Weekends were a dreaded thing.
While everyone out in the regular every day work force was dreaming of an entertaining Saturday and a relaxing Sunday from the moment the alarm went off on the first of the week Nick was trying to avoid it. The weekend meant a few very simple things in this world; Holly would be off work, and they would be going to her parent’s old beach house. It was kind of a summer custom, more so for Holly than for himself, heading to the beach house for a few days of sun and surf instead of smog and stress. It was something she had done ever since she was a child, and was making the trip to help break up hellacious weeks for her parents, so now that they had both passed, and the beach house had come to belong to Holly and her siblings they liked to take advantage of it as much as possible. He of course didn’t complain that he would rather just spend the weekend at home, sleeping in and watching Sports Centre, and he wouldn’t complain, because he wouldn’t deny Holly her break away from her life even though he never got one himself.
With an exaggerated sigh he shoved a small plastic pail and shovel into the back delicately balancing it on top of a box of supplies. He was hoping no one tried to open the hatchback or they may be lost forever under a pile of stuff. They didn’t need half of what was in there but Holly was never under prepared. They brought all of their own linens, pots and pans, utensils, food and even toilet paper. Since her family shared the small coastal bungalow they had agreed to just bring their own things rather than worry about who paid for what. So in order to do that every Saturday morning at the crack of dawn he packed half of their house into the back of their small Toyota Yaris.
Yawning he headed back into the house, his flip flops smacking against the linoleum flooring, dead set on getting in a cup of coffee before he was squeezed into a car with the house, the wife, and the daughter for a two hour road trip.
Holly was still bustling about the kitchen when he walked in, heading straight for the mugs to pour a hot cup of liquid splendour. He held it to his nose for a moment, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply the small wafts of steam billowing from the cup. It was a beautiful moment.
“Did you put the bag with the sunscreen in the car already?” Holly’s voice suddenly broke through the caffeine cloud.
It was a beautiful moment.
“I don’t know,” he answered in reply, not opening his eyes or moving the cup away from his face.
Hands to hips she looked up at him, “Well did you put the red and blue beach bag in there?”
Once again, “I don’t know,” was the answer and he knew her short huff of air was a signal that nerves were being grated.
“What do you know?” Holly questioned, trying not to sound condescending… unsuccessfully.
He finally opened his eyes, blue clashing against brown in a battle of wills, “Not a whole hell of a lot,” he shrugged, “I will let you in on the things I do know about though, for future reference. I know I’m cranky in the morning until I have my coffee, I also know that I have been up since four and have yet to have a spare moment to enjoy said coffee, but more than anything I know that right now I’m going to sit on my ass at this table and drink it without thinking about the location of sunscreen or anything else that might be crammed like sardines into the fucking car.”
They continued to stare each other down, and he fought back the urge to run and hide from her overwhelmingly evil stare (a female trade secret, he was sure of it). He held out though and finally it was Holly who turned away from him, snatching the car keys up off of the table.
“You’re a jackass,” she announced as she walked out the door and Nick didn’t bother to disagree with her because he couldn’t deny she was absolutely correct in her thinking.
Smiling he sat down at the table and brought the mug back up to his lips with a contented sigh.
~*~
Two whole hours of the most annoying road trip songs in the existence of music.
Holly always thought it was important for Olivia to listen to music as a part of her development, but with the questionable content in modern song she had opted instead for a strictly educational approach to music. He wasn’t quite sure how singing Christmas songs in Spanish in the middle of a one hundred-plus degree summer was educational but he went with it. What he just couldn’t handle was the singing along. If only the music could be played softly in the background, but no, both Holly and Olivia had to get in on the action and belted out classic kids tunes for the entire ride.
It was track 22 of 22, and he was counting down the seconds until the two bar fade out.
“Oh darn, the CD is over, I guess we’ll just have to sit quietly the rest of the way to the house,” Nick said dryly as the final song came to an end and he snatched the CD out of the player with cheetah-like speed.
