Heather (part 2)

Start with part 1 of this short story if you haven’t already read it or want a refresher.  Did you guess the guy?  You’ll find out in the first line of part 2 if you’re correct.

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    Heather tried to look for butterflies on the shelf, but her attention kept shifting to Adam, who was doing a better job looking for butterflies. He’d pointed out two more suggestions. Heather didn’t think either of them would be something her mom liked.
    “What was that word you said before?” he asked. “Butteriflied? Is that how your mom describes her collection?”
    “Uh, no.” Her face warmed. “That was just something that slipped out when I tried to explain that she only collects items where the butterfly is the first thing you see.”
    He nodded. His eyes sparkled with amusement. It wasn’t mocking or derisive. Heather allowed herself to smile at the nonsense word. She relaxed enough to actually think about her mom’s gift again. Nothing on the shelf in front of her seemed appropriate.
    Adam rounded a corner ahead of her, and a minute later his voice called, “Hey! Isn’t this what you were holding when I came in?”
    Heather caught up to where he was holding a tall, skinny vase. She recognized the slippery neck and took in the square base for the first time. It was covered with beautiful butterflies. The wings were colorful metallics, mostly in shades of blue and purple on a silvery background. “That’s perfect,” she said. “Mom will love it.”
    “Then why were we looking for something else?” Adam tipped his head in confusion.
    “I didn’t see the butterflies.”
    “On the thing in your hand?” His confusion turned into disbelief.
    “Well, Mrs. Johnson had just picked it up when you walked in, and – ” Heather clamped her mouth shut on the rest of that thought. She was not going to admit she’d freaked out at the sight of him.
    Adam stared at her for several moments, searching her eyes for the other half of the sentence. He must have read at least a hint because his expression softened. “I messed up so much with…”
    Mrs. Johnson’s footsteps made him cut off what he was about to say just before she reappeared at the bottom of the stairs smiling cheerfully. She was holding a lidless shoebox full of plastic toys. “Most of these light up. I think someone was collecting novelty lights, then sold the whole thing for five bucks when he got tired of it. I knew I couldn’t sell it here, but something made me buy it anyway.” She handed it to Adam. “Then I remembered the summer fling coming up at the church.”
    “These will be great prizes for the kids’ games,” Adam said. “Thanks.”
    Mrs. Johnson turned back to Heather. “Now we need to get you squared away.”
    “I’ll take this.” She held up the vase.
    “Good choice.” Mrs. Johnson smiled. “Of course, you do know your mom is likely to continue being stupid, especially after you show your appreciation.”
    Heather laughed.
    “Moms are like that,” Adam said from behind her.
    Heather had sensed he was still there, but she assumed he was slowly making his way to the door. She turned at his comment and saw him standing there as though he was waiting for her. Was he waiting for her? Heather finished her transaction as quickly as she could while still being polite.
    Adam moved towards the door in time to open it for her. “Heather?”
    She hadn’t processed what, if anything, she wanted to say before they parted at the sidewalk. She was relieved that he seemed to have something to say. “Yes?”
    “Um…” He rattled the box he was holding. “Mrs. Donnelly is waiting for this, but… I was on my way to Pans and Plates to try Noah’s alien pizza. Have you eaten? Do you… have time to join me?”
    “I’ve been wanting to check that out. Emily said it’s really good.”
    “Great. So you’ll wait for me while I drop these at the church? It’ll only be five minutes.”
    “Sure. I’ll save you a seat.”
    Adam nodded, tucked the box under his arm, and moved past her at a jog.
    Heather walked slowly, trying to sort through a million thoughts that all wanted to talk to her at once. She and Adam used to get along. That last interaction had been surprisingly natural, almost as though they’d returned to the time before Kayla imploded a bunch of relationships. Heather couldn’t help reminding herself that in the present Adam was unattached. She wished he would eventually see her as more than a friend, that he was coming back into her life in a significant way. But she managed to push those thoughts away and focus on being content that he was coming back for lunch.

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Don’t forget to preorder Eve’s Brother. That can be the next thing on your to read list.

Heather (part 1)

