Hanson, p.1
Hanson, page 1
HANSON
MEN OF BIRD’S EYE BOOK FOUR
KAT SAVAGE
CONTENTS
ALIEN BLUES
LITTLE POOR ME
BOOM CLAP
OVERKILL
MANIC
NONFICTION
FALLING DOWN
MIND OVER MATTER
IDK YOU YET
SHAKE THE ROOM
POINT OF NO RETURN
MANIFEST
ALMOST (SWEET MUSIC)
HATE ME
BURY ME FACE DOWN
10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU
IT WON’T KILL YA
KISS THE SKY
INTERLUDE
LOST IN THE MOMENT
DIRTY PAWS
KISS ME SLOWLY
SHE IS LOVE
DAMN REGRET
TWO BIRDS
HARD TO FORGET
TRULY MADLY DEEPLY
ALL EYES ON YOU
NO REASON
DANCE WITH MY DEMONS
ONLY LOVE CAN HURT LIKE THIS
INSANE
OH NO
FIND MY OWN WAY
Epilogue
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Also By Kat Savage
About the Author
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
* * *
Copyright © 2022 by Kat Savage All rights reserved.
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No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.
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www.thekatsavage.com
thekatsavage@gmail.com
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Cover Design by Kat Savage
Formatted by J.R. Rogue
For my mother, who I miss with each passing day.
For every mother who longs to break the chains of their mistakes,
who prays they won’t screw up their kids too badly in the process,
and to those still looking for the piece that makes their family whole.
Your Hanson is somewhere out there,
ready to step in and show you that not everyone leaves.
ALIEN BLUES
HANSON
It’s not that I don’t love my therapist—I do. I really and truly do. But I have an intense disdain for the way he taps his pen on the side of his notepad while he’s listening to me. If he wasn’t such a good goddamn listener, I’d have probably taken it and stabbed him in the neck with it by now. Just kidding. But I would’ve thrown it out the open window behind him for sure.
Instead, I rationalize to myself that perhaps the source of his awesome listening powers is rooted in the way he taps that damn pen, and therefore stopping the tapping would render him useless. And I’d rather not start all over again with someone else. I didn’t say my rationalizations were rational.
“Are you ready to talk about your father?” he asks.
Dr. Russell has been my therapist for two years. Every session, it’s the same. We reach a natural point in which he asks this same question. And then I give the same response.
“Maybe next time, doc,” I say.
“You’re going to have to open up about him one of these days,” he says.
“I know,” I say.
“Give me something,” he says. “One little thing.”
My mind travels back to my childhood in Brazil. All I see when my mind goes back that far is my mother crying. There’s also a lot of screaming. I try to go back further.
“His hands felt soft when he held mine despite all the times his knuckles were bloody,” I say.
Dr. Russell quickly scribbles something on his notepad, which halts the tapping but my comment has piqued his special interest. That’s probably the most I’ve told him about my father.
I talk about my mother all the time—her kindness, her intelligence, and the way she told me bedtime stories with character voices and props. Her pain. Her bruises at the hands of my father. How much I miss her. But my father? Salvador Juan Serrano is not a man I miss or care to talk about.
“Why were his knuckles usually bloody?” the doc asks.
I roll my neck. This chair is wildly uncomfortable. My fingertips grip the stiff armrests as I mull his question over.
“Maybe next time, doc,” I say.
What I like most about Dr. Russell is that when I say I’m done, he doesn’t push. So, he nods understandingly and begins to tap his pen again.
“You’re going to have to trust someone eventually, Hanson,” he says.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because you can’t carry all that darkness yourself,” he says. “Eventually you’ll need someone to help you carry it.”
Maybe he’s right. Then again, maybe not. I’ve been successfully carrying the burden of my father’s memory all my life and no one has helped me so far. Well, that’s not entirely true. My mother shielded me from it until she couldn’t anymore.
The doc and I shake hands and part ways at the end of my session, and I exit past his receptionist just like I do every Wednesday. We have a standing weekly appointment for ten in the morning. Luckily, my boss accommodates this. Hell, it was his idea to start therapy in the first place.
I’ll admit I don’t think I’ve made a lot of headway with Dr. Russell. The one thing he wants me to talk about is the one thing I avoid talking about like it’s the goddamn plague. Still, he presses me to think differently about many things. I dish about work, my nearly nonexistent dating life, and pour through fifty different scenarios for my future. He asks questions and lends perspective I don’t have.
I arrive at work at Bird’s Eye Tattoo Studio to find everyone in a bit of a panic. Will is running around, Drew is nowhere to be found, Hawk is running out the back door, and Jericho has a person in his chair but the needle isn’t going.
“What’s going on?” I ask, my general direction toward Will.
