Hey...what's going on guys? I hope everyone is having a great week so far. I promised to start updating the blog more regularly again so here I am...updating the blog. Right now, finishing up "Love in the City" is eating up most of my time so I haven't been able to create any short stories to post here to entertain you guys but that doesn't mean I don't plan on sharing. Here's the raw, unedited opening scene from "Love in the City." Enjoy and feel free to leave comments or email me with your feedback.
Chapter 1
Stuck on Repeat
He
looked up from the notebooks he had been scribbling in for most of the morning
for a split second, just long enough to notice her as she strolled through the
glass doors of the coffee shop, bringing with her the noise from the busy
street outside momentarily. Against his will, he became stuck, the way he
always became stuck whenever an interesting woman caught his attention. Max
wasn’t a creep, and he rarely ogled women but there were rare, magical moments
when he found that he couldn’t take his eyes off of certain ones and the tall,
well-dressed woman who had just walked in was exactly the type that he tended
to stare at. The expression on her face was mean but Max guessed that the
seriousness she wore like a mask was probably just a well-practiced defense
mechanism to deter men from frivolously flirting with her which was completely
understandable. The way her grey dress slacks hugged her hips and showed off
her shape, she probably couldn’t walk ten feet without being approached by some
guy who would’ve loved to get her out of all her clothes. Her skin was dark
brown and as smooth as the hot chocolate he had been sipping as he attempted to
get something significant written in his notebooks aside from the random
ramblings that he kept writing over and over. He kept his eyes on the
dark-skinned beauty until she sat down at the counter and crossed her legs as
she waited for someone to take her order. He smiled a little as he admired her
before he turned his attention back to his work. In his mind, he had no doubt
that she was something special.
***
Ruthie Pantsy sighed and smiled as she inhaled deeply
to take in the wonderful smell of the coffee shop. The exotic roasts and blends
gave her life as she sat her weary body down and crossed her legs on a day when
she would’ve preferred to stay home in bed. Unlike most people, she hated
Fridays for a few very good reasons. As the owner of her own construction
company, the weekends weren’t really weekends for her. She found that
she was often out supervising her work crews, seven days a week. In fact, on
most days she wore work boots, jeans, kept her hair tied up in a neat bun
underneath a dusty bandanna and got her hands dirty right alongside the crude,
sometimes crass, fellas that worked for her. Fridays were the only days when
she dressed up because it was payday for her workers and she needed to remind
them that she was the boss as she signed and handed out their paychecks.
She was a good boss, or at least she tried her best to
be. Later on that morning, she planned to stop at one of the more generic,
mainstream doughnut shops to buy pastries and coffee for her employees but for
herself, she was in the mood for something more exotic, less franchised, more
authentic and much more expensive. She deserved it after a long week of dealing
with demanding clients and frustrated workers who had done their very best to
help her meet those impossible demands.
That early in the morning, most of the people who came
to get their coffee from that particular shop were stylish hipsters quickly
placed the orders and were in and out. They were all busy people, always on the
move and always on their way to do something important. Ruthie looked around
the tiny coffee shop and noticed that the only person besides herself, who didn’t
seem to be in an extreme hurry was the man sat at one of the three tables with
his nose buried in the notebooks spread out in front of him. His fitted, faded,
blue Yankees cap was pulled down low enough to almost completely conceal his
eyes beneath the deep shadows cast by the crooked, bent brim. The scruffy beard
that wildly covered his cheeks was bushy enough to hide some of his features
but, Ruthie recognized him just the same. She had seen his face in black and
white on the back covers of at least a dozen of her favorite novels. Her heart
skipped a beat and she felt giddy, like a young groupie backstage at a concert
who found herself within arms-reach of her favorite band. She had always
promised herself that she would make it to one of his book signings but had
never found the time. Ruthie almost wanted to pinch herself to make sure that
she wasn’t dreaming when she realized that she was in the same quaint coffee
shop as her favorite author, Maxwell Michael Morgan.
***
Max heard when the chair on the opposite side of the
table where he was working slid across the floor and tried to ignore the person
would Ruthie sat down in it without an invitation until he heard her voice.
“Mr. Morgan,” a melodic feminine voice greeted him politely.