Here’s a brief never-before-published scene I imagined somewhere between Love in Andauk and More Love in Andauk. (Minor spoilers if you haven’t read the former.) Notice that the guy’s name is not mentioned. Have you read enough to guess his identity?
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    “I need a present for my mom because she’s being stupid.”
    Mrs. Johnson didn’t even blink. She walked around one of the glass shelves and returned a minute later holding something in each hand.
    Heather barely registered either item before she heard the door open behind her. When she saw who was coming in, she lost all ability to focus and, for some unknown reason, the feeling in both her legs.
    He tried to hang back near the door, but Mrs. Johnson smiled and urged him forward with a question about how she could help.
    “I don’t want to interrupt,” he said. His eyes searched Heather for how upset she was by the interruption.
    She wasn’t upset. She was delighted to see him, despite the shock and mortification, despite being unable to tell him that, despite still just trying not to fall over.
    “We’re going to be awhile picking the perfect gift,” Mrs. Johnson said. “If you have a quick need, we can do that first.”
    He took another step forward, still trying to gauge Heather’s reaction.
    She managed to nod a little, which she meant to give him permission to continue. Heather was having trouble remembering why she was there so Mrs. Johnson was likely right about her not being quick.
    “I was just at St. Jude’s,” he said. “Mrs. Donnelly caught me leaving and sent me here to pick up… She said you had a box of… um… trinkets for the festival next week.”
    “Oh, it’s sweet of you to save me a trip. I’ll just run upstairs to get those.” Mrs. Johnson pressed the items in her hands into Heather’s hands. Then she pulled a key from her pocket to unlock a door on the side of the shop. Her footsteps tapped lightly on wooden stairs after she disappeared.
    Heather looked down at her hands. There was a snow globe in one and an awkwardly tall vase in the other. Both were glass and dangerously slippery in her sweaty hands. She’d seen him at church and around town in the year and a half since Kayla made the idiotic decision to dump him – since Kayla had cited Heather being in love with him as the reason for her idiotic decision – but this was the first time she’d been in a position to have an actual conversation with him.
    “Who’s the gift for?” he asked.
    “My mom.” Heather’s eyes slipped over a pretty cross on one of the shelves as they lifted to meet his. It filled her with courage and a bit of clarity, though her legs were still jelly. “I’ve had some car trouble, and she’s been giving me rides everywhere. I was going to get a friend to take me to pick it up this afternoon, but she insisted she could do that, too. I wanted a small thank you… something.”
    “Doesn’t your mom collect butterflies?”
    She tried not to gasp audibly that he remembered. It was a tiny fact not worth gasping over. “Yes,” she said.
    “Got to be a butterfly in here somewhere.” He turned towards the shelves.
    He was going to help her find a silly present for her mom? Heather quickly stashed the items she was holding on the closest shelf. She knew that wasn’t where Mrs. Johnson had found them, but there wasn’t much organization in the second-hand shop. And the fragile things were safer there.
    “What about this one?” He pointed.
    Heather moved closer to see what it was. It was a plaque with a lame platitude engraved. A butterfly graced one corner amid a blur of flowers, but it wasn’t the focal point.
    He laughed at the expression that apparently gave away more of her opinion than she intended. “Not even close, huh?”
    “Well, it’s… uh… it’s not… butteriflied enough.” Heather cringed. What in the world had she just said?
    “I’ll… I think I’ll try again.” He focused on the knickknacks spread out before them, but there was an earnestness in his voice that somehow reached beyond the trivial present to a hope Heather had never dared to have before.
    She prayed that hope wasn’t as obvious on her face as her previous thought.


To be continued...

The Order of Operations

We’ve all been tempted to skip ahead while reading a book.  I’m not talking about a bad book where a reader skips to the ending to more quickly move on to something worth reading.  I mean a good book where the reader gets impatient for even better scenes with thoughts like, “I suspect he’ll eventually win her over with his pirate impression, and I need to know if I should be tracking every mention for possible foreshadowing,” or “I predict she will find the magic portal back home under that spooky shed when she accidentally burns it to the ground, and I just can’t wait to know if I’m right.”  These are universal thoughts.  But we all resist the urge to look ahead because that’s just not how you read a book. 

I have to admit I’m occasionally tempted to skip ahead with books I write as well.  Sometimes in the early chapters I’m thinking about how much more fun it’ll be to write the super romantic thing he says or does to really cement the relationship.  I have to wait.  I can’t write the super romantic line until it becomes romantic through everything that happens first.  I need to multiply the feelings before I add the people.

Let’s examine a real, non-romantic example.  One of the best lines in The Lord of the Rings is when Sam says, “Come, Mr. Frodo!  I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you.”  Starting the book from this line makes the amazing quote dumb.  What is this thing that Mr. Frodo can’t carry?  And why does Sam think carrying it with the added weight of a person will be easier?  Sam doesn’t know what he’s talking about.  And if you read just enough to know they’re trying to get to the top of Mt. Doom, it’s even worse.  Anyone trying to climb something literally called Mt. Doom must be a moron.  It’s the rest of the story that makes it awesome.  Reading it out of order makes as much sense as a math problem with only half the equation.

It's the same with a romance.  I can’t skip to a scene where the heroine swoons over a plate of deviled eggs when the hero peels off the tin foil, puts it on his head, and says, “Pro nobis.”  By itself, it’s a terrible scene.  But… if I’ve written the part where they meet at a picnic reaching for the last deviled egg at the same time, and the part where he works to overcome his fear of mustard bottles to make the recipe he got from her mom, and I’ve written several scenes about her recurring dream where she’s married to a guy she can’t see but always makes her feel safe and cherished and has tin foil on his head, and I included the bit that specifies her love language is Latin… then it’s a beautiful moment.  Right?

Don’t worry about any of that being a spoiler for book 4 though.  I’m still working on the multiplication, and I haven’t added any deviled eggs.