Please log in to recommend or discuss...
It wasn’t so much that her piece-of-shit car was stalled out again, or that it gave its last death rattle in the middle of the busy intersection. It wasn’t that it was snowing heavily with twenty-mile-an-hour winds gusting up the back of her shirt because she’d given her coat to a forgetful daughter before school. It wasn’t the blinding white and freezing cold while she tried pushing the car out of the way. It wasn’t the muffled honks and flashing headlights from impatient drivers behind her. It wasn’t that her socks were wet or that she’d finalized her divorce the week before. It wasn’t that she couldn’t afford repairs, and certainly not a new car. It wasn’t that her next book was two weeks overdue, or that she had no ideas for how to begin it. It wasn’t the million and one reasons that would justify her just laying down in the middle of the road and trusting that the conditions and college-student drivers would take care of her misery.
It was that she was tired.
Tired of doing it alone. Tired of slogging through the muck of life, while trying to paint beautiful landscapes on the page for other people to daydream about.
“Jesus Christ,” she grunted as her boot slipped and she fell to her knee in the dirty slush, “a little help?” She looked skyward and gave the car a useless and final shove before falling to her ass in the cold and wet street. Flinging two unapologetic fingers up at the sky she shouted, “You’re an asshole!”
“Uh—ma’am?”
Laney looked past her wet hair, now plastered to her face, to the young officer standing beside the car door.
“What seems to be the problem, officer? Was I speeding?” she said morosely.
Then—as the icy slush melted into her shirt and through to her skin, she laughed wholeheartedly, unable to contain the crying hoots that wracked her body. The officer offered her his hand.
“You really shouldn’t talk to God that way.” He cleared his throat.
“Ah, young man, God and I have a special kind of relationship. She knows I’m a disastrous example and I know she’s a cosmically heinous bitch. It’s a mutual distrust kind of thing.” She groaned as she got to her feet.
“Uh,” the officer stammered as snow fell into his confused face.
“Never mind. Let’s see if we can get this piece of sh—” The officer cleared his throat, and Laney scowled. “Metal off the road.”
Just a typical glamorous start to another glamorous day in the life of a divorced and bitter, soon-to-be-washed-up romance novelist, Laney thought as she waited beside the road for a tow truck and dialed Marc, her best and nearest friend.
“I don’t want to hear any ‘I told you so’s,” she said.
“Fine, because I’m your friend, I won’t. But, because I’m also a bitch who tells it like it is, you should have gotten rid of that piece of crap car three years ago.”
“Right? While I was
still married and I could have infidelity-guilted him into a fancy little sports car—oh wait. That’s right, he had already spent most of our money on her by that time.”
“I’ll come get you,” Marc sighed. “Which intersection?”
“Uh, Grand and Fifteenth.”
“My word, Laney! How are you still alive?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been trying for weeks. Nothing’s working.” Marc rolled his eyes so hard Laney could see it from across town.
“I’ll be there in five. Do you need anything else?”
“Dry underwear?”
“I’m not even gonna ask,” he sighed.
“Thanks, Marc.” Laney leaned into the phone with delicate humility.
“No problem, funny face, I’ll see you soon,” he said and hung up.
Laney waited and thought about school getting out in a week. She thought of her ex, David, taking her kids to France with his new girlfriend over the holidays. She could have kept them from going, just to spite him, but she didn’t want to hurt her kids by taking away their opportunity to see the world beyond the square borders of their state. She didn’t know what she’d do with herself for a month without them. She could go back home to Sweet Valley. Be with her family, hang out in the small downtown and ache for a better cup of coffee. Wallow in misery and drag down the rest of her family in the process. She thought of her sisters’ newfound happiness. Elle, who’d suffered an abusive marriage and escaped to come home and find herself and her strength again. Katelyn, who’d fallen
in love last summer with a man in need of a new start himself. They were all still glowing with the light of new love. Laney’s stomach turned. She couldn’t imagine being happy for them, presently.
“Be an asshole to yourself, but don’t be an asshole to the few people left who love you,” she grumbled and resolved to stay in Laramie, in her small apartment, and finish her damn book. At least maybe then she could afford the payment on a new car. Marc pulled up, in the middle of her resolution, and she smiled at him before making a gun with her finger. She pointed it at the car, pulled the trigger and then pointed her finger at her own temple.
“Don’t be dramatic, nobody makes a death pact with an Isuzu. Get in,” he said as he opened her door. Laney nodded in agreement and slid into the seat. Marc had had the foresight to put a towel down.
“Lord, Pigpen, what the actual fuck happened to you?” Marc asked.
“Darling, it’s been a rough day.”
