Who would have thought I’d agree to this…I never would have. I mean, if you’d asked me yesterday if I’d help my best friend kill his wife I’d probably have laughed, or given you that “are you crazy” look, or said you’d had enough to drink, or something. I mean, I definitely would not have said “yes, of course, what are best friends for?” But that’s essentially what was happening. Or at least that’s what my friend thought was happening.

See, he’d married her when we were all still kids. They didn’t hardly know who they thought they’d be, not to mention who they’d actually be. None of us did. I knew I wanted to be a nurse, in the ER if I played my cards right, but them? He just wanted to work a local job that’d let him have weekends off and she just wanted to be married with kids. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m a feminist, after all. If she wants to spend her life raising good humans, good for her. No, great for her. The world needs good humans.

The problem was, none of us got it right. At least not for ourselves. I was the one who ended up at home trying and some might say failing to raise good humans, while she pretended not to be jealous and went back to school for a degree. Her husband was the only one who came close, he got a job where he was home weekends. The rest of the time he was gone though. Times were tough and he was able to get a job at the mines which meant being in another state all week long, sleeping in a cheap hotel at first and later renting an apartment with a fellow mine worker. All they did there was sleep, so you can only imagine the kind of place he got.

Still, I thought we were all mostly happy. I mean, who is really happy happy? Nobody. But we were mostly happy. She’d come over during the week and help me make dinner or fold laundry and I’d help drill her on legal stuff that I didn’t understand at all, but didn’t need to as long as I could read and tell her she was right or wrong when quizzing her. He came home on weekends and even though we were still technically best friends, I hardly ever saw him because he tended to drink and sleep for two days before heading back to the mine. We were all just making due.

I tried to talk to her once about the babies. The lack of babies. It’s a tough thing to bring up, I’ll tell ya. No one wants to talk about miscarriage, and I should know cause I had one too. But having one miscarriage in a sea of living babies is so different than several miscarriages in a ocean of emptiness. And not to say her hurting was worse than mine, pain isn’t a competition, it’s just to say that not everyone can talk about things and not everyone who can talk about things can find someone to listen. I tried to be both the talker and the listener, but it seems she wasn’t either one, and that was that.

But how’d we get to me agreeing to kill her, you ask. It’s a good question. I wish it was a simple one, and maybe it is. Maybe it’s as simple as she knew about my first baby, the one after the miscarriage, the only one my husband knew about. Not the miscarriage I mean, my husband never knew about that. I’m talking about the baby. The first baby. She knew about it, and he didn’t. And you wouldn’t think that would matter much this late in the game with five additional babies, but it does matter, because he’d just threatened to divorce me, again. And this time I was afraid he’d actually do it, and if he did, how was I going to support these babies? And especially how if she told him the first one wasn’t even his?

At first he wouldn’t believe her, wouldn’t want to. But then all those times where he’d look at me and say how the baby looked just like me and why wasn’t there any of him in there? And then he’d think about the other babies and how they all look like more of a mix of us. I mean sure that second baby looks just exactly like him, but she has my ears. And that third baby looks exactly like me, but she has his eyes. And yes, that third baby looks like our genes were thrown in a blender, the puree poured into a baby-mold, so much of both of us it’s hard to see the child as her own person. But see, that’s the thing, too, isn’t it. They’re all girls, those other babies, the ones that are his. But not that first one.

“Daddy’s” pride and joy, the boy, the first. He wouldn’t want to believe the child wasn’t his, but he would. Just give him a few days. And then if he called in paternity testing I’d be done. There’s no way I could get support for that baby, and I’d need support. I didn’t have a nursing degree like I’d like, I didn’t have rich parents to fall back on, I didn’t have a husband…or at least I wouldn’t anymore. I’d need that support. For all of ’em. For a little while anyway.

The question of why I would help is therefore pretty straight forward. She caught me getting re-pregnant with the UPS man one day, one day about three days after the miscarriage, a day when I was so exhausted by the loss, so unable to figure out how to tell my husband about it when he returned from his trip back to his grandma’s funeral, a trip I should have been on but I hadn’t exactly been feeling well before the miscarriage, and he hadn’t wanted to risk me getting worse and losing the baby. That’s rich. I lost the baby anyway, didn’t I. And then there I was trying, in my hormonal haze to “fix” the situtation.

I swear if that first and only boy wasn’t the very best kid I ever made I’d regret the whole damn thing. But I can’t. And none of that’s really important. The thing you ought to be asking me is why the devil did my best friend want to kill his wife anyway?

