Steven Granger

-Yeah, we're all adults here (Meaning over 18 for the literally challenged.)

Anyone who has read some of my other stuff, has seen me refer to a town called 'Laurel.'

This is the story of Steven Granger, and how he came to earn his place among the occupants of Laurel.

I have tried to make this story standalone, and I think that I have succeeded for the most part. But it is still related to the other 'name' stories.

This story is magical (magic is used)

This story has sex, and partially describes sex with a trangender woman.

-Buckle up-

Being lost in a small town is different than being lost in a large city.

In a large city, when you ask somebody where to find a place, they just smirk at you and move on. When you are lost in a small town and you ask a person about a place, they will not only answer you, but will show you.

At a second brush 'lost' wasn't the word I would have used to describe myself, 'confused' was more like it. I was looking for a lawyer's office and I couldn't for the life of me figure out where it was. The instructions were 'right across from the courthouse.' The courthouse had four sides, which didn't help at all.

I was standing at the corner of 'West Street South' and 'South Street West.' It had to be some attempt to discourage tourism by the founding fathers of the Town of Upper Wilmer. Another fun fact about the state was that the town of Wilmer was actually two hundred miles north of Upper Wilmer.

I had ducked into a local shop, which happened to be a front for a machine shop located elsewhere. A bubbly blonde in a suit was talking to a man dressed in overalls, and they both stopped their chatting when I walked in.

"Excuse me? I'm sorry. I need to be at one-thirty West South Street at one-thirty," I said. "But this doesn't look like the office of a lawyer."

The man in the overalls snorted. "See you later, Lisa."

"I'll help you," Lisa said. "Come with me."

When we were outside the shop, she latched her arm through mine. "I'm not from around here, either," she admitted. "But you are looking for one-thirty South Street West."

"Is there a difference?" I asked.

"There is to the residents," Lisa replied. "If I hadn't been looking to buy machine parts from Edgar back there, I'd probably still be looking for his shop."

"Where are you from?"

"I'm from Wilmer," she replied, half-smile on her face.

"Really," I grunted.

"No, not really. I come from a little town in North Carolina called Laurel. Not like Laurel Hill, we're in the mountains," Lisa explained.

"I've never heard of it, and I'm from North Carolina."

"We're here." Lisa indicated the door in front of us. "I'll see you later, Steven Granger."

"I didn't tell you my name," I said.

"No, you didn't," Lisa said. "Mind the step."

The door came open with a low groan, because it was being a hundred year-old monster. There was a small grade inside the office, and I felt it under my shoes as I walked in. "I'm here to see Pauline Crowley," I announced to the receptionist.

"She's at the courthouse, she'll be back in a moment," the receptionist said.

A moment turned into fifteen minutes. It took Pauline all of three minutes to tell me that even though my father had died in Upper Wilmer, that any paperwork would have to be settled in Zane, a city sixty miles to the south and east.

Feeling dejected, I left the office and ran into Lisa outside. My spirits totally lifted when I saw her. "Hello, again."

"Hi," she leaned over and gave me a kiss. "I take it you got some bad news?"

"Yeah, I have to go to Zane to settle my dad's final affairs. I hate the city," I replied.

"What are you going to do now?" Lisa asked.

"I'm going to wait for my daughter and go get something to eat," I pulled my cell out and looked at the screen. It was just now fourteen hours plus thirty. Hope wouldn't be back from wherever she went until fifteen. "Maybe something to eat first."

"Great, I know just the place." Lisa latched onto my arm and started leading me around the square. We ended up at the front of a very fancy-looking hotel. "Their room service is to die for."

"R-r-room service?" I stuttered.

"Yes." Lisa gave a gentle tug and I let her lead me into the hotel and to the elevators.

I was in a stupor when she led me into her room. "What are you doing to me?"

"Well, I'm about to give you a choice. Come over here."

We went to an open space on the floor and she knelt down. I knelt in front of her. "What now?"

"I have a confession to make to you, Steven. I've felt your presence for about a year now. It's really unusual for witches to sense their other halves across great distances, so you must be special."

"Thanks?" Witch?

"Well, I didn't know exactly where you were, but your presence got clearer when I came to Upper Wilmer to pick up my machined parts. I have felt pieces of you: Your aunt, your cousins, and your father. Mostly their memories of you. The strongest memories were from your father."

"That doesn't sound right. My father..."

