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mastershakeme
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Everything posted by mastershakeme
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Monday morning I woke up and checked my phone before I opened my eyes. Nothing. It had been two days. Two days since the Blue Plate. Two days since Ryder had stood up from that booth and walked out the door and swung onto his motorcycle and driven back to Youngstown without looking at the diner once. One day since I’d sent “i miss you” into the void and gotten nothing back. The message still sat there in our conversation, delivered, read, unanswered. Three words hanging in digital spac
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The ring looked real. That was the thing I couldn’t stop thinking about as Margot slid into the pew next to me at St. Michael’s on Sunday morning. The silver band with the small clear stone, sitting on her left hand like it had always been there. It caught the light from the stained glass windows and threw it back in tiny fractures, and if you didn’t know the truth, if you didn’t know this ring was bought for a girl in Vermont who grew fiddle-leaf figs and called them Gerald, you would look
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Margot’s house was seven minutes from mine. A white colonial with blue shutters and a yard Kathleen Brennan maintained with the intensity of a woman who needed the outside of her life to look as organized as she believed the inside was. The garden beds were perfect. The hedges were trimmed. There was a wreath on the door that changed with the seasons and right now it was sunflowers and hydrangeas because it was June and Kathleen Brennan did not miss a seasonal transition. I parked on the st
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He was bigger than his pictures. That was my first thought. My first stupid, useless thought as I stood in the doorway of the Blue Plate diner and looked at Ryder for the first time in three dimensions. His profile photo had been a guy on a motorcycle, squinting in the sun, fitting neatly into a circle on a screen. The real version didn’t fit into anything. He filled the booth like he filled a conversation. Broad shoulders, arms that came from actual labor, a jaw I’d noticed in the photo bu
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Thursday night, I called him. This time I was in bed. Not in a funeral home parking lot in a suit smelling like lilies. In my bed, in my room, with the door closed and the football lamp on and the crucifix doing its thing on the wall across from me. It was different from last night. Last night had been urgent, desperate, the call I’d made because I was afraid of losing him. This one was just because I wanted to hear his voice. That was new. Wanting something and doing something about it. Tw
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You guys are really making me laugh today 😂 I needed that.
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I just snorted into my cappuccino
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Good catch! Fixed
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Dad and Mom were still inside, shutting down. Cleaning the lobby, resetting the chapel, going through the checklist Dad kept in his head and never rushed. Post-viewing shutdown took about an hour. It always did. Dad didn’t leave until every flower was repositioned, every program was collected, every light was off except the one in the hallway. I sat in my car with the door closed and my phone in my hand. Ryder picked up on the first ring. “So he lives.” His voice. I wasn’t ready f
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Absolutely nothing. Pure romance 😎❤️
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I know about the cliffhanger, it's so mean! And while my phone is my coping tool, it can be a stressor, too, at times, as it was in this instance. But Owen was probably low-key enjoying the panic haha. Somebody wants him!!! Yep, red flags all ignored. See you tomorrow 😂
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My phone is my coping tool.
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Wednesday was good until it wasn’t. VBS was becoming a rhythm. I pulled into St. Michael’s at eight fifty, Theo attached himself to my leg by nine-oh-one, Levi started talking about something involving sharks and outer space and a theory he’d developed overnight that combined both, and Nora handed me a revised schedule she’d made at home with color coding. Ellie came in quiet as always but she sat closer to the group today. Not next to anyone, but in the orbit. Like she was testing the grav
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I woke up before my alarm. That hadn’t happened in months. Maybe years. I was the kind of person who treated every alarm like a personal attack and negotiated with the snooze button like it owed me money. But this morning my eyes opened at seven thirty-two and my hand went to my phone before my brain fully came online, and the reason was sitting right there on the lock screen. Ryder: morning overthinking kid. try not to scar the seahorses for life today I smiled at the ceiling lik
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Dinner was quiet. Just me and my parents. Dad talked about the Hendrix viewing tomorrow. He wanted everything perfect. He always wanted everything perfect, but there was an extra edge to it tonight because the Hendrixes were old clients and old money and the kind of family whose opinion could make or break a funeral home’s reputation for a decade. “Owen, I may need you there Wednesday,” Dad said. “At the viewing?” “In the lobby. Greeting people. Handing out programs. You’ve done i
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The funeral home was eleven minutes from St. Michael’s. I knew this because I’d been counting the minutes since I got in my car, watching them tick down like a sentence being carried out. Eleven minutes between the best morning I’d had in months and the place where I went to feel nothing. Donnelly & Sons sat on the corner of a quiet street that never seemed to have traffic, which made sense because nobody drives fast near a funeral home. The building was old, red brick, with white colum
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Eyebrows!
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I hope you also saw jerk-face. And I had hours to change that stupid word. But I didn't. 😎
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I'm definitely adding jerk face to his description 😂😂😂
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I don't think anyone else read the synopsis. I've been chuckling to myself all morning.
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I was slightly jarred by this reaction, ngl 😂
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My alarm went off at seven forty-five and I stared at the ceiling for a full minute trying to remember why I’d set it. Then I remembered. VBS. Children. Church basement. Nine to three. I got up. The house was already moving. I could hear my dad downstairs, the coffee maker going, the muffled sound of the morning news. Mom was probably in the kitchen doing whatever Mom did at seven forty-five on a Monday, which was one of the great mysteries of my life because the woman didn’t work and
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The house was quiet when I got back. Mom and Dad had already retreated to their room, which meant the kitchen was cleaned, the doors were locked, and all the lights were off except the one over the stove that Mom left on for me like I was still twelve and afraid of the dark. I wasn’t afraid of the dark. I was afraid of plenty of things, but the dark wasn’t one of them. I kicked off my shoes by the door and went upstairs, careful to avoid the third step that creaked. Not because I was sneaki
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😂 I guess in hindsight this might be a bad idea. Sigh. Just... ignore the major plot hole here!!!!!!!
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Margot drove the way she did everything. Deliberately. Both hands on the wheel, mirrors checked, speed limit respected. She was the most responsible person I’d ever met and it was honestly a little exhausting sometimes, but tonight I was grateful for it. The steadiness. The predictability. The fact that she would never once swerve into oncoming traffic even when I kind of wanted her to, just for something to happen. “Dairy Barn?” she said. “Yeah.” The Dairy Barn was this little dr
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