Here’s a free story for you this hoilday season. Some of you enjoy my love stories, and “Trash Talk” was a lot of things, but not that. https://books2read.com/b/bPnGJY has my newest work, across several e-book platforms- hopefully, including your fave!

A young girl tries to imagine a perfect Christmas love story, based on a chance meeting in a grocery store. But what do the characters want, and who are they? Instead of just forcing them into her plot, Bethany uses them to explore the nature of Love at First Sight. How does love work, anyway? Maybe that should be the title…

“How Does Holiday Love Work, Anyway?” by Cecil

Beth is sure she’ll surprise her friend Monday with this one.

Her new friend Ken might even draw it. He said he’d take a look. It had to be better than Beth’s hurried bundles of nervous geometric shapes. It’s her sort-of secret passion. She loves to write stories. This time she realizes she likes to learn something from what she writes. While love stories can be transcendent when moved to spectacular settings, it’s the subject of Love-At-First-Sight, emerging from every day life.

She promised her dad she’d come down and laugh through a kung-fu movie with him, but he’d gotten busy. She thought she’d give her female character a sad beginning. Beth pictures her as someone who likes to hike, likes to mediate in beautiful places.

“So Who Are My Characters?”

We’d meet her after she lost her father. Beth takes a sad trip to the idea, and sheds a tear. It’s clear she’s got to work on this chick’s happiness. She feels an inner strength in her; she’s not going to just be defined by misfortune. She doesn’t want attention for her private grief.

So she walks up to the self-checkout line. She has over a dozen things, and she can remain in her private world this way. She does like the look of the dude with purple hair. He has a kind face and a carefree demeanor. She doesn’t need his help, until, in the process of dealing with the scale on the grocery-loading table, she does.

He repays her compliment about his hair, with one about hers, wavy and fresh. She is one of many good-looking women he encounters in the course of a shift, but she is personable, also. He explains, in answer, why his hair color is so good- it grabs attention, provides an ice-breaker for kind people- and she knows. “Plus, the purple goes so well with your blue eyes.”

He laughs and reflects. “I had just considered complimenting a customer on her eyes, myself. I was concerned it’d be a bit too flirty.”

“Is it too flirty?”

“No, not in this case, for sure. I like it.”

They talk about the terrific energy that comes with extending friendliness, kindness.

“What’s the Underlying Conflict?”

And then, because he feels so welcoming, she blurts out:

“I lost my father.”

It’s her present reality. She is still getting used to the alien expression. If Reality is what you make it, why does she have to accept this, like it’s gravity or weather?

Not only does he not make it awkward, he tells her something from his own experience. He feels sure it’ll make her feel better. He instinctively knows we want Love to be a replenishing circuit, not a sadly-spilled puddle of all we can never have back.

Right now, Beth wants to feel better. It seems like the only time she stops to do these writing projects is when she’s under the weather. She stops to blow a thin layer of blood out of her sinuses. At least the headache from earlier’s subsided. She thinks maybe the aura of the characters will make her feel good.

It occurs to her she’s shipping them for fun. Even while she wonders what there might be to them that she doesn’t know yet. Something that might not make them fit her storybook intentions.

Beth, his writer, mind you, wants him to ask Dori when she lost her father. But he seems to know that’s the kind of thing others have been asking. She realizes he might wish he knew, later.

What matters? How she feels!

Not to try to solve her every problem. Just to open up the feeling of Love, being cared for- things she still wanted to give her father, feelings Dori’s dad gave her.

The guy says:
“I want to share something with you, because I believe it really might help you feel better.”

That’s why he tells her of the feeling he got when his own father died:

“I felt this warm light with me, like he’d always be with me.” He means to say he felt his father in the sunshine itself, but he needs to get the story to the point so she can finish her grocery check out and, despite the candor, someone was still likely to need him any second.

That’s what she’d noticed at the grocery store: her inspiration was the patient waiting, then the pinball-ing, as the check out attendant became busy helping people at three self-check out ‘bots. It’s fun to imagine! Are the people impatient, or nice? Does he make them feel less confused, or revel in making them look stupid? It really just depended on the nature of the person setting the tone.

