Tracie Renee
Listen to Tracie read her story
In the story Vera’s life was writing, Ted’s hands on her throat were a surprise – but not a dealbreaker. He’d been wearing a USMC VETERAN cap when they’d first met, had explained the PTSD before their first date. She’d liked how open he was; Ted didn’t swallow his opinions to make others happy the way she did.
Still, Vera should have known the marriage was doomed when he’d suggested they rent a hobbit hole for the honeymoon. Ted had been so disappointed in her, in her failure to remember hobbits as the heroes of the LOTR trilogy, that she’d said yes just to redeem herself. It was a package deal: him AND his chiseled six-pack forever PLUS the hobbit hole for three nights.
They couldn’t afford a honeymoon, given his unemployment; she’d been honest about their budget. But when he’d offered to sell her romance novel collection to cover the Hobbit Hole Hotel deposit, she’d lied. She’d said, “Sure, babe, that’s fine.” And when he’d fingered the HELP WANTED sign on the front desk at check-in, she’d said it again: “Sure, babe, that’s fine.”
Now they were jetlagged and sex-lagged and trying to sleep but sharing, instead, Ted’s first night terror as an officially married man. At least he woke up before her lips turned blue. And at least he apologized. But what surprised Vera even more than finding Ted’s hands on her throat at two in the morning was the way almost dying brewed in her a fresh perspective on life.
She didn’t wait for daylight, nor did she apologize for the way her dreams did not fit into his. Vera simply told Ted, “I’m not a side quest, and I don’t want a life that fits inside a hobbit hole.” Then she left. She did not look back – not even when he called after her, confessed that he’d been storing a first edition copy of The Return of the King in her duffel bag and told her—so generously—to keep it.
She left the book in the first gas station bathroom she found.
There were so few women in that world of his, so few ways to be round AND breasted AND powerful, so few ways to make both magic AND milk, and Vera was done trying to squeeze her own story into those margins. She drove off into the wide and unclaimed dark with a full tank of gas. She had a Bluetooth connection. And an Emily Henry audiobook on her phone. That was all she needed to find a blank space to call her own.
Tracie’s prompts were: at a novelty motel, former/ current military personnel, title of a Taylor Swift song
Tracie Renee (she/her) is a librarian, a Publishers Weekly book reviewer, and a BOTN-nominated writer who lives and dreams in sort-of Chicago. Find her in HAD, Orange Blossom Review, on Bluesky and at https://linktr.ee/tracie.renee.
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