Felicity's NaNoWriMo Novel in Progress

Natural Disaster

2004-11-15T20:45:00.000-05:00

Just then, a gigantic asteroid crashed into the Indian Ocean, knocking Earth out of orbit and sending the planet and all of its inhabitants spiraling to their premature demise in the fires of the sun.

The end.

Lunch with Kristin...

2004-11-08T13:15:00.000-05:00

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Kristin said. “He just snuck right up behind you and whispered into your ear. How did you keep from fainting?”

Vickie had retold the story between bites of her salad. “I’m not entirely sure that I didn’t. The whole thing seems so surreal.”

Kristin, who was no stranger to romantic encounters, was still somewhat taken aback by Vickie’s stroke of good fortune. “Well…?”

“Well what?” asked Vickie.

“Well, when are you going to talk to him again?”

“I can’t even think about him without nearly having a seizure. How am I supposed to walk into the store and face him if I feel like passing out every time I just think about him? I don’t imagine most book stores keep the paramedics on speed-dial.”

“Why not just call him? Then you don’t have to worry about having a major medical emergency in his presence,” Kristen suggested.

“Kristen, you know me. There is no way in hell that I am going to get up the nerve to call him and talk about this,” Vickie said. “Last week, when I had to call the shop about a book I had ordered, it took me a good two hours to get up the nerve to dial the phone, and then when I finally got done talking to Stan for all of twenty five seconds, I was catatonic on my couch for the next half hour.”

“You’re such a fucking wimp,” Kristen said jokingly. “You already know he likes you, so what do you have to lose?”

True to her unassertive nature, Vickie responded, “Well, if he likes me that much, I’ll let him make the next move. In the mean time, I’ll just work on keeping my breathing steady and not actually drooling the next time I see him.”

“You do that…pussy.”

When Vickie returned to the print shop, she could see from the less than vacant look on Theresa’s face that something was up. When she stepped into her office she was momentarily unable to find her desk. It seemed to be lost under the massive bouquet of flowers that had been delivered while she lunched with her best friend.

“I guess that’s the next move,” Vickie said under her breath as she opened the card on the bouquet. “At least Stan’s not here to deliver them in person, or I really might need medical attention.”

“Well then it’s a good thing I took that CPR class in college.” In what seemed to be becoming a trend, Stan stepped out from around the corner with even more flowers in his hand. “I called and asked Theresa when you’d be gone for lunch so that I’d have a chance to surprise you.”

He stepped over and kissed Vickie on the cheek as he handed her the second bouquet. “Kenneth was just helping me find a vase for these.”

After a few seconds of taking in the situation and making a mental note to stop talking out loud to herself when she thought no one was listening, Vickie spoke. “Wow, Stan…thanks. I would never have expected this. You really shouldn’t have.”

“You’re absolutely welcome. But,” Stan said with a mischievous grin on his face, “don’t get too excited. It’s just a new customer service thing I’m trying out at the store. You think it’ll work out for us?” he asked sarcastically.

“You’ve definitely got my repeat business,” Vickie replied, somewhat more relaxed. There was something about the tone of his voice and the way he smiled that made her feel at ease around him.

Stan pulled a little note pad out of his back pocket and pretended to check off items on a list. “Flowers…done. Peck on the cheek…did it. Witty exchange of words…check. Ask the amazingly beautiful woman in front of me if she’d care to join me for dinner…” He paused and looked up from his notepad.

“You make it really hard for a woman to say no, don’t you,” said Vickie.

“Your place at six it is,” said Stan, and with another kiss on Vickie’s cheek, he headed out the door.

A day at the office...

2004-11-07T02:42:00.000-05:00

“Gee, Vickie. You seem a little out of breath,” Kenneth said. “Sounds like you must have been rushing to get ready this morning.”

Kenneth Greenly, a cat lover, was the owner of Nine Lives Printers, Vickie’s place of employment. She had been working there for about a year and had built up a great rapport with her boss, but not quite great enough to let on exactly what had her so breathless this particular morning.

“Yeah. I woke up a little late and had to rush to get things done,” Vickie replied.

“Still not feeling well?” Kenneth asked.

