A Charm-ing Gift

Author's note: This is the story I hoped to expand into something capable of meeting the requirements of the romance contest. But, since I couldn't manage that, I am setting it free . . .

Josette will soon have to go back home, but she wants to have one more day of fun in the city first.

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Dear Readers,

I've written 50,000 words of this story. In doing so, I went back and rewrote it from the beginning.

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A week after the incident there were still repercussions popping up in the executive level of management at where I work. My immediate boss had written a memo and sent it to all of his fellow male executives. What was said in the memo you never say in public, much less put it in an email and send it out, even if it was only sent to a few fellow male employees. He addressed the coming secretaries day in his email, an unofficial event that our company had honored and participated in for several years.

A young New Yorker finds himself in over his head after finding a symbiote that changes him in unexpected ways.

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Chapter 8 The First Family
8

[At a Hotel in Wensleydale, mid-July]

“Good afternoon, can I help you?” said the man at the reception desk.

“Yes, I have a room booked for the night in the name of Michaels,” said Melissa.

“So… exactly how many high school fantasies are we fulfilling right now?” Paul asks as I tune my bass guitar, and I can’t help but smirk as I can already guess how the impending argument will go.

“Bit inappropriate to ask about MY high school fantasies, but I’ll let it slide,” Stuart replies, and I sense my opportunity to chip in.

“If it helps, Paul, I’m wondering the same thing,” I say, chuckling at the mock-offended look on my mentor’s face.

“…Okay, yes, every music student dreams of playing in a garage band in an actual garage,” Stuart concedes.

“Some members of the family, maybe, might be sad to see me go. But the family as a unit? As some sort of community?” I shook my head. “It’s like I’ve knocked over a beehive or something.”

Her dark eyes were thoughtful, weighing my words. “Maybe it needed to be knocked over.”

I would like to share one of the rabbit holes my mind goes down:

See, I was watching this documentary on the formation of the moon, and for some reason I started thinking "what if we had ended up with 2 moons, instead of 1?"

Now there is a bunch of physics that would be in play in this situation, but since I don't understand it, I am going to skip it, and just talk about the effect on humans (assuming we evolved on this alternate Earth).

©2025 SammyC

CHAPTER 83
The settling-in period went far too quickly, as did our boy’s enrolment in the International School. That second part was actually eased by my wife’s presentation of some old photos of the place, because it had actually been her former father-in-law’s school in the ‘East of Suez’ days.

I had to force myself away from worry, because the school were offering a minibus service for pupils, recognising how those needing an ‘international’ school were rather likely to be ‘international’ in their own right, and possibly rather busy. So we made his packed lunch each evening, left it with a cold drink in the fridge for him, and one of us walked him down to that familiar bus stop, as Maz and I worked swap shifts until we were sure he could handle coming home to an empty house.

He was a Big Boy, but always our baby.