GUEST POST: Patience by Helena Stone
Meeting the Challenge – aka The Trouble our Friends get us into
Did you ever do anything that, in retrospect, was utterly foolish and possibly irresponsible? And if so, why did you do it? Was it a spur of the moment thing or did somebody else push your buttons?
Challenges and bets, can be both tempting and dangerous. Of course it is exciting to do something that’s outside the norm or even not entirely allowed, but on the other hand, there’s always the risk of being found out and having to face consequences if things don’t go according to plan. I know because I speak from experience.
I think I was only ten when my best friend challenged me to scale the roof of the local primary school in the hope that we’d find lost tennis balls there. The school had several levels and the lowest roof was fairly easy to reach, as was the second. The third and highest roof however, was two floors higher.
My best friend was both more adventurous and more athletic than me. She had to help me get up onto the lower roofs because on my own I wouldn’t have made it. Both of us were very disappointed when we didn’t find a single ball on those levels. “But”, my ever optimistic friend said, “we’ll just climb to the next roof. There’s bound to be lots of balls there.”
In theory this was a great idea. In practice however, there was no way I was climbing any higher. This school was one of those buildings made mostly of glass, which meant there was very little to hang on to while climbing. Never one to be denied, my friend scaled the glass wall and reached the top ceiling only to discover two things; there were no tennis balls to be found there either, and a police car was on its way to our location.
In retrospect everything would have been fine if she’d just stayed where she was. But youthful enthusiasm (or mindless optimism) took over and my friend tried to get back down to me as fast as she possibly could. About half way down she lost her grip and fell….
I don’t think I’ll ever forget those few seconds. I watched her in shocked horror as she came down and fell through the glass roof into what I knew to be the auditorium of the school. With tears streaming down my cheeks and sick with worry I shouted her name through the hole in the glass, not expecting an answer. When she responded I almost collapsed in relief.
By this time the police car had pulled up at the school. One of the policemen had to climb on the roof to lower me down to the ground, because I couldn’t make myself move after the shock I’d been through. I can’t remember how they got into the school, but the officers found my friend and put the two of us in the back of their car before driving us home. Needless to say both our parents were horrified when their daughters were delivered home by the police. Their anger and punishments didn’t bother me though. I was shocked when my friend, days later, told me that if only I’d jumped into the school after her, the police would never have found us. To this day I’m glad I wasn’t quite foolish enough to do something like that. Just because she was lucky enough to land in a large box filled with knitting projects didn’t mean I would have done so too.
The whole experience did teach me one very important life lesson; be careful before you agree to a bet or accept a challenge.
Let’s hope that Xander has more luck when he accepts the challenge set by his friend Eric in Patience.
Buy Link
Buy Patience from Pride Publishing
Blurb for Patience:
Patience is a virtue. But what if you wait too long?
While Xander Ekman’s dream of becoming a successful artist has come true, his love life has gone from bad to worse. Sick of the endless string of one-night stands, he accepts the challenge when his best friend, Erik, bets him that he can’t be celibate for a month. Now all he needs is a reminder to keep his distance in the heat of the moment.
Troy Moriarty doesn’t have time for love. He’s too busy trying to keep his recently opened tattoo parlor afloat. Besides, ever since the man who was supposed to be his business partner abandoned him to run the shop on his own, he has a hard time trusting others.
When Xander turns to Troy for a tattoo that will remind him to be patient, the attraction is instant. But faced with Xander’s month of celibacy, Troy’s trust issues, and a nemesis lurking in the background, their relationship may be doomed before it has a chance to begin.
Author Bio
Helena Stone can’t remember a life before words and reading. After growing up in a household where no holiday or festivity was complete without at least one new book, it’s hardly surprising she now owns more books than shelf space while her Kindle is about to explode.
The urge to write came as a surprise. The realisation that people might enjoy her words was a shock to say the least. Now that the writing bug has well and truly taken hold, Helena can no longer imagine not sharing the characters in her head and heart with the rest of the world.
Having left the hustle and bustle of Amsterdam for the peace and quiet of the Irish Country side she divides her time between reading, writing, long and often wet walks with the dog, her part-time job in a library, a grown-up daughter and her ever loving and patient husband.