Page 43 of For the Plot
In the end, I only ended up writing about a page’s worth the whole day. But it was also the first writing I’d done in months, so I was calling it a win. It was also the perfect excuse for my tardiness, though in truth I was late because after I wrapped up writing, I sat down to catch up on notifications for “ten minutes” that turned into sixty.
"Sorry, sorry! I’m here!" I called out, heading straight for the dining room. My family was indeed already seated around the table, digging into dinner. I was met with a chorus of greetings as I settled into the last open chair. Tonight it looked like it was homemade alfredo and chicken, with a side of garlic bread.
I loaded up my plate, not realizing how hungry I was until I had the food in front of me. My stomach growled as I swirled the first bite of pasta around my fork, moaning as I swallowed it down.
“Perfect timing!” Mom smiled at me as she passed the garlic bread down. “We were just about to do Highs and Lows!”
I nodded in response, my mouth full of pasta.
“I’ll go first,” she continued. “Today’s high was an uneventful day at work. My low was stubbing my toe on the coffee table,again.” Mom had terrible spatial awareness, and had been stabbing her toe on that coffee table our entire lives, even though the coffee table hadn't changed spots in all the years we'd lived here.
Dad went next. “My high was getting lunch with Dan.” Dan was his best friend, and they tried to get together at least twice a month. It was much easier for him to have his plans scheduled in advance, and having specific scheduled time with people helped him stay in contact so he didn’t go too long in between hangouts. “My low is that I’ve had a headache all day, unfortunately.”
We all echoed our sympathies, and then Noah volunteered to go next, both her high and her low having to do with patients at work.
“My turn,” I jumped in. “My high is that I wrote a few hundred more words!” Everyone congratulated me, knowing how hard I was struggling to write at the moment. “My low is that it took me all day,” I added wryly.
Robyn went next, her low a professor who was pissing her off, and high the new tattoo she'd added to her sleeve.
Last to go was Alex. He didn't usually love Highs and Lows, but today he seemed to barely be holding in his excitement. “Well, I was hoping that everyone would be here for this news, but I’ll just have to call Ezra when he’s off. I got it. I got the sitcom.” He had barely finished getting the words out when chaos unleashed, all of us running around the table to pull him up and give him a giant group hug, everyone shouting over each other in an excited cacophony. The rest of dinner was spent talking about what this could mean for Alex, his low forgotten.
After wrapping up dinner and dishes, Noah and I said our goodbyes and headed out to our cars.
As soon as the front door shut behind us, Noah grabbed my arm. “Twin chat time,” was all she said before dragging me to her car. I groaned but didn’t fight her. "Twin chat" was what we saidgrowing up when one of us needed to talk, no questions asked, no getting out of it.
Once we got in the car, she turned it on to run the AC. As anyone who had ever lived in SoCal knew, September and October were the hottest months of the year. Noah turned to look at me expectantly. When I didn’t say anything, she sighed in exasperation. “Girl, tell me how it went!”
I bit my lip, trying to decide how much I wanted to tell her. Normally, we told each other everything. And I know I had promised her to keep her updated, but something about what James and I were doing just felt like… Well, it felt like it was just for us, and I didn’t want to share it with anyone, not even Noah.
I shrugged in an attempt at nonchalance. “It's going really good.”
“That’s all you’re going to give me? 'It’s good?'”
“I saidreallygood.”
Noah gave me a deadpan look. “You know I was all for this, but the fact that you don’t want to talk about it makes me nervous,” she said, her voice full of concern.
“I don’t know, Noah, I’m having a good time! We’ve been taking it slow, we haven’t had penetrative sex yet, we’re building up to it. And he is definitely up to the task.” I grinned cheekily at her, and she tried and failed to hide her snort of laughter. “I’m just kind of enjoying the ride.”
“OK, come on.” She laughed.
“Sorry, sorry, I’m done now, promise.” I grinned at her.
“But seriously, how long do you plan to keep this going?”
“We… haven’t really talked about that,” I hedged.
“Nikki.”
“What?” I asked.
“You know I love you.”
“Oh, here we go.” I rolled my eyes to the roof of the car in exasperation.
“I’m just worried about you!” Her voice was defensive, but the undertone of care was there. “I’m worried that this is starting to seem more like a relationship rather than just sex lessons like you claim, and you're going to get hurt.”
“I promise, I know what I’m doing.” I sounded way more confident about it than I really felt.