This #writethirtyminutes session was prompted very loosely from “A Year of Writing Prompts” by Writer’s Digest, available here

It had started as a celebratory Happy Birthday card insert, the glitter, or confetti rather. Just as little something to make her girlfriends smile when they opened their cards. And that very first card, it was a surprise and everyone smiled and laughed and yelled “Happy Birthday,” again, because they’d already been through all that multiple times. But anyway, after the second card the next month with more confetti, it became an expectation. So every time they got together to celebrate a birthday, there would be her card and there would be the confetti.

After the first year though, she realized that maybe it was time to stop. She’d gotten glitter this time, agreeing that confetti had “been done” the year before and now something new was needed. An upping of the game if you will. So she used glitter. And maybe, although unlikely, the glitter would have been okay if they’d been sitting outside on the patio of a restaurant or perhaps even in the backyard of the birthday girl, but instead they were in her home, in her living room no less, when the card was opened.

To be fair, her Ladies Who Lunch group had become accustomed over the prior year to shaking their cards before opening them, shaking their cards and their heads with one of those knowing and obligatory half-smiles. So the birthday girl in question had shaken the card. And she’d heard…something. She just wasn’t sure what. She knew it wasn’t confetti, they’d all heard that sound enough over the past year to know the sound, but she couldn’t quite determine what the actual sound was. There almost wasn’t a sound, she was beginning to think the card was safe when she caught the sound of…something.

Very gingerly the envelope was opened. Very carefully the envelope was held and peered into. And while everything appeared shiny, there was nothing particularly worrisome found in that glance. And so it was only as the card was being extracted, only as the first grains of glitter began to fall that the ensuing chaos of the situation could be felt.

Glitter, as you well know, is a nightmare of long term proportions. It isn’t something that gets vacuumed or swept up and life goes back to normal. Glitter is a thing that finds its way into every crease of your skin, every fiber of your carpet, every everywhere. Glitter is the worst possible gift that keeps on giving.

But it was too late to stop what was happening. Even as one or two women began to notice the shimmery specks fall to the floor, it was too late. Even as she reconsidered this upping of her game, it was too late. Even as one woman launched herself from her seat in an attempt to catch the falling sparkles from hell in her wine glass, figuring it was better to have to dump out her drink and get a new glass than to have to terminate the party early due to disaster, it was too late.

The glitter went everywhere as the card was opened. Everywhere as the glass of wine stretched out in an effort to save the day, spilled and gave the glitter a wet and sticky ride to further reaches of the room. Everywhere as the birthday girl stepped back in surprise, her arms automatically rising above her head to steady her and so she could more easily see the woman now prostrate on the ground before her, the wine seeping into her carpet, the glitter now a swiftly falling cloud around her head.

It was by now much much much too late to do anything about the glitter. And yet, she found herself thinking, “huh, that was perhaps not the best idea.”

But that was neither here nor there.

The thing is, it happened. And while it only happened the once, the Ladies Who Lunch had apparently decided it would not happen again. Only she was the last to know.

It would have been simple really for the Ladies to simply cut her out of the next get together, or at least the next birthday lunch get together. Easy. But they didn’t. She assumed her profuse apologies had paved the way for her continued invitation, but she should have known, perhaps even did have an inkling, a feeling somewhere that something wasn’t quite right. But if she did she ignored it. And that’s how she came to be here.

It was Gilda’s birthday lunch. Gilda who always chose The Cheesecake Factory. Always. But here they were in Gilda’s home. Not just in Gilda’s home, which she’d never been invited to not once in five years, but in the depths of her home. They’d all been given a tour, a tour that culminated in the basement. Not one of the Ladies was missing. Not even Fran who’d had a bit of a falling out with Gilda two years ago. Everyone was there. And everyone was in black.

Everyone except her. Had she missed the memo? Not only was everyone in black but the entire basement had been covered and draped and clothed in plastic. Not like a couch covered in your grandmothers plastic, more like, oh she knew she’d seen this before…it was like what painters would use to keep the floors from getting paint on them. Oh, there it is! She remembered now, it was the plastic she’d seen in that HBO show about that cop and his son and the daughter and the son ended up being a cop but also a murderer, what was that show…Dexter! Yes, Dexter.

Oh.

This #writethirtyminutes session was prompted very loosely from “A Year of Writing Prompts” by Writer’s Digest, available here

How could he possibly have known he’d be proposing? He wasn’t even in a relationship with anyone…well, actually, that wasn’t entirely true, was it? He’d been sort-of dating Simone for months now, but they were just, what was it, “friends with benefits.” He wasn’t even entirely sure he could call it that since they didn’t start as friends and technically weren’t even friends now. She was a fuck buddy, but apparently that wasn’t a nice thing to call someone. Irrelevant, sometimes the truth hurts.