One green fuel smoothie sip later, she sits to type, then is up again walking around to find a box of tissues that were, of course, behind where she’d sat.

She wants to write this now : a poignant interlude between two strangers at the onset of the holidays.

Now, in exploring these characters, she feels she has a good story. Dori and- what’s his name?

“So I flew back east for Dad’s funeral, you know,” he continues, “and friends and family, my sister, are there at Mom’s house. I had the attention of about fifteen of us who were hanging out together across the kitchen and dining room. I told them Dad would appreciate them being there, loved each of them, and would always be there inside us, I think. Anyway, as if on cue, the toaster oven dinged!

And everyone laughed. And you know something? The toaster oven was not plugged in.”

“I’ve had some experiences, too,” Dori says tentatively.

And then, even though he’d love to hear what she means, he’s got to go check an I.D. for alcohol or help someone find the accidentally-sacked food item they needed to weigh in order to continue. He helps them break out of robotic modes of demeanor, really. Dori feels happy when she watches him with others, and continues checking out, so she’s not a bother to anyone else who might need to check out, too.

Do some of their words thread between him being called away to help others at work? There could be some fun comedic timing, if it isn’t overly devoted to quips. It’s the sincere things they want to say, after all, that are being relatively trivialized by their circumstances. That’s why Bethany loves this: they’re opening up as people rarely do, but they have no privacy.

Plus, that bit about Life going on in a way to make us feel unimportant is terrific, she reasons, because they’re trying to transcend that feeling by making a bond. Dori is every customer who ever opened up about something deep. She’s every person who might treasure the moment you give them, to contrast an unyielding misery of that day.

But her comment about his eyes and hair, much less her enjoyment of his matching other clothes, hooked him from the start, provided momentum to want to be around her acceptance and admiration.

“How will they deal with their desire to talk?”

He should even say, one of those times he goes to help sort out a mistake he’s seen four times an hour as nicely as possible, “I admit I’d rather hang around with you.” He’s learning to enjoy the acceptance of others as he accepts himself, and there’s probably a lot to discover about his motivation process for being happy at work. Everyone seems to vaguely want workers to be happy, but so many don’t have a clear idea why they would be.

She’s gathering her groceries, after somewhere in there throwing in that she could manage fine, because she’s been doing this at this store most of her life. No snark intended. It is a good piece of information for Dez to hear, because he doesn’t have to do any work to be accepted by her as company. It’s a show put on, nearly subconscious in nature, to visibly justify him being there.

So he says:

“Really? Then might it be possible we’ll see each other around?”

Now how does she says ‘yes’? Beth types ‘yes’ and skips thinking about it for now.

She says she’s Dori. He proudly tugs on his nametag on his apron string and says, “Dez!”

“It’ll be easy to remember,” says Dori. “Our names both begin with ‘D.’

Beth pauses. Dez? (Is that double D idea lazy? In the end won’t it be OK if their names begin with the same letter?)

They’re living it out before her eyes.

She’s so excited. Before she goes to bed for the night, Beth types one word:

Hug.

The vacation time, with nowhere else promised to be but snug at home,

means it’s fine to start writing again, to finally get Dori’s groceries on their way home. Beth tries to get breakfast in the mundane world of the kitchen, but she takes a single carrot back, so she can start the story again where Dori’s leaving. It occurred to Beth, there’s definitely something more after they part ways. But should that be left out, to preserve a vignette of a perfect little moment in the bustle of the holiday season?

When she’s truly ready to go, Dori’s taking his help with the bag of groceries she’s lifting to cradle on the way out to the car. She’s clearly tired of pretending she would not appreciate something from him to rush in and fill the void she feels, at leaving him, someone who understands, like the light of her father bridging from him, angel sent to offer her an experience of Peace.

And Beth wonders: is that what he is?

And does the angel work there full-time? Because some rando putting on an apron and name tag and working would be noticed very quickly.

He’s clearly tired of pretending he doesn’t want to pull her close and share a heartbeat.

