triptych

While I’m not able to give you pieces of my first book quite yet, I love these characters so much that I find myself returning to them again and again. For this week's tiny fiction, I wanted to play with different points of view, particularly how different characters might react to the same moment in time. On top of that, what would the picture look like if we take a step back, falling into a limited third person point of view?

To learn more about my writing process through this exercise, check out this week’s blog post: triptych.

Gretta

The ladle clanged against the soup pot—the sound of metal against metal echoed through the room, almost cutting through the tension radiating from Kate. The glass of wine I’d offered her an hour ago had long been drained, my girlfriend forgoing class and dignity to drink straight from the bottle instead. God, she’s perfect. 

We’d both gotten home an hour ago, and I set out to make her favorite meal—chaos soup, as she liked to call it. Really, it was just a bunch of vegetables and broth we didn’t use in time at the restaurant, thrown into a pot and left to simmer for a bit. Kate insisted it was magical, saying something like, ‘a bowl of that’ll heal you right on up.’ I smiled at the thought, my mind running toward the beautiful girl watching me from her perch atop the island as I chopped vegetables.

“I just don’t get her.” Kate sighed, a loaded breath heaving from her chest. “Who wants to be alone all the time?” I paused, looking over my shoulder to catch her head falling into her hands. Her blonde curls, pulled into a loose bun on her head, bounced—a few falling free from the hair tie. 

“You’ve been there for years, babe.” Her eyes shot to mine. “You can’t act surprised. When has she ever given you the idea that she wanted to change?” I turned back to the knife, letting the consistent rhythm guide my thoughts while I waited for Kate’s reply. It wasn’t unusual for her to sit with someone’s words—turning them over in that head of hers until they made sense. I just wish she’d realize that you can’t ‘get’ someone who refused to be known.

I’d met Asha a handful of times and each one was as perfectly pleasant as the last. The woman was as unreadable as my three-year-old nephew's handwriting—everything about her carefully carved into place. 

I lifted the cutting board, sliding piles of onion, garlic, and celery, now minced to perfection, into the bottom of the pot, the sizzle of vegetables meeting hot olive oil filling the stretching silence. I wiped my hands on my apron before turning my back to the stove, leaning against it to look at her again. 

Her gaze found mine and I could see every thought running through her honey-brown eyes. Kate had a penchant for caring—deeply. She just worked for someone who didn’t quite know what to do with it which ripped at the tenacious little fireball looking up at me with defeat weighing on her face.

Kate

The ladle clanged against the soup pot—the sound inviting me away from the loop of thoughts replaying since Asha sent me home earlier. She’d given me tomorrow off, which was the first day off I’d had in years. I couldn’t silence the quiet, unsteady voice in my head that wondered if I’d pushed her too far today. 

I’d been her assistant for years now and, honestly, I thought I’d get over how cold and calculating she was. For someone who needed me to be deeply involved in her life, it was no small feat that she still managed to keep me at a distance. I could know where she’s going to dinner, could even set up the reservation and driver. The second I ask if it’s a date, she shuts me out. I can’t count the amount of times she’d told me that I care too much. Still not enough to convince me she wasn’t worth caring about I guess. 

“I just don’t get her,” I said before blowing out a deep, unsteady breath. The room filled with my annoyance as I reached for the bottle of merlot. Gretta had offered it to me when we got home, mumbling something about me needing to take the edge off. “Who wants to be alone all the time?”

I took a deep swig from the bottle, letting the wine dry my mouth before swallowing. My focus settled on the woman in front of me, her eyes glued to her hands as she worked an assortment of vegetables into small piles with one of her big knives. She looked so relaxed, at peace. I loved this time of day, when the evening sun beamed through the windows and cast rays of light against her dark skin. 

“You’ve been there for years, babe. You can’t act surprised. When has she ever given you the idea that she wanted to change.” My face tightened at her words, my bottom lip surrendering to my teeth as I tried to let her words settle, still fighting for a way around the reality of them. It wasn’t that Gretta was wrong, but I wasn’t sure she was right either. I’d been around Asha long enough to know that she’d been fighting the love that people try to give her for a long time. If she lets someone in long enough to look, she’s gotta sit with the fact that they might leave, too. 

She’s just…hurt. 

