Ramblings From This Chick: Feature and Giveaway: Freestyle Love by Marcus Lopes

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Feature and Giveaway: Freestyle Love by Marcus Lopes

When it comes to one-night stands, Malachi Bishop has “rules”. No pillow talk. No sleeping over. No planning a future hook-up. First names only. It’s just sex, not a prelude to love. But when Cole Malcolm, a smooth-talking management consultant, woos Malachi into bed, the rulebook is tossed out the window. The one-time fling leaves Cole reeling: Malachi is his first real shot at happiness, his “forever” man, and he’s determined to show Malachi just how good they could be together. But Malachi doesn’t believe in happily-ever-after, and dodges Cole’s play for his heart. After all, Malachi is still mourning the loss of Taylor Blanchard, whom he hoped to love forever. Then there’s Zach Brennan, a handsome twenty-five-year-old and student at the college where Malachi teaches. Falling for Zach could destroy everything he’s worked for, but Malachi can’t help himself.

Caught by love and in its betrayal, it’s a later affair with a beautiful stranger that changes Malachi’s life most dramatically. Now Malachi must confront his present and his past that bring into question the larger fantasies of home and his place in the world.

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As Cole Malcolm asked the server for his bill, Malachi Bishop was across town, alone in his condo, pouring himself a stiff drink. Malachi picked up the crystal tumbler and moved into the living room, standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows and watching as the dark storm clouds edged their way eastward, dulling the bright sky. His unit, located just below the penthouse level, offered a view of the west side of Claredon, including the college. And Malachi was right, as he had explained to Shane Martin, that on a clear day he could see to Chemong Lake.

Malachi sat down on the worn brown leather sofa and stared blankly at the TV. Am I unreal? Malachi lifted his glass to his mouth and held it there. Tuesdays, when he taught three of his four classes, left him drained. Today he was exhausted. Malachi’s day started off with the advanced writing workshop, and Zach Brennan had not shown up again. Malachi had taught the ninety-minute English literature course that started right after the lunch break pausing often, as if he were unable to weave together, and hold, a train of thought. One of his students asked if he was okay, to which he replied, “I’m fine,” with great defence, and then dismissed the class — forty minutes early. When all of the students had left the classroom, Malachi sat down at his desk and wrote out a notice cancelling the creative writing class he was to teach later that afternoon. He posted the notice to his classroom door and then made for home.

Beyond the usually long day of teaching, beyond the ordinariness of his life, Malachi was caught up in the paralyzing, awful, blackly saddening events of the day. In the aftermath of the day’s events, his perception of his life in Claredon had shifted, seen now as imaginary and formless, indeed a fabrication. There remained a contradiction because he knew that there was an inescapable realness to Claredon where he had, over the past five years, carved out a home. And in that realness there was Zach Brennan.

Marcus Lopés is originally from Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia. His writing has appeared in Canadian and international literary magazines. Freestyle Love is his first novel. A novelist, essayist, poet, painter and singer-songwriter, Lopés lives in Sherbrooke, Québec.

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