"He kept hoping that you would come, but nobody seemed to know how to get a hold of you."

"How do you know this?"

"I went to see him, your father. He was holding on to your memories despite the excruciating pain he was in. He couldn't speak because of the ventilator shoved into his throat. They had your father strapped down to the bed because he had tried pulling out the vent and feeding tubes earlier that day."

"Please don't...I already know this."

"Then feel it," Lisa reached out her hands and put them on the sides of my head. I felt pain and hunger and I couldn't breathe and pain. She let her hands down and looked into my eyes.

"What?"

"I gave you a taste of what your father had been feeling for days. He knew where you lived but couldn't share it with anybody because he couldn't speak and couldn't write. Ten-ninety Wolf Street, apartment six, Southstar, North Carolina."

"Are you here to exact some kind of revenge for me shunning him all these years?" I asked, tears rolling down my face.

"No, I wanted you to know why I helped him pass."

"You what?"

"I gave him the reassurance that you would be found and then he fell into his last sleep. As his soul eclipsed, I felt his thanks." Lisa reached out to me again. I felt just a wisp of happiness and an equal amount of regret.

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.

"Because I couldn't begin a relationship with you until I did. Rules. Now that I have, do you want to begin a relationship with me?"

"I don't even know you!"

"Remember what I said about other halves?" Lisa asked.

"Yeah."

"What movie did you think of right after I gave you those feelings?"

"Brainstorm," I said. "Some obscure movie..."

"You've been to the Wright Brothers memorial multiple times just so you could see what it looked like in real life. So have I."

"Interesting," I mused. "What do I think when I see your hair?"

"Jamie Dornan couldn't braid worth a shit," Lisa replied. "But you can."

"What else?"

Lisa blushed. "Let's keep the dirty thoughts to a minimum for right now."

"Why? Aren't we destined to be together?"

"I don't have my riding crop with me," Lisa stuck out her tongue. "What else? Walking, hiking, biking, sunrises? I know you like sunrises, Steven, you even have a sunrise app on your phone so you can see as many as you can."

She was good, almost too good to be true. I tried to think of my weirdest desire, and found it. Lisa stood up, shedding her suit jacket. She was wearing a white, sleeveless blouse, and you could see the black bra she had on underneath.

Lisa knelt before me, looking at the inside of her left arm. I tore my eyes away from her breasts to look at her arm. Tattooed there were eight symbols, and they were the same eight symbols I had tattooed on the inside of my right arm. Those symbols were the Stargate address for Atlantis, something that only a tremendous fan of the Stargate television series would do.

"I think I love you," I said.

"Just what I needed to hear. Let's eat."

"Huh?" I just couldn't understand her.

"Dessert later. I'm hungry."

Over a large salad, we traded barbs about our favorite TV series, and there were more than a few. When I teased her about being the perfect mate, she gave me a smile and said that I was hers.

"Am I, really?" I asked. "You've already admitted and shown me that you can read my mind, you could just be reacting to my thoughts."

"That is true," Lisa nodded. "What reason would I have for reading it in the first place? Maybe I really am interested in you."

"The last woman to say that..."

"I know. I can see that suspicion in your eyes."

"You're half my age," I scoffed.

"I'm going to tell you the truth. I am over eleven times your age," Lisa countered with a straight face. That's right, I am five hundred sixty years old."

"So if I cut your head off, you'll die?" I asked, half-kidding with my reference to the Highlander universe.

"Well, you'd have to get close enough to do that without me sensing your presence or intentions, but yes," Lisa nodded.

"What happens if you do sense me?"

"I zap the shit out of you, then you die. I'll die right after you in any case, I've never felt a soul so evenly matched to mine. Ever."

"That's both scary and humbling at the same time," I teased.

Lisa stood up and beckoned me over to the spot on the floor where we had been kneeling before. "Put up your hands."

I put up my hands and she mirrored me. Lightning passed between us, and the lights in the room dimmed.

"Are you doing that?"

"We are doing that, together. I wouldn't normally be able to affect anything outside my sphere of influence, which is ten meters or so. We're at two kilometers now, three. Ten kilometers, look, there is your daughter."

There was Hope, all right. She was making out with some kid in the Chain-Mart stock room. My anger at her caused me to pull away from Lisa.

"Holy fuck," I muttered. "Like mother, like daughter."