It was just like my momma used to whisper into my ear after Daddy left. ‘Hurt people don’t know better than to hurt people, butterfly. But that don’t mean we can’t love ‘em just the same.’ 

The soup pot hissed as Gretta dumped her meticulous veggie piles into it, the sharp smell of onion pulling me away from the faint touch of my mother’s hands twisting through my hair. 

Third

The ladle clanged against the soup pot—the sound filling the space as two lovers danced around two irrevocable truths, neither brave enough to share the burden of their respective secret tucked close.

If there’s one thing we know, it was that Asha Arlington wasn’t going to change for anyone, much less Kate. Gretta knew this, of course, better than anyone perhaps—the fact bouncing around her head for months as she fielded complaints, and continued to rub the ever-growing stress from her girlfriend’s shoulders.

It had taken three minutes in the car, both of them tired after a long day of work, for Gretta to decide that Kate not only needed alcohol, but she needed it before her thoughts dragged her past her boss’s issues and into her own. Sure, it wasn’t the best solution, but a bottle of merlot, and a hearty bowl of soup, would surely turn the evening around.

After Asha had dismissed her assistant for the weekend, worries plagued the poor girl. Kate asked her girlfriend to spend the day with her—a luxury not often afforded to the two of them on a random Friday—hoping Gretta could provide a distraction from her thoughts. It was something that she wanted to enjoy but, the longer her mind lingered on Asha, the more she wondered if the distance between them was somehow her fault. Maybe she wasn’t trustworthy enough. Or maybe the woman she’d come to admire only saw her as a pest—a means to an end. Kate couldn’t deny she was great at her job, but that was simply because she wanted to impress the powerhouse that had hired her in the first place. She hated how easy it’d become to spiral. 

Gretta’s knife bounced against a wooden cutting board, the deep and hollow knock soothing to her as she tried to figure out just how to comfort Kate. The onion she’d brought home from the restaurant was staunch, the damned thing forcing tears to her eyes. She persevered, of course, as she always would when it came to the woman behind her, trying to think through someone else’s problems. Her knuckles gripped the bulb tightly, fingernails digging into flesh as Kate spoke, that thick, southern drawl stretching around Gretta like her favorite blanket. 

“I just don’t get her.” Kate sighed, her fingers already wrapping around the bottle of merlot—encouraged by the desire to drown the words before they could force her into realization. That she’d finally stumbled upon someone she simply couldn’t help. Gretta turned, worried eyes scanning her girlfriend’s face, wishing she could fix the heartache given to her by someone who simply didn’t care. “Who wants to be alone all the time?”

Gretta weighed her words carefully, knowing better than to acknowledge the flare of jealousy that shot through her chest. It was hard, at first, to accept Kate’s devotion to Asha—hours committed to a woman who, for the life of her, couldn’t let another human in. Gretta worried that she’d never receive the whole of Kate’s love, especially if Asha was insistent on manipulating the bits forced onto her by the overzealous, human-handyman her girlfriend liked to see herself as. 

“You’ve been there for years, babe.” As soon as the words passed her lips, Gretta regretted them. She turned back to her work, letting the rhythmic beat of her knife, the crunch of the celery under her hand, keep her steady. “You can’t act surprised. When has she ever given you the idea that she wanted to change?” 

Kate’s breath caught in her throat, her body still as the countertop she rested her weight on now. She tried to receive the words for what they were rather than how they made her feel—something far easier said than done. Gretta wasn’t wrong and sure, she would’ve even been willing to admit that if it hadn't been for Scheff finding his way back to the company, a light sparking in her boss’ eyes for the first time since Kate had known her. Kate was eager to see Asha brought back to life like one of the many refugee plants that rested in the corner behind her now—stems strong, and leaves proud after some time under Kate’s gentle guidance and green thumb. 

She focused on her partner, the way her tight curls rested on her neck—alive in their own regard as they flowed with Gretta’s kitchen grand pas. She was thankful for the calmness that radiated from the woman, her steady anchor in the tumultuous sea that she existed in—one that plagued her mind and her home just as much as did her job. Sometimes she wondered what it would be like if she just…let go of it all. If she let herself float alongside Gretta instead of holding onto her for refuge. 

The soup pot entered the conversation, a violent assault of oil splattering against vegetables as they released flavor into the room. Two lovers danced around two irrevocable truths, neither brave enough to confront what that truly meant.