About Roger Chapter I

CHAPTER I

“Come Met All Off My Friends”

Roger was a good guy. For some people he was a little bit strange. But all in all he was a good guy. A good friend. A good brother. A good son. A good boyfriend.

But if you asked him he would say that he believed he was a lucky guy, lucky enough to get accepted in Seattle University and graduating with honors from English literature, he thought this degree would come in handy since he wanted to become a writer.

He knew that he had met his best friends out of mere luck 20 years ago in preschool, he was going to attend another preschool but since the headmaster had just cut the art program Roger’s mom, which was a professional artist, said that she will start experimenting with graffiti as an art before she let her children attend to a school that did not had a proper art program. So first day of preschool he met Greg, Charles and Rose, The Gang as Sarah called them when she became part of it 5 years ago when she moved in with her ill grandmother, Grandma Crystal neighbor and best friend of Grandma Lauren, Greg’s grandmother.

Greg was the prototype of the unconditional best friend, the kind of guy that would do and say anything for his friends; he was an only child that lived with his grandmother since his mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer when he was 12, so for him his friends were his family. He was the first friend Roger ever made the fact that they both wore Mariners t-shirts was enough for the two young boys to realize they would be very good friends. After graduation Greg moved in with Grandma Lauren, a place where everyone was always welcome to stay, eat, do laundry and get advice, and they all did from time to time, Grandma Lauren loved having all of them there, she used to be a nurse, so she knew and liked to take care of people.

Now Greg was a psychologist and had just opened his practice after quitting his job with Dr Samuel Weathers, a renowned psychologist and family counselor who had hired him to work and learn in his practice, but all Greg had done so far was nothing more than answering phones, schedule patients appointments and get Dr Weathers his salad, everyday for the last two and a half years , his grandmother was sure he was going to make a change in people because if Greg had something it was heart and advice from anyone who needed one, sadly after 6 months on his own he had only 3 patients, Mrs. Newly  a 50 year old divorce with trust issues who believed she would die alone since her kids no longer lived with her; Mr. Helms 45 not married, still living  with his mother and Sarah that really enjoyed spending time in Greg’s office, she liked the fish tank Greg had and Greg didn’t mind because he really liked Sarah, in the God-good-why-don’t-you-just-love-me-and-marry-me kind off way.

Rose and Charles were twins, and you could see they were related just at looking at them not as much as how they look alike but mostly at how they pick on each other.

The first time Roger saw Rose she was crying because she found her yellow crayon, her favorite, broken. Roger felt so bad for her he gave her him yellow crayon, since he didn’t really like the color, at that moment Rose decided she one day would marry Roger, but changed her mind 10 minutes later when she saw him and his new friend Greg made friends with his brother, whom was telling him not to mention to Rose he was the one that had accidentally broke her crayon, she knew that if Charles made friends with him then it was a matter of time until they became like him,  so she was ok with just being friends, and to her Greg looked kind of weird, but she was ok with it also.

Rose had always wanted to be a singer, so evidently she became a vet, she started appreciating animals because they did not complain about her singing, well not with words like her brother and friends did. Rose was a kind girl, charming, smart, clumsy, witty girl, she lived with her best friend and she was really proud of having a boyfriend that worked on a boat of Green Peace. She worked in the Seattle Heart Animal Veterinary Practice where she worked on any kind of animal that needed her assistance as long as neither they nor their owners bite or question her methods; she also did house calls, and she had come to learn that in those cases it could be because the animal was bigger, meaner or pregnant, and sometimes, and those were the hardest cases, all of the above.

For the first time Mrs. Doyle saw his son Charles she knew he was going to be a heart breaker, and she couldn’t have been more right. Charles, Carl, Charlie, or Carlstar, as he was often called, was what you would call a player. He was never seen alone and never with the same girl for more than 2 months. He had the style, the personality, the face and the job for being the best wing man either Roger or Greg could ask for. After graduation Charles and Greg became roommates and Charles got a job at a music studio, a year later Charles had been promoted from assistance to producer ad a year later he had signed more new artists than any other producers in such a short period of time, by that time he decided to move in to his own place downtown, a place that show more of his personality as a single, successful, rich and afraid of commitment just like he was. Him moving out did not generated a problem to him and Roger, because by that time he was ready to move I with his girlfriend, but more on that later.

