Page 15 of The Sunday Brothers Novellas

CHAPTER ONE

PORTER

I was three tequila shots past my limit, otherwise I would have never considered confronting Dr. Hancock at his own home.

Or, okay, knowing me, maybe I would have, but I definitely wouldn’t have done it quite so… aggressively.

In my defense, though, my friends at the bar had made it sound like such a good idea.

“Doctor Hot-Cock needs to understand how he screwed you over, Porter,” Nolan said, nodding at his empty beer glass as if having a conversation with it rather than with the group of us who’d come straight from the Advanced Creative Non-Fiction critique group meeting we had every Thursday.

The after-session bar meet-up had become something of a tradition over the past couple of months, and since I was only taking one class this semester, I appreciated the social hour with my fellow students.

Otherwise, I’d be back in my apartment feeling sorry for myself for being a twenty-six-year-old sixth-year senior, and I sure as hell didn’t need more of that.

Toru waved their slender fingers in the air and sniffed.

“If that asshole had failed me the way he did you— having it out for you practically from the jump, forcing you to put your whole life on hold just so you could repeat this stupid class— mmmpfh . Honey. Best believe I would sit him down for a serious conversation about it.”

Now I was the one nodding. Remembering the injustices that had been dished out to me all last spring kindled a fire in my gut…

or possibly that was the tequila, too. “I had a 3.8 GPA until that class,” I confessed.

“And now it’s fucked. I was supposed to have embarked on my big career by now.

I should be in Boston or New York or… I dunno, London?

Doesn’t matter, really. The epic journey of my life has been… ” I burped delicately. “…derailed.”

Sean nudged me. “There is one silver lining. At least you get to work at the Hub for another semester.”

“Well… true.” I sighed. I loved my job at the Hannabury Youth Hub, and leaving to pursue a real job after graduation would be painful.

The one and only upside of fucking Dr. Hancock fucking ruining my fucking life was the fact I hadn’t had to say goodbye to the kids yet.

But… “The Hub doesn’t have enough money to give me more paid hours, so I’m mostly volunteering at this point,” I admitted.

“Volunteering,” I repeated, the word feeling so strange on my tongue that I couldn’t help giggling. “ Volunteeeeering .”

It occurred to me at this point that I might be getting just a tiny bit inebriated, so I forced myself to take a sip from the glass of ice water in front of me, which I’d ordered specifically so I wouldn’t get hammered that night.

Sadly, the water didn’t taste nearly as good as the salty tang of the tequila, so after that single sip— look at me, being responsible!

—I waved to our server for another round of shots.

Sean grabbed a potato skin off the nearly decimated platter on the table and took a big bite.

“Another bright spot,” he mumbled around a mouth of melty cheese, “is that old Professor Burton is the faculty member teaching Advanced Creative Non-Fiction this semester, and he seems to like you just fine. Because if you’d gotten stuck having you-know-who as a professor again…

” He wrinkled his nose in drunken concentration.

“What’s a word that means more-screwed-than-screwed? ”

Beck nearly snorted her tequila. “In Porter Sunday’s case, the word is Hancocked ,” she laughed.

I gave her a sour look.

“Eh. Disagree. Professor Burton’s ancient and bald, and he talks like a human white-noise machine,” Toru complained.

“Gotta say, even though Doctor Hot-Cock is a terrible human and we hates him, I’m a little jealous you got to take this class with him your first time around, Porter.

He’s young and passionate and scrumptious, and he was the faculty advisor for the Hannabury LGBT alliance.

Might’ve been worth getting screwed over if it meant getting to stare at him during lectures for a whole semester. Those eyes…”

I pictured my nemesis, the ruiner of all things good in my life, and…

I couldn’t disagree. Dr. Theodore Hancock, aka Doctor Hot-Cock, professor of English at Hannabury College, was God’s gift to humanity.

Or his body was anyway. His attitude could go to one of Dante’s infernal rings of damnation as far as I was concerned.

“Which circle of hell is violence?” I asked abruptly, but no one was listening.

“…and that ass ,” Toru continued, nearly drooling.

“God, and that dimple .” Beck flipped her long, blonde ponytail back and waved at her flushed face. “Jesus save me from staring at the dimple in my Shakespeare’s Sonnets class. Pretty sure Hot-Cock caught me doing it the other day. Can’t even say I’m sorry.”

