Picked Up (a follow-up to the Pick-Up Lines Post)

At the end of May I wrote a post about first lines and did an exercise based around that. The original post can be found here. This past week I took the next challenge which was to turn a first line (which if memory serves was one that most people were interested in knowing more about) into the first paragraph. I couldn't stop with one paragraph and ended up writing a whole page. I was surprised by what came out. It was not at all what I was expecting.

I'm already thinking about NaNoWriMo 2013 and the story that I'll tell this year. Perhaps it will be this one, perhaps I'll find something else entirely. I do know that I'm going to do more pre-planning this time perhaps even doing a story outline (in some form or another).

But for now, in case you were curious, here's what came out of that first line:

"Tell me," Jeremiah said, "how it is you ended up here, at my door in the middle of the night, when you are supposed to be on a plane to the other side of the world."

All the way from the airport, riding in the back of a taxi that seemed to contain the stench of every passenger who’d come before, I’d been thinking of this moment, the moment when Jeremiah would open the door and I would finally tell him the words that I had been saving for 10 years, words I’d been holding back since we were seventeen and he caught me smoking a cigarette outside, alone, during our senior prom. Words I should have spoken then but didn’t because his date was two steps behind him.

Now there were no excuses left. I would finally tell him the truth, how I’d had a crush on him since we were 14 and fate had given us neighboring lockers on the first day of high school.

“Who is it?” I heard an unfamiliar woman’s sleep-coated voice emerge from darkness of the apartment.

Jeremiah looked at me and then looked back towards the apartment. “It’s just a friend, babe. I’m going to step outside for a minute.”

I could feel the tears rising from the depths. I’d always been good at swallowing them down, but this time I couldn’t make them stop. I turned and walked down the hallway to the door leading to the staircase and opened it, not looking back to see if Jeremiah was still behind me.

I should have known this was a horrible idea. I should have gotten on the plane and left for my new life, leaving old friends and unrequited loves behind, in the past where they belonged. Maybe I’d watched too many romantic films or maybe I’d had one too many mojitos in the airport bar as I waited for my plane to begin boarding. Whatever it was I wished I could go back in time and erase it so I’d never end up here, sitting alone in a stairwell, embarrassed, alone and crying.

My personal pity part was really starting to heat up when I heard the door open and close behind me. I buried my tear-streaked face in my hands so Jeremiah wouldn’t be able to see.

He sat down beside me and I felt the weight and warmth of his arm wrap around me. “Alice,” he said, his voice steady, calm, and sure. “What happened?”

Here I was, faced with that moment of truth, the opportunity to say those very words I’d come here to say.

Instead I said, “My flight was cancelled and I just didn’t know where else to go.”

Another lie.

And whether Jeremiah believed me or not, he accepted those words.