Tuesday Tales: From a Picture

Welcome to this week’s Tuesday Tales. Hasn’t it been a crazy month and we’re only thirteen days in. I feel as if someone told Mother Nature she couldn’t do something, and she answered “Hold my beer.” Heat, cold, and smoke have been the orders of the day. Who knows what the next seventeen days will bring?

This week, we’re working with a picture prompt, and I’m working on It’s a Match, a Contemporary Romance with a few laughs in it. Since we have a picture prompt. We’re limited to 300 words. Here’s the picture I chose.

“Are you telling me that Zak Mitchum is going to be staying in the same house as me? That I’m going to have to put up with him for the next two weeks until your wedding day? What other disastrous news have you been keeping from me? Let me guess. He’s part of the wedding party—maybe even the Best Man? Seriously, Marley. How could you keep this from me?”

“For the exact reason that’s happening right now.” She rolled her eyes. “Calm down, Marissa.”

Calm down?

As if telling someone to calm down ever worked.

“He’s not part of the wedding party, but since he’s Aaron’s special guest, he will be part of the festivities. Zak and the horse will arrive the day before we do. I’m not asking you to spend time with him. I simply expect you to be polite. Canadians are polite. It’s our shtick. Surely that isn’t asking too much?

The blood in my veins turned to ice. I hadn’t laid eyes on Zak in five years, not since …Now, not only was I supposed to share accommodations with him, I was expected to be polite to him? Polite to the man who’d broken my heart and had left it in tatters? That was like going up to someone with a nut allergy and handing them a piece of the most gorgeous almond cake in the world and saying to them, “It’s okay. Go ahead and eat your fill. It’ll only kill you once, but you’ll enjoy it.” This wedding might well be the death of me.

“You don’t know what you’re asking.” I swallowed the tears choking me. Even after all this time, the mere mention of his name turned me into a mess.

That’s it. Stay safe, and don’t forget to check out the other Tuesday Tales.