Read Online Haywire by Justin R. Macumber - Free Book Online Page A

his backyard after a good watering. His stomach growled like an angry bear when he sat on the stool in front of the counter.
    His mother refilled her coffee and then sat on the stool on the other side of the counter. After blowing across the top of her mug she took a quick sip. “What are your plans for today?”
    Shawn grunted and shoveled half a fried egg into his mouth, the warm yolk thick and creamy on his tongue, then chased it with a slice of salty-sweet ham and washed it down with a swig of coffee. The combination of flavors was heavenly in his mouth. “The band has a big gig coming up, and we need to practice.”
    “ I see.” She coughed into her fist and settled into a straight-shouldered position.
    He recognized that as her ‘I need to talk to you about something serious’ posture and groaned silently.
    “ I hate that I have to go to the museum on your first day here and leave you on your own, but the arrival of the new acquisitions just couldn’t be put off. But, I would love it if you’d meet me for lunch.”
    She’d mentioned the acquisition delivery in an email the week before, so that wasn’t a surprise. Planning a lunch date, though, was. “Lunch? That’s the best time for me to get together with my band. We have to practice. Badly. I don’t really have time for lunch.”
    His mother lowered her head, and her upper body shrank in on itself like all the air had been taken out of her, but Shawn barely had time to feel bad before she looked back up and gave him a somber look. “Then make time. I normally wouldn’t ask you to take time away from your friends, but this is important.”
    The back of his neck grew hot, and he struggled to keep from kicking the wall beneath the counter. “Lunch is a meal, Mom. It’ll come around again tomorrow. Playing at Minerva’s Den might happen once in a lifetime.”
    He braced himself for her to dig her heels in, escalate her gaze from somber to stern, but instead she sighed after a few seconds and shrugged her shoulders.
    “ Fine. I wanted you to meet Alex today, but with that attitude perhaps it’s best you didn’t.”
    Shawn stopped moving, a forkful of egg hovering in front of his mouth. Before that moment he hadn’t realized just how much his mother’s feelings about her new boyfriend were more than she’d let on the night before. He still wanted to stay home and practice, but he was also curious, ready to see a side to her never open to him before.
    “ Really? That’s… Huh. No, I can put practice off until later. The guys will be pissed, but whatever. Do I… uh… need to meet you at the museum?”
    The lines around his mother’s eyes softened. “That would be good, yes. Come to the museum, and then we’ll go to this little Turkish place Alex likes to go to downtown. He’ll meet us there.” She looked away for a moment, her fingers playing with the handle of her cup. After a few seconds she took a deep breath and said, “In fact, you could come with me to pick up the new acquisitions if you’d like. These new items will make wonderful additions to our collection, and you could be one of the first to see them.”
    He shook his head quickly, his curiosity about her boyfriend withering away when her work entered the picture again. “Yeah, no thanks. I didn’t come all this way to look at dusty old Titan stuff.”
    She clicked her tongue at him again. “I really don’t know how you can find the Titans anything less than fascinating.”
    He shrugged and scarfed down another fully loaded fork of food. This was an old source of contention between then, and the last thing he wanted was to get into it over breakfast. “Do we have to do this, Mom? The Titans are your fascination, not mine. I have a hard enough time dealing with crap that happened yesterday. What that mad man and his crazy inventions did over a century ago doesn’t mean anything to anyone but you.”
    “ Don’t call Dr. Groesbeck a ‘mad man,’ “she replied, her tone