from the trash heap: cyrus & anna ch. 1
Welcome to April’s paid subscriber newsletter! I typically do one a month, and every cent from my beloved subscribers is donated to a different charity. This month your subscription is going to ACLU.
Hahahahhahahahaah I can’t believe I’m doing this. What’s there to lose?!
I asked my subscriber chat if they would be interested in a scrapped chapter from a flopped Cyrus romance and y’all said yes!
After I’d finished SUMMERTIME PUNCHLINE, I was extremely eager to expand the Evergreen universe. Almost immediately, I started working on what would have been a road trip romance between Del’s New York bestie Cyrus and an 86’d side character from SP named Anna. Anna originally was someone Del met after playing her set at The Billiards, but I took her out pretty early and kept her, conceptually, in my back pocket. There are a LOT of threads here that I ended up teasing out in 32 Days in May — a non-binary bestie, two friends working at a small business together, my general sense of humor lol, Anna’s bike, her being from PA but spending summers at the shore.
Anna was going to be veeeeery messy, making this a sort of peas-in-a-pod romance between her and Cyrus.
Anyway, it’s extremely basic and not good and you’ll why I ditched it almost immediately hahahah. Especially Cyrus. He’s literally just Del 2.0
Happy reading and happy friday! <3
Cyrus
I needed my rotted green Hyundai Sonata back like I needed a bullet in my head. Like I needed a permanent exit-only valve on my already-empty checking account. Like I needed that second cheesesteak I’d clocked last night after approximately fifteen PBRs and half a pack of cigarettes.
A disastrous burp ripped through me.
“Is that a yes?” Del was leaning across the bar, eyes twinkling like she was a goddamn wolf with an appetite for grannies. “You’ll drive Anna to Indiana?”
I pressed a balled up fist into the center of my chest, gulping back another bone-chilling gurgle from deep within me. “Remind me why I need to do you a favor in order to get my own car back?”
“It’s not a favor, Cyrus! It’s an arrangement. You need to get to Milwaukee. Anna needs to get to Indiana. You have a car. She doesn’t.”
A little less than a year ago I’d lent my best friend Del my car so she could make a covert escape from New York City after what was, in an objective and scientific sense, a real fucking shitty day. I didn’t have any precious feelings about my car; it was more of a pain in the ass than it was an asset and I spent more time than what could be considered normal for a thirty-year-old man feeling bad that I never drove it. But now my older brother was getting married in Milwaukee and I had more vacation days than dollars to spare. For once in my entire cursed life, I actually needed my car. That’s how I’d ended up in Evergreen, New Jersey.
The hangover was a totally different story.
“Indiana is a full-day detour, Del. I need to be in Wisconsin by June first. It’s not negotiable. I’m his best man.”
“She’s willing to pay for gas and food.”
I took a protracted sip of Pepto. “But can she manipulate time?”
“Ugh, come on!” Del reached across the bar and took my finger in her hand. “You’ve been so sad since Margot…”