ends of her hair while talking in hushed tones with her best friend Madeleine Walsh on the seat beside him. How Mr. Palmer droned with his low-baritone voice that somehow both hooked the attention of those that listened to his lesson and lulled those that did not.

Elliot bit at the ferrule of his pencil, eyes staring daggers at the new formula Mr. Palmer introduced on the board when a knock came on the door.

Elliot hadn't been looking. Nothing of import had ever concerned him. And the problem on the board was a far more pressing concern for the young boy at the time. It was such a headscratcher he thought about asking Ruby how to solve it but they weren't that close.

So, it was with some trepidation, some concern when his name was the one being called up. Mr. Palmer beckoned him to step up and Elliot consciously felt all eyes on him as he walked towards the front of the class. Mr. Palmer put a hand on his shoulder told him in hushed tones to go visit the principal's office.

"What was it for?" Elliot asked.

"Uhm...the principal would like to have word with you, son," Mr. Palmer added, his eyes unable to meet Elliot's gaze for a split second, as if hesitating. Elliot had never seen the look before on the towering mathematics teacher.

"Is something wrong?"

"Oh no, no. Nothing's wrong. Just.... just drop by for now," he reassured Elliot immediately.

Years later, Elliot did not blame Mr. Palmer for lying. What words were he supposed to choose? To let him know that Elliot's mother got into a car accident? How a galloping stag suddenly jumped in the middle of the road, making her swerve towards a tree?

Years since then, Mr. Palmer would confess to Elliot that it was one of the hardest things he had ever done as an educator, how to tell a ten-year old boy that his mother had died during class. They talked it over with ice cream and milkshake in the diner on 3^rd street among other things.

For Elliot, when he stepped through that door in the Principal's office with the hovering uniformed policeman, a cold vice settled on the deepest parts of his bowels. He twisted and folded his fingers stretching them out as the veins on his blood ran cold while the officers explained calmly and reassuringly what had happened.

It was...jarring.

One moment, she was there and the next.... gone. Perhaps the fact that she wouldn't be here tomorrow or the one after that and so on made it hurt so much. Almost cruelly, Elliot thought at the time, life went on for the both of Elliot and his father. The world wasn't as bright as it was once in Elliot's eyes. There was a loss in a spring of his step. Food didn't taste as good as it once was and the mountain winds that once Elliot loved so much just wasn't as good as it has been. If anything, it reminded Elliot of his mother.

No one wants to live the remainder of their lives in pain. And humans are extremely adaptable creatures when presented by a sudden change in their daily lives. Three years would pass and in that three years, Elliot's father worked his grief into his work. Elliot, the once quiet and content young boy, though still introverted, saw the world with a tint of dour grey. He didn't smile as he once had. Still, he diligently goes to school and kept on with his studies but their household didn't possess the same light as it had. Over time, the pain of his mother's death softened but still lingered in his chest.

The Suttons' lives rectified and settled into a new routine, a new normal. Elliot stopped pondering of what the future might hold, his heart still weighed by the past, chained by the memory of his mother.

And yet Elliot, now thirteen, had not learned the lesson. No, he would soon come to this conclusion many years from now, as a young adult. It would take many more instances in his life before this would be hammered in his head.

The lesson that life likes to throw curveballs.

The second of which, came in the form of Katherine Morgan and her two daughters, Kassidy and Kinley.