“Getting there,” Vickie said with a slight smile. She blushed a bit, thinking about her experience in the laundry room the prior night. “Nothing a little chicken noodle soup won’t fix.”

When she got into the office, she took stock of her day’s workload, and called her friend Kristin while she waited for her computer to boot up.

“You’re never going to believe what happened to me last night,” Vickie teased. “Meet me for lunch and I’ll tell you all about it.” She hung up the phone with a sly smile on her face.

“What’s that grin for?” asked Theresa, Vickie’s obnoxiously intrusive co-worker. As much as Vickie loved her job, having to deal with Theresa every day was trying, to say the least.

“Oh, nothing,” replied Vickie, knowing that starting a conversation about her love life with Theresa would be opening a can of worms…really stupid worms.

“It sure looks like something’s up,” said Theresa, in the grating southern drawl that, despite its “hearing fingernails on a chalkboard and receiving painful electric shocks while being lectured by your mother about how your life isn’t going anywhere” sort of quality, was actually one of her less annoying traits. Aside from being a very vocal religious zealot, Theresa’s knack for stating the obvious walked the fine line between irritating and just plain brainless. Classic Theresa-isms included, “That really cooks stuff fast,” (while heating something in the microwave), and “We sure have a lot of paper here,” (It’s a fucking print shop for Christ’s sake. Of course there’s a lot of paper.)

“Just glad that I’m starting to feel better, that’s all,” Vickie said. Hoping that it would satisfy Theresa’s curiosity.

“I knew you’d feel better,” she said proudly. “I prayed for you this weekend.”

While Vickie considered herself spiritual, she wasn’t convinced, with all of the other things God had to think about this past weekend, that her illness ranked very high in his priorities…even with Theresa’s intervention on her behalf.

“Gee, thanks,” Vickie said somewhat shortly. While she normally made an effort to be nice to other people, Vickie felt her time was wasted with Theresa. Her hapless co-worker seemed to be too dense to understand anything more complicated than tying her shoes in the morning, much less the subtleties of a little old fashioned sarcasm.

Vickie could already tell that lunch couldn’t come soon enough.

Here comes the sex...

2004-11-03T23:37:00.000-05:00

Up until meeting Joe, Vickie had been significantly less successful than her friend at the dating game. Her most recent ex had just gotten married.

“Good luck to whoever he suckered into doing that,” Vickie thought and giggled.

Before Andy, Vickie had been in a string of flings with a couple of “long-termers” thrown in for good measure. Most of them weren’t worth mentioning, but every now and then, when she was with Joe, she would start to think about a former “friend with benefits,” Lowell. Lowell was never the “settling down” type, but what he lacked in the ability to commit, he made up for in the ability to please.

Vickie checked her watch, saw that she still had a few minutes to spare, so she sat down on her couch and let her mind wander back to her first encounter with Lowell. They had been friends for a little while, and one Sunday after football, they were sitting in his living room talking. The topic quickly moved from the finer points of the 4-3 defense to secret fantasies. Lowell asked her if there was anything she had ever wanted to try but never had the nerve to tell a partner about. Just thinking about the conversation made Vickie blush a bit. She and Lowell shared several of their forbidden desires with each other, always skirting around the obvious sexual tension that was building in the room.

Finally, Lowell made a bet with her. She couldn’t remember what the bet was, only that the winner got a kiss from the loser. A kiss on the couch quickly became much more in the bedroom. Even though she had shared so many of her turn-ons in the prior conversation, Vickie was shocked at Lowell’s ability to satisfy her.

He gently unbuttoned her blouse, taking time to caress the curves of her full breasts. As his hands worked the final buttons, his lips brushed tenderly against her cleavage. Lost in the sensations she was feeling, Vickie tilted back her head and let out a soft moan. Lowell took advantage of her new position and began kissing his way up her neck towards her gently parted lips.

They kissed passionately as clothing seemed to disappear into thin air. Feeling his weight on her, she reclined fully on the bed. His hands seemed to caress every inch of her skin at once. She fervently pulled his body closer to her own. He responded by guiding his hand between her thighs. Without thinking, Vickie parted her legs to accommodate him.

