#oblishwick

“This will be my first Christmas away from my family,” Cory sighed.

“Olive Oil Broomstick.” Ash clapped her hands together as she sat down across the table from her school friend. It had been...months since she’d seen Oli. It was before Alex and...a part of her felt bad. But she knew he needed his space, and she wouldn’t help much with his grief. “You feeling any better? You kinda disappeared to...wherever.”

“To freedom!” Alex raised his bottle in a toast, the Maine coast in the background. “To never dealing with professors again.”

Kai had always hated doing this. Telling people that someone died...it was just too harsh. He had Hanai and Amoka with him, the two dogs being the most affectionate. With a heavy hand, Kai knocked on the old wood door of the Maine home. He waited for a minute before the door was yanked open by a disheveled looking young man. “Are you Oliver Blishwick?”

“I don’t know about you, but I could use a break.”

Ash was sitting in the Bearclaw, looking through some paperwork and punching numbers into the calculator. She wasn’t exactly bored, nor did she want to spend time out in the dining room, but she’d said something to the blonde one and made her cry, and Ash didn’t feel like dealing with that. Not today. The bell on the door rang and Ashlyn looked up, a smile crossing her features when she saw who it was. “Oli, hey.” Ash stood up from the booth she was sitting in, waving him over. He looked...different. His hair was messier, face unshaven, dark circles under his eyes... “Dude, what’s wrong? Jackson didn’t break your back again, did he?”

Ash hardly registered faces as she pushed through the crowd. She turned a corner, and immediately ran into a solid human wall. A script of degrading insults was lined up, but fell to a stop when she recognized the aforementioned wall. “Well color me surprised. What’s Oliver Blishwick doing in this part of the country?” 

“Happy Birthday! It is today, isn’t it?”