I haven’t posted a scene or a brainstorming session in a long time. It’s been even longer since I wrote here about writing in my idea journal. There’s a lot of reasons for that: I haven’t been writing in it as much, I’ve been afraid of sharing unpublished things, and I never know what I’m going to do with those ideas.
But, enough is enough.
I started this blog as a way to help make sure you knew what was going on with my writing journey. It’s not always pretty, it’s not always linear. Sometimes I get random scene ideas that refuse to let me work on anything else. Sometimes I have really vivid dreams and need to get them written down or I’ll forget about them. I do still write in the idea journal. I don’t always know where those ideas are going.
The scene you’re about to read is one of those. I had a vivid dream. When I woke up the next morning, I could still picture it. So, I wrote it down. Since then, I’ve looked at it a few times and made a few notes. I love these characters. I love the idea that this is the START of something for them. I just don’t know yet what that something is.
So, enjoy. As always, don’t steal my ideas but feel free to comment. I love knowing people read this stuff.
Who knows, maybe it’ll turn into something sooner or later.
It’s a cold night in January. Not the kind of cold night that her New England family would call cold if she told them the temperature but the kind of cold that would make even them bundle up under blankets if they were here visiting. She’s bundled up beside her husband on the couch, each of them cocooned under their own blankets while they watch an episode of a show they like but never make time for.
They both jump when the doorbell app chimes.
“Are you expecting someone?” her husband asks.
“No. You?”
He doesn’t answer because asking first meant his answer was implied. Instead, he pauses the program and makes his way across the living room to the front door. She pulls open the doorbell app on her phone. “I don’t recognize her,” she tells him.
He opens the heavy wooden door, leaving the security screen between him and whomever is outside. “Can I help you?” he asks.
The woman’s voice is light and airy. She sounds like she doesn’t have to worry about anything. “My name is Becca. I think you know my husband, Nate. I’m actually looking for the Stanleys. I hope I have the right house.”
“Yeah, that’s us.” He turns toward his wife, still under her blanket on the couch. “Nate’s wife Becca is here.” His voice holds the unasked questions. When was the last time they saw Nate? Did they know he was even married? Why is this woman here? Should he invite her in?
Tasha stands up from the couch and makes her way across the living room. “Hi, I don’t think we’ve met.” She is the one who moves Bob out of the way with her elbow and actually opens the security door. “It’s nice to meet you.” She reaches out and offers her hand to Becca. First impressions tell her Becca is exactly like her voice sounded. She’s wearing designer clothes, carrying a designer purse, and has perfect highlights in her hair. This is not someone who normally has to worry about money, that’s for sure. Her handshake is light as a feather. Tasha stands to the side. “Would you like to come in?” She can feel Bob’s hesitation coming off of him in waves but she’s just going with her instinct here. She vaguely remembers that Nate did, in fact, get married. It was probably two years ago. She saw pictures on social media or somewhere. This looks like the right girl from those photos.
“I’d love that, thank you.” She makes her way into their home and her eyes flit around the room.
Tasha refuses to apologize for the dust on things or the fact that her home looks lived in and not polished. “I don’t want to be rude,” Tasha says, “but what are you doing here?” She wants to know if she should invite Becca to sit down, pour her a drink, or kick her right back out. That sort of decision requires a little more input.
“Actually, I just wanted to talk. Can we sit somewhere?”
She wants to talk? This is a woman Tasha is pretty confident they’ve never met. Her only connection to them is a guy they went to high school with and haven’t kept in contact with. “Sure, we can sit. Does, um, Nate know that you’re visiting with us?” she asks, still trying to solve the mystery of why this woman is here.
“Not exactly. I’d love to explain. Can I, maybe, get a glass of water?”
Bob nods, likely happy to be given something he knows how to deal with. “I’ll get it.” He rushes off in the direction of the kitchen.
Tasha gestures to the armchair. “Have a seat.” She settles herself back on the couch, wrapping the blanket she was using back around her legs and tucking it tightly. “So what’s up?”
