Welcome to the Fifteen Minute Novel. Each morning I spend fifteen minutes writing on a singular story line. Each morning starts with the last line of the previous day. The goal is to get a (very) rough draft out of the simple story idea and to avoid letting the story idea languish in limbo forever, actually writing it out. This is the third year I have done this writing experiment and each year I learn just a little bit about myself and the way I write as well as creating a framework for the story. But without further ado…
Day 180: She scrolled through them quickly.
She scrolled through them quickly. They were pretty much all in the same vein. He wanted to talk to her. He was sure she would get over her temper soon enough. They should get back together. Gwen shook her head when he told her there was a family barbecue that afternoon and that he would pick her up at ten thirty.
‘And then we can talk after,’ he told her in his final text.
Gwen sat at the kitchen island, the sound of the rain outside lulling as it splashed down from the sky. Her plans for the day mostly involved packing and sorting. The only outing she planned was her morning run. Thinking of Toby arriving at ten thirty to take her to a barbeque with his family made her want to have other plans and not be around when he arrived. Gwen set the phone to the side, finished her breakfast and walked her dishes to the sink. As she washed them, she tried to think of various places she could be.
‘Its not a day when the realtor is going to be here,’ Gwen thought. ‘I have a couple of days before they start coming in with the fix up and staging crews.’ She ran through the schedule. ‘So technically this would be one of the days where I can run errands if I needed.’
The need for errands was small, but Gwen thought that a run out to the stores to pick up things for the upcoming road trip and to browse things that might be helpful either getting back to her grandparents or once she was there might not be a bad idea. While her grandmother took her to high end outlets and department stores, there were some basic things Gwen thought might be easier for her to pick up here where she was familiar with the stores.
‘And if Toby is going to be here at ten thirty then I can leave at ten and be out when he arrives.’
It felt a little cowardly, but Gwen decided she didn’t much care. She didn’t want to talk to Toby. She especially didn’t want to talk to him when she was at the house alone. She didn’t think he do anything, but he didn’t really like being told he couldn’t have what he wanted and she’d rather there were people around when he was disappointed.
‘And I certainly don’t want to go with him to his family’s place.’ Gwen found herself annoyed that Toby’s family was more upset that she wasn’t going to help him run the family business than at Toby’s behavior. ‘Of course, I really only know the rumors.’
The rumors, however, rang true. In Toby’s family he was pretty much the golden child. His parents didn’t think they were going to be able to have kids, and then Toby came along, their miracle child. He was treated as a miracle and allowed to do pretty much whatever he wanted. The only requirement they had was that he one day run the family business. Beyond that, anything else he did was fine with them and if something went wrong it was someone else’s fault.
Gwen shook her thoughts away. Any visit she had to Toby’s family was always slightly uncomfortable and now that they weren’t dating, she had no desire to go back. ‘Shopping it is,’ she decided. Gwen checked the time on the clock.
Ten til Midnight 