The Drumbeat Years (girlxgirl)

5

5

16th. December 1988

She had written and rewritten the story several times, by now, and the closing date for the competition loomed large before her. She couldn't remember the last time she had put so much effort into something for such a sustained amount of time. Putting it aside to work on her college assignments felt like a betrayal, but writing the story had given her a kind of impetus that had flowed out to everything else.

The story had also given her an excuse to spend time with Dawn, who had become a supervisor and mentor for the work. Instead of walking from the campus together, or Tina fleeing home in a state of restrained embarrassment, they had taken to sitting in the college library every other night, or so, until the librarians ushered them out, more than ready to turn out the lights and go home themselves.

During those times, Tina held her feelings for Dawn in check as the need to complete the story took hold. She would still glance towards Dawn, every so often, trying to reconcile the vision of the woman before her with the one she had seen on stage. Always in dark t-shirts and jeans, in class, it seemed like a distant memory seeing the tutor in the barest of clothing for her gig.

For now, however, she sat with someone else. Someone almost as important to her as the attractive tutor. Sat in their favourite spot, rain falling outside of the cover of the building, Kyle read through her story. His expression never changed throughout the reading. A stern look of concentration that seemed out of place on the boy.

He flipped on to the last page, running a hand through his long hair, and Tina waited for him to finish, her chest feeling as though someone had gripped her heart, awaiting the terrible review she expected. She had told him she wanted honesty, not a friend's reaching for something, anything good about it to praise, but she also dreaded that.

As the rain came down harder, the drops pattering upon the tarmac path to the side, Tina wished she had never started writing the story. On the one hand, she felt that she had written the best story of her life. On the other hand, she felt like it had come out as an unmitigated disaster. Mills & Boon mush and cloying clichés. When he flipped the last page, frowning, Tina readied herself for the horror to come.

"Cool. Cool." Tapping the sheets on his knee, to straighten them out, he reached over, offering the pages back to her. "It was good."

"Good?" Frowning, herself, she began to flick through the pages. She had read and reread the story so many times, she had lost the ability to tell whether the story was good or not. "Is that it? 'Good'? I was expecting, hoping, for something a little more, you know, detailed."

"I'm still digesting it, woman!" Leaning forward, he slapped the toe of her trainer and gave her one of his goofy smiles. "I'm not as good a writer as you and I don't read that often. I'm trying to think how best to put it."

Pouting, looking at him from under her eyebrows, Tina replaced the pages into the plastic folder. When she had woken up, that morning, to see the rain beating down, she decided to keep the manuscript as safe as possible. She hadn't photocopied it yet. This was the only copy. Sealing the folder, she realised she had held her breath. Kyle still looked as though he needed to think and, to Tina, that was a bad sign.

"Just tell me." Putting the plastic folder into her bag seemed to take forever as Kyle chewed upon his thoughts. When he still hesitated, Tina couldn't take it any longer. "Look, if it's that bad, you should just say so. I don't need you treating me with kid gloves."

"I said it was good, didn't I?" Throwing up his hands in exasperation, Kyle shook his head. "You're so quick to think the worst of yourself! Right, here it is. I thought you have a great ear for dialogue, it's all really natural and just flows really well. You might go overboard, a little bit, with descriptions of the settings, but that's because you know every single part of your world so well, you want to share its flavour, I get that, and it actually works with the story you're telling. It needs that depth to the world. The love story came across as natural and well-paced, but I think you put in one too many obstacles to their love for such a short story. It doesn't spoil it, but it's something to consider, in the future. It was good! Good good, not 'how can I put this gently?' good."