Chapter 6
Birdie walked out the door, calling to Gram that she would be back in two hours, then closing it softly behind her and walking off the porch.
She had thought about skipping out or showing up late, but she would feel bad not showing up after she said she would, and she just couldn’t be late on purpose. The Holy Spirit in her would not allow her to treat someone that badly.
Not that she hadn’t been late plenty of times because of things she couldn’t control, but it was the idea of deliberately not caring about a person enough to show up on time.
She had a little energy today and didn’t feel so heavy inside. She’d also eaten a little bit of the cinnamon rolls that had been left over from supper for breakfast. They had been delicious.
Gram had already made lunch and was working on supper. She had given instructions to Birdie that she was supposed to invite Wesley and Gramps to come.
She felt like maybe that might be a little much. Perhaps the men didn’t want to spend every evening with them, but Gram had insisted, and Birdie wasn’t going to tell her no. She stepped down the steps onto the sand and saw Wesley standing at the bottom of the steps that led from his cottage. She hadn’t seen him from the top, although her eyes scanned the beach.
“Hey. I wasn’t sure whether you were going to show up or not,” he said, carrying a small laptop and coming toward her .
She clutched her notebook and pen. She always wrote songs better when she had a pen in her hand.
She had checked in with her business earlier that day on her laptop. There were so many things to keep track of and things she needed to run, and while she had a business manager and a group of other people who worked for her who were supposed to handle the day-to-day activities so she didn’t have to, it was up to her to make sure that everything was going the way it was supposed to.
“I said I would,” she said, walking toward him and thinking that those words did not even hint at the temptation she felt to just stay in the cottage. Maybe part of the reason that she came was because she knew it would just be a simple matter of him walking a few steps to their cottage to see what was going on with her. And since the cottage was all one room except the bathroom, she would have no choice but to be there when the door was opened. Unless she was going to hide out in the bathroom all day.
There were times where that idea didn’t seem so terrible.
“A lot of people say they’ll do things, and then they end up not. You just never know anymore,” Wesley said, sounding like he knew what he was talking about.
She noted another tight T-shirt, this one a different color, a bluish gray, and the closely cropped hair.
He had a nose that looked like it had been broken and a scar on the bottom of his jaw that she’d noticed the day before at supper.
“Is there a certain spot where you’d like to sit?” he asked, and she figured that she might as well try to get her head in the game since she obviously wasn’t getting out of this.
“No. Just I like to sit as close to the water as I can without actually getting wet.”
“So you don’t like to get wet?”
“I don’t like to be wet and cold at the same time.” She lifted her shoulder, knowing that it was a little bit weird, but it was the truth. And he’d asked.
“You mean even on a hot summer day, you don’t like to get in the lake and be refreshed with a little dip?”
“I’ll do it, and I love to swim, but... I’d like to swim in bathwater, if I could. That would be nice.”
“That’s gross,” he said. “I grew up in upstate New York, and the water’s cold year-round. It’s the best water to swim in. You get in there, and you feel like a new person when you get out. ”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“You mean this writing session doesn’t include a swim? Even though we’re right by Lake Michigan?”
“I’ll hold your computer while you go,” she suggested with a lopsided grin. She knew he was just teasing her, and she appreciated him breaking the ice a little. She hadn’t been sure that she was actually going to like working with him. And she really hadn’t been sure whether she was going to be able to write a song, let alone multiple songs, while he was around.
“All right, how about here?” he asked, just shy of where the pebbly sand started to get wet. It was a perfect spot.
“This is good,” she said, impressed that he had actually listened to her and had chosen a spot that he knew that she would like. That was...considerate. And despite herself, she was a little bit charmed.
“All right, I’ll just admit this, I was thinking about it yesterday, and I could tell that there were some things at dinner that you were hiding.”
“Wow, okay, let’s jump in the deep end right away.”
“Well, I was going to ask you how things went at church, but I didn’t want to remind you that I hadn’t gone, in case you were upset about that.”
