I know, some of you are saying, no, it’s too early! But this is on my goal list for this month, to work on them. I’ll fine-tune and finalize them next month, but I need to at least have a starting point. My goals list for this year went to hell early in the year, but I think that happened to a lot of people this year. I had intended to have Medusa stories back out in the world, not just my Common Elements Romance Project story. That won’t happen now until next year unfortunately. The accountability challenge in September was great for me. I won’t make up enough ground to get in everything that was on my original goal list for 2020, but I’m back on track with daily writing or revising, which was what I needed. Now I’ll take a look at the 2020 list and see what I didn’t get to this year and start working out what I can manage for 2021.
Before I get to that and my writing for today, I have a little snippet for you from my Common Elements story, Light the Way Home.
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Nate schooled his expression to neutrality before turning around. Hayden’s chin jutted stubbornly, and his blue eyes narrowed. “I’m saying Lucie might be busy right now,” Nate said evenly. “Maybe we’ll see her outside tomorrow.”
“I can knock on the door.” His son crossed his arms on his chest, covering the spotted blue dog graphic. “She said we’d play later, and it’s later.”
“We can check, but, buddy, you have to promise not to be upset if she’s busy. Plus it’ll be suppertime soon, so we’ll be busy here, too.”
Hayden’s chin jutted out further.
“Just don’t get your hopes up,” he said, trying to keep his tone from dropping in defeat.
Hayden bolted for the back door.
Nate followed more slowly, picking up his son’s jacket from the chair inside the door. By the time he reached the bottom step, he heard his son’s voice, then Lucie spoke in reply, though he couldn’t hear the words. When he cleared the lilac bushes, he expected to see Hayden’s shoulders droop.
He was a little surprised to see the two of them walking into the middle of the neighboring yard while Lucie bounced the big yellow ball on one hand. Huh. He would’ve bet on her putting Hayden off. He paused at the open gate between the yards to watch them. They’d stopped, and she crouched in front of Hayden, who chattered a mile a minute. She nodded as she rose.
Hayden jogged backward a few steps, grinning, then held out both hands.
Lucie gave the ball another bounce before she tossed it to him.
His son caught it, giggling. “Too easy,” he shouted. He jumped once, then moved a few more steps away from her. “Ready?”
“Ready!” She leaned forward and held out her hands.
Nate wished he could see her expression.
Hayden lobbed the ball at her, and she caught it before it hit her in the face. He smiled and shook his head when his laughing son danced backward a couple more paces. “Throw it again!”
“You sure you can catch it so far away?” The tease in her voice made Nate relax. Lucie Russo might be a nice woman. Mindi and Harry trusted her, which meant she was okay.
But she seemed to be enjoying his son, genuinely enjoying him. Maybe she had nieces or nephews–she was comfortable, chatting with Hayden as they played catch.
He leaned on the fence to watch.
“Daddy, come play with us!”
Lucie straightened and looked over her shoulder, eyes widening.
Nate felt a little kick in his gut at the appealing image–pink cheeks, green eyes that tipped up at the outer corners, full lower lip dropping a tiny bit. Lucie Russo was pretty.
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Looks like the three neighborhood cats who visit us are looking for an early supper, so before I dig into my writing on the third Medusa story, I had better get some food out to them. I am thankful for them, too, even if they aren’t ours (and perpetually annoyed by their people; one belongs to people who live diagonally behind us, who moved into the house and set their two cats outside, and this orange guy really ones to be an inside cat again; he tries very hard to get in, even with us; another of the trio is feral, and it’s taken us a couple of years to get to the point where he will brush up against us when we feed him, poor baby; the third is a really sweet, friendly guy, and the neighbors behind us believe that his people moved away and left him behind, poor thing.). They fill a cat void we’ve had since we had to let our old girl go earlier this year, even though we aren’t ready to have another cat in the house. Yes, I’m still working on my gratitude this month. How are you all doing with that? I’d still love to hear. Some days I need a reminder to look harder myself, so if you feel like you do, too, we can work on it together. You can comment here, or drop into my daily happy thread over on my Facebook page, too.