But that’s neither here nor there. The thing is, he was going to marry this woman. Not Simone, this woman. He didn’t even know her name. He didn’t know if she snores, has good hygiene, wears those terrible pre-faded/holey jeans he can’t stand. He didn’t know if she liked sushi, drank beer, could listen to that pina colada song without singing the words. He had no idea who she was, but after watching her kick that guys ass, he was in. And he was in all the way.

See, the thing is, he wasn’t much into violence, in fact, he’d go out of his way to avoid confrontation, something that had earned him a difficult to remove label in grade school. But it’s just his way, a fight always seemed like something no one ever won, so what was the point. And it didn’t matter if it was verbal or physical. No fighting, ever, he couldn’t handle it.

But this? This wasn’t a fight. This was perfection. This was karma. Or something… Probably not karma cause isn’t karma a Buddhist thing and aren’t they all passivists or something? Whatever. The point is, this was exactly the way the world ought to work but never did. Like when there’s no cop and every car seems to be speeding and swerving and generally implying that everyone around them is seconds away from dying catastrophically, but then a day later when that one car is doing five miles over the speed limit and gets pulled over. Bullshit.

But not this. This was the opposite of bullshit. This was flowers and rainbows and unicorns. Or something. It was epic. He’d watched the whole thing, heard the whole thing, too. Although he’s sure no one noticed him, it was kind of a thing he’d perfected since grade school. Anyway, he’d seen and heard the whole thing, and he would testify to that if it came to it.

What happened was, this guy, this sleazy, bougie, frat boy type guy had been coming on to her at the bar. It was obvious. He was not at all afraid of the whole place knowing that his awesome self was interested in this chick at the bar who would be throwing herself into his arms any minute. Guys like that were so useless. But the thing is, she wasn’t. And she wasn’t rude or quiet or subtle about it. She was clear. She was calm and polite, waiting for that douche to finish his long and much too loud entreaty, and then, looking him full in the eyes, she said “no, thank you,” before turning the other way to continue her interrupted conversation with the woman next to her.

You could tell this guy, this “Brad” we’ll call him, wasn’t entirely sure what had just happened. He was clearly not used to hearing “no,” but even more shockingly there seemed to be this confusion about whether or not her dismissal had been debatable. Despite how clear it had sounded to the rest of the bar, this elite little shit seemed to think she was waiting for further persuasion.

The people around the bar, not those by the old-timey looking jukebox that was actually a false front for a full musical collection with everything from country to rap but everyone else, heard when he said, “Awe, come on beautiful, I just want to buy you one drink!” slapping his hand on her shoulder. And everyone saw, even those by the giant cloud of tunes speaker, when in one smooth motion she stood up, took his hand from her shoulder and somehow threw him to the floor without moving, stood over him, releasing his hand, and said very clearly and with just enough tone, “no.”

That was it. I was in love. She was everything. She was perfect. Here was a woman who wasn’t interested in conflict, who avoided conflict, but who stood her ground. A woman who could take conflict and flip it on it’s dumb ass.

I didn’t have time to go to Jared’s, how could I?, but this was it. This was the woman I was going to marry.

This #writethirtyminutes session was prompted very loosely from “A Year of Writing Prompts” by Writer’s Digest, available here

“I have a confession to make. I never really…” this was harder than I’d thought it would be. I cleared my throat, the fingers of my right hand gripped tightly around the fingers of my left, and tried again, “Remember how I said I’d take care of everything, how I was making enough and had my savings,” I took a deep breath then blurted it out, before I could stop myself, before I could try to doctor it up, “I have to declare bankruptcy. Er, rather, we have to.”

The look in her eyes was gutting, I could see as she went from encouraging, her eyes clearly saying, “I love you, I trust you, you can tell me anything,” to confused, the way her eyebrows would come down and together wrinkling above her nose in a way she hated. Then, it started coming, the confusion was there, but in the background, like an afterthought, now front and center was anger tinged with disbelief, the eyebrows now in opposing positions, one up and one down, as though they were the two halves of her brain fighting for supremacy of her face.

“What are you saying, exactly?” she asked, “Are you saying we’ve run through everything or…?” she trailed off and I could tell that my next words would determine our entire future, I knew I had to be careful, but I couldn’t keep up the lies.