“Why would I be upset? It’s your choice. That’s between you and the Lord. If you want to get to heaven and explain to Him why you skipped out yesterday, go right ahead.”
“He’s not going to do anything.”
“If you say so,” she said, lifting a shoulder, but not looking at him, rather looking out on the lake, admiring the beauty in front of her. She didn’t really think that God expected them to go to church every time the doors were open, except...it was good for them. She could tell a difference between when she was able to get to church on a regular basis and when she wasn’t. Even the teaching last night had grounded her and challenged her in a way she felt was necessary.
“Wow. So you’re legalistic about church attendance?” He looked down at his laptop. “All right then.”
“Oh no. I told you, do what you want. God gives you free choice, why wouldn’t I?”
“But you think I should have gone.”
“No. I think I should have gone. And I did, and I’m glad I did. What you do is up to you. ”
He nodded and didn’t say anything more.
“All right, let’s jump back into the deep end.”
“I think we’ve already been swimming there for a while. Pretty much every conversation I have with you is in the deep end.”
She laughed, it was true, they started out talking about religion, which was supposed to be a taboo subject. “I suppose the next thing is that you’re going to want to talk about politics?”
“No way. Not touching that, not for anything.”
She laughed. “All right. You’re right. There are some things I was trying to hide yesterday, and some things that I definitely don’t want to talk about.”
“Same.” He said that immediately, which surprised her. And then he had a suggestion which she thought was really good. “What do you say we don’t try to uncover each other’s secrets. I was thinking last night I was kind of curious about what you weren’t saying, but then I thought about how there were things I didn’t want to say, and I figured you probably felt the same way about your secrets. So how about we just let the secrets stay buried, and we’ll focus on other things. Deal?”
“Deal.”
“You can tell me if I’m getting too close to something that is important to you.”
“All right. I’ll just tell you. I don’t want to talk about who I am. Just Birdie, and that’s enough.”
“All right. I’m Wes, and that’s enough.”
They looked at each other for a moment, both of them with their eyes a little narrow, like this new piece of information—the fact that neither of them wanted their identities to be divulged—was interesting, and then they grinned at each other. Because they realized they were doing the very things that they had said that they weren’t going to do, which was trying to figure out each other’s secrets.
“This is a little tricky for me, because what I’m actually writing is an autobiography.”
“Oh. Interesting.” So he was famous enough that people might want to read his autobiography. She had been approached by several different places asking for her to write one, but she knew she didn’t have the time. They had said that they could have a ghostwriter do it, but she wasn’t comfortable with that. So, she was keeping notes about her life and thought perhaps one day... Perhaps .
“Yeah, which is going to be a little tricky because I was hoping you would help me with it. I... I’m not a writer in real life.”
She laughed. “I’m not a writer either.”
“But you’ve been carrying around the notebook and a pen.”
“True. I do do a little bit of poetry like I said, but it’s not my actual job.”
“That stinks, because I have to have the first chapter of my autobiography written by Saturday. That’s when... That’s when it’s supposed to go live.”
“You’re not publishing it in book form?”
“No. My... Someone suggested that I should start it out as a serial on social media.” He seemed to be choosing his words very carefully so that he didn’t give anything away. She could respect that, because she had the same care with her words.
“You must have quite a social media following if that’s going to be profitable.”
He blinked at her, and she thought maybe she’d said too much. Obviously she was a little bit knowledgeable about social media. But that shouldn’t give away her actual identity or what she did for a living.
“I do. And maybe the book will increase that.”
“I see.”
“Anyway, I wasn’t sure where to start. I guess that’s what I was hoping for help with. That and... I don’t know how to make the story compelling. I want to say this happened, and then this happened, and then that happened. But that doesn’t seem very fun.”
She thought about that for a bit. With her experience in songwriting, she knew that songs often told a story. And humans were hardwired to hear stories. They wanted to know what happened. Men and women were a little bit different. Where men had a tendency to want action, women wanted to know what the people in the story were thinking, but they all wanted a beginning, a middle, and an end.