Their lips parted for the first time in what seemed like eons as he began to work his way down her body. Over and over she felt a kiss, followed by a flick of the tip of his tongue, and then another kiss as he made his way down her throat. When he reached her chest, he took time to give each of her rock hard nipples the attention it deserved. Each time his lips made contact, she could feel the desire shooting down to where his hand was now sensing her level of excitement.

As he continued his slow descent, Vickie had to make an effort not to respond too loudly to the ecstasy she was feeling. He approached her downy mound, and, to Vickie’s surprise, moved his lips directly down to her inner thigh. She felt his tongue, as he traced his way up from the side of one knee, stopping right as her anticipation became almost unbearable. He paused slightly before snaking his tongue up her other creamy thigh. He paused again, but Vickie could take it no more.

“Don’t make me grab you by the ears Lowell,” she said forcefully.

Lowell must have known that he could torture her no longer. When his lips found their way to her fluttering bird of paradise, she could no longer control the volume of her moaning. Subconsciously, she stroked her breasts with one hand, as she ran her fingers through his hair with the other. Where so many others had missed the mark, Lowell was right on target. Her hips rocked back and forth to match his rhythm, as her vocalizations grew ever more fervent. No man had ever brought her so far so fast.

There were many more climaxes that night…and countless other nights. With Lowell, she was able to explore her fantasies without the worries she had faced in committed relationships. When his job required him to move across the country, she lamented the loss of their physical partnership. She was, however, thankful for the seemingly boundless ways in which he had helped her discover her own sensuality.

“BEEEEEP! BEEP, BEEP, BEEP!”

“Fuck…my ride is here!” Vickie was jolted back to reality by the sound of her boss beeping his horn in her driveway. She had been so caught up in her reminiscence that she had lost complete track of time. Now she would have to head in to work with thoughts of Stan…and Lowell on her mind.

It continues...

2004-11-02T16:37:00.000-05:00

Getting ready for work, Vickie thought about the events of the previous night. As the warm water ran down her face in the shower, she couldn’t help but recall the tenderness of Stan’s first kiss. Without even thinking about it, her hands caressed her shoulders in the same way that his fingers had done only hours before. As she dried off and slipped into her work clothes, she quietly cursed whoever it was that invented the whistling teakettle (Chester Greenwood, in case you were wondering).

Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that something had stopped them from going too far in the heat of the moment. Vickie knew it could never really work between them anyway. Stan was almost ten years younger than she was, just barely entering his twenties as her thirties were approaching more quickly than she cared to think. What could he possibly want with a somewhat geeky single mom with a “less-than-perfect” figure?

Besides, she had Joe. They had been seeing each other on and off for the past three years. He was the kind of guy her mother had always pushed her towards – good job, homeowner, nice car, retirement plan. Vickie supposed she could settle for Joe. He was older, but still attractive, had always treated her well. He got along well with her son. Still, when she was with him, she was always aware on some level that she missed the spark of being in the room with someone she couldn’t resist. At this point in her life, not many men offered her the sense of stability that Joe could. But stability isn’t everything.

She put in her earrings and gave herself a once-over glance in the full-length mirror.

“Who am I kidding? Stan must have been delirious to do what he did last night,” she thought.

She’d have to consult with her best friend Kristen over lunch. Kristen Hernandez had been her best friend since their first playdate when Vickie was two. Kristen always seemed to know exactly what to do when it came to men and relationships. She was never without a male companion (or three), and always seemed to be in control of her love life.

It begins...

2004-11-01T23:09:00.000-05:00

Victoria awoke on the couch to the sound of someone coming up the stairs to her apartment.

“Who the hell could that be,” she thought while verifying that she was actually wearing pants (not always a sure thing after about 9:30 p.m. on a weekday).

Vickie Flanders had been sick for a couple of weeks, not “debilitating” sick, but miserable nonetheless. The disorientation she was feeling from the decongestant wasn’t helping at all as she tried to figure out who was about to knock on her door…

“Oh, fuck…my hair. It’s not bad enough that I feel like crap, I have to look like it, too.” She ran her fingers through her unruly blonde hair and hoped whoever it was had either been drinking heavily or had forgotten to put in his contacts.

