Page 1 of Bliss: Part 1
One
BLISS
I’d fallen asleep in the basement again.
It was basically our hangout spot.
My brothers and cousins spent hours down here playing video games or watching movies, and I usually joined just to have something to do.
I never really cared about the games or the movies. I just liked being near them. They meant everything to me. All four of them.
My two older brothers, Tripp and Rhys, and my cousins, Ashby and Dash. They were all in their early twenties, between twenty-one and twenty-four. I was the youngest at eighteen.
The baby of the family.
The only girl left, as harsh as that sounded.
Mom died when I was two. Aunt Laureen, Ashby and Dash’s mom, passed away giving birth to Dash.
So yeah, that made me the only woman in the family.
And honestly? I liked it that way. I never really knew Mom or Aunt Laureen, so there wasn’t anything to really miss. I know it sounds cold, but I’m not heartless.
I loved my family. All of them.
Dad. Uncle Odin. The boys.
Loved them so much it sometimes felt like too much.
I stretched out on the couch and let out a yawn, sighing as the tension left my body. God, that felt good.
I looked around the room, not surprised by how clean they had left it. All four controllers they used last night were neatly placed on their charging station, and both remotes were placed side by side in the middle of the coffee table.
The blanket Dash had covered his legs with was folded perfectly.
They liked to be tidy.
Unfortunately for them, I wasn’t.
I left the blanket I had slept with on the couch, crumpled up, and ready for me to get back under once we came down here again tonight. I knew we would, because there wasn’t much else to do out here anyway. And we rarely left the house.
We lived on an old farm. We didn’t have animals or anything, but we owned quite a big piece of land. On it, there was this house, an old barn right down the gravel road, and a small lake near the edge of the forest.
We didn’t have direct neighbors, and the nearest town was a ten-minute drive away. We had our peace and quiet, and we loved it, and we only ever left to go to work.
Dad and Odin bought it when I was around ten, and when we moved in, we knew we’d never leave this place.
There was another place we liked to call home.
We owned a motorcycle repair shop calledThe Old.
We all worked there. Well, I’d officially start working there after the summer, because I just graduated high school, and wasn’t going to college. None of us went to college besides Dad and Odin. The guys and I didn’t see a point when all we wanted was to stay here forever, anyway.
We loved our family, lovedThe Old. So why leave and start a whole new life with people we probably wouldn’t even like? Some would say we took the easy road. Not caring about our education or future. But we simply chose happiness over a life filled with stress and uncertainty.
While all the others repaired bikes, I sat at the front desk and did the administrative work. I’ve been doing it for about three years now, and I was fucking good at it. I also took care of phone calls, emails, and other customer-related stuff, and customers loved me.
Odin often said I was the reason whyThe Oldwas one of the best repair shops in all of Montana. And I liked to think that’s true.