Sighing, I opted for the full truth, “I’m saying I lied. I’m saying, I didn’t have any real savings, I mean I had a couple hundred bucks, but not any real savings, and I was making decent money for a single guy, but…” I took a deep breath, “I’m saying, I wanted to give you what you wanted and I didn’t stop to think about whether or not I could.” Her face had taken on a tinge of color I’d come to know as “fury” and realized what I’d said had been misunderstood, I rushed in to clear things up, “And this isn’t on you, at all, that’s not what I’m saying. I just,” I ran my hand through my hair, shrugging and laying them out before me a universal gesture of “my cards are on the table, “I thought I could do what I said, I thought I could give you this life we wanted and I didn’t stop, not once, not the many times I could have to tell you it wasn’t working out, because I was just so determined I could do it. I didn’t tell you when I couldn’t keep up with the big bills, or when I couldn’t keep up with the small bills, I didn’t tell you when I knew I’d have to take on a second job or when I realized even that wasn’t enough. I was so confident I could rally, that I could find a way, that there’d surely be some outside intervention, and then there was, only it wasn’t what I’d been hoping for.”

She was still looking at me, which I figured had to be a good thing, but the emotions flying across her face were changing faster than I could keep up and I wasn’t at all sure that this would end well.

Her shoulders, which had slowly been tightening up, suddenly dropped. She closed her eyes and raised her hands to her cheeks doing this thing where she kind of rubs them a little, like she’s getting makeup off or trying to warm up her face or something, but I know that for what it is, she was buying herself some patience and keeping herself from saying the first words that came.

When she lowered her hands and opened her eyes, I saw that she’d made a decision, and instinctively tensed already sure of the verdict. So I was surprised when she said, “I can’t talk about this right now, I’m late.” She grabbed her keys from the sideboard, a jacket from the hook above it, and turned to the door. With her hand on the knob and her back to me I heard her say softly, but with enough power that she’d know I’d hear her, “I need to see it all. Everything. Write down every lie. Give me every bill and every bank statement. I want it all, everything, on the table by tonight.”

And then she was gone. I couldn’t even tell you what jacket she took or if she had her purse. I couldn’t tell you if she turned before closing the door to look at me. I hoped she did, no, no I didn’t. I didn’t want her to see my face. I was sure she’d know exactly what I was thinking, what I was feeling.

Relief.

I knew, maybe from the tone in her voice, or maybe because she took that moment to rub her face, but I knew she would forgive me. More than that, I knew she was going to fix this. That’s what she did, what she does. She’s a fixer, and I knew she was going to take this on, take it over, make it right.

Everyone said I didn’t deserve her, and they’re right, I mean, they’re probably right, no, they’re definitely right. I don’t deserve her. I don’t even know why she stays with me, I mean, that’s why I’d been so quick to promise her I could do it, take on everything myself and give her the time and space she needed to try something new. To not worry about the day-to-day. I was confident that if I could give her that, if I could give her this thing she wanted that no one else had ever given her, that I’d seal the deal, that I’d somehow earn her.

But I’d messed it up. First with the lies, I mean how hard would it have been to just say, “I would love to offer you this, but I can’t right now,” or “you deserve this, and we’ll get to a point where you can have it,” or even “wow, that’s such a great dream you have and maybe someday we can make it a reality.” Anything. I could have said anything. And I went with a lie. And that was it, what do they say about lies, one lie begets another or something? Well, it’s true. I went with the whole macho thing, the whole let me take care of you thing, and it went from one lie to another lie to another. Sometimes in the same sentence. Definitely in the same sentence. It started with “I’m making enough and I have my savings.” Lies couched in truths so I could tell myself I wasn’t lying.

And now because of all those lies, because I not once considered sharing even a portion of the truth, we were broke, looking at being homeless, looking at being alone if she decided to leave me. I’d do anything to prevent her from leaving, like lie.

This #writethirtyminutes session was prompted very loosely from “A Year of Writing Prompts” by Writer’s Digest, available here

Thank you for your email, I will get back to you if I return to the office. I shouldn’t say if, but I’m going to say if, because really we could be hit by a bus tomorrow, right? So, yeah, if I get back to the office I’ll get back to you. But really what I mean is, I have no idea how long I’ll be out of the office, because my PTO is only for two weeks, but if I’m going to fly all the way to Europe then you better believe I’m going to get my jetlag’s worth.

