The October air always felt different on Gavin Sheets’ skin. The chill that comes along with truncated days, and the way nature seems to surge with life; one last gasp before the cold, dark hands of winter take hold.
“You were born for this time of year,” his father would recite like an incantation, like clockwork as the weather began to falter.
Gavin had been imagining this day for as long as he could remember. He would play all the possible variations on a loop in his mind; the feeling of achieving everything you had ever hoped and strived for.