Love Letter

Ian:

I looked up occasionally at Lynne the rest of the trip while she read my book.

I had caught her a few times looking at me.

I caught her the very last time she did and made her blush.

She was either interested in me with all the staring or was still mad about the coffee incident.

She also seemed to like my book more and more since she had not put it down until we were a few minutes out from our stop. I wanted to ask her how she liked it, but I never asked people a second time. It would show I was too invested in what they were reading. I was an open book, so she could probably tell that it would offend me if she said she hated it.

But I want to see her again; I have no clue where she would be staying. I tried to make a joke when she gave me my shorts back, but she did not bite at it, and I knew that I most likely would not be seeing her again.

I slump back the rest of the way in my seat in defeat.

Maybe she had a boyfriend, which is why she did not like me flirting with her. She was beautiful, so I would be shocked if she was single. Why do I care if she is single? I never cared if people were singled.

Relationships were not for me.

The bus pulled up to the curb for the final stop, twenty minutes from my final destination. My fingers were itching to start typing. I have not had that feeling in a long while.

I have missed it.

My sister Amanda was already waiting for me at the bus station in the brand new car I had purchased for her a few months earlier. "Liking the Christmas gift?" I ask her as I put my bags in the back seat.

"Like? I am loving it," she says with her famous smile. Amanda's smile was famous from her being chosen to do the Colgate commercial when she was ten. It was weird anytime I woke up to watch TV, and my sister's face popped up on the screen. When I was sixteen, instead of Colgate making up a new commercial, they used Amanda again. I thought this would strike a match under Amanda to want her to do modeling or acting again, but she acted like the commercial did not exist. What I found odd the most was that she used Crest as her choice of toothpaste. I assumed that she would love Colgate since they picked her for her commercial. I asked her one time about it, and all she said was to let it go.

I felt like there was more to this story in her life than I would ever know.

Amanda had always been a happy person and her being my only sibling meant she was my favorite.

She won the contest hands down; I could almost go a little bit farther and say she was my best friend.

She was two years younger than me, but I could not tell sometimes. Our parents retired a few years back and decided to move to Florida. We both agreed that the holidays could not be spent anywhere without snow, so we picked the family cabin to stay at. It had been vacant since we were little kids, and there was no better time to use it than now. It would be the two of us, along with her boyfriend Kevin, who would be arriving a few days later, meaning I would have some downtime to write out what I was thinking.

I did not have a plot; all I had was the character that the book would surround.

It was hard to sit still with all the different ideas I had swirling around in my mind. I sat there silently, nixing the bad ideas that were flying through my mind. No one would read a love story based during the dinosaur stage – maybe my writer's block was not over yet – or worse, I was out of any useable plots.

Pulling up the drive to the family cabin Amanda looks at me with a coy smile on her face, and I know she has something brewing in her mind, something worse than what was in mine. "What is it?" I ask wearily.

"Well, I met some people" of course, she had met people; she was the outgoing one. "And they invited me to this welcome home party."

"Who is this welcome home party for?" I ask, wondering if she was trying to get Clara and me back together. I would not put it past the two of them. Amanda was more than pissed for a month at me when I had told her that I had broken up with her. My sister was already picturing Clara as her sister-in-law. Being one of the bridesmaids at our wedding, she loved going to weddings. She told me multiple times I was preventing the inventible not getting married to Clara. I never responded every time she said this. If I did respond, it would just start a fight that neither of us would win.  

"For my friend's sister," she says, like making a friend in three days of being here is normal. 

"Since it is a welcome home party, don't we need to know this person?" I ask.

"Not really – it will be good for us to meet people here. We are staying for a few months." The word that caught me on this was the "we" part. My plans had been to stay with my sister here during the holidays and then she was supposed to drive back to the city for her job. My job was writing, and I could do that wherever I was. My sister was a personal shopper, and she had to be there physically for it.

"I took an absence of leave from my job," she says, looking down pulling the keys out of the ignition.

"An absent of leave?" I ask, confused.

"I quit," she admits. She looks up, waiting to see if I am upset.

"Why would you quit?" I ask, not looking mad.

"I need to find my passion. You have writting, and I have what? Shopping?" she says.

"Shopping is your passion," I say dryly.

"Not anymore – I need to figure out what I will do the rest of my life," she says, getting out of the car. "Now go shower, you smell." I hope Lynne did not think I smelt.

Oh, but what does that matter... 

"Fine," I say, letting her know with my tone that I did not want to go. I take my time getting ready.

"It's a surprise party; we cannot be late; otherwise, we will ruin it..." she says as she stands at the door with the keys in her hands, jingling them at me. I did not feel like socializing. I felt like sitting in a dark room typing out my thoughts from the days. That was not going to happen now, so I needed to make the best of this shin ding we were about to arrive too.

Who knows, maybe I could find who my villain was at this party. I had never really made a point to have a villain in my books, but this last one I did, and I like being able to write from their perspective.

Amanda drives through town faster than I would have liked with the fresh snow that had just fallen. My sister starts driving up a large hill toward a house that is sitting on a bluff overlooking the city. It is a magnificent house with windows surrounding most of the outside of it. I did not think that they would have a house like the one we were driving toward with the size of the town we were in. I imagine the people who lived in the house felt like they looked down on ants whenever they looked out. Or they felt like God.

It is the only house around, and I know that the welcome home party is being held. In the front is a four-stall garage with four cars sitting in the yard and driveway. "I thought this was a surprised party?" I say mockingly. I needed to get out of my mood before we went in. 

"It is; that is why we are parking outback. They have a larger family." My sister says while she pulls the car in the yard behind the house, which looks like a parking lot at a state fair with all the rows of cars sitting there.

"It looks like the whole town is here," I say while shutting the door and walking up to the house.

"It wouldn't surprise me," my sister says. We step inside the house where the lights are on dim. People are kneeling down, and shushing is heard every few seconds. I can hear someone whisper she should be here in a few minutes. I stand at the back, feeling like we are waiting for a ten-year-old girl to surprise her for her birthday party.