Broken Down on Memory Lane Alone, Together Alone

The morning after our ‘movie night’, the writing bug had bitten me. I’d come up with, what I thought was a good book idea. I told Sonny about it, and he agreed. After that I’d locked myself away in my office and began planning. I spent the rest of the week in there. The only time I left the room was when I had to use the bathroom. Sonny would quietly bring me food and leave it for me.

So far I had my basic storyline planned out. And I’d just begun really figuring out the characters. Which was one of the most important parts for me. If you had shitty shallow characters, you might as well not bother. You could have the best plot in the world, but if the characters sucked, no one would want to read it. Or at least that’s how I felt when I was reading things.

It was around lunch when a knock came at my office door. I couldn’t imagine why Sonny would be knocking. He usually just came in.

“What?” I called out through the door.

Sonny poked his head in through the door, “I’m gonna take Mara out to lunch, you need to get cleaned up for when we come back.”

With that he closed the door. I listened to his footsteps as he walked down the hall. I wasn’t that dirty, was I? I ran a hand through my now greasy hair, and sniffed my armpit. Oh yeah, I needed a shower.

I walked into my room and grabbed some clothes before heading to the bathroom. I took my time in the shower. It felt so good to be clean again. I smelled like raspberries again, instead of a homeless person.

When I got out of the shower I decided to do some laundry. I saw that Sonny had just left it all there to wait for me. I loved that man, but he really needed to learn how to do things for himself. I could die at any time, then where would he be?

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the dishes were done, when I walked into the kitchen. At least he was doing something. I made myself a big mug of coffee to help get me back to my usual self. This visit was going to be a little challenging for me. I was in writing mode, so it was going to be a struggle for me to not run off and start writing little things down.

It wasn’t too long after I finished making my coffee that Mara and Sonny came back from lunch. They were both laughing happily about something. It was nice to see that they were enjoying some time together.

“How was lunch?” I asked as Sonny gave me a quick hello kiss on the cheek and went off to do whatever.

“It was great,” Mara grinned, “Grammpy has some serious issues with slow drivers though, he kept yelling at everyone, and he taught me the proper way to pass people.”

I had to laugh at that, “of course he did.”

“So, what do you have planned for today?” she asked as she hopped up on the kitchen counter.

“I duno,” I mumbled as I bit my lip and looked around, my eyes landed on a cook book, “you wanna make some deserts, or something?”

“Sure,” Mara jumped off the counter and walked over to the sink to wash her hands.

I grabbed the cookbook and flipped through to the desert section, “so, how’s life treating you?”

“Pretty good,” she said as she dried her hands, “I got an eighty seven on my chem. test.”

“Wow, I didn’t know you were into chemistry,” I looked up at her over the top of the book, “shoe’s how much I pay attention, huh?”

She laughed, “I hate it, actually. The only reason I’m taking it is because Judy made me.”

I set the book down and looked at Mara seriously, “don’t ever do anything you don’t want to do because someone else says to. Understand? It’s not their life, it’s yours. And you have to live with what you do. Not them. It doesn’t matter if someone threatens you, you need to choose your own path, or you’re going to end up being miserable. Do things that work for you, not for other people. I don’t care id you decide that living in a cardboard box is what you want to do, as long as it’s what you want to do, do it. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Alright?”

Mara nodded, looking quite thoughtful, “okay.”

“Good,” I smiled as I picked up the book, “now, how does this look?”

“Hard,” she laughed.

“That’s what she said!” Sonny called from the other room.

Mara burst out laughing, where as I tried to suppress it as I called back, “very mature!”

“I know,” I could hear him begin to laugh too. It was wonderful how mature we’d become with age.

I started to get out what we needed, as I let Mara calm down. She wiped a few tears from her eyes as she leaned against the counter.

“I don’t think that would have been as funny if anyone one other then Grammpy had said it,” she grinned.

I rolled my eyes, “he does have a way of making people laugh.”

She nodded in agreement, “so, are you going to tell me more about you and Dravin?”

“Sure,” I shrugged, “what do you want to know about now?”

“How did he ask you out?” she didn’t even take a second to think about it.

“Well,” I began, “it was around a month after we met. We’d become very good friends…”