Joshua Bader's Blog: How I Learned to Love the Bomb - Posts Tagged "romance"

I've been looking forward to making this blog entry all week. I can't express that sentiment strongly enough. There's a certain point in a project where it's coming to life and the writing is easy and the story is all I can think about. I'm at that stage with Small Favors and I'm excited to share a little bit of that energy with you, constant reader. I think it's all the more crazy because it's a genre I haven't written in before, beyond one or two short stories.
Now, what portion or chapter to share? I promised to keep it PG-13, which rules out... But no reason to go strictly G... And you need a little background for that, so...
Without further ado, Small Favors.

Chapter One
Those eyes drilled into her, so mercilessly blue they reminded Morgan of cold steel and frozen glaciers. "So, we going to do this or not?"
The day had started off normal enough. Simon woke her up with a slightly more enthusiastic than routine demanded kiss to her cheek. He was already dressed for the office, nice shirt, tie number two, and khakis. The colors blended decently, but not perfectly. Morgan had given up waking up early enough to help Simon with his wardrobe color palette years ago. He was middle management now. Secure against demotion, but promotion was unlikely no matter how stylish his dress. She slept, he kissed goodbye, and their worlds briefly touched before drifting apart for the next twelve hours.
Morgan got "morning dressed", pulling herself together enough to wake the kids and half-ass her way through breakfast. Stephen was eight and the first to the table as usual. Like normal, Morgan debated if she cared enough to send him back to his room to put on clean pants. She decided that was too much of a fight and pretended not to notice instead. Tara, the oldest six year ever, sleepily stumbled to the table a few minutes later. Toaster waffles and organic orange juice satisfied all three of them without unravelling Morgan's diet hopes. She had forgotten what weight she was targeting, but she’d be damned if she got old and frumpy without a fight.
While the kids were supposed to be busy brushing their teeth and getting dressed for school, rather than screwing around with their phone and tablet, Morgan got “school-gym dressed”. Yoga pants, sports bra, tank top, and a headband might have sounded simple enough to her husband. To Morgan, they were carefully calculated tools in status symbol warfare. All gear had to be clean, free of holes and signs of wear, with the right color ensemble to convey her attitude and social standing to the other school moms and gym attendees. If the fit was right to be seductive without being slutty, all the better. Morgan had never cheated on Simon, but she still enjoyed knowing that she could attract attention from those around her. Their desire fueled her self-esteem and served as a security blanket against the possibility of Simon going off the deep end during a mid-life crisis.
Unlikely. Simon had never wandered into deep waters in his entire life. You have some experience at depths where feet and soul can’t touch.
Once armored up for the suburban battlefields, Morgan herded Stephen and Tara into the SUV and braved school traffic. There was nothing like a blinking school zone sign to cause people to forget how to drive. Some of the other motorists even lost basic human decency. Morgan’s SUV was a metallic silver, resembling a futuristic tank in shape and color. That metaphor made her feel better about the dangers of driving her kids to their elementary. As she dropped them off, Morgan sighed. Life was truly dull if she had to imagine the twice a day school trip as a real adventure.
Dull, but safe. Sometimes dull was good.
From the elementary school, it was on to one of the two Planet Fitness gyms on her side of town. If she was really serious about her diet or was hot to write on her latest book, she went to the one closest to home. Other days, like today, she wasn’t watching her pounds too closely and was even less eager to get home to her unruly computer screen. She went to the other location, which happened to share a parking lot with Starbucks. Through most of the drive there and all of her workout, Morgan couldn’t think of anything other than the rich texture of cream on top of a sensuous and sugary blend of coffee. She may have skimped on the cardio a little, but who cared. Simon barely paid attention to his waist line, save for when a pair of pants was too tight. Why should she have to be perfection while he got to have a dad bod?
Post-exercise she stopped in at the Starbucks. She ordered her usual drink, pretended outloud that she might be interested in a pastry, mostly to practice her flirting. The male barista taking her order either didn’t notice or was batting for the other team. Morgan consciously avoided the alternative that at the ripe old age of thirty-one she was too old for his tastes. She was damn good looking, regardless of age, and refused to let anyone else tell her otherwise. She took in her drink at the back corner, watching the other employees and customers as they went about their work.
That was how she had caught lightning in a bottle with The Last Embers. People watching was a valuable skill for a writer. Letting the imagination play with the appearances, body language, and attitudes of the people around them allowed for a richly populated vibrant novel. If she just found the right setting, the right group of people, maybe her third novel would live up to the high bar set by her first.
Right, people watching, that was her muse. It had nothing to do with who you were people watching with. You don't need him to write.
Thinking about James slowed her down a little and the drink was cold by the time she got to the dregs. She threw his memories and the cup out at the same time. She returned to her street legal war machine and drove back to her now quiet house in a cozy neighborhood. She tried not to think about the mocking computer screen that would be waiting for her, it’s empty blackness a challenge that she was finding harder and harder to conquer. She blasted her Pandora station, hoping some lyric would catch in her soul and help her find her way. She squeezed her SUV into the garage and ran upstairs to take a shower.
The water erased both sweat and tension, helping Morgan return to her stress free self. She opted for “all-out-work dress” afterwards. She had read somewhere that how a person dressed affected how they thought. If she was going to think like a socialite at an exotic cocktail party, like the main character in The Rose Among Diamonds, it couldn’t hurt to look the part. She broke out one of her little black dresses, admired herself in the mirror, and started downstairs to her home office. She thought better of it on the top step and turned around to add her favorite pair of heels. She took off her wedding ring and put on a pearl string choker. That was what her character would have worn, given her closet and budget.