Plus, I’m really hoping I’m gonna meet someone, it happens in books and films all the time, so why not me? And sure a little fling, a little ex-pat romance would be fantastic, but I’d be happy with a little somethin’-somethin’ at a hostel, because I will most definitely be staying in hostels. Did you know they have those there? It’s like a giant dorm room for a quarter of the cost of a hotel, for like a few dollars a day. Sign me up! And really, what better way to have a little fling far far from home than to hook up with someone else in the hostel? But how would that even work, really, cause it’s a bunch of people in one room with a bunch of bunks…how would you, you know, without waking everybody up? So I haven’t quite got that part figured out yet, but it could happen.

And really, what I’d love more than anything, is to find someone who’s from there, Europe I mean, who wants to stay there and who wants to get married and then I could just stay there too. I wouldn’t ever have to come back to this job with lousy PTO accumulation and an office mate that snort-cough-hacks all day and that one person, I think it’s Sabrina but she won’t admit it, that keeps bringing fish for lunch and then the whole office, not just the lunch room which would be bad enough but the whole freaking office, reeks of fish for the rest of the day. And then I’d never get your email and I’d never reply to it, although I’m sure there’s some kind of SOP in place for that sort of thing.

There’s gotta be, right? They wouldn’t just leave you hanging? Someone’s gotta be getting cc’ed on my incoming emails while I’m gone, right? I mean, it’s two weeks, which isn’t much in going-to-Europe terms but in where-is-the-person-I-need-to-help-me terms, those are your terms, in those terms two weeks is a long time. I wonder if I should check on that before I leave? I probably should, but you know what, everyone’s gone for the day, or at least the three people I can think to ask are gone, and I’m trying to get out of here too, lotta packing to do and only a few hours before I gotta catch that flight, so, how bout this, when you get this email, if I haven’t gotten back to you in two weeks and one day, please contact one of my many bosses, or hell, just call the main line and tell the receptionist what’s up, and I’m sure someone will take care of you.

Also though, before you wait the two weeks and one day and bug the receptionist, it is almost certain, like 99% likely, that your problem can be solved by logging out and logging back in. Don’t ask me why, I couldn’t tell you, I don’t work in IT, but those d-bags always ask me if I’ve asked the customer to log out and log back in, and damned if it doesn’t fix the issue nine times out of ten.

So anyway, that was all a very long way of saying, I’m out of the office. Catch you on the flip-flop. Maybe.

This #writethirtyminutes session was prompted very loosely from “A Year of Writing Prompts” by Writer’s Digest, available here

There were only so many conversations she could have about football, a topic she knew next to nothing about and had no intention of studying. Yes, she’d occasionally go to the bar and watch a game with him, but that was for the chance to have a few good draft beers, and yes, she loved a fantasy football league, but that was for the gambling and opportunity to win some cash. As for the game itself, the players and teams, the rules and the cheerleaders…she couldn’t really care any less.

“Let’s not talk about football,” she said. Jim looked over at her without smiling and now she smiled at him. Shit, she thought, should have continued to nod and smile. “It’s just that I’ve got a bit of a headache now and was thinking we could snuggle on the couch and you could watch it and I’ll read my book, see if that gives it a chance to go away.” She wasn’t lying, she did have a headache, but more than that she was desperate for a few moments to herself.

It was laughable really, a few moments to herself. She had entire days to herself, how could she possibly need more alone time? It was greedy, gluttonous, selfish. Lovely.

Jim’s job kept him out of the house for at least ten hours a day, her job for at least eight, but because of their differing hours she’d often be up and gone long before he awoke, and back long before he’d return. It was perhaps what had kept them together so long, the not being together.

So while she figured she could gain his happiness back with reference to his being able to sit on the couch watching the game while also getting her time to herself by suggesting her book, it was a bit of a gamble. He might throw the whole, “we need to spend time together, and sitting on the couch doing different things isn’t ‘together,'” and then what would she say? I mean clearly they were “together” on the couch, but she couldn’t very well argue that, could she? And besides, that would be the stereotypical male argument, so no, she wouldn’t do that to him. She knew better.

She took a deep breath and tried not to let it out in a sigh. He caught her, caught the deep breath, seemed to understand exactly what she was thinking, feeling, avoiding. And there was that moment. That moment where he could call her out on it all or let it go. They were both very aware of this moment that stretched for an hour when it was nothing more than a fraction of a second.

“Yeah, alright. You want a beer?” he asked.