"Oh, she's married," Lisa whispered. "I'm sorry, Steven. I didn't sense that on you, I was more focused on what sexual positions you liked."

Lisa's admission made me laugh out loud. "Well, as you probably saw, I don't know all that many positions."

"All you have to do is say 'yes.'"

"Yes, Lisa."

Lisa asked me to drive her truck, a brand new Ford Explorer, to the Chain-Mart. The after-images of my connection to Lisa led me to a stockroom, where Hope was still making out with some kid, barely eighteen. "Hey, Hope."

Hope spun around so fast, she tripped over her own feet and almost fell. "Dad! What the hell?"

I looked over Hope's shoulder at the kid. "Could you excuse us?"

"Yo, man. You're not even supposed to be back here," he countered. "What are you, her dad?"

"You show promise toward getting into the one hundred IQ club," I scoffed. "Leave now or I'll let Hope's husband know about you. I'm sure he would enjoy breaking you in half."

He put his hands up in surrender. "Yo, man, s'all good."

I watched the kid back himself out the door and then turned my attention to Hope. "What were you thinking?"

"I just wanted something outside of the normal. The baby, Kevin, secretarial job."

"Those itches are supposed to be scratched before you get married! You're supposed to learn from my mistakes!"

"You can't compare my marriage to yours. It was your job..."

"My job put a roof over your heads and cars to drive and health insurance to keep you well. You lived better than most kids your age," I countered.

"You left mom alone!"

I put my hands over my ears. "I'm not having this conversation again. Let's go."

Hope followed me out of the stockroom and Lisa was waiting outside the door. She was stifling a smile and I knew why.

"Hope, this is Lisa May Frasier, of the Frasier Mills family. Lisa, this is my daughter Hope Roslyn Granger-Holmes."

"Pleased to meet you" Lisa said offering her hand.

"What are you doing with my dad?" Hope asked, refusing to shake Lisa's hand. "If you really are of the family Frasier, shouldn't you be hobnobbing with the bigwigs, not slumming around?"

"Manners, Hope," I growled.

Hope took Lisa's hand and gave a little curtsy. "Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Frasier."

"Miss Frasier," Lisa corrected. "As far as what I am doing with your dad, my intentions are not entirely honorable."

I gave a snort at Lisa's remark. "Lisa, will you follow us to Aunt Teresa's house? You'd like her."

"I'll ride with you," Lisa put her hand on my arm. "I call shotgun."

"What about your truck?" I asked, confused.

"You know how to drive it," Lisa said.

"Get a room," Hope panned.

On the streets of Upper Wilmer, I had noticed that the ass-end of the Explorer was heavy. When I got up to highway speed, I felt it more. "How much weight do you have back there?" I asked Lisa.

"300 kilograms," she answered.

"You don't believe in UPS?"

"I like to get around a little. No, not like that," Lisa slapped my knee. "Sometimes it's good to take a drive, you know?"

"Another thing we have in common," I admitted.

Hope, who had happily been sitting on our tail, suddenly picked up speed and went zooming past us. I fumbled for my phone, but Lisa pointed to the Bluetooth logo on her dash. I toggled the control on the wheel. "Call Hope."

"Calling," the computer voice said.

"What, Dad?" Hope snapped.

"Where are you going with my car?"

"I'll drop it off at your apartment. You can ride Miss Frasier home." The speakers clicked, telling me that Hope had dropped the call.

"Whatthefuck? I'm sorry, Lisa."

"Steven, I've been around a while. I can swear like a sailor in fifteen languages."

That got a chuckle. "Okay. I hope that she doesn't demolish my car, that's special to me."

"It'll be okay. Since I'm partially responsible for her bad mood, I'll get you a new one if she wrecks it."

"You're kidding me."

"No, I'm not," Lisa seemed to promise.

Aunt Teresa was delighted with Lisa's presence, having no problem calling my soon-to-be-ex the b-witch.

Lisa had went back to the Explorer and I was getting ready to join her when Aunt Teresa pulled me into a hug. She took my hands and pushed a piece of paper in them. "This is for you."

I opened the paper, it was a cashiers check for fifteen thousand dollars. "Auntie, I can't take this."

"You can and you will. That bitch screwed you out of your house, and I can help to get you a new one."

Auntie, what a foul mouth you have.