“Daaaarling,” he corrected, “it’s been a rough year.”
“Or ten.”
“You need a break, Laney. A bonafide vacation.”
“Uh, okay? Shall I just, camp out in front of the Loaf ‘N Jug for a month? Because that’s about where the budget stands.”
“Let me consider our options. You just sit back and relax. And by sit back I mean try not to touch anything.”
“Okay.” She scowled and folded her arms across her chest as they rambled to her small apartment, close to campus.
The statuesque woman came straight off the beach. The glistening, crystalline sand still speckled her blonde locks and the Caribbean breezes tousled them into golden waves around her face.
Luke had been away for most of the season. He spent summers racing in the French Riviera, and wintered in the islands. The patrons of his favorite beach-side club were ever-changing. But she shone, brilliant and angelic, among them in the early evening light. The wispy linen wrap dipped low to reveal the Brazilian bikini and a hard, young body beneath. His fingers trailed down the glass of beer sweating in the heat. His eyes drank her in as she strode up to the bar, woven satchel in one hand and sunglasses in the other. He had to meet her. He couldn’t not…Why not…why did he have to meet her? Because of her stupid hot body? Or her obviously stunning personality… because he needs another object to own? …
“Shit.” Laney tore the page out, crumpled it ferociously, and sent it across the room into the pile of its fallen brethren. The unforgiving pad of paper sat, wordless again, angry pointed lines, and empty… so empty. Her brain was a massive jumble of words and thoughts that wouldn’t fall into place. She let out a frustrated growl and pulled at her dark blonde hair. Dirty dishwater blonde, they called it. Not stunning platinum or honey gold.
Dirty. Dishwater. Everything about Laney was a shade plainer than the rest of the world, especially the worlds she built on the page. She closed her eyes and thought about the book she’d already gotten an advance on, and how it faltered at every step. When she tried to pep talk herself, it only got worse.
“This is bullshit. Hard young body? Who the hell has that? And what in the hell do I know about the French Riviera? What in the hell do I know about any of it anymore?” She spun in angry half arcs in the old office chair as she looked out of the window.
Snow had started. Fresh white stuff to cover the graying brown and speckled layer. The wind blew it around, dry as sand and pelting. Eight weeks into the heart of winter in southern Wyoming felt like six months. She sat dazed, her brain fogged over with the numbness of a life half-lived. She tried to picture a different world. A brighter, more romantic place, with brighter, more romantic people, b
t the same picture she’d been staring at, day after day, remained. She couldn’t escape into her mind, because it had become just as barren as the landscape outside.
She only had an hour until her last class of the semester. She looked back down to the page and tried to refocus. But the truth was staring at her undeniably in those blank lines.
She had nowhere to go.
She was dead-ended in her life and in her writing. With only three books out and the deadline at her door for a new series, she was floundering, empty, and lost. The everyday stresses of being a single mom and working two jobs to make ends meet while her family back home struggled, keeping up with a ranch that was in peril every season from being bought out by encroaching conglomerate ranches, had worn her to the bone.
Laney sighed and knocked her forehead against the desk.
“Cursing at your imaginary friends and committing self-harm? What are you? One of those after-school specials on mental illness?” Marc’s voice broke through the stillness. Laney kept her head down on the desk in pathetic surrender.
“Yes,” she sighed. “I’m the poster child for ‘don’t let this happen to you, get a good engineering job’.” Her mumbled words drew the large, goateed man inside with what she could only guess was an eye-rolling head shake.
“Girl, you’re going to knock yourself unconscious.”
“I’m all right with that,” she mumbled into the worn wood.
“Laney!” Marc yelled, and she sat up and looked at him like a child in the throes of a tantrum.
“What?” she grouched.
“About that vacation we were discussing—”
“Even if I had the money, honey, I don’t have time. The deadline is in four weeks. And plus, where would I go? The mountain and interstate are both snowed out. One sister is building up her therapy business, one is busy making biscuits for half the Rocky Mountain region. Plus, and this is the truth of the matter, there’s no place I can go where I’ll actually be a better writer.” She barely breathed as she continued. “Marc, my friend, you are witnessing the death throes of my short-lived career. I’ve no romance left in me. I don’t even think I believe in romance.” She slumped back into her chair. Marc crossed his arms.
“God, you’re dramatic. Honestly, I don’t remember your first books being so wordy
but the same picture she’d been staring at, day after day, remained. She couldn’t escape into her mind, because it had become just as barren as the landscape outside.
She only had an hour until her last class of the semester. She looked back down to the page and tried to refocus. But the truth was staring at her undeniably in those blank lines.
She had nowhere to go.