“No one calls me Mr. Morgan,” Max answered without
looking up from his notebooks. He did not want to be distracted.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you but, I’m a huge fan of
your books,” Ruthie continued.
“I figured that when you called me Mr. Morgan.
Only my readers do that,” he answered and as soon as the words left his mouth,
he realized how asshole-ish he sounded, although that was not his intention. He
was just frustrated that he couldn’t get any type of rhythm going with his
writing and the woman who had invited herself to sit down at his table and
engage in conversation was an unwelcome distraction. On the same, he always did
his best to not be a complete jerk. His grandmother had always preached to
treat others the way you would like to be treated and he lived by that,
whenever possible. “I’m sorry. Good morning Miss. I didn’t mean to be rude,” he
apologized. “It’s just that I’m trying to work. I’m stuck…and I’m not quite
sure how to write my way out of it,” he tried to explain.
“Well what are you working on?” Ruthie asked as she
boldly grabbed one of his notebooks to see what he had been feverishly
scribbling down.
Max didn’t quite know what to say when she snatched
his notebook away and he couldn’t find words when he looked up and saw that it
was the same woman who had caught his attention before when she had strolled
through the doors. That close to him, just on the opposite side of the small
wooden table, Max got a good look at her light brown eyes, an usual feature for
a woman of her complexion. The early morning sunlight that poured in from the
front windows of the coffee shop highlighted them and made them even prettier.
He stared without meaning to stare and got lost in her features. She had a
broad nose that perfectly suited the shape of her face and her big, juicy lips
looked soft enough to share many blissful kisses. Aside from a little
eyeshadow, her skin was free of makeup but still glowed naturally and
magically, no doubt the result of the God-given gift of extra melanin. As he
studied her, Max suddenly felt very shallow. If a less attractive and much less
alluring woman had snatched his notebook, he would’ve been furious but instead,
he calmly allowed her to read his mad ramblings without protest or complaint.
Ruthie flipped through seven pages in the notebook and
every line was filled with the same sentences, repeated over and over again in
Max’s handwriting. Aside from our excitement about stumbling across her
favorite author in a coffee shop she frequented, Ruthie became a cyclone of
swirling emotions. She was caught somewhere between fascinated and frightened.
She had heard stories about how odd creative people could be but what she read
on those pages seem like some obsessive psychosis.
“Excuse me. I’m sorry,” she apologized as she closed
notebook and carefully slid it back across the table. She felt as if she had
just impolitely peered into his mind and inadvertently discovered something
that was deeply private.
“I’m not crazy,” Max tried to reassure her when he
noticed her confused, nervous expression. “Well, that’s not entirely true. I’m
a writer so I am a little crazy. Honestly, I think that’s part of the job
requirement…at least if you expect to be any good at it anyway. But, I assure
you that I am by no means a maniac or serial killer kind of crazy. I prefer to
say I’m eccentric. It sounds sexier and rolls off the tongue much more
smoothly than crazy,” he joked. Then, Max smiled when he saw her body
language shift as she relaxed just a little bit.
“I didn’t mean to grab your notebook like that. I
don’t know what got into me,” she tried to explain. Ruthie still couldn’t
believe that she had been so forward with someone that she held in such high
esteem. On many occasions, while reading his novels, she had felt as if his
words inked on those pages spoke directly to her soul. The secrets he shared
seemed like they were somehow hers as well. That was why she loved every single
one of his books. She was quite embarrassed by how pushy and overbearing she
must’ve seemed to him.
“It’s fine,” he told her and watched her let out a
slight sigh of relief as she relaxed a little bit more.
As Ruthie fumbled around in her head for what she
should say next, there was a brief, awkward silence between them that quickly
became an even more comfortable moment than when she had snatched the writer’s
notebook without permission. Before Ruthie could figure out what to say next,
Max spoke up and kept the conversation between strangers going.
“You’re wondering what I’m working on…and why I’ve
been scribbling those same phrases over and over again right?” he asked.
