Thirty Happens (2 page)

chapter two.

I
shook my head to get the cobwebs of the past out of my brain. They had no place taking up any space up there. I needed to focus on my life now, not what had happened nine years ago.

I threw on a pair of khakis, and a button down shirt. This had been the unofficial wardrobe up at the Beacon. Although I was writing for the Onset Live now, I wanted to keep it professional. I could probably show up in pajamas and bunny slippers and they wouldn’t care, as long as I kept turning out all of the articles for the paper. Yeah, you heard that right. All of them. Just me.

Thank God I had an editor. Because the crap that came out of my fingertips after a mind-numbing town meeting needed him. Needed him desperately. I may have once accidentally typed, ‘
Dear Lord in heaven and baby Jesus. If you love me at all, kill me now.’

My bad.

I grabbed my phone to look over my agenda for the day and to see if anything newsworthy or breaking happened overnight.

Snort.

Yeah, right.

Nothing happened in this town. Not usually, anyway. I hadn’t had a suspicious death to write about in two years. No one had been mugged in one. There was a suspected break in six months ago, but it turned out that the teenager in the house had forgotten or lost her key and accidentally broke a window to get back in the house.

In the Onset and Wareham area, I covered bank openings, business galas, town meetings, people turning one hundred years old and kids winning awards for their poetry attempts.

Yeah, exciting stuff, right?

I scanned my emails and nothing new or exciting popped up.

I did smile when I saw that tomorrow was our networking lunch day. That was something to look forward to.

A bunch of us local news journalists got together once a month to hash out life. Most of us worked for small weeklies, like me. It was nice to be able to discuss my grouchiness with others who totally got me.

Please don’t get me wrong, I loved my life. I really did. I just sometimes got down if I thought about where I thought I would be at this point in my life. I didn’t want to come across as a whiney brat or anything. I just, I don’t know. I had plans. I was totally set in motion, too. I was on the fast track before life slammed me and all my plans into a brick wall.

I was a journalist, so that was good. It was my dream to be a newspaper journalist. I had ink in my veins, as they like to say. I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up and stuck with it. In high school when other kids were writing about the obnoxious goo they passed off as lunch food; I was trying to uncover conspiracies in the variances between different teachers’ grading systems. Or trying to get the scoop on the secret lives of nuns. Not sure why, but I was convinced that the teachers at my school, many of whom were nuns, had some secret life once we all left at three thirty in the afternoon.

I’m not really sure what it was I thought they did besides teaching, going to mass and praying. Toga parties, wet habit contests, who knows. But I really thought there was a story there. Maybe there still was. Hmmm… I tapped open the notes on my phone and typed ‘
revisit the secret life of the religious orders’.

Nodding to myself, I put my phone away and traveled to the gym to chat with Leah about the open house she was holding next week. I supposed that one of the cool things about being the sole writer at the local paper is that sometimes I got the opportunity to help out a friend and write a piece that was blatantly supporting her business without charging her for advertising. I did the same thing for my friend, Alex, when she opened up Nonna’s Baked Memories, or Nonna’s as we called it. It was actually kind of how I met Leah.

Alex had met Leah at the fitness studio when she took a kickboxing class with Nick, her boyfriend. I’d met Leah at Alex’s house a while back when she invited all of us over for wine night. This had gone from being a one time deal to our Friday night routine. Every Friday we met up, usually at Ashley’s, and had wine and ice cream. It’s a weird combo, but it totally worked for us.

I had known Ashley for years, she was already one of my closest friends, but that night I ended up forming a bond with Alex and Leah that has become so strong. We were more than friends, the four of us. We were almost more like sister wives. Well, without the sharing a husband thing, that would
not
work for me at all.

Leah’s studio was both her biggest passion and her greatest enemy. She was really into the whole fitness thing and healthy living. I mean, she didn’t just own the business and try to make money with it, she really lived the life. Fortunately, she could toss back the red wine and eat ice cream like the rest of us, or I wouldn’t be able to be friends with her. But the next day, she would get up at five thirty in the morning and go for a five mile run to work it off before heading into the studio for morning classes.

The problem was, membership wasn’t growing like she’d hoped. She was living hand to mouth and having to work extremely long days six days a week because she didn’t have the money to bring in any extra help. So, by giving her a teensy bit of a news story for the open house she was holding next week, maybe I would be able to help make her life a little easier.

I stopped by the café in Onset on my way to see Leah, picking her up the Green Goodness smoothie she loved. Ugh. To me, there was something really gross about green drinks. I’m sure they taste all delicious and healthy and were good for you and crap, but they were green. Bright. Freaking. Green.

Cue the involuntary full body shudder.

I instead chose the Mocha Java chippachino. Mmmmmm. Chocolate and coffee and cream and ice. Absolutely no redeeming health value, except for the happiness that it poured through my veins. Happiness was a good thing, right?

I ran up the steps to the studio and pushed open the door.

“Hey, Leah.”

She was set up in the middle of the studio with a step bench, some dumbbells, a barbell loaded up with way too many weights and a medicine ball. She did about ten more reps of sit-ups with the medicine ball before popping up to her feet.

“Hey, K! What’s up?”

Leah walked over and enveloped me in a really strong hug. Like,
ow
level strong.

“Geez, let up girl. And maybe it’s time to back off of the upper body work. I think you nearly popped my head off with that hug!”

“Ha ha, you’ll be fine. Wanna jump in on a workout with me?”