She was dead-ended in her life and in her writing. With only three books out and the deadline at her door for a new series, she was floundering, empty, and lost. The everyday stresses of being a single mom and working two jobs to make ends meet while her family back home struggled, keeping up with a ranch that was in peril every season from being bought out by encroaching conglomerate ranches, had worn her to the bone.
Laney sighed and knocked her forehead against the desk.
“Cursing at your imaginary friends and committing self-harm? What are you? One of those after-school specials on mental illness?” Marc’s voice broke through the stillness. Laney kept her head down on the desk in pathetic surrender.
“Yes,” she sighed. “I’m the poster child for ‘don’t let this happen to you, get a good engineering job’.” Her mumbled words drew the large, goateed man inside with what she could only guess was an eye-rolling head shake.
“Girl, you’re going to knock yourself unconscious.”
“I’m all right with that,” she mumbled into the worn wood.
“Laney!” Marc yelled, and she sat up and looked at him like a child in the throes of a tantrum.
“What?” she grouched.
“About that vacation we were discussing—”
“Even if I had the money, honey, I don’t have time. The deadline is in four weeks. And plus, where would I go? The mountain and interstate are both snowed out. One sister is building up her therapy
business, one is busy making biscuits for half the Rocky Mountain region. Plus, and this is the truth of the matter, there’s no place I can go where I’ll actually be a better writer.” She barely breathed as she continued. “Marc, my friend, you are witnessing the death throes of my short-lived career. I’ve no romance left in me. I don’t even think I believe in romance.” She slumped back into her chair. Marc crossed his arms.
“God, you’re dramatic. Honestly, I don’t remember your first books being so wordy,” he laughed. “You just need a change of perspective. You need to rediscover the romance.” Laney snorted unattractively and threw her head back.
“Um … let’s just file that under ‘not a damn chance’. Have you seen me lately? I’m Plain Lane, remember? I’m un-romanceable.” Marc leaned against the doorjamb and sighed.
“Oh, God, not Plain Lane. You can’t fall back on your high school nickname every time you want to justify the shitty way your ex treated you. That had nothing to do with you—he was just a bonafide douche.”
“Well, I won’t argue with that,” she whispered. Marc stared past her, out the window, looking across the street to the south side of the campus.
“Alan and I have to visit his parents in Florida over the break.” He said it like a man naming the date of his own execution.
“I’m sorry?” Laney said.
“Which means we won’t get to use our cottage in St. Croix like we had hoped.”
“Oh, poor you?” She frowned up at him and he returned it with a smile.
“Aren’t the girls going with their loser dad all month?”
“Yeah, so?” Laney stopped and stared out the window while an invisible fist clenched her heart and she swallowed down the pressure it caused.
“So?” he led.
“So?” she retorted angrily. “What? Am I supposed to talk more about that?” Marc made an impatient sound in his throat and rolled his eyes skyward.
“So, you should take the cottage on St. Croix.”
Laney looked up at him as if he’d grown another head. “What? Me?”
“Uh, do you see another starving writer with a deadline in this office?” Laney looked over her shoulder and then stared down at her baggy sweater and tattered jeans.
“Marc, I don’t think that—”
“For the gods’ sakes don’t think,” Marc slapped her shoulder. “The cottage means four weeks of uninterrupted, inspirational time.”
She stared at him blankly. “Marc, I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can.”
“Of course I can’t!”
“Because?” he led. Laney stopped to think about what he was saying. When had she last taken a vacation? She’d gone to Colorado to promote her last book for a couple of days, but with both of the kids, she’d been on mommy-duty the whole time. She hadn’t traveled alone in twelve years. She shuddered with an introverted calamity of fear.
“But I don’t even have a bathing suit.”
“So, get one. In fact, let’s go shopping Thursday, after you throw some more paper around and call your characters worthless pieces of shit.” Laney sputtered, but he interrupted. “And,” he said in a hushed voice while looking over his thick-rimmed glasses at her, “you’ll need to get waxed too. I’m sure that’s long overdue.”
She scowled at him. “I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t feign offense, you know what I’m talking about. Probably looks like you got a tumbleweed in a headlock down there.”
Laney tried not to laugh. “Marc, no way.”
“Laney, yes way!”
Laney growled under her breath as he whistled his way out of her office and across the hall to his own. Later, while she finished up a short outline and gathered up her papers for class, she tried to decide how she would graciously decline. Perhaps she could fake a kidney stone. He yelled across the hall as if sensing her gathering excuses.
“Friday flight okay?”