He gets her consent in a literally non-verbal fashion, and reaches around Dori’s grocery bag and her back. It’s somehow wholesome they should have the bag between them; they realize it, and Beth does, too.

They appreciate each other’s energy and presence. It’s a pure kind of love gathering two physical creatures.

And now Beth relishes how he visibly shows how stimulating Dori’s presence was, a boost of seratonin or whatever, dopamine maybe, that he’d enjoyed such an encounter, dramatic but heart warming.

And she realizes, he’s counting on seeing her again. But he has a card with his website and phone number on it. Why wouldn’t he share that?

Why would he want to hide something about who he was?

Why would he want to cling vainly to the illusion that she might find him attractive? Or would the card just leave him wrestling with his desire and new versions of his own sense of rejection cycled in-between calm, patience, and, for sanity’s sake, just moving on, kind of?

And Beth realizes the guy character she felt like shipping with Dori, however wonderfully he treated her, could be complicated in a way. But still be essentially nice enough to treat her thoughtfully.

Oh, but Beth really senses he’d love something special with Dori. That is, he has an ideal of being loving and things going well,and what he found in those few minutes, at least, fit. But they haven’t anything but those moments.

It’s the thrill of the theme, how exciting it is to meet someone who makes you feel special. A theme seems to want to be born, a revisit to

Love at First Sight.

Maybe he was going a little crazy over meeting Dori, and by the next day, he had to create a song, and think up the words, and sing each piece of it. It was the only way to metabolize his wonderful experience: he would not obsess over already missing her, even for the sake of that possible storyline.

If he made the song, it would make a creative object that held the feelings he had. By its existence, he would be willing for it to make her happy and one day be part of their long story of knowing each other. He wanted just to brazenly say, if he saw her these next three days: “excuse me, last time we talked, did we fall in love at first sight?”

And Beth is taken aback, because, either, how cute and perfect, or is this a red flag? And Beth realizes, she’s not experienced enough to know for sure. Because it could be funny, but the next day, it might seem insincere, and by the end of the next week, he wouldn’t just say a line.

The song helps him enjoy how much he has had a long time wish and Dori is the latest woman to remind him of that wish. At the same time, it remembers that he told her, your loved ones will play in your heart. He wonders if some of the rhymes are dumb. The song is his assurance they’d see each other around. But how glad should he be? If he wanted to already enjoy the goodness of that future, what would its intensity be?

And Beth, story creator, sat back with no idea.

Because there’s always this question, too: “am I distracting myself with thinking of this person, to avoid something else?” What is the thing that needs his attention, so he can improve at his passions?

When she comes back later, Beth tries to narrate the listless game he plays with himself, where he imagines he is looking for her, everywhere. And that could be sweet for a lonelier heart, perhaps. But what is Dez’s secret? What’s his love life?

Right now, it’s the one Beth would sort of like to see for him and Dori. He pictures being with her in ways where a friend might be like family. He would ride with her to things she is not sure she wants to deal with, but feels she truly must. He would make the people she takes him around feel better. He would make this Christmas not have to hurt so much.

He’d be the sort of friend her dad would wish her to have. Someone to respect the continuity in her feelings, but someone who understands joy in a way that can only uplift her.

But Beth realizes, in a way, to picture himself being so perfect for Dori, Dez is, in reality, in love with himself. His love for himself makes him want to be a holistic part of people’s lives.

And that’s why it happens. He doesn’t see her for days, and realizes he can’t feel dissatisfied every day at work that he isn’t reunited with Dori. But he wants to be the same happy guy, for everyone’s sake. He realizes he has a blissful ability to connect with the present Now. That’s where the best ideas spontaneously arrive.

Beth writes an outline for a scene where Dez tells a guy during an ID check, “I’ve been looking forward to seeing this girl come through again. But maybe I need to make it about whomever is in front of me, and appreciate each of them in the moment.” The guy, whose ID says he was born in 07-27-1991, agrees, and says one time in the past, he could’ve benefited from thinking about things that way.

But is he single? Isn’t she?

If not, is there some chance he’s with someone he wants to introduce to Dori?