This time her smile was genuine, “yes. Yes, please.” She retreated to the couch, grabbing a blanket off the back and her book from the coffee table. She sat with her lower back against the arm rest, her feet towards the middle seat, tossing the blanket over her legs, with some extra at the end in case he wanted some too. She leaned towards the table, balancing her weight with her left arm as the fingertips of her right searched for purchase on the remote. Gratified that she was able to both get the remote and remain on the couch, her smile became even broader, and by the time Jim returned with two open bottles of beer she was ready to make nice, sliding her feet back a bit as he plopped down on the other side of the couch, handing the remote to him and taking the proffered bottle.

The day that had only moments ago threatened to become a disaster was now cozy and quaint and something she could mention to co-workers the next day and have it sound enviable. She was able to pretend that all was well for another week, to lose herself in a book for another day, maintain the facade for a bit longer. And it was exactly what she needed, even if it wasn’t at all.

This #writethirtyminutes session was prompted very loosely from “A Year of Writing Prompts” by Writer’s Digest, available here

He still doesn’t understand how it came to this. He still doesn’t quite get what happened. They’d been driving down the road, a longer trip this time, a state or two over to see the leaves change. A state or two he wasn’t sure because all these east coast states are the size of a dime and you could easily drive through three in a couple hours, but that’s irrelevant, still, he noticed they’d driven a long way to get to the changing leaves and now they were having to go back through it all only this time was different.

The way out had been full of romance and hope. Good music thanks to a new album he’d created on his music app pulling in playlists for road trips and love. He was sure this trip would be the thing to cement them, the thing he’d been looking for to get her to really lean in, to get to that place where she’d accept his proposal, the one he’d been planning for several months knowing the timing wasn’t quite right, waiting.

The trip itself had been fantastic, better even than he’d dared to hope. The leaves were in full color and they saw everything from some light greenish-yellows to deep burgundy red, deeper than bricks, the old ones with character. So many colors, she’d been awed, having never seen this sort of display having grown up on the west coast. She’d been delighted, frisky, something about their first major trip together in two years, just them, alone. Perfect.

But it was on the way back, that he noticed the change. She was no longer smiling, no longer laying her hand on his thigh on occasion, an endearing ownership and connection he’d come to notice and wait for. If anything she’d begun to fold in upon herself, shrinking. He’d asked if her stomach was upset, if her head hurt, if she was hungry: no, no, no. He’d begun to give up hope of ever understanding what had gone wrong when she suddenly began to cry and by the time her words started coming out he’d been stunned.

“I was so sure,” she’d said, or at least what he thought he could understand, “so sure you’d propose this weekend. I don’t know why I thought that, you’ve not once intimated you were even considering it, but I just…I guess I thought, there was so much planning in this weekend and you’ve been so odd lately, so quiet or suddenly watchful and I just thought, ‘this is it! He’s going to propose!’ and then…nothing. And I was so ready for it, but now, sitting here and realizing it’s not coming, and knowing we’ll be back home in a couple hours and then, I have to just…keep going like this, after what I’d thought and,” she heaved an enormous breath in, her first since the tirade as he now thought of it began, and he attempted to say something when the car suddenly bucked and veered to the left.

He heard her scream, the scream of fright, of lack of control, of complete surprise. He felt the car pulling into the oncoming lane as he was desperately pulling it to the side of the road. Finally it all clicked, the vehicle went where he wanted and he was able to stop, turn it off. His hands were stuck to the wheel, his fingers perhaps permanently clawed, but he noticed his head turning to look at her.

She was straight-armed, straight-legged, every joint locked, eyes and mouth open wide, held up out of her seat by her muscles and yet locked in place by her belt. He took a deep breath before two things came out of his mouth, almost without his knowing, of their own volition. The first, made sense, “I think the tire blew.” The second, seemed to come from another lifetime, “I was waiting til we got home.”

They looked at each other, away, back again. He could see that she had no idea what he’d just said, and he could hear it in his own head, perhaps it sounded as though he expected the tire to blow when they’d arrived at home, and then the words all beginning to make sense, two separate unrelated sentences, one applying to the here and now, the other to moments before. As though life had suddenly been divided between now and then.

“No.”

It took him a moment to figure out what she meant. To internalize that she meant she would not marry him, and now he was sure it was all a misunderstanding. Perhaps she still meant he thought the tire would blow when they arrived home and she was stating the obvious, no, it hadn’t waited but had blown now. It took him another moment to realize that’s not what she meant, that she was firmly sitting in the here and now, that her mind had in fact flown into the future the moment he turned off the car and had already returned to the present and knew thing she couldn’t possibly know or understand.