Lisa was arranging some bags in the back of the Explorer. They hadn't been there when we began the journey to Chain-Mart, but they were now. I didn't care, she probably had an assistant fetch them when we got to Aunt Teresa's house. She climbed into the passenger seat, kicking off her shoes. "Yes, my assistant brought my things to me. Uma is very efficient and is good at staying invisible if need be."

"Okay."

She reached behind my seat and brought out two bottles of cold water. "If we hurry, hit the seventy-five and we can be in Cincinnati by nightfall."

"Lisa, I have to go back to Southstar," I protested. "What's left of my life is there. My job..."

"Your ex-wife," Lisa prompted.

"My daughters," I countered.

"One of whom just took off in your car in a hissy fit and the other you haven't heard from in two years."

"Stop it," I felt a tear run down my face. "I have nowhere else to go."

"Come with me, then. You obviously took time off of work, what would they say if you needed another day or two?"

"Not much," I grumbled. "It's not like they can fire me for taking a little extra bereavement leave. Plus, they do need me."

Pull over here," Lisa indicated an empty parking lot. I complied, then turned toward her. "Yes?"

She put her hands on my face, locking eyes with me, the most beautiful green. "I can help ease your pain, but you must ask for my help. In return, I can help you. We have just met, Steven Granger, but I can honestly tell you I have never felt as close to anyone as I do to you right now."

"Okay. I want your help. But why me?"

"Why you? Steven, you will find that out later, but not too much later."

"Okay."

"I need you to trust me, completely. I'm not going to strap you down and eat little nibbles out of you, but I need your trust. It's okay to have doubts in the beginning, but once you see what I am doing, you'll understand." She pulled me into a kiss, fierce and full of fire. "That is just a taste."

"Cincinnati?"

"Turn left," Lisa smiled.

We were tooling down the seventy-five, and I had finally adjusted to the extra weight in the back. "Are we going to Laurel?" I asked.

"Yes, we are. Tell me about the house, Steven."

"What house?" I scoffed. Before I could say anything else, Lisa put her hand on mine, and that stayed me. I had agreed to trust her.

"Ten years ago, Taylor and I were looking to buy a bigger house for our steadily growing family. When we kept running into dead ends, I announced that I could build a house for half of what the people were trying to charge for theirs."

"Ambitious," she commented.

"It was. I put it together mostly by myself, except for the roofing."

*That was a labor of love," she squeezed my hand. "I can feel it."

"If you can read me so well..."

"Steven, I can only read your mind if the thoughts are close to the surface. To answer your lustful, animal thoughts, I'll wait until you are ready."

"Taylor helped a little in the beginning, then came back to help with the finishing work, drywall, painting, et cetera. But the guts, the heart of the house? That was all me. In fact, the house would be legally mine, as part of the equitable division of property, but it won't be mine to live in."

"It must be hard for you, being asked to let it go like that."

"Lisa, I have to let it go, I have no other choice. Taylor was given the land from her father, so even if I could get the court to agree to give me the house, I would have to move it."

"So buy her out," Lisa offered.

"The latest appraisal of the property is two hundred fifty thousand dollars. The worst thing is, ten percent of that house isn't even on her property, it's on her brother Lance's land."

"Say what?"

"Lance had told Taylor that we could use his land if he could hunt there a couple times a year. My house spans the property lines, and guess who is now complaining about the protrusion of the house onto his land?

"Lance," Lisa sighed.

.

"Enter Beverly. The driveway to my house is entirely on her property."

"There should be an access road," Lisa countered.

"Well, there is an access road to Taylor's property. But since it has become impassable due to fallen trees and a creek making itself bigger, I can't get to the house that way."

"So let me get this straight. You have a house, and you can get it in the divorce..." I nodded. "But if you want it, you've got to get it off the property."

"Yes."

"You could move it, if you really wanted to, but the roads to it are either impassable or someone else's."

"Ready for the rest?" I asked.

"Go ahead, she nodded.

"The house technically has no value to Taylor. She can give it to me, and she doesn't have to buy it from me, because it's on her land."

"Wow, that's..."

"...fucked up," I finished.

"So what happens to it if you leave it there?" Lisa asked.

"Taylor files for a deed to abandoned structures on her property. She gets it either way, scott free. Want to know the kicker?"

"It gets worse? Oh, it does."

"When I got toward the end of the project, I had to take a signature loan out for the finishing materials. I still have to pay that loan back or file bankruptcy."

"Did you sign the house away yet?" Lisa asked.