“Well, first, I wanted to apologize for taking you off of the wedding guest list,” Becca starts.
Tasha doesn’t know what to say to this. She wasn’t aware she was even considered for the guest list. She’s pretty sure she hadn’t spoken to Nate in at least three years when he got engaged. “No problem.” She chooses the best explanation she can think of in the short time she has to process this. “I don’t think he was invited to my wedding either. No hard feelings at all.” Has this been bothering this girl for two years? Thinking about the time she took Tasha’s name off some wedding guest list? That can’t be why she’s here.
“Right, well, I’m sure you also heard that we’re having a little renewal ceremony right here in Nate’s hometown and I’m truly sorry you weren’t invited to that either. Nate is pretty upset. We had a big fight about it. So, I’m sorry.”
“Wait, what?” Tasha has absolutely no idea what this girl is rambling on about. “You’re having a renewal ceremony?”
“Yes.”
“Here?” Didn’t she remember hearing that Nate moved to Colorado or California or something? He wasn’t local anymore. At least, she didn’t think he was.
“Yes. I wanted a vow renewal.” She smiles as if this is a brilliant plan, to renew your vows with some big expensive party only two years after the original big expensive party. “Nate said he’d do it but only if we came to his parents instead of making them fly to us again. So we are flying everyone from home in and having it here.”
“Congratulations,” Tasha says, unsure what else she’s supposed to say.
Bob reenters the room and hands a glass of water to Becca before taking his seat on the couch. “What are we congratulating?” he asks.
“Becca and Nate are renewing their vows in a ceremony here in the valley.”
“Oh,” Bob looks completely confused but he plasters a smile to his face before looking at Becca. “That’s nice,” he says.
“I hope it will be, yes.” Becca takes a large sip of her water and then sets it down on the little table beside her.
“I’m sorry, what does this have to do with us?” Tasha asks.
Becca sighs. “Nate thinks that you were invited to the wedding and couldn’t attend. So he asked if you were coming to the renewal and I had to admit that you weren’t invited. The whole thing came out and he’s pretty angry. He says you were one of his best friends, someone who got him through high school, and he can’t believe I didn’t invite you and that I lied about it.”
“Oh.” Tasha can’t think of anything else to add. Honestly, it sounds like Nate had a good reason to be offended. She’d be angry if Bob lied about something so stupid. “He wasn’t invited to my wedding either,” she says. She’s pretty sure she already said that. But it seems relevant.
“He says you told him about it over the phone but you got married in a destination wedding and didn’t want him to feel pressured to get a plane ticket.” Becca sits forward as if something has just occurred to her. “Is that not what happened?” The idea of Nate hiding this from her has given her hope, Tasha can tell. Hope that he might have lied too.
Well, she’ll have to burst that. She only feels mildly guilty. “No, that sounds right. Honestly, we’ve been married a long time.”
“Ten years,” Bob adds.
“Right, so the details are a bit fuzzy.”
“He was invited. It was exactly like that,” Bob adds. “I remember we couldn’t offer to pay for his ticket because we were already paying for Shawna’s. Instead, you and Shawna called him the day before and talked about how things were changing.”
Oh my God, she actually remembers that. Tasha smiles. “We did the same thing before Shawna got married,” she adds. “Wow, I’d completely forgotten.” She turns her attention to Becca. “Do you know if Shawna came to your wedding?”
“Um, she did not.” Becca looks down at the floor. “She wasn’t invited either.”
Oh. Right. Well, at least they were both excluded.
“Wow so he was able to talk to his high school friends before they got married but he didn’t get a chance to talk to either of them on his wedding day or before?” Bob asks. “That’s actually sad.”
“That makes me feel like shit,” Tasha mumbles.