But sometimes the structure could be twisted a little so that there was a hook right at the beginning. Like a song that started with a really catchy chorus, in order to grab people’s attention and their ear, kind of get their foot tapping and their minds flowing along with the music before the story started. And then, the story would be interrupted every once in a while with that same attention-catching, toe-tapping, mind-grabbing chorus.
It didn’t have to be that way, but it could .
“Is there an exciting event in your life that everyone is curious about? Something that people might not know the ending to, that you could grab them with right away? A hook, if we’re going to use a fishing analogy. You want to bait the hook, cast it, and grab them right away with that.”
“I suppose,” he said thoughtfully.
“Or is there something that people don’t know, something in your childhood that you could start with that would leave people curious? People who know you might think, ‘wow, how did he get out of that,’ and people who don’t know you might think, ‘how did he get into it?’ You know?”
“I see. Something exciting that you’re gonna stop in the middle.”
“Yeah. Which you’ll finish later after people are invested. It’s like saying, did you hear that the dam broke?”
“And then, once you grab their attention with the fact that the dam broke, then you can go back to the beginning and start talking about how there had been a lot of rain in the area and the government had diverted funds to teaching diversity instead of taking care of the infrastructure of the country and... There you go. We just started talking about politics,” he said, shaking his finger at her and teasing.
“You’re right. I did.”
“I just shook my finger at you, didn’t I?”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t see it.”
She tried hard to keep politics out of everything that she did, not that she didn’t have opinions, but she had fans on both sides of the aisle, and she wanted to keep it that way. Plus, she wanted to have less influence about politics and more influence about religion. She hadn’t been shy about talking about that.
“All right, I think I know where I can start. But this isn’t just about me. You said you had writer’s block too. Do you really have to write?”
“I actually do, but it’s just a small part of what I do.”
She hoped that he would think that she was an advertising exec, or something along those lines, where she had to write a catchy little jingle.
“What are you writing about? Can you give me a hint so I can help you? ”
“I have some leeway in what I can write, but right now, I’m thinking about peace. That was the only word I got written down yesterday when I was sitting here.”
“Seriously? You sat here the whole time I was swimming, and you only wrote one word?”
“How many words do you have written?” she asked, knowing that he had said that he didn’t have any.
“None.”
“And how long have you been trying to write?”
“All right. You got me. Six months.”
“Six months, and you have zero words.” She shook her head. “At least, if I’ve been trying to write for six months, I have one word. I win.”
“You have one hundred percent more than I do.”
“I think your math might be a little bit off,” she said. “I hope you’re not an accountant in your real life.”
“Maybe I work on the space shuttle. Maybe that’s why they’re having so much trouble with everything. They got someone in there who isn’t good with numbers.”
“All right. I can see why you’re trying to become an author. Because that space shuttle job is not gonna work out for you.”
They laughed a little together, and she lifted her face to the breeze, allowing it to push her hair behind her, what was left of it after she chopped it all off. She had to admit that she missed it. Kicking her shoes off, she dug her toes into the rough sand and smiled, not thinking about anything in particular.
“Peace is being alone, or is it being with someone? And not feeling like you have to talk all the time?”
His voice came while she had her eyes closed, and she opened them, looking at him. “I often wonder that.”
“I can help you a little better if you could give me an idea of what you’re looking for.”
“No, no. That was perfect,” she said, flipping her pen in her hand and jotting a few words down. “This is four times as much as I did yesterday,” she said, grinning.
“Is peace a theme? Are you thinking about things that give you peace? Because just seeing your toes in the sand, and feeling the lake breeze, made me feel peaceful. Although, having the water flow over me, and being underwater with the muffled sounds, and the fuzzy vision if I even bother to open my eyes, while everything flows over my skin feels peaceful to me as well. I almost hate to come up for air.”
She narrowed her eyes and looked at him, thinking about how peaceful it was to be under the water. She’d never really considered it. Even the waves were calm when she was below the water.
