Here’s one final holiday-related excerpt from “Ten Years and Then…” – it’s fairly early in the book, when Daniel and Nora are first dating. And at this point in the book, it’s December 1988, which is relevant to the choice of movie as you’ll see below…
He got out of the car, came around to the passenger side and opened her door. He grabbed her as she got out, just in case she stumbled on a bit of ice. “But are you sure you really want to see Working Girl?”
“Yes! It looked really fun from the preview. And Harrison Ford is hot.”
But two hours later, it was clear that Working Girl had been the wrong choice. Nora was sniffling for the last fifteen or twenty minutes of the movie, and she began crying—sobbing, honestly—by the time they were outside and walking through the parking lot. Daniel had no clue what had upset her.
It wasn’t until they were almost back to the car that she finally spoke. “He was just like my Dad! Why didn’t you tell me the movie was about a guy dating somebody half his age?”
Daniel started to say that he’d had no idea what the movie was about, so how could he have known? But then he replayed her words, and things started to make sense.
She’d told him her parents were divorced, but she’d never said very much about them beyond that.
And she hadn’t been planning to come to New York over Christmas. She’d believed they wouldn’t see each other for twenty-three days as surely as he had. So something had to have changed when she got home.
When she got home to her father.
Her divorced father. Who was probably dating Melanie Griffith.
Well, obviously not Melanie Griffith, but someone as young as her. And when Nora found out about her father’s new girlfriend—or maybe actually met her—she couldn’t deal with it, so she called her Aunt and begged to be allowed to stay with her in New York.
It all sounded very logical, but he was pretty sure logic wasn’t what Nora needed right now. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Let’s get back to the car and we can drive over to Wendy’s and get you a chocolate Frosty and we can talk about it.”
“How will that help?” She nearly shouted it.
“Trust me. I always felt better after my Mom got me a Frosty, no matter what was wrong. I trusted you yesterday with the ice skating. You can trust me now.”
You can find the book on Amazon, on Audible, or find out more about here on my site!
Powered by Linky Tools
Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…
Share to:
Related
Here’s the one-page resource for everything you need to know about me and my books…especially how to buy them!
...
Good morning! I’m sharing an excerpt from Ten Years and Then… this morning. It’s a scene between Nora and her mother, who have had a...
Early in Ten Years and Then… Daniel and Nora are home from college for Christmas break. Daniel goes home to his family, and Nora does,...
It’s officially Christmas season (well, for me personally Christmas season begins on November 1st and runs through the end of January, but I realize everyone...
5 Responses
I like them both. They deserve a happy ending.
I love the way you bring in the backstory so effortlessly, J.J. Well done! 🙂
Thanks so much!
What I like best about this scene is how lucky it was that the timing of it worked out. The story was already set in winter 1988 at this point in the book and I didn’t have to fudge the timing of the movie – Working Girl actually was playing in theaters exactly at that time and the plot of the movie just fit perfectly with the messy situation of Nora’s parents.
We actually do see her meet her father’s girlfriend in a previous scene – he picks Nora up from the train station in his brand new midlife crisis red sports car, with his new 25 year old girlfriend in the passenger seat. It’s very jarring for poor Nora!
Love the excerpt, J.J.!
Oh what a sweet thing to say! I like this guy. 🙂