Nothing could prepare her for what she saw when she opened the door. Standing at the threshold of her apartment was an unbelievably attractive, rain-soaked, redhead with a box of Lipton’s instant chicken noodle soup in one hand and the new Carl Hiaasen novel in the other.

“Oh my god, Stan…you shouldn’t have.”

“I heard you were sick, so I figured I’d stop by and see if I could cheer my favorite customer up a little. The soup is to compensate for my total inability to cook, and I’ve seen you eyeing this book every time you’ve been at the store.”

“Always asking when it was going to come out in paperback. I had no idea you were paying attention,” Vickie replied, hoping that in the throes of her sickness she wasn’t sounding too much like Bea Arthur.

Stan Princeton was the manager of a new bookstore that had recently opened in Pine Haven. Vickie loved books, but had spent a little more time at The Corner Shelf than she could justify by her enthusiasm for a good read. The truth was that from the first time she had walked into the quaint store, she found herself smitten with the handsome manager. She kept telling herself that it was nothing more than a silly crush, but that didn’t change the fact that Stan made her feel like she was 13 again, leafing through the pages of the latest issue of Tiger Beat.

Vickie was in a state of shock that somehow the man she had desired for the past three months was suddenly three feet away from her…with rain running from his coppery hair down his cheek.

“Jesus…what was I thinking. Come in. Let me grab you a towel and brew some tea,” Vickie said.

She walked, as calmly as her racing heart would allow, to the bathroom to grab a towel and steal a quick glance into the mirror.

“Thank god his glasses were a little foggy,” Vickie thought as she quickly attempted to tame her “sleepy-head” hair.

She poured some water into the teakettle and set it on the stove. When she made her way back into the living room, her heart nearly leapt out of her chest. Stan was standing with his back to her…and his shirt off. He spun around when he heard her approach, his dripping shirt in his hand.

“It’s really pouring out there,” he said. “Any chance you could toss this in the dryer for a few minutes?”

“Ummm…sure,” Vickie responded, dumbstruck by the situation she had somehow found herself in.

Stan must have noticed her eyes lingering on the lines of his bare chest and perfect stomach. He gave her a knowing wink. Vickie grabbed the shirt from him and headed for the laundry room to try to avoid fainting right there on her living room floor.

Once there, Vickie took a second to take stock of the situation.

“He’s here. Stan is here…right here in my living room,” she said under her breath, barely able to contain the emotions she was feeling.

“Actually, I’m standing right behind you,” he whispered into her ear.

With the sound of her heartbeat pulsing in her ears, she obviously hadn’t heard him follow her into the tiny room. Now she could feel his warm breath on her neck and his firm chest brushing up against her back. There wasn’t time for Vickie to feel embarrassed. By the time she fully realized that Stan had heard her, the only thing she could think about was his warm hands that had suddenly found their way to her shoulders.

After two weeks in physical agony, nothing could have felt as good as Stan’s hands rubbing her neck and caressing their way down her arms. For weeks she had imagined what it might be like to kiss him, and now it looked like she was going to get her wish.

She turned to face him, placed her hands on his chest and looked directly into his eyes. “Stan…I know this is sil..”

“Shhh,” he said, gently placing a finger on her lips. “There will be plenty of time to talk later. Right now I need to do…this.”

Her eyes closed as his lips brushed against hers. It was the most tender kiss she had ever experienced. She responded by sliding her hands up behind his neck and returning his kiss with passion that caught even her by surprise. Her fingers worked their way through his damp hair as her tongue probed the corners of his moist mouth. She could feel his enthusiasm growing, fueling her own desire.

“SHREEEEEEEEEEK!!!!” They both startled at the sound coming from the kitchen.

“Tea’s ready,” Vickie said, in a daze. She slid past Stan and raced to remove the screaming kettle from the stove.

No actual "novelling" yet.

2004-10-31T23:41:00.000-05:00

OK...I was going to start at midnight tonight, but I am way too freaking tired. You'll have to wait until lunch time tomorrow (if I'm lucky), or after my son goes to bed.

I do have some good ideas floating around in my brain, and I'm kind of starting to look forward to this.

Good luck to all the other NaNos out there!