“No Daddy!” Olivia whined from the back, kicking her feet against the back of his seat.
While Nick was expecting Holly to jump in and chastise their daughter for her behaviour she instead surprised him, “Yeah Daddy,” she agreed (shockingly), “Put the CD back in, I pretty much forgot what track one was so I wouldn’t mind hearing it again.”
“Yeah Daddy, track one again okay?” Olivia piped up from the back, still kicking his seat.
They were working against him. He wondered if there was a union that paid them extra for every time they drove a man to the brink of insanity.
“Oh I think I recall track one actually, I can recap it for you,” he offered sarcastically, still holding onto the CD for dear life in one hand as he drove with the other, his anger growing as he felt like he was being attacked by both females, “If memory serves me right from the thousand times I’ve heard it I believe it’s the hokey pokey.. en espangol, and if you don’t stop kicking my goddamn seat we’re turning around and going home right now!”
The kicking immediately died away.
Not because of the threat of returning home, but because Olivia had very little recollection in her short memory of any time where her father had gotten so angry with her that he used bad words and yelled at her out of pure rage. Sure he had been annoyed, and frustrated, and generally fed up but it was the first time she had ever feared him. She did the only thing in response that her emotions could think of, and that was burst into wild tears.
“Good job Nick,” Holly said with a roll of her eyes, trying to reach back and comfort the small girl as she threw her entire body into her sobs.
He could think of a dozen snotty comebacks and inappropriate replies but instead he chose to say nothing. He simply held both hands on the wheel, gripping it tightly as he navigated the roads. He felt bad but at the same time he just wished he had someone on his side. Alaina would told her to stop, he thought then immediately scolded himself for even bringing her into his mental reasoning.
The next thing he knew Olivia was suddenly moving over the centre console with Holly’s assistance and was now crying in her mother’s arms.
“Put her back in her car seat!” Nick said, glancing back and forth between the road ahead of them and his wife beside him.
“She’s crying… because of you!” Holly reminded him, rubbing her hand soothingly over Olivia’s back.
“She’s not buckled in! What if we get in an accident? Do you want to explain why she went flying out the windshield?”
Holly was fuming, fighting to keep it together, “We wouldn’t get in an accident if you would keep your eyes on the road instead of worrying about everything else that’s going on in the car!”
He scoffed, “Oh right, because no one has ever gotten in an accident while they were looking at the road! Newsflash, I don’t have to be the cause of the accident, someone could hit us!”
“What is your problem?!” she snapped, running a hand roughly through her hair, “You’ve been acting like a jerk all day!”
“I don’t have a problem!” I wish it was Monday,, “I just want her to be safely secured in the car!” I wish we were on our way to the park,, “If the roles were reversed here you would be ripping my head off… oh wait, you already are!”
“We’re here.” Holly said dryly as Nick stopped in front of the house, neither of them noticing how close they had been through all the arguing. Her tone was a mix of anger and relief, and she was out of the car with Olivia before he could even turn the ignition off. He knew he was absolutely screwed for any semblance of a good weekend.
Nick slammed his hand against the top of the wheel, pressing his head back into the head rest, “God, why do you hate me?” he asked quietly towards the roof of the vehicle, not expecting any kind of response.
~*~
If there was one thing Nick knew he could always rely on when he came to the beach house for the weekend was the ever constant blinking of his laptop.
It wasn’t the laptop itself that provided and unyielding amount of blink, but rather his word processor.
He always diligently brought his computer with him on the weekends to maybe get a moment alone to write. Holly spent the weekends catching up on work or enjoying a book out on the sand while Olivia was contractor on sandcastle construction, giving the impression to her mother that she was playing with some of the other children though she always played alone. He just sat and watched the steady blink, blink, blink of the cursor while no words came to him.
