Finding Montana

Breakfast of Champions

"Molly Tulip! You better let your best friend and manager into your house!" I startle awake, after having spend another night on my couch my neck is all kinds of messed up. I look at the clock and see it's only 8:30 in the morning. I groan and roll over on my other side ready to fall asleep again. "Molly!" I hear again and I realize that I'm not dreaming and that Brigette is actually here.

"Shit." I jump up and rush down the stairs to the front door. I swing it open and my stunningly beautiful manger bursts through the doorway and into my mini mudroom.

"Took you long enough!" She exclaims. "It's not like I just got off the plane, traveled thousands of miles just to see my favorite person in the whole wide world!" I wrap her in a massive embrace and we stand there for a good five minutes just holding each other.

"How have I lived this long without seeing you?" I exclaim and finally let her go.

"You've been gone for the longest week of my life!" She whines and gives me another hug. It was one thing to be moving across the country with my partner of three years, but now that I've moved here alone it's made everything here seem so much more lonely. He wasn't the only one that was going to be uprooting his life to move to Montana together, I had friends and family back in New York that I miss every second I'm out here, and now that I'm practically alone I'm starting to wonder if it might just be easier to move back to NY.

"It's barely a week, let's just be honest with ourselves." I say and she rolls her eyes.

"You know what I meant, it's just so hard not having you in that big city. I've felt so lost without you to support me." She sighs and I nod in agreement.

"Trust me, I know exactly what you mean." We both stand there in silence, not wanting to bring up the elephant in the room, but both knowing we're going to have to eventually talk about it.

"So, where can a girl get some breakfast in a small town like this?"

We end up finding an adorable little diner hidden underneath some office buildings. It's a hole in the wall eatery, the only entrance is a set of stairs leading down from the main sidewalk, and the windows that peer out into the world are up at the ceiling, eye level with the street. After much internal debate, Brigette ends up ordering the double stack of pancakes, she said she's on vacation so the extra carbs don't actually count, plus she'll have some leftovers for a snack later tonight while we get some headway on my novel.

"So how many chapters did you end up getting done?" She asks as she pours two cubes of sugar into her tea. She's never been impressed with American tea and reminds me constantly that we Yanks should have inherited some sort of tea knowledge from the Queen, especially after dumping all her precious cargo into the harbor those many years ago.

"About a dozen," I sip on my own cup of tea and look down at the local newspaper we picked up on our way down to breakfast.

"That's not a bad start, I'll work on editing them so you can revise them once you've made some more progress on the story." She leans back in her chair. The light from the window behind her perfectly outlines her head with a halo of light. I pull out my phone and snap a quick photo of her while she's not looking. Perfect for Instagram. I think and I send her a copy of it.

"I'm still trying to figure out where this story is going to go, Brig. I know that Lilac needs to overthrow her uncle and become the rightful heir to the throne, but now that Zander's out of the picture I can't imagine she'll get very far on her own." I huff and stretch out my hands in front of me, working the muscles in my wrists around a bit. After all that typing last night my fingers are beat and need a little TLC.

"Well, Zander was inspired by he who shall not be named, so it's completely understandable why you've lost your muse for that character. You, and Lilac, both need to find your way through this tough time and learn to be stronger on your own." She says and checks her phone for the message that I sent her. She smiles when she sees the picture and begins typing on what I can only assume is Insta.