[NaNo 2011] Day 11

I keep wondering if I'm being too subtle with some parts of this narrative...though it's also fun to play with readers' perceptions. For example, this idea of the other woman....

“I'm worried that I'm being played,” Ross muttered as he looked into his glass. Again, he thought, though he didn't say that.

But still Neville didn't seem concerned. “So she wants to take it slow,” he replied. “You said yourself it's made things interesting.”

“It was interesting for the first two days,” Ross said. “But it's been a week, now!”

“Quit complaining,” Neville told him. “Amber's a great girl.”

“I'm not saying she's not great,” Ross countered. “I mean, she's a right fit bird; the best we've had around here in a long time!” He sniffed, and mumbled mostly into his drink, “I just want to know if I'll ever get a leg over with her.”

Now Neville snickered, in a way that was both scornful and amused. “Sex has always come easy to you,” he said, lowering his voice, likely to be decorous while in the pub. “But now there's a girl who's making you work for it, and you can't stand that. That's the only reason you're bothered.”

Ross shot him a glare, then turned back to the remainder of his own ale. “Be that as it may,” he muttered back, “it would still be nice to know that I'm not just waiting around for nothing.”

Neville returned the glare but didn't say anything else for a long time. So they just finished their pints in mutual silence, until Ross started to dig in his pockets for some dosh, when Neville stopped him with a hand. But where Ross expected this to be about settling up, it wasn't:

“Don't be a lad, mate,” Neville murmured, all stern seriousness of a sudden. “Amber's cool; everybody thinks so. And she really likes you, for who you are. Not like-” he started, but then he stopped himself, and swallowed back whatever it was he was going to say.

He didn't need to articulate it, though; Ross knew well what was perched on Neville's tongue, and he could almost hear the other man spit the word from his brain anyway:

Susanna.

I took the day off from work today, in an effort to get my wordcount up. I did manage to break 20K, but there was a huge chunk of the middle of the day that I spent wandering around the city, going from lunch to dinner with a few chocolates and beers in between, so it wasn't totally as productive as it might have been if I'd simply stayed in and written all day. But I suppose that life is about living, just as much as it's about writing, these days.


20302 / 50000 words. 41% done!