She marched downstairs, ready to conquer the world, or, at least, chapter three. The triumphant show of force proved ineffective. Ten minutes later, she was still staring at the monitor, trying to add a new sentence to the existing total of the book.
Fifteen minutes later, she reread the opening of chapter three, editing as she went, polishing where she could. It was romance, right? Half of the good stuff would be invented in the imagination of her readers. She just needed to get close enough to let the torrid minds fill in the blanks.
Forty-five minutes later, she was back to staring at where she had left off, wondering what in Hell she was going to write next.
Slightly after the hour mark, she went back to the very beginning of chapter one and started slowly working her way forward.
Doing this wouldn’t get anything new written, but at least she could pretend she had been productive when Simon got home that night. It had been such a simple decision. She didn’t need a “real” career. She was a talented writer and better with the kids than Simon was. Of course, she should be the one to stay home with the children, stand barefoot in the kitchen, and dust doilies when… Morgan forced herself to stop and return to the screen in front of her. She had been a writer from middle school on, but had really blossomed while she was pregnant with Stephen. It had been a hard pregnancy for a number of reasons. She had miscarried a couple of years before it and the doctors thought it best if she stay in bed for the last half of her pregnancy. Simon bought her a new laptop and Morgan dug out an old notebook with a half started manuscript. The Last Embers was finished forty-eight hours before she went into labor.
Neither of them had expected much out of it at the time. It had been something to pass the time, really. But somewhere in the mist of exhaustion that was life with a newborn, she had used nap time to query an agent. One of the queries took, which led to a publisher, which led to reasonable success, especially for a first time author. The novel had been critically well reviewed and romance was a hot genre. After that, it was obvious that Morgan should stay at home and write and Simon should work at his career for another decade or so. Back then it had been assumed, they would retire after they got kids off to college.
But the success that had been foretold by The Last Embers had fallen flat with her follow up, Dancing Across Ice. It wasn’t that it was a bad novel… but people who had been in love with her first book just didn’t have that same visceral reaction to the second. Everyone around her, Simon, her publishing house, her agent, her, were very careful not to blame Dancing Across Ice for the movie deal falling apart for The Last Embers. The absence of open accusation made it all the more obvious that was exactly what had happened. The movie made sense when she was a rising star, not when she was a one-shot wonder. It’s not that the money for two novels was bad… but it wasn’t retire early, move to the Bahamas, good, either.
All of that could change if The Rose Among Diamonds worked. But it wasn’t. She had been toying around with it for over three years now and still couldn’t close out the third chapter. Yes, she had small children, yes, they demanded massive amounts of time and attention. But others had written more under harsher situations. She had played around with other genres, other starts, but beyond a few promising first chapters, The Rose Among Diamonds was the most complete idea she had to work with.
She stared at the screen, pounded out a sentence, deleted it, and tried again. It wasn’t great, but it was something. At a sentence a day, she had to eventually finish, right?
Sure. Because if you have two minutes of sex a day, you’ll eventually have an orgasm, right?
She texted Simon at work, partly to remind him she was there, partly to make it sound like she was busy and productive. Morgan didn’t think her husband was having an affair, but it never hurt to prod her man with the knowledge she existed. She went back upstairs and traded the heels in for something more sensible, in this case, her jogging shoes and socks. She took a selfie with the choker still on and sent it to him. With enough poking, maybe she’d get two or more minutes of sex when night came and the children were safe in bed.
Do you even remember why you pick on him about time? Have you completely forgotten?
Simon wasn’t bad in bed. He wasn’t. It was just a natural progression after two children. Her body wasn’t the same, no matter how much work she put into it at the gym and at eating times. They were getting older, their hormones decreasing. Nobody could be a voracious teenager forever. When they did have sex, she usually did finish. Not always, but often enough not to complain. It wasn’t fireworks, but it was better than a sparkler.
She put such thoughts and the choker away, grabbed her purse, and headed out to the supermarket. She didn’t have a clear plan for dinner, but she would figure out something as she shopped. She was so lost in her own fugue, she almost didn’t see the black sedan parked in front of her house. She slammed her brakes before she could back into it. She almost let her foot drift off the pedal in surprise when she saw the man leaning up against it.
He was wearing blue jeans and combat boots, leading up to leather belt and crisp white tee. A fatigue green jacket hung loose from his shoulders, but it was left open, leaving little of his chest or abs to the imagination. The white shirt clung to his contour, revealing a solid physique. Black hair hung to his shoulders, his face clean shaven. Even from the front seat of her SUV, she could feel those eyes looking at her. James should have been thirty-two, but not a damn thing had changed about him in the last decade. The boots and blue jeans were new, virtually perfect condition, but other than that he looked exactly like he had when they had parted so long ago.
Morgan started to get out, stopped to remember to put the vehicle into park first, and then got out for real. She should have pulled back into the garage, shut the door, and called the cops.
Why? You really think he would hurt you?
She dismissed that idea with a shake. James was a dangerous man, but not to her. Not physically, at least. She shook her head, stared at him, wondered what the hell she was supposed to do next. She slowly creeped down to where he was, trying not to slink her hips back and forth in her little black dress, desperately wishing she had changed into something else before leaving the house. She tried to find words to say, but found them as vanishing as when she tried to write novels about him… novels with him… novels. Standing this close, she found it impossible to deny who the real muse for The Last Embers was. All her long standing defenses crumbled to dust.
Those eyes drilled into her, so mercilessly blue they reminded Morgan of cold steel and frozen glaciers. "So, we going to do this or not?"