Instead of doing my proper novel-writing today I did some ventwork. It's a beginning which could possibly be a novel if the story decided to behave. It's about a snarky psychic named Melanie Shefford and Brian, her ex-fiance. This is how it starts:
I didn’t go to work on Friday. I spent the morning curled up next to the window with a cup of tea and a book. The tea was chammomile, which is good for the stomach and the nerves, and which I occasionally forget to despise. I was wearing my warmest sweater and fuzzy slippers and a blanket around my shoulders. The blanket was for comfort, mostly.
When I didn’t turn up to work and I didn’t answer my phone, which was dead, again, Brian showed up to check on me. Either he predicted my response or he was really worried, because he poked his head around the door before I could answer his knock. “Mel, you really can’t just skip –” he began when he saw me, then took another look and stopped. “What – ”
“I’m fine.” I tugged the blanket tighter around my shoulders. “Kettle’s on the stove if you want tea.”
“Are you sick? Why didn’t you call in?”
“Phone’s dead. Can’t find it,” I lied. “I’m not sick.”
“It’s not like you to just…not show up.”
“Felt like being spontaneous.”
He gave my very settled position a very pointed look. “You know Carl’s the sort of guy who’ll get you fired for spontaneity. He’s being nice because we’re worried. You’ve been different since – ”
He stopped, bit his tongue as if he’d almost spit poison. I wished he’d just say the goddamn word. Dancing around a thing, refusing to take it head-on, you have to judge it by its shadow – and the shadow’s always been a hell of a lot bigger for me than the thing I’m scared of.
“We all want you to be okay and to take your time to be okay,” Brian resumed, trying and failing not to sound like a TV commercial for counseling. “But you gotta call us and let us know if you’re not coming in. Use the neighbor’s phone or something. Carl would definitely fire you if you gave him a heart attack.”
I had nothing to say to that. Silence fell, awkward enough that Brian checked his phone to give his eyes something to do. On a bad impulse I asked, “How long have you got till he expects you back?”
“Depends on how you’re feeling.”
“Tell him I tripped down the stairs and had a concussion and you had to take me to the hospital.”
That startled a laugh out of him, like a flash flood crashing over a desert. He went to make himself some tea.
I've stuck the two of them in a situation which may or may not be melodramatic, but which is terrible for them both. I love Melanie more but I think I feel worse for Brian, who's actually a geniunely nice guy.
