RUSTY BUCKET MOTEL

“Give me that,” Ryan Moriani says, thrusting out his hand toward the other bed. Diane Bishop responds by placing a bottle of crappy Merlot in his hand. The sound of True Lies playing on the woefully out-of-date TV fills the dreary motel room.

“I can’t believe I’m trapped here the night before my wedding,” Ryan says as he pours more of the wine into his plastic cup.

“Yeah, well, life is rough.” Diane slugs down what’s left of the wine in her cup and reaches for the bottle. Ryan passes it over.

He feels a full-blown explosion boiling within himself. The match was sparked as soon as he had to get in that car with her and drive all the way across the state to talk to a convicted murderer on her behalf. The fuse was lit when they came to that fallen tree and were told they couldn’t cross the Pass and make it back to King’s Bay tonight. And now he is stuck spending the night before his wedding in this dump, and he can’t even be honest with Danielle about why.

“I wouldn’t be stuck here if it weren’t for you,” he says, exhibiting as much restraint as he can.

“Actually, you wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for yourself.”

“How does that math work out?”

“Because you’re the one who screwed me over in the first place. If you’d just left well enough alone, Julian St. John would have stayed with Vision, and I wouldn’t have needed to look up Javier Camacho--”

“I’m sorry if I didn’t want you publishing all sorts of nasty details that would have turned my whole life upside-down,” he snaps. “I did what I had to do to look out for myself.”

Diane swivels around so that her feet are hanging off the side of the bed. “And I’m looking out for myself! I needed Camacho to sign on so that I could save my job. Do you think I wanted to spend five hours in the damn car with you? And you couldn’t even convince Camacho, so now I don’t even have my career, and--” She cuts herself off by dumping more wine into her cup.

“Oh, now it’s my fault that he wouldn’t take your stupid publishing deal?”

“It’s your fault that any of this is happening!” She gulps down more wine. “I can’t believe I married you. Ugh.”

“Your lawyer took care of the annulment, so it’s like it never happened. I think we’re better off looking at it that way.”

“Fine by me.” She stares blankly at the slightly fuzzy image and overly bright color on the TV screen. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I got fired today. Diane Bishop got fired. Think about that for a second. Besides Samantha, my career is all I have. And if I don’t have that, I’m even letting her down. This entire thing is a disaster.”

“You’ll find a way,” Ryan says weakly. “You always do. I can barely tolerate you, and I know that’s true.”

“Shut up.” She swings her legs back onto the bed and focuses hard on the TV screen--and on what is left of her wine.

Ryan still feels compelled to say something, anything, to cut through the tension. “At least you have good taste in movies. I was worried you’d try to make me sit through some Kate Hudson mess.”

“If you keep talking, I swear to God, I will find How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days somewhere on this dial just to torture you.”

Ryan feels the slightest hint of a smirk tugging at his mouth as he leans back against the headboard and redirects his attention to the movie.

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