“Well…yeah,” she answered and blushed a little when
she realized that his eyes had found their way to her cleavage. An extra button
in her blouse had become undone, exposing a little more of the soft flesh of
her breasts than she meant to show. She surprised herself when she didn’t make
an attempt to cover up or say something to get him to raise his gaze, which is
what she normally would’ve done. She wasn’t fond of men gawking at her breasts
but, there was something different, something sexy about the way Max looked at
her that she didn’t mind at all. Yes, he was staring at her body but there was
something more than lust in his eyes. Ruthie even flirted with the idea of
possibly being the inspiration for some female character he would create in one
of his stories. She wondered what type of woman he would make her into and was
curious about how close that character would be to who she truly was. She was
even a little turned on by the thought of him writing about parts of her that
not many people got a chance to see, not just physically or sexually but parts
of her soul.
“To be honest with you, I’ve been writing these same
lines over and over all morning because I’m stuck,” Max explained.
“You mean you have writer’s block?” she asked, full of
curiosity. She had never had the opportunity to speak to any author about their
writing process and words couldn’t express how blessed she suddenly felt to be
having just such a discussion with a man whose work she cherished.
“First, the term writers block is taboo when
speaking to a writer,” he said playfully. “And no, I wouldn’t say that I have
writer’s block. I’m just stuck,” he answered vaguely and took his eyes off of
her breasts and stared into her pretty face instead.
“Stuck how?” Ruthie asked and as she stared back at
Max, she realized that he was one handsome in person than his black and white
photos on the dust jackets of his hardcover books suggested. However, the sad,
lonely and lost look in his eyes was the same.
“I’m trying to write a novel about love and I’m
completely stuck,” he said before he took another sip of his hot chocolate. The
marshmallows had already melted and dissolved into white swirls in his hot
drink. The splash of cognac he had added had kicked in but he was only a little
tipsy.
“That’s understandable. Love is complicated,” said
Ruthie. She experienced her fair share of heartbreaks, just like most people.
“Indeed it is,” said Max. “And some loves are more
complicated than others.”
“So, who is this magical woman that you can’t find
words to describe?” Ruthie asked the words he had written over and over
suggested that some woman had possessed his heart with her presence and
occupied all of his thoughts.
“I don’t think it’s just one woman in particular. I’ve
been thinking about all of them this morning,” Max answered.
“I guess there’ve been many,” said Ruthie.
“There’ve been a few,” he answered. “I’ve been
struggling and trying to dig up my fondest memories of those encounters,
relationships, entanglements and romantic associations because I fear that I’ve
lost too much of my faith in love.”
“I’ve probably read all of your books. You write about
love, and intimacy in a way that I’ve never read or experienced before so, I
kinda find that hard to believe,” she said.
“But, it’s true sweetheart. I mean, I woke up full of
enthusiasm, and optimism, and ideas for this new book I planned to work on
right here at this table but, it all quickly went away…and all because I did
something this morning that I usually don’t do,” he answered.
“What did you do?” Ruthie asked, anxious to see if
maybe she could help him to get out of the funk he seemed to be trapped in if
she knew what the source of his problem was.
“And I sat down at this charming little table to write,
there was already a newspaper sitting here,” he started to explain as he
shifted his notebooks to reveal the local newspaper that was hidden underneath
them. “As I sipped my first cup of hot chocolate, my own curiosity got the
better of me and I ended up reading it. I always try my best not to watch the
news or read the papers. I know, a weird thing for a writer but I don’t trust
the media and most of the news is always bad news. As I flipped through these flimsy
pages and read the stories printed on this cheap paper, all I kept reading
started to make me more and more depressed,” he told her before he picked up
the paper angrily and started flipping through the pages until he found one
article in particular. “How can I sit and write about love have to I’ve read
about something as tragic and heinous as this?” He asked as he turned the paper
to show her article that had so deeply disturbed him.
Ruthie’s stared at the headline which read: TEEN GIRL ON TRIAL FOR MURDER and as Ruthie read the article, she learned that the
murder victim was the stepfather of the girl on trial. The article went on to
state that the teen claimed that she acted in self-defense. According to her
statement, her stepfather had been molesting her for years.
Copyright
© 2017 Keith Kareem Williams
All
rights reserved.
I hope you've enjoyed this sample from "Love in the City." In the coming weeks, I'll tease you with more. Remember to pre-order it. (I'm almost at the finish line)