“Hawk’s mom fell and broke her hip!” Will yells back.
“Oh shit, is she okay?” I ask.
“I think she will be but Drew and Hawk are going to the hospital now, and then I don’t know. I have to call all of Hawk’s appointments and pick up Ava from school in two hours and I also have people coming in to interview for the two piercing positions,” she says.
She’s losing it. Hell, so am I, a little. But I’ll keep that on the inside for now. This also probably means that her boyfriend, Derek, is rushing to the hospital. Not only is Derek a doctor, and Will’s boyfriend, but he’s also Hawk’s brother. Honestly, it’s a lot to keep up with.
“Calm down,” I say. “Give me half the list of people you need to call. And I’ll pick up Ava from school and hang out with her upstairs until you’re all back. You should go to the hospital after the interviews to be there for everyone.”
Because my therapy appointments are on Wednesdays, I never book clients. I only take walk-ins for the rest of the day so I have plenty of time to help. Will has been in their lives since childhood so I know she will want to be there.
“Are you sure?” she asks, a look of desperation in her eyes.
“Of course,” I say. “That woman is more a mother to you than your mother. Go be there for her and Hawk and Derek.”
After she agrees with only a hint of reluctance, we head back to the office, where she splits the list with me. This is the one day Hawk was booked from open to close with lots of little tattoos but we manage to get through it without anyone yelling at us. You never know what you’re going to get with people, but almost everyone we’ve tattooed is chill as fuck.
“Okay, I’m going to contact the piercers and get them in here early if I can, then I’m taking off,” Will says. “Are you sure you can get Ava?”
“Yeah, of course,” I say. “I know Drew put all of us on her pick-up list back when she was pregnant with Knox so I’ll be fine. Wait, who’s got the baby?”
“He’s in daycare,” she says. “He can stay there a bit later and they’ll pick him up on the way home. Or if they need to be there longer, I will get him.”
“Cool, okay. Sounds like we have a vague plan,” I laugh.
I run back out to the front while she gets on the phone with the interviewees. Since no one is here to man the front counter, I take a seat on the stool there to answer the phone and look at the appointment calendar.
“Hey, man,” Jericho calls from his booth. “This is the only appointment I have today, so I’ll be fine when everyone leaves.”
“Okay, cool,” I say. “I’m not worried.”
I know he’s saying that because he’s only worked here a few months, but I trust him. I’ve known him for a long time and suggested him when a spot opened up. Avery, the guy he replaced, is one of my best friends. But he went and fell in love with a billionaire—no I’m not kidding—and is now running the second Bird’s Eye location down in Nashville. Sure, it’s only a couple of hours to drive from here in Louisville. And sure, Jericho is a cool guy. But I’ll be the first to admit I miss that dude—even if we text every day.
LITTLE POOR ME
THEA
I wonder how many times I will repeat to myself that it’s Wednesday, which means it’s closer to the weekend than not. I also wonder how many times this class is going to make me repeat the same steps to the same math problem that’s been written on the whiteboard for twenty m inutes.
“Miss James,” says Ethan. “Which place do you subtract again?”
By my count, that’s fifteen. Fifteen times I’ve explained various portions of the problem.
“Let’s just do it all together,” I say, finally succumbing to insanity and walking to the board.
I grab a marker and show the kids step by step so we can do it as a group. Once we’re done, it’s as if they all seem to totally understand. Sixth graders are so fracking frustrating.
“Now, everyone take out their homework logs and be sure to study for your test this Friday,” I say.
“Miss James?” Ava asks. “Will this problem be on the test?”
“Not this exact one, but several like it,” I say. “Study unit six in your textbook and you should do great.”
Ava isn’t a student I have to worry about. She has excellent grades in all her classes. My son, Ethan, on the other hand…well, let's just say it will be a miracle if I can get him through sixth-grade math.
Don’t get me wrong, my son is smart. He loves reading and writing and has excellent grades in history too. But math and science aren’t his strong suits and we work hard at home to make sure he learns what he needs to maintain decent grades.
Wednesday also means Ethan goes to his father’s for the night. Don’t get me wrong, I love my son, but the mid-week break is sometimes much needed. I often use my time without him to see friends or go on dates, and several other things I don’t do when he’s with me. For the record, he’s with me ninety-five percent of the time. Shane—my ex and baby daddy—isn’t exactly reliable. Despite having paperwork that clearly outlines visitation, he still misses a lot of his days. And honestly, some nights he’s with his father, I just drink a glass of wine and fall asleep on the couch at seven.
Not tonight, though. Tonight, I have a date. I’d stopped trying for a while but now I’m back on the saddle. Or back in the pond. Or ready to sew some oats. Whatever people say. Notice I didn’t say “wild oats”. My wild days are behind me. I had enough of that with Shane.