Meanwhile Sarah was living in Ohio, she was the youngest of eleven brothers and sisters, and alongside her mother she used to visit her grandmother a lot, but it wasn’t until 5 years ago when Grandma Crystal got sick that she moved in with her and got a job in the Coffee-Book-Store-Shop where she met, named and became part of The Gang, 2 years later after Grandma Crystal passed and left Sarah a lot of money that she used to buy the store and changed the name of it to Crystal’s Coffee-Book-Store-Shop.  Grandma Crystal also left Sarah her house which instead of selling, like most people would have, she redecorated with the help of Rose whom was moving in with her. Sarah liked her Coffee-Book-Store-Shop, it was right next to Rose’s work and across the street of Greg’s practice, and since Roger was a writer he used to do most of his writing there.

Currently Sarah was single, she and Joe never really sat down to say “it’s over, thanks for all and good luck” because on the moment of the breakup Joe was a little busy with another girls legs wrapped around his neck, she was having a tough time with her breakup which she was working on by writing, meditation, going to base ball cages and since she was a member of the gun Club of Reaton in Seattle she also got her kicks out by spending time in the shooting ranges.

No matter how different all of them were, or what miss steps they had in their lives they always remained together, they were each other’s family; they were each other’s person, and for that Roger felt like the luckiest guy in the world.

He said his luck had helped him became chief editor of the university newspaper, and the get a job at the daily news just after graduating from college 3 years ago, and even do he wanted to be a novelist he liked the stories he was covering now and those stories had helped him write many poems and short stories, some that had actually been published in the cultural magazine that the newspaper owned, still he said it was just luck, but actually he was really talented. 

But most of all he believed he had hit the jackpot of luck the day he met Lucy, he met her in a coffee shop near the newspaper, he was waiting for his coffee, which was taking way to long, perhaps it was also the first day of the poor skinny little guy that was in charge of making the coffees that day, and right after his name was called his large mocha cappuccino was taken away from him by her, brunette, long hair, and a face of an angel that always knew how to get what she wanted, and she did, she got Roger’s coffee whit just a smile and giving saying her name was Sally and that she would buy him another one in another day but that she had to leave because she was already late. That was how Roger was late for his first day at work, where to his surprise he found out that Sally was actually Lucy and that she worked at the newspaper as a photographer.

Any other girl would have apologized and made some lame excuse, but not Lucy, still holding his coffee in her hands she walked to him and said “you can’t be a news reporter if you are going to let every charming quick girl take things from you”, and after that he was doomed, he was utterly in love with her. Too bad for him she already had a boyfriend, too good for him he was not a monogamous guy and they broke up just 2 weeks after Roger met her.

A year after he met Lucy he got the courage to ask her out, he wanted to do it before but Rose had recommended he waited at least a year before he was the rebound guy and after she was done being angry at everything whit a Y chromosome.

A year after they started living together, and now it had been a year since they had been living together and Roger thought life couldn’t be better for him. But really who has ever heard life is always easy and trouble free?

Every Monday for the last year Roger woke up at exact 5:45 am so he could get a glimpse of Lucy’s last 15 minutes of sleep before she woke up at 6 am, she never knew he did this. 

At exact 6:10 am Roger went out for a 40 minute run around the neighborhood. Even do he and Lucy had been living together for a year Roger still didn’t knew the area so well. Because Lucy’s apartment was bigger and Roger and Charles had given up their apartment the most reasonable thing to do when they decided to move in together it was for Roger to move into Lucy’s apartment.

The only thing Roger didn’t like there was Peanut the little, annoying-like-all-the-other-little-dogs terrier that Lucy had. Roger didn’t liked little dogs but he couldn’t have a regular size dog in an apartment, so for now he had to deal with Peanut. He had tried to get attached to him and take him out when he went running, but apparently Peanut had a problem with people that didn’t liked little dogs, and he wasn’t afraid to show it.

After running would come back with muffins and juice for breakfast, eat the other half of breakfast that Lucy had just made, take a shower and the two of them would be o their way to work at 7:30 am, so they wouldn’t be late and reprimand by Mrs. Belle the editor in chief of the daily news.