“You can roll over and just have your nose and mouth out.”
“Yeah. Take a breath, and submerge back under. You don’t even need to flip over. Just let the water roll over you.”
“As long as it doesn’t roll up your nose.”
“You breathe out a little bit. It doesn’t come up if there’s pressure for it not to.”
“There must be a trick I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully.
They lapsed into silence as he opened his laptop and started typing. She stared at the line that she jotted down, beneath the waves, a silent song.
She manipulated the words a little, adding to them and finally coming up with another phrase, cool touch of water’s grace .
She liked the ring to that one, and before long, she was immersed in her work and didn’t notice the time flying by.
She was startled when he snapped his laptop closed. “I can’t thank you enough. You jogged my memory, gave me some ideas, and I’m pretty happy with the way I started out. I can’t say that this is exactly what I’m going to...put up on social media, but it’s a great start.”
She was opening her mouth to say that he also helped her, when thunder rumbled in the distance, and she looked up to see lightning flashing on the lake.
“Oh goodness, it’s going to storm, and I hadn’t even noticed.” She realized that the breeze had gotten gusty, and clouds had rolled in overhead.
“Looks like it’s going to be a doozy. Come on. I don’t think we want to get caught out here when the lightning rolls in.”
“No. That would probably be dangerous.” She’d never actually been in a storm on the lake before, and she was kind of curious. Excited even. She always loved storms.
“You don’t seem very scared,” he said as they stood up and started walking toward the steps.
“I love storms, but I don’t like to be wet. So I definitely want to get inside.”
“I thought it was wet and cold. ”
“It’s going to be cold. Can you feel the temperature dropping?”
He tilted his head and then nodded. “I believe you’re right.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I got more done today than I’ve gotten for a while. I appreciate your perspective of how you feel underwater. I guess it’s never hit me quite the same way, and you gave me some ideas.”
“I think it’s good when people who come from different backgrounds get together. Because you don’t know what you don’t know until you know it.”
She laughed. “That’s a great quote. You should put that in the book.”
“I’ll do that. And I’ll add it was by your request.”
Her face froze for a moment before she remembered that he didn’t know who she was, and he was just teasing.
“You do that. I’ll sign your book for you.”
“It’s going on social media, remember? There’s nothing for you to sign.”
“See you later,” she said, laughing and throwing up a hand, and hurried off as he did, going to their respective steps.
She couldn’t believe what a good time she had. She hadn’t expected it, hadn’t expected to like him so much, and hadn’t expected for them to come to a compromise. For him to be so open about him hiding things and noticing that she was hiding things too, and for them to agree to just leave well enough alone. It took all the stress out of the conversations and their interactions, enabling her to relax and enjoy it.
To relax and write.
“Oh goodness, I think it’s really going to storm,” she said as she opened the screen door and slipped in, careful to close it softly behind her.
“You always liked them,” Gram said from where she worked next to the stove. She hadn’t even realized that it was almost time for supper.
“That smells heavenly,” she said. And her stomach growled. Which made her smile even bigger.
“You had a good time. Look at that smile,” her gram teased.
“My stomach’s growling!” she said, her eyes shining. She didn’t deny that she had a good time, because she absolutely had, and it was a pretty big deal that she was hungry too, so there was that.
“Let me put this down, and I’ll give you a hand with supper.”
“You might want to brush your hair. I can handle this. ”
She put a hand on her head and realized that her short hair had blown all over the place. It made sense that short hair would be easier to care for than long hair, but she felt that wasn’t always true. Of course, if one wanted to curl or straighten their long hair, then they could really get into a lot of time, but a natural look was easier to pull off on long hair than short hair, which was something she found out the hard way.
This was the first time in her life that she had hair that short. She didn’t care for it and couldn’t wait until she could grow it out again.
She appreciated her gram noticing and sending her to brush it. For some reason, she wanted to look her best when Wes came over in just a bit.