“No,” she said again, “I meant, I was so sure you were going to propose, and then you didn’t and in the last few hours I’ve realized it would be a mistake. An enormous mistake. We aren’t meant to be together, we’re not forever. We’re perfect for the odd trip with friends or even together alone, but that in the long run we simply aren’t right. There’s a reason we’ve been together so long and not gotten married, there’s a reason we’ve come to see all the change happening in the world, and it’s to throw into greater relief the fact that we haven’t changed at all.”

He knew she’d just said something that should make sense, something that he was meant to agree with or refute but he was still stuck. Hadn’t she just been having a breakdown over his not proposing, and hadn’t he just admitted that he had every intention of proposing, what had happened, what had he missed, how could he so thoroughly have misunderstood the situation?

He thought to argue, he thought to persuade, he thought to soothe, and instead realized, he needed air. He opened the car door and attempted to step out, realized the belt was still firmly in place, released it, stepped out, closed the car door. He took a deep breath, raked his clawed hands down his face, saw that the tire had indeed blown out, proceeded to walk towards it. And then, he was running. He hadn’t done anything more active than a day hike in years, but he was running, running down the side of the road.

This #writethirtyminutes session was prompted very loosely from “A Year of Writing Prompts” by Writer’s Digest, available here

“The question for this month was, ‘if you could go back in time, would you? Where would you go and would you change anything?’ So, who wants to share?”

She stared at the moderator, a bit dumbstruck. Why had she chosen to join this group again, she wondered to herself. This was definitely not the place for her. Yes, she was lonely and bored and forcing herself to try new things, but a monthly group that holds in depth discusses of random questions…how did the group even get started…she couldn’t fathom.

“I’ll start,” said a younger man, roughly mid twenties and sporting a beard that was very meticulously maintained to appear to be unmaintained, what was his name, she couldn’t remember, Mac or something nick-namey and false sounding, irrelevant, she thought as he continued, “Originally I’d thought I’d be too afraid to go back in time. Who wants to relive their worst moment, right?” he looked about with a half-smile. He’s definitely practiced this in front of a mirror, she thought. “But then I began wondering, what if I could have made a major difference?” Oh, no, he’s going to say something about Hitler, ugh, she thought. “I mean, what if I could go back and stop Hitler?”

This is ridiculous, she thought, and decided to plaster a smile on her face while surreptitiously looking about. She was pretty sure the redhead to her right had joined to meet men, she always came dressed to the nines, her makeup applied thick and perfect, maybe women? No, definitely men, she thought as the redhead nodded and beamed at possibly-Mac as he droned on. Who am I to judge, she thought, I joined to meet people too, even if I wasn’t thinking about dating, meeting is meeting.

Who would I even want to date here though, she wondered, continuing her perusal of the room. Certainly not possibly-Mac, too bougie, or was he hipster? What was the difference? She shook her head and realized, possibly-Mac thought she was shaking her head at him, his stream of speech began to slow and concern showed in his eyes, she flapped her hand around her as though the head shake had been to dislodge a fly, and his smile returned, his speech picking back up to speed, relief evident in his eyes, he still owned the room.

Taking a deep breath, and trying to be as inaudible as possible she sighed. This was crazy. If she could go back in time she’d decide not to sign up for this meetup. A real smile came to her face and she did her best not to turn it on possibly-Mac directly, so as not to give him the wrong idea. He was way too young for her, not that she’d come here to date, she reminded herself.

The man next to her accidentally brushed her leg as he crossed his. She tried to see him from the corner of her eye. His name was John, she was sure of that, or maybe Jim? What was the point of meeting people if you aren’t going to take a few minutes to remember their names, she admonished herself. At any rate, John-Jim was definitely closer to her age, thirty-ish with a good smell to him, something like vanilla, like cookies. Oh no, wait, those were the actual cookies she was smelling. The cookies that other gal, Joyce? maybe, had brought.

What was Joyce-maybe’s deal, she wondered. Definitely here to drink, always the first one to order and the last one. Whiskey, it looked like. Which was surprising, not a common drink among women. She didn’t appear to like it much, grimacing with nearly every sip, yet always ordered another. Interesting. She would definitely say she’d go back in time. She clearly had regrets.

Wait, what was happening, everyone was looking at her. Shit! Clearly she was expected to say something about possibly-Mac’s monologue.

“Yes, uh, it really made me think about Stephen King’s book 11/22/63,” she stammered.

The moderator, Amy, she remembered that name anyway, had a confused look on her face, “Mac,” oh thank goodness it is Mac, “mentioned that too.”