“Wait, you’re taking his Shakespeare’s Sonnets class?” I demanded, blinking at her. “How did I not know this?”

“Um…” Beck shrugged a bit guiltily. “It never came up, I guess? But it’s been fine.

Great, actually. He’s really nice… and not just to look at.

He’s really engaging and charismatic, and he makes the subject matter accessible, so it’s super fun— ow !

” She jumped slightly in her chair and scowled at Nolan, who tilted his head pointedly in my direction.

Beck winced and gave me an apologetic look.

“Oh. Uh. I mean… I mean it’s super fun- ny that such a horrible person could seem so nice,” she concluded lamely.

I sighed down at my water glass. I couldn’t blame Becks for enjoying the class.

If anything, I was a little jealous. I’d never told anybody this because it was way too woo-woo and embarrassing to admit, but Dr. Hancock’s Shakespeare’s Sonnets class had actually changed my life… even though I’d never taken it.

I’d been hanging around in the corridor of the English building one afternoon sophomore year, impatiently scanning the flyers on the message board in the hallway while I waited for a friend, when a voice began to read Sonnet 116 aloud.

Now, I’d recognized the poem right away because I’d had to do an essay on it back in high school, and I’d hated every minute of it.

I’d thought it was overwrought and a little silly—I mean, love admits no flaws, when all humans are flawed and imperfect?

Pfft. Ridiculous, right?—which is not the sort of thing you’re allowed to say about Shakespeare, at least not if you don’t want Mrs. Titelbaum to give you a C- and a note to see her after school.

But as that deep, self-assured voice rumbled through the pin-drop silence of the lecture hall, I realized that no matter how many times I’d read it, I’d never truly understood the poem before.

Something about that voice made the words twine around my chest, urgent and right and unignorable.

I’d stood stock-still in the hallway outside the open door, heard the line “… That looks on tempests and is never shaken ,” and I’d… well…

I’d been Hancocked , without ever laying eyes on the man.

I’d been toying with the idea of an English major (to go along with my Nonprofit Management minor) before that day, but as a person from a tiny town who’d only made it to college thanks to a combo of scholarships, a hardworking (generous) brother, and my own steady employment since age sixteen, I’d sort of figured I should pick something more practical for career purposes.

Business marketing, maybe. Or supply-chain management.

But, shit , after hearing that recitation, I’d felt sucker punched.

Words were power . You could use them to make up worlds and suspend people in an alternate reality.

To hold an entire audience in the palm of your hand.

To teach them facts and hard truths. To change their minds. To make them feel things .

I’d gone to the student office that very day to declare an English major, and I’d never regretted it…

At least, not until last semester. And that was thanks to Dr. Hancock, too.

I shook my head to clear it of those stupid memories, but all that did was make my brain slosh precariously like the goldfish in a bag my nephew Aiden had once brought home from a fair.

“Dr. Hancock’s good at sonnets,” I admitted in a defeated voice, slumping further into my seat. “And he’s a good professor.” Except, inexplicably, with me .

Nolan scowled at me, almost managing to focus on my face.

“He’s also good at ruining lives, my man.

Stop getting distracted with the sonnet thing.

That’s what they want you to do. English professors lure us into this major with the rhyming couplets and the…

the… iambic pentameter. Next thing you know, they have us doing a biographical analysis of David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster and writing personal essays on ‘memory and place.’ It’s all the sonnets’ fault.

” He brandished a fist at the ceiling. “Fucking sonnets .”

“Fucking sonnets,” we all agreed before throwing back another shot.

Beck paused for a beat as the tequila burned on its way down. “Okay, so, like, what if you… what if you took back the sonnet , Porter?”

I squinted at her. “Took back… which sonnet?”

“The one you’re going to write!”

“Huh?” Either she was very drunk, or I was.

“ Listen ,” she insisted, leaning toward me with tequila-infused earnestness. “What if you wrote out your anger in an angry sonnet for Professor Hancock?”

“An angry sonnet,” Toru said, testing the idea on their tongue. “Hmmmm.”

“You mean like Sonnet 147? ‘ Black as hell and dark as night ’? That kind of thing?” I tilted my head, considering. “I have always enjoyed an angry sonnet.”

“Same,” Nolan said, nodding at the same empty beer glass in front of him. “Same! I mean, who doesn’t?”

Beck tapped a fingernail on a beer mat. “And what if you delivered that sonnet spoken word style to his face.”

I blinked. “To his face? But…”