He kept what was already completed of his manuscript beside him, a pile of loose computer paper held down by a conch shell to keep the wind from taking it from him. He of course had the whole thing backed up on disc but the actual print out was valuable to him. It contained hundreds of notes, personal edits, and revisions that hadn’t quite made it to print and couldn’t be replicated. If he lost it, he would be pretty much starting over.
“How’s it going?” Holly asked cautiously, making her way up the stairs of the deck. She had switched her sunglasses for her own black plastic frames and her lean body was covered modestly by a one piece bathing suit; still though she grabbed a t-shirt from the railing to throw over her swimwear before making her way over to the small table where he was seated.
“It’s not,” Nick said, closing the lid to his laptop with a groan.
She sensed that he was over that morning’s initial anger so she sat down beside him, “Oh. Well, writer’s block can’t last forever right? I’m sure when it starts flowing again you won’t be able to stop it.”
“Can you recall the last time it ‘flowed’? I certainly can’t,” Nick ran his hands over his face, rubbing his eyes lightly now that they were tired from staring at the screen and being out in the sun.
Holly rubbed his arm quickly and he was almost surprised by the contact, “You’re a good writer Nick.”
“Good writers can actually finish their books,” he laughed at his own expense and leaned back in the seat.
“Why don’t you take a break?” Holly suggested, “Go down to that vegetable stand and get some lettuce, and tomatoes. We’ll have hamburgers for dinner.”
He nodded, not even wanting to think about why she was being nice to him after the way he’d been acting all day. He stood up out of his chair and stretched a bit, looking out at the water, “Yeah that sounds great.”
“Good,” she smiled, and went to her tip toes in order to quickly peck his lips with a kiss much to his surprise.
“What was that for?” Nick asked suspiciously, giving her a once over.
Holly chuckled nervously, wringing her long hair through her hand, “I didn’t think I needed a reason.”
“You don’t!” he corrected quickly, giving her a half smile, “Trust me, you don’t.”
“Good, now that we have that cleared up can you go get those veggies?”
Nick nodded his head, throwing a ball cap over his blonde hair to shield him from the sun before heading out to the local produce stand to get what they needed. He really did like this small beach town, and if he wasn’t such a grump most of the time he probably would enjoy the weekends away. He had always been a bit of a beach bum, and things hadn’t changed that much in the past four years.
“Hi,” he smiled at the owner of the stand, going through some of the vegetables to find the perfect ripeness. He took a short moment to ponder his new happy disposition, wondering if Holly’s unexpected intimacy had anything to do with his newfound cheerfulness. One innocent peck on the mouth and he was like a lion in heat, damn his libido for still being at peak running power.
Maybe that would be the night; the night that would make u p for all of the nights he had spent lonely, sexually frustrated, and desperate.
Upon short reflection, probably not; countless times he had believed similar statements and just as many times he had been shot down, so it was best not to get ones hopes up.
He spent a lot of time on auto-pilot, one of the traits of his chosen occupation. He thought of long complicated things in his head all the while going about his day to day functions as if they were the only thing on his mind. While thinking of how much he thought he paid for his produce and headed back to the car, and back to the beach house. Auto-pilot was not only good for multi tasking, but also for avoidance.
When he got back to the house Holly was in the kitchen turning ground beef into hamburger patties.
“Got the veggies,” he announced, setting the ad-less white plastic bag down on the counter, “Where’s Olivia?”
“In the other room playing,” Holly answered, carefully setting a patty down on the plate next to her to keep it from losing shape.
Nick just nodded and made his way over to the patio door to look out at the beach. There it was: water, sand, garbage, children, and people taking in the sunshine. Their patio was small but held everything they needed to enjoy the summer evenings. A small propane barbeque to the left, piles of toys and beach things strewn across the centre, and granite topped patio table to the right where his computer and conch shell still sat.
His eyes brought him back to the beach but it barely lasted a moment before they snapped back to the table. All that sat there was computer and conch shell; no big pile of paper to be found.