“Fine?” The word slipped out between her lips in an exhausted sigh. She wound her hair into a bun and secured it with a teeth-marked pencil as she made a quick jaunt to his office. She peeked in. He sat in the sleek, modern furnished space, severely contrasting the old, worn, hand-me-down relics she’d scraped together. She felt like she was infecting his clean lines with her frump.
“Uh, Friday is only three days away.”
“Yep.”
“That’s too soon. I mean, isn’t it? Sudden?”
Marc looked up from typing. “Sudden? Laney? At our age we have to take all the sudden we can get.” He looked back to his computer screen with a smile. She sighed and slumped against his door.
“You are going to let me pay you, right?”
He didn't
look up. “No.”
“Marc, really.”
“Pay me back by writing a glowing dedication to me in your next masterpiece.”
“Masterpiece? Really? Have you seen my numbers? You’ll never get paid back.” She smirked and kicked a wayward ball of yellow paper back into her office.
“I think you are going to surprise yourself. And don’t underestimate how much women will pay for a good romance.”
“Lies,” she argued.
Laney’s phone called her back before she could argue. It was David. He and Tasha would pick up the kids Thursday afternoon from school. She remained calm and light-toned, all the while her heart fizzled and faded in her chest. David hung up, satisfied long before she was. Such was the story of their relationship. She roused herself enough to get out the door and into the cold wind.
Four weeks without them. Four weeks that would either be spent snowed into the small town, or off in some exotic locale. The choice shouldn’t have been difficult to make, but she wasn’t a person who readily left her cozy comfort zone. The trek across the street gave her a few moments of alone time to think. She stopped in the main library and reached for the well-worn phone book, just to spite the tech-savvy student behind the desk. It was archaic, but she liked the weight of it and the particular smell of the newsprint-thin paper. Her short nail skimmed down the left side column.
The Screaming Peach. For all your waxing needs.
Well, if anyone needed a change, she smirked, it was her. And if she had to be alone, it might as well be some place different.
Jameson Clark was drunk again. The revelers around him moved through a hazy fog that threatened at the edges of his consciousness, promising a hangover tomorrow. He watched the beautiful women laugh, swaying their long legs and narrow hips to Lynyrd Skynyrd while their drinks sloshed over and splattered on the concrete edge of his pool. Hell, he didn’t even know ten of the hundred that were at this party.
He stood up in a spinning world and staggered, unnoticed, off the deck and down the private walkway. When he’d gotten far enough, his bare feet pressed into the sand and the music was only a distant wave behind him, he plopped down. His hand still clung to the half-empty bottle of rum. He crossed his arms over his knees and stared out into the horizon. His eyes were heavy, but he knew what he’d see if he closed them. He did it anyway.
There was Dad. Steel worker, blue collar, and beaming with pride. A pride that fell from his face when his one and only son started trashing tour buses and hotel rooms. When the music became a money-making machine, cranked out yearly for the hungry crowd of beach cowboys and bikini-clad country girls. His dad’s eyes crinkled just like his own, when he smiled or squinted into the hard truth of something he didn’t like.
Jamie’s head pounded. What he’d give to have his dad look at him again. What he’d give up to take back the cutting words and their last devastating fight. He took a long pull, straight from the bottle. He couldn’t even remember the last song he’d written himself. Hell, it had been three years since the last album; the last tour. He didn’t want to remember the last time he’d sang.
The cool, coastal breeze blew past his face, and he sat up to inhale. Something strange filtered through his senses, something cold and fresh. He opened one eye and, even in his drunken state, could tell that the wind had shifted from the north. His father’s words echoed in his mind. He was a man without direction. A boat out to sea.
What he wouldn’t give to walk off this beach, and into obscurity. To change his name and disappear. He’d spent the better part of the last twenty-five years beneath the stage lights, the noise of crowds thrumming to music that he wasn’t even sure he believed in anymore. A boat out to sea, indeed. He was a lost man. His father’s last words came back to him with harsh and piercing clarity, and he drank until the bottle fell into the sand, shortly followed by his body.
***
Clothing haphazardly spilled from all sides of the open suitcase with no discernable order. Laney hobbled around the room, and angrily tossed in an array of clothes, as if she’d never actually been on vacation. The delicate skin of her bikini line might never be the same. Who knew so much hair could grow in such a small space? Other women did things like this all the time, but even as the oldest of three girls, she’d never been caught up in typical standards of beauty. She had always been a t-shirt and jeans girl.
Marc had specifically forbidden her from wearing t-shirts and jeans on the island. When they’d gone shopping, she’d protested, especially when he’d bought over half of the purchases.
“You can’t—”
“Think of it as my holiday contribution to charity.” He chuckled and held a bikini up to her sweatshirt. ...
