Read dissonance. (a Böhme novel) for Free Online Page B

now that I’m back home, my family means the world to me and that is enough. Whatever I have done in the past doesn’t matter. I’ve learned to focus on this day, right now. So I wasn’t going to try to answer that question.
    _______________
    I made it to my apartment before the Tonight Show finished. I based my evenings on the time that shows aired. The Late Late Show was now my usual bedtime.
    I didn’t watch the TV; it merely filled the background, reminding me life continues moving forward.
    I got a bowl of fruit and sat on my couch and mindlessly stared at the television. I needed to reel in my emotions. I am a reactionary person. I found myself always reacting to something and this evening it seems Blake fell to the blunt end of it.
    Guilt reared its horrible head for being a bitch to him earlier. I reacted without thinking.
    I pulled out my laptop and thought of a response to send to him. The least I could do was accept his friend request.
    After doing so I found myself sucked into the life of Blake.
    I spent several minutes reading about him and found that his birthday was this month. Our age difference was closer to nine years rather than ten and my anxiety eased slightly. That one year made a difference. I laughed at my own juvenile way of thinking.
    I clicked through his photos and saw many selfies in front of random inanimate objects. All of which looked sexual in nature. Instead of annoying me, it made me laugh. The farther I scrolled I found one album of older photos and each had him and another little boy in them.
    Blake stood about a head taller than the other boy. The other boy was thin compared to Blake and seemed to have the same expression on his face in every photo. Blake always laughed, but the other boy seemed standoffish in the photos. But in the occasional photo he laughed along with Blake. In those photos the two of them didn't pose, but Blake acted goofy as the other boy watched.
    The funniest photo had the two of them dressed as He-Man characters. Blake was He-Man and the little boy he referred to as Wynn in each photo was dressed as Skeletor. The costumes were homemade and the pants Blake wore looked as though he took the fur off a stuffed animal and tied it onto his shorts. He was something else.
    I smiled as I scanned through more recent photos. The photos in the album shifted to the high school years and Wynn eventually caught up to Blake in height the older they grew. I paused on a photo of the two of them singing. The caption under it read, “Mom making us sing songs from musicals… again.”
    It made the photo even funnier when I noted the fact that Wynn had tattoos and the contrast of singing musical numbers with his appearance was surreal and humorous. The two shared a deep connection in the photos that reminded me of my own brother and me.
    I closed my laptop and laid my head on the back of the couch and looked at my ceiling. I misjudged Blake. But, I couldn’t base everything about him on his online profile. After looking through it though, I became even more curious.
    I sighed as I resolved to the fact that I needed to apologize. Apologies were not things I was keen to give, but I’d do it.
    A knock sounded at my door that made me jump and I quietly walked to it and looked through the peep hole.
    “Auntie, it’s me. I know you’re up watching TV. You don’t work tomorrow.” Conall smiled down at me as he leaned on the doorframe.
    I unlocked the door and let him into my apartment.
    “What are you doing here?” I asked, stepping aside to let him enter.
    “Jess has to get up early, so I didn’t want to stay there,” he said as he took a seat on the couch. “What are you up to Aunt Breck?”
    “Just surfing the web and thinking,” I said as I sat next to him.
    He turned toward me with a snarky grin, “So what's that smiley guy's profile say about him?”
    I punched him in the shoulder on reflex. He resembled his father so much I regressed into a younger version of