“Miss James,” a boy in the back named Theodore calls, snapping me back.
“Yes?” I ask.
“Will the problem we just went over be on the test?” he asks.
Lord help me. I redirect the class to begin their worksheets and sit at my desk to review my lesson plans for next week. Checking my phone, I notice a message from Shane, and two more from Clint, my date for tonight.
SHANE: I’ll be there at release.
Why he felt the need to tell me that is beyond me. That’s what time he’s supposed to be here anyway. The deal is he picks Ethan up from me at the school when it lets out.
I move on to the messages from Clint without answering Shane.
CLINT: We still on for six? Still good with Rizzo’s?
CLINT: Can’t wait to meet you
A little flutter travels through my chest as I feel the first wave of first date jitters.
I type back a reply, confirming and telling him the feeling is mutual before shoving my phone back in my desk drawer. Clint is exactly the kind of guy I need in my life. He’s stable and has an actual career even if it does sound dreadfully boring. I’m not even quite sure I understand it, but he seems to be passionate about it so who am I to judge? The point is, he’s nothing like my ex, who bounced from a dead-end job to “gig” work back to another dead-end job and once invested our rent money in a pyramid scheme.
I blame my falling for him on his singing voice. Because even though he used to chain smoke cigarettes, his voice melted me. I’m fairly certain he’s the male version of a siren, luring unknowing immature women to their demise one sweet note at a time. Between the voice, the grunge style clothes, and the tattoos, I was a twenty-three-year-old goner. Eleven years later, I would not and will not be making the same mistakes.
“Miss James?” Someone calls out and it takes me a full ten seconds to bring the class into focus.
“Sorry, guys, I was a little distracted,” I say. “Is everyone finished with their worksheet?”
“Are you okay?” A girl named Sara asks.
“I’m fine, yes,” I say.
All the kids are staring at me like I’ve grown a second head. Not that I blame them. Their teacher just went full-on robot in shutdown mode at her desk, getting lost in thoughts of her spotty youth.
Exactly four seconds later, the bell rings. I find myself quite literally saved by the bell.
BOOM CLAP
HANSON
There’s a homeless man who sits on the corner of the road near the shop. If you walk to Ava’s school from this direction, you pass him. His name is Anthony, though I’m probably the only one in a ten-mile radius who knows that. I drop a few dollars into his cup and he nods silently. Truth be told, I don’t use or carry cash for any reason other than to make sure I can give him a few bucks when I see him. We’ve spoken before, but not this time and not most times. It’s just a quiet understanding and moment of gratitude. On both our parts.
When I was a child in Brazil, my mother would take me into the heart of poor areas and we would pass out water and food. My father called her Mother Theresa like it was an insult, though I didn’t realize it at the time.
Approaching the school, I see a slew of cars lined up, parents eager and annoyed with the process of long lines like there’s some other way. It makes me feel glad to be on foot. I glide right up to the door where walking students will come out and see only two adults waiting there. Of course, they both make eyes at me like I’m a leper. The lady nearest to me even adjusts the strap of her purse, clutching it closer as if I might rob her.
Sometimes this world has a skewed perception of the person under the ink. Don’t worry, Karen, I don’t want your knock-off Michael Kors bag. Normally, in situations like this, I’d try to break the tension with a joke or some sort of relatable topic so they can see that I’m a real boy, but I’m not in the mood today.
The loudest chime in the world dings from a speaker right above my head, sending a wave of rage down my spine. I make a note never to stand in this particular spot ever again. As if perfectly choreographed, children begin pouring out from all the exits, some boarding buses, others climbing into cars, and several out of the door next to me who scatter in all walking directions.
Ava and a boy file out together, talking and laughing before she spots me.
“Hanson!” She comes running in my direction, the boy following just behind her.
“Olá, princesa,” I say. She’s never been a big fan of me calling her a princess, but it’s sort of a joke between us now. She’s forever the princess of Bird’s Eye and the matter is not open for debate.
“This is my friend, Ethan,” she says, pointing at the boy.
“Olá, Ethan,” I say.
“Whoa,” he says. “I like your accent.”
“Hanson is from Brazil,” Ava chimes in.
Ethan looks at me like an exotic animal. If he were an adult, it would be annoying, but the pure innocence of childhood curiosity causes me to lean into my character.
“Espero que você teve um bom dia,” I say, Ethan's eyes wide and fully captivated.
“That means he hopes we had a good day,” Ava says.
She’s been catching onto common words and frequent phrases and I say this to her every day when she gets to the shop. Of course, she’s not conversational yet, but we’ve got time. If I have anything to do with it, she’ll be bilingual before she hits college.