“Yes, er, right, I just meant, I agree. I agree with Mac, and I also was thinking of that book.” She could see the people around her appeared a bit puzzled, but were also smiling, wanting her to feel welcome with her first bit of sharing, Joyce-maybe was nodding and raising her glass in a cheers-y fashion. “Excellent Mac, really, everything I was thinking,” she added, earning a sheepish but broad grin from the man himself.

Thank god that’s over, she thought, too soon it turned out as Amy spoke, “what else? Why don’t you share?” she said, staring directly at her.

Shit.

This #writethirtyminutes session was prompted very loosely from “A Year of Writing Prompts” by Writer’s Digest, available here

As an early riser is had been years since she’d seen a sunset. How many years, she couldn’t be sure, who remembers the last sunset they see? You’d have to know ahead of time it was your last sunset, or be one of those annoyingly mindful people that she secretly wished she was. Mindful, that is, not annoying. In the moment, wasn’t that what it was all about? You have only today, only the now, only right this second. Sigh.

At any rate, as far as sunsets went this was pretty spectacular. It wasn’t just that she was on her first vacation in twenty years, or that she was in Hawaii, a place she’d never been to before despite having multiple opportunities, it was that the colors themselves were so vivid. Maybe it was the humidity? Stop wondering why, she scolded herself, and just enjoy it.

It was then she realized no one else was enjoying it. In fact, everything had become eerily quiet. She noticed that everyone was staring not at the dramatic pinks and tangerines in the sky, but at him, the man in the tux who was supposed to be marrying her cousin but didn’t appear to be doing so. Was he flustered? Was he having a heart attack? What the hell was happening? And then she understood, just as he dropped her cousins hands, the tears streaming down his face, her mouth held in a perfect O of surprise, like something out of a movie.

He didn’t love her, and it was killing him.

How could I possibly know that, she wondered, but she did. She knew it in her gut, you weren’t supposed to know things in your gut, but in your heart, but she knew this in her gut. Her cousin and that man had grown up together, like cousins themselves, which is why the whole wedding had felt so wrong from the beginning, cousins shouldn’t marry! But they weren’t really, were they, related that was. Just grew up close like family, which was why everyone else thought the marriage was so natural, so expected even.

But he didn’t love her that way. He loved her, clearly he loved her, they’d grown up together and knew each other more intimately than anyone else knew them, he’d asked her to marry him. He loved her. But he couldn’t marry her.

She wondered when he realized it. It had to have been just this moment, he wouldn’t have put either of them through this otherwise, wouldn’t have put their familied through it. He was a good man, she knew that, they all knew that. There was no time to sit there trying to figure it all out, chaos had erupted. The bride was crying now, not just crying really, sobbing. It was loud and snotty with makeup running everywhere despite the shellacing the makeup artist had given her to withstand the humidity. People were literally running, some to the bride others after the groom who’d apparently disappeared, no, no there he was almost back to the hotel already. Chairs were overturned on the sand, women were cooing and coddling and crying with the bride, men were standing about hands in and out of pockets and running through hair, a lot of murmuring with no real understandable language.

She knew she should go to her cousin or her aunt and attempt consolation but she was simply stunned. No, that wasn’t quite right. Stunned would imply she hadn’t seen this coming, and somehow, she had. She realized she wasn’t stunned so much as disappointed. She’d known this was coming, if she was honest, and she’d had plenty of time to figure out how to behave and yet, here she was just sitting. Watching the damn sunset. Enjoying the sunset, how was that possible, but she was. It was gorgeous. When she’d last seen a sunset became irrelevant and she began to wonder if she’d ever seen a sunset this spectacular, and realized she hadn’t. And she’d certainly remember it, whether it was her last or not.

She felt the warm and rough texture of the sand against her feet, realizing she’d slipped off her shoes sometime between sitting down after the bride walked up the aisle and standing up when all hell broke loose. She realized she was sitting again, however, her hands gentle in her lap. She was breathing deeply, breathing in the colors, the humidity, the scent of something, plumeria maybe, in the air. Heavenly.

She felt like that mouse from the childrens story. The one who didn’t work stockpiling food for the winter and who the other mice began to resent a bit until winter. What was the mouse’s name, she wondered. It didn’t much matter, she was like the mouse. She was stockpiling the colors and scents and sensations, the pinks and tangerines, the plumeria and ocean, the gritty warmth of the sand.

Fredrick. That was his name. The mouse.

She was Fredrick now, so that her cousin could make it through the winter of her wedding day, a winter that would extend far longer than an actual season.

This #writethirtyminutes session was prompted very loosely from “A Year of Writing Prompts” by Writer’s Digest, available here