Hi everyone, it’s been a bit, thanks for still being here and hello to new readers! Today’s prompt was unexpected. I’ve had some writer’s block and this just flew out of me in a way writing hasn’t lately, and I’m excited to tell their story that I think has been on the tip of my tongue for awhile now. I think I’ll share more of their story and the process of writing it over on Instagram, if you’d like to follow me there :)
Anyways, enjoy the first bit of Charlotte and August’s story - All My Love, a brother’s best friend trope, secrets, small towns, summer, what’s not to love?
There are some things in life that require you to realize you’re making a memory. An instinct humans have to reach for their camera to preserve the moment. A certainty in our gut that tells us we’re in a time, place, or with people that we will want to remember.
There are others, though, that slip past us. Memories, people, things, and places, that we forget to capture with physical proof. We either don’t preserve them because we’re unaware of their significance, or we’d grown so accustomed to them, we didn’t think we’d ever be without. We don’t try to save any of it because we can’t fathom ever having a chance to miss it, them, until they’re gone.
They linger though, they’re always with us, even if we can’t see or feel them anymore. Even if we didn’t take enough pictures, ask enough questions, record or save everything.
They’re in glow in the dark stars taped to the ceiling and around a light switch, a bedtime song from a beloved film about a little girl and her grandmother reuniting in Paris.
It surprises her, in a box of Raisinets at the check out, suddenly not buying ramen, but back in a memory where there’s a sizzle of homemade popcorn on the stove. It’s perfectly buttery and salty as it’s set down in front of them and their stack of rented movies. She can feel the rug beneath her fingers, hear the rain hitting the wood on the porch, feel the salt air on the wind coming through the open screen door.
Life choices and tastes altered, merely from the scent of artificial blueberry. A memory so visceral, it caused a distaste in the fruit for her entire life because of a soft spot for a little brother who had to have that scent of Mr. Bubble.
She’s there, in the pink of sunrise over a sleepy town, a glass of rose (or a whole bottle) she drank when she got the news, and a pair of well worn and loved pointe shoes in the back seat.
“You think you’re so funny,” Charlotte muttered up to the ceiling of her inherited bug as she pulled over to a stop along the side of the road. Her wheels crunched on the gravel and her horse of a dog paced in the back seat, whining at the blue and red lights or the sudden stop, she wasn’t sure.
She could still see the sign that said Welcome in her rearview, barely over the town limits and pulled over. Of course.
A memory of getting her permit, a shotgun rider who whistled low and slow made her stomach warm, made her hips wiggle in the leather seat.
No doubt about it, her grandmother was up there pulling some cosmic strings, sipping a glass of wine and saying watch this.
Her fingers twisted and slid down the gray leather of the wheel, fingers aimlessly tapping along to the beat of the song she’d nudged lower to hear the sirens.
The knock to the roof of the beetle didn’t startle her, though it did make Bruce let out a boof, which made Charlotte sigh and call out the open window, “Was I speeding, officer?”
“Playing that music a little loud, don’t you think?” A gruff voice said, accompanied by a deep sigh of an exhale, expelling annoyance and tobacco into the air.
Red lips pursed in her rearview mirror as the lyric shouted out of the speakers: “The girl is crafty like ice is cold!” and she quipped, “Thought it was a little too quiet for what the boys require, if I’m being honest, sir.”