And what does he want to happen?

And will they ever become friends?

Or is this Dez’s one time like that, and now he must amuse himself with more physical daydreams?

And can he pass the time growing into the sort of person he would know is plenty worthy to take and share any attention Dori might discover she can bring.

All of that, after this time of transition. Beth realizes that several of the family members might have different ideas and feelings, and would have a lot of memories, the inheritance left by good parents.

And then Beth realizes, anything about him brightening her Christmas is a pipe dream.

Maybe she’ll have a birthday coming.

And as for love, as for Dez: maybe he needs to not lock in at the phase where there’s fear and a desire to stabilize things that always borders on control issues. He sees again and again, they’ll just happen upon one another. If she has time, she might even look for where he’s working. It’s the one thing that makes him fine with taking additional hours, really: he can’t say no to gambling he might see her again. And she will really have a place in her life where they can magnetize a little and establish orbits.

He realizes he needs to be open to other people that come by. One of those smiling people might be happy to spend some time with him and …who is in his life? And what does she want?

Dez remembers his friend Millie and the girl who’d stood by him, apparently interested romantically, or so he’d wanted to believe, a little too much. A few days later, Millie – ah, Beth is skipping all the desciriptions-Beth gives her clothes a little flash, for a colorful and passionate woman. There! A strong woman from a South American country. Perfect!

Millie comes through his line at check stand 15. He’d never told her the sad ending to that brief attempt at close friendship. He learned he can get along fine with someone who might not be at a place in her own trials, after all, to keep his unreserved trust. And for some people, to lose the sense you are appreciated and trusted, after being but so close, is to be left with nothing to say, at all.

But to Beth, the goodness of his lover empowers all he does, even if his kindness is his choice.

It’s not that she wants him to be single, if he doesn’t like being single; it’s that she feels he was created so she can ship him with Dori. She’s so sweet, cute, clever, and their friendship would be precious. He would naturally add to her happiness. But maybe the secret of his power is that he is so unconditionally loved, and maybe his dilemma is, he wants her to understand him ever thinking of her this way, but for his own sake, he’d dearly like a friend.

And maybe he’ll begin to discover, like when Millie comes through his line, he was already making friends. The time for some new ones that will be productive should be any time.

Maybe he’ll hear about the best group of friends he’s had in years. It’s more complex than just the subliminal drive for Sex. (Beth is trying to see the constant motivation to procreate as not gross; it’s not true for everyone, and it might be hard to ferret out as a motivation.)

And since there’s now not anything he can do except appreciate the friends who offer their company now, Dez has to accept Dori not being present, as she was learning to accept her father’s death, too.

And if he wanted to encourage her to let the good feelings weave a harmonious tissue, then it was fitting he, too, who could only imagine loving her so intensely, to which he had no logical right and did have a predilection for thinking of women passing through his life so romantically, would have to live with Dori’s ‘ghost” of sorts. After all, she would probably come back as the same person he met. And since she’s alive out there, when they’re both ready for whatever, they’ll see each other around.

And that’s as far as Bethany takes it. She picks up her fun stuffed monkey, Weaver, a Christmas present from her new friend Andy, and takes it on a ride around her neck while climbing the tree outside, on a cloudy day. She doesn’t mean to leave Weaver out there on the branches. Beth just got so lost in thought, wondering what those characters would do, next.

She didn’t know if it was a lack of human experience at her age, or an introduction into how the heart ties people together along ways that might be profound to them, without ever being able to say to the others what they meant. Beth wonders why society has rigid viewpoints on what is necessary to work for a home- and to what end? And she knows she considers them rigid, while at the same time, like the branch upon which she sits contemplating, she wasn’t sure how far one should move from what is considered safe.

She can only congratulate herself for thinking of some questions she is in no way ready to start discussing with anyone. Yet. But she’s too absent-minded from her brush with the heart’s unknown to remember to bring Weaver in.

And that’s all right.

Weaver can be free to be other places he needs to be.

As we’ll see. (In “Ho, Ho, Ho, Signed, The Lelle Gang”)