“Look, I just didn’t think you were all as close as he tried to say you were. I mean, I’d never met you and we’d been dating for years. You two have never been to visit us in Colorado.” Tasha mentally pats herself on the back for having that right. “He doesn’t use social media, he doesn’t text or call you. I mean, how was I to know you were all really that important to him?” Clearly, she’s given this some thought.
Tasha grimaces but tries to cover it at the last second with a fake smile. “You’re totally right,” she says. “Bob and I have never been to visit.” She shrugs. “We don’t really keep in touch like we always thought we would. It makes sense that you’d be confused.” Except, she refrains from adding, that Nate tried to tell you. He tried to tell you what it was like and you brushed him off. Tasha feels that flint of anger start in her chest. It’s an old habit, to instantly hate something that Nate hates. Something she hasn’t felt in over a decade. And yet it comes back. She tries to shake it off by rolling her eyes. “I can’t believe he’s even upset about it, honestly. I’m surprised we were invited.”
“Right, that’s what I tried to tell him,” Becca says with renewed energy. “I told him that you probably didn’t expect an invitation. None of my friends from high school would give a shit if I invited them. They probably wouldn’t even know. I just didn’t think it was as big a deal as he was making it out to be,” she says. Her eyes are positively glowing with what she thinks is agreement.
“Except they weren’t like that,” Bob says. His voice comes out quiet, like he didn’t mean to say it out loud. When Becca’s head whips in his direction he clears his voice and adds, “They weren’t just some friends from high school.”
“Bob,” Tasha says. One word, a warning. This is not something they talk about. This is not theirs to share. Stop talking.
“What do you mean?” Becca asks, slowly, cautiously.
“You should probably talk to Nate about this,” Bob says. “Ask him why it was so important to him.”
“I did,” she answers, throwing her hands up in frustration. “He just said ‘my girls got me through high school’.” Her eyes snap to Tasha, accusatory and hard. “He called you that. Why would he call you that? How am I, his wife, supposed to be ok with him calling someone that?”
“Oh, I see,” Bob says. “Yeah, I went through this too.” He stands up, putting himself between Becca and Tasha. “Jealousy is a completely logical reaction. Did Nate tell you I went to high school with them too?” Becca must shake her head because her hair sort of shakes side to side. “Yeah, I did. So I knew them all as a group. I was crazy jealous of them. Anyone would be. They were always together, they thought like one group, and they were incredibly protective of each other. I didn’t really understand, at the time, what their relationship was like. I think I assumed there must have been something romantic there, because why wouldn’t there be?”
Tasha laughs. No one reacts.
“I promise you, as someone who was there,” Bob continues, “they were completely platonic. All of them. They had a relationship of necessity. They needed each other to get through those years. I can’t talk about anyone’s personal life or home life, that’s not my place. All I can tell you is that the three of them leaned on each other to avoid leaning into that. That’s not regular friendship. That’s life saving sort of stuff.”
Tasha tries to hold her body as still as possible. Maybe they’ll forget she’s here. Maybe they won’t ask follow up questions. Bob is right, it’s not their place to talk about this with her. Becca deserves to know. Heck, maybe she already does. But Tasha will not be the person who talks about this with her. Not without Nate’s permission.
On its own, her brain throws up images of Nate when they found him. She shakes them away. She won’t think about that right now. She can’t. He’s fine. He’s safe. He’s grown and married and happy and safe. They got there in time.
She feels Bob’s hand on her knee, bringing her back. She smiles. “It’s fine, really. What can I do?” she says.
“Come to the renewal,” Becca says. “I know it’s short notice and you’ll probably have to cancel a bunch of things. But come. Please. I don’t know how else to fix this and I can’t just leave it like this. I didn’t realize …” she stops herself, shakes her head. “No more excuses. I was jealous and I didn’t give you a chance to be there for Nate.” She stands up and runs her hands down the front of her outfit, smoothing out wrinkles no one can see. Then she pulls a white envelope out of her purse and drops it on the table beside the still full water glass. “I hope you’ll consider what I said. I’ll let myself out.”
