The Incident
Author's Note: I'm not sure how long this story's been languishing in a folder on my desktop, but I've plugged away at it for months. I decided to shorten my stories from about 20,000 words to somewhere closer to 10,000.
Character development is always my most important priority. Who are these people? What are they looking for? The rest is about getting acquainted which inevitably leads to marriage, and I think that trying to find some new way for two people to fall in love without saying the same things over and over again was the main reason I stopped writing. In a word, it was boring.
So...this story focuses on developing the characters and how they meet. The rest is left up to the reader's imagination.
In case you're wondering, no, I don't have my 'mojo' back. I'm just pecking away a little and a little there every now and then. As always, I hope you enjoy the story.
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As she started it up she smiled. It wasn't a Rolls Royce but it was hers, and it was the first major purchase she'd made in the three years since her husband's untimely passing. She smiled again when she thought about him. She smiled for many reasons, but this time it was because she knew he'd hate her new car.
It was a mini-Cooper, and as much as she loved it, she knew Paul would have shook his head and made some kind of comment like, "Where's the rest of your car?"
Lacey Graham felt good and even laughed at the thought. In fact, she felt like she hadn't in so long she'd forgotten was it was like to have this easy, lighthearted approach to life. As she put it in gear she turned up the radio which was actually Sirius XM. She was born in 1981 but considered herself a child of the 90s and still loved the same music she had was she was in school.
Her new car was small as American cars went, but she loved its solid, sturdy feel and felt safe in it. The large windows gave her almost unlimited visibility, and it just had this...vibe...to it--a vibe that she really liked.
Once she got out of her development she turned onto the main road when a song she loved came on. She cranked it up a little higher and began singing along. It was from 1995 and called "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman" by Bryan Adams.
The words hit her hard as she recalled life with Paul and never having had a single day where she didn't know he'd really loved her. That, in turn, reminded her of the son they had; a wonderful boy who's life ended all too soon just two years before his father's passing.
On a dare, he'd taken a pill from a girl he was crushing on. She was one of the prettiest girls in school, and she'd let their boy know she was interested in him. He'd never done drugs or even taken a drag off of a cigarette, but they were at a party, and she told him that if he 'joined her', something she later learned meant 'get high together' that things would um, go well for him later on, romantically speaking.
Unbeknownst to him the pill had been laced with Fentanyl, and less than 30 minutes later her baby boy, who was then just 16, was dead and laying on a bed beside the girl who'd also overdosed--both of their bodies in the Fentanyl death pose.
Just as she'd done with her husband's death, she'd run the facts of her son's passing through her mind thousands of times. No matter how she sliced it, nothing ever changed. Both of them were still gone, and there was nothing she could do to change it.
So instead, she changed the station to avoid the pain of the memories the song invoked and settled on something mellow on a station called "Yacht Rock Radio" that had a DJ who did a terrible impression of Thurston Howell, III, from "Gilligan's Island."
She'd taken a few deep breaths, blinked several times, and was feeling better again. The new car smell hit her, and to her pleasant surprise, she smiled again. For the first time ever she'd gone down memory lane and was able to mentally walk away without feeling overcome by sadness and melancholy. Yes, it still hit her hard, but she didn't collapse under its weight, and that made her wonder if there was any chance she could ever experience love like that again.
Her trip back in time ended when she needed to move into the right lane in order to exit. She was doing about 55mph as she checked the rearview and side mirrors then glanced over her shoulder before starting the merge. Seeing no one, she put on her blinker and slowly began to slide to her right. Out of nowhere a car appeared on the passenger side that was so close she could see every detail of the young driver's face as she stopped merging and prayed they didn't hit. Somehow the other car went right on by accelerating and heading toward her exit.
As she continued the merge, Lacey realized she was shaking.
She had no idea that the cars hadn't completely missed each other until she noticed that the passenger-side mirror was no longer usable. It had been bent toward the front of the car and was now useless to her. It was hinged, so it wasn't broken, but it had been hit, and when she saw that her anger roiled up then boiled over.
Steaming, she followed the car onto the exit ramp then pulled in so close behind him the driver could barely tell there was someone behind him. When she saw him glance back she laid on the horn--the weak, little beep-beep horn most modern cars had. She didn't care, though. She just needed this...jerk...to realize what he'd done.
After 3-4 seconds of honking the driver finally looked in his rearview mirror a second time. She saw him sort of throw his arms up in a "what the hell's the matter with you" gesture. Lacey pointed furiously for him to pull over, but the driver kept going, and Lacey kept following and honking.
Finally, after another quarter mile or so the car that sort of hit her pulled into a parking lot and stopped. Lacey pulled in right behind him, and as she was shutting her car off she saw the other driver open his door. She did the same and got out just as he strode up to her door.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" the other driver demanded to know as he looked down at her, his brow narrowed, his voice deep and angry.
"What's wrong with you?" she nearly screamed. "Are you blind?"
He was a younger man who looked to be in his 20s, but she was too angry to notice anything else.
"What?" came his reply, the emotion draining from his voice.
"What do you mean...what?" she demanded. "You hit my car you...assh...jerk!"
He had a genuinely puzzled look on his face as he quietly said more than asked, "I...I did?"
"Oh, don't even go there! You know you did! You whipped around me and passed me when I was trying to exit. You were so close I could see your face, so don't give me any of that bullsh...nonsense."
She finally realized she was out of control and felt a hint of shame as this was so unlike her it was a little scary.
The man's face softened along with his voice.
"Listen. I honestly didn't see you. I believe you, and if you say that happened, okay. And...I apologize."
Lacey drew a long, deep breath then exhaled slowly and loudly. Calming herself, she pointed to the mirror.
The younger man walked over to it, examined it from all sides, then carefully returned it to its previous position before returning to where he was albeit a couple of feet further away from the crazy lady.