My nose crinkled with disgust at the thought of jumping in. I didn’t do the whole sweat thing. I knew I should probably work out more. But I just was all… meh. I had started taking a pole dancing class in Plymouth, Chris didn’t know but I was going to have a stripper pole installed in our bedroom while we were on our honeymoon. He didn’t even know I was taking the classes, I just wanted to be able to surprise him. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to spice up the relationship a bit with the whole thing. Plus, then if I really sucked, he would never know about it. We’d been together for so long, and I’d finally beaten him down and got a proposal, I would do everything in my power to make him stay.

Leah snorted as she laughed at the look on my face.

“Someday, kid, I’m going to get you into one of these classes.”

“Maybe if you offer pole dancing or stripper fitness classes. Until then, you enjoy your weights and stuff.”

“Will do. So, are you really okay with covering the open house? I mean, are you sure?”

“Hell, yeah. You need help, I’m here to help.”

“I would never take advantage of you, it feels weird having you write about the gym.”

“It’s not taking advantage if I offer.”

“I know, but –“

“But, nothing. Sit your perfectly toned ass down and start talking about the event. Give me all the details.”

An hour later I was sitting in my car tapping out quick notes on my tablet. I had taken notes while we were talking, but I just wanted to tighten them up a bit and add any extra thoughts I had before they left my brain.

Checking my schedule, I had about fifteen minutes to cross town to Wareham Center Nursing Home. Their oldest resident was turning one hundred and nine years old, and I was told to cover it. Sigh. I’m sure this would be a riveting interview.

Excuse me, ma’am, to what do you attribute living to one hundred and nine?

How do you like your oatmeal?

What model hearing aids do you wear?

I rolled my eyes as I headed across town, wishing I had enough time to swing by Nonna’s. I felt like I burned calories just standing next to Leah at the gym. It was completely exhausting just watching her work out. I really thought I should replenish those lost calories so I didn’t pass out. I mentally calculated how long it would take me to turn around and go back Nonna’s and get something I totally shouldn’t eat before heading to the nursing home. Nope, no chance.

I whimpered.

Oh well, suck it up future prize winning reporter. You’ve got to pay your dues if you expect to move up in the world.

Beep
.

Hmm, I looked down at my phone expecting it to be my editor springing a last minute article or idea on me.

Awww, it was Chris.

I couldn’t lie, even after two years together and a ring on my finger I still got a little girly when I got a text from him.

Hi, babe, how’s your day going?

I thought a second before responding.

Not bad, same old. You know the drill. You?

Good. You up for drinks tonight?

Uh, of course. I was always up for drinks.

Of course! See you at home.

Squee! Date night with the fiancé. Suddenly my day was looking up.

***

Nine hours later I was sitting at a cozy table for two with Chris.

I leaned forward on my elbows as he filled me in on his day as a property owner and the Chairman of the Wareham Board of Selectmen. He had made some really decent decisions in his life, and as such he was one of the main business property owners in the town. He’d been acquiring properties for thirty years, ever since he got out of college. Oh, we had a teensy bit of an age difference between us.

When we first started being seen around town, I fielded some not too nice ‘Letters to the Editor’. Some of them were so nasty that I came so close to breaking it off. Once the shock wore off, we were able to relax into the relationship and just be us.

Well, as relaxed as you could be when you were about to marry the closest thing to a celebrity that Wareham had. Honestly, it could be a pain in the rear. I had to smile and pretty much keep my mouth shut whenever we were approached in public. I smiled and nodded. Smiled and nodded.

Sometimes, I lucked out and was able to get the scoop on a possible story from just standing there. The weird thing was people were honestly surprised when I contacted them for an interview. They could never figure out how I knew. I realized that they had totally forgotten that I was a reporter when they saw me out with Chris, and only knew me as the future queen of Wareham.

Yeah, totally gave myself that title. I was even considering getting a tiara and scepter. And a sash. I giggled quietly for a second, which drew questionable glances from the person currently trying to proposition my future husband.

Proposition, but not in a dirty way. More like a ‘hey, let me buy you a beer and talk about this land development project I would like to get your help with permitting for’ type of way. Seriously happened every time.

Sometimes it annoyed me. Not every time, though. Sometimes I appreciated it because they were approaching him, not me. I couldn’t even count the number of times business owners in the town had approached me in the past, angling their business ideas as some sort of new and exciting ‘breaking news’ that would make life better for the Town of Wareham.

The truth is, I wasn’t much of a ‘smile and nod’ type of person. I wasn’t quite as in your face as Alex was, but I wasn’t shy in stating my opinion like, say, Ashley. I guess that next to Alex we all sort of looked like wall flowers. I would never understand how she could be so blunt yet so loved. She had the mindset of ‘I’d rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I’m not.’ It totally worked for her.

“…Dontcha think so, Karyn?”

Chris looked at me expectantly, obviously having lobbed a question my way in an attempt of including me in the conversation.

Shit.

I had no idea what was being talked about. I looked to my left in the pathetically eager eye of John Simmons, an electrician slash wannabe business owner. Oh, crud. He must have pitched another one of his ‘amazing’ ideas to Chris.

I sat back a bit in the chair, pasting a nonchalant, unaffected look on my face. It was a look that I’m sure had been perfected by many a political wife before me.

“Oh, Chris, you know I defer to you in all those types of things! I just write for a small paper.” I laughed as I waved him off a little and took a sip of my water.

He arched an eyebrow at me and smirked in humor.

Busted.

John, on the other hand, had no idea what had just transpired and instead looked a little relieved. Like, oh, thank
God
the token female arm candy didn’t have a thought to contribute. Little did he know that the token female
did
have a thought, but she just didn’t give a shit about whatever the hell it was they were talking about. So, yeah, I smiled and nodded. I gave in a little every time someone hopefully approached the table, ignoring that I existed and breathed the air next to them.