They both watch while she does exactly that, opening the front door and disappearing back into the night. For a beat, no one moves. “Are you alright?” Bob asks.
Tasha takes a deep breath in and lets it out. “That was weird,” she says.
“Totally weird.”
“Do we have to go?” she asks, looking at the envelope the way one would expect her to look at a poisonous snake.
“We don’t have to do anything.”
“We don’t even know when it is.”
Bob takes the two steps he needs to reach the envelope, and picks it up. It’s not sealed so he easily slips out the silver and blue cardstock. His eyes scan the document. “Tomorrow,” he says.
Tasha lets a chortle slip out. “Seriously? Jesus, that girl has balls.”
“Call Shawna,” Bob says.
“What?”
Bob shakes his head and gives her a sad look. “I can do a lot of things for you, babe. I can make you tea and listen to you talk about this all night if you want me to. But the bottom line is I wasn’t there that night. You need to talk to Shawna. This is one of those times where this will have to be something you two decide together. Call her.”
Tasha wants to argue. She wants to say that phones work both ways and Shawna hasn’t called her in years either. She wants to say that Shawna is busy and probably won’t answer. That the time difference means she might even be asleep. She wants to tell him he’s wrong, she won’t need that girl from her past. Not now, not ever.
But she can’t do that because she promised she wouldn’t lie to him.
Instead, she grabs her cell phone off the table beside her and goes out the front door so she has a little privacy. She sits on the bench on their porch and dials the number she can’t remember dialing in a long time. She expects the answering machine so Shawna’s voice shocks her. “Hello?”
“Shawna?”
“Holy shit, Tash. What’s up? How the hell are you?”
“We need to talk.”
Two hours, a glass of wine, Bob’s credit card, and half a THC gummy later, Shawna has called into work on a “family emergency” for tomorrow and has gotten off the phone to pack her bags for a ridiculously expensive flight that will get her here before the ceremony. Tasha hangs up and leans into Bob. “We should get some sleep,” she says.
Bob checks his watch. “We have to pick her up at the airport in like four hours.”
Tasha yawns. “That’ll be enough time for a little sleep.”
He kisses her on the top of her head. “You go climb into bed. I’ll lock up the house, set an alarm so we don’t oversleep, and be right in.” Tasha dutifully follows instructions and when she’s out of the room Bob slips out his own cell phone and calls a number he also wouldn’t have imagined he’d ever need before tonight. He knows the number is programmed in his phone, it’s been transferred from every phone he’s ever had. Part of him wonders if it’s still the right phone number.
“Hello,” the voice is sleepy but not whispering. Is he alone?
“Hey, it’s Bob Stanley.”
“Holy shit. Hang on.” There’s a lot of scrabbling as if someone on the other end is moving around. Bob hears a door click and then the noises stop. “Hey, I’m here. Is everything ok?”
“Yes, everyone’s fine.” There’s a relieved sigh. “I just, um, wanted to give you a heads up. I’m not sure how much you already know. Becca was here.”
“Fuck.”
“Right. I didn’t know if you knew that. She invited us to come to the renewal.”
“Shit, man. I’m sorry. It’s tomorrow. I didn’t know you weren’t invited before –”
“No, it’s fine. Listen, I don’t have time for a lot of explaining. I just …” Bob tries to think about the important part. The part he would want to know. “You need to know before tomorrow so you can be ready.”
“Ready for what, man?”
“They’re both coming,” Bob says. “I couldn’t have that all hit you at once in front of everyone you know and love. They’re both coming. I mean, I’m coming too but the three of you will be together for the first time in a long time, man. I needed you to be ready for that.”
“Holy shit,” Nate says.
Bob hears something that sounds like a belly flop. “Nate? You good?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m good.” There’s a little laugh. “I’m really good. This will be good. Thanks for the call, brother. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Then, in typical Nate fashion, which Bob is surprised to realize he remembers, Nate hangs up without so much as a goodbye.
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