Fiction Bit: Meeting Maggie
This week, I have a little fiction to share. This is something I’m just starting to work on. It’s unedited, but I like how it’s unfolding so far. Enjoy!
“Last time I saw you, you were wearing that same faded-flag tank top. Only tied up to show your belly, if I remember right.”
The last time Lauren Tate had heard that voice purring in her ear was the night before she’d left Magpie, Montana for good, or so she’d thought. Life had a way of circling back, and ten years later, here she was, back at the Fourth of July Rodeo in her hometown, with none other than Colter Brennigan breathing down her neck again.
Literally.
“It was one of the few things still in my closet at the homestead. I’m just glad it still fits.” She turned around to look at her high school crush – the guy she’d hoped to never face again. “Sorry, the daisy dukes don’t fit anymore. So you’ll have to ogle someone else’s ass… not that you weren’t doing that back then, anyway. How’s Missy, by the way?”
Colter put his hands on his hips and stepped back, shaking his head with a sardonic smile and looking off over her shoulder. He was still tall and his wavy black hair still curled at the nape of his neck under the black baseball cap on his head. She wasn’t sure, but that Godsmack t-shirt might be nearly as old as her tank top.
“If you’d stuck around long enough,” he said, “I could have told you Missy wasn’t a thing. She was setting me up, and you fell for it like she knew you would. As soon as you left town, she never looked my way again. I’m surprised Beth or Dory didn’t pass that along. Unless you ghosted them, too.”
She hadn’t at first, and her best friends had passed the message along, but she hadn’t believed it. Hadn’t wanted to, really, because she’d needed to get out, and believing Colter didn’t want her was the only thing that made it easier to stay away.
Now her grandmother needed help, and Lauren needed a place to rest and regroup for a while. Which was the only thing forcing her to continue this conversation with Colter.
“There’s something you need to know,” she said, waiting for him to look her in the eyes. “Something I should have told you a while back.”
He nodded and stepped forward, lowering his voice as he moved into her personal space. “I heard you came back with a kid. I used a condom, Lauren – or did you forget that too?”
“Thing is, they don’t always work.” He stepped back at that, and she shook her head and rolled her eyes. “I don’t expect anything from you. I never did. But it’s not like I can hide it, so yeah. She’s yours. I just wanted to tell you before someone else did.”
“You’re gonna have to get a paternity test to prove that.”
Lauren laughed. “Yeah. We’ll see about that.” She looked over her shoulder and called out, “Maggie! Come over here, sweetheart!”
Maggie turned away from the clown making balloon animals, and Lauren swore she heard Colter gasp as their daughter ran up, the same dark waves spilling down her back that curled at his nape, and the same sapphire eyes sparkling under long black lashes.
Even if Lauren had wanted to erase him from memory, she couldn’t. Every time she looked at Magpie Madeline Tate, she saw Colter.
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