“Where’s my book?” he asked rhetorically, opening the door and heading out onto the patio. He immediately started searching underneath tables and chairs, and a quick glance down to the sand below, before he panicked. Panic was putting it lightly.
Back inside the house into the kitchen he stood next to Holly, heads over her, looming down, “Did you move my stuff?” he asked accusingly.
“What stuff?” she questioned back with a roll of her eyes, wondering what had crawled up his butt this time.
“My book, did you move my book?”
Holly now realized the seriousness of his question and moved away from the counter to take her own glance out to the table, “I didn’t touch it Nick. When you left it was still sitting there next to your computer.”
They both stood in thought for a moment, Nick taking the time to scratch his head in stereotypical contemplation, neither seeming in that moment like the intelligent adults they were.
“Olivia!” they both yelled out simultaneously, moving at lightning fast speed towards the closest available door.
Falling over each other, and into walls they scrambled into the bedroom where their daughter was playing and came to a screeching halt.
Strewn across the floor, some covered in brightly coloured markers, crayons, and non-toxic paints were dozens of pieces of paper. In the middle of the chaos was Olivia, still diligently colouring away, her small tongue just peeking slightly from the corner of her mouth.
With a glance upward she smiled a big toothy grin, “I’m making it pretty for you Daddy,” she stated then returned to her art.
His heart had stopped, he couldn’t breathe, his life flashed before his eyes and every other imaginable cliché that anyone could throw at him was happening at that very moment.
“My life is over,” Nick announced, not even having enough in him to be angry with his daughter. He dragged his body over to the bed and collapsed back on it, staring up at the white ceiling. The mattress dipped as Holly sat down next to him and he heard her sigh.
“Some of it is salvageable I’m sure, she couldn’t have coloured on hundreds of pieces of paper,” she tried to console him, “Besides, I’ve made due with things in worse shape than that. It’s just a little colour; I have to fight against hundreds of year’s worth of dirt.”
“Please…” he begged, rubbing his face with his hands, “No dirty coin comparisons, just this once?”
Holly sighed, “Sorry, I analogise what I know. Maybe it’s for the best?” she offered, but Nick found it difficult to find any comfort.
“Why’s that?” he asked, peeking out from between his fingers.
“To be honest…” She drawled, hesitant to go on, “It wasn’t really that good.”
“You told me you liked it!” Nick exclaimed, sitting up straight on the bed.
“I told you what you wanted to hear,” Holly shrugged, “It was dry, and I wasn’t really a fan of the plot. There was way too much sex and violence that seemed inappropriate for the movement of the story.”
His face first recognized shock, not able to believe that after all this time she had been lying to him about liking his book. His shock soon melted into a smile and he couldn’t hold back a chuckle, “You’re so right,” he laughed, “I can’t believe I spent all that time on such an awful novel! Even if I did finish it, no one would have bought it!”
“Don’t say that,” Holly scolded, surprised he had suddenly become giddy, “You’re a great writer like I said before, and that’s the truth. You would have found a way to sell it.”
“Maybe this was meant to be,” Nick finally agreed as he looked over to see Olivia still happily drawing pictures on his life’s work, “Maybe starting something new is what I needed. I’m a different person now than I was when I started that book.”
“You are?” Holly asked, intrigued to know the answer.
Nick nodded, “I am. I’m a husband, and a father now… not a single student. You basically said before that you speak what you know… maybe I need to start writing what I know?”
His words made Holly smile, and for the first time in a long time she felt a surge of warmth when she looked into his eyes, “I think if you wrote what you know as the person you are right now you’d have a best seller on your hands.”
Eye contact; it had been a long time since Nick had gotten the opportunity to stare into Holly’s pretty eyes and he was captivated by them. He smiled then cautiously leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers and they shared at unrealistically perfect kiss, no doubt soon to be featured in his first novel.
The rest of Saturday flew by without a single thought of the date at the park.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Thank you for reading! Please review if you have the time.
