Three Word Wednesday

The rules, if you wanna call 'em that, are here.

Stroke

Summer

Leave

Arriving
Continuation of "Leaving"
By the time Michelle got to her sister’s house, a number of scenarios about the rest of her life had coursed through her strained and anxious mind. She was relieved to be with her sister, yet torn about her departure. She hated him, yet longed for the days when he would stroke her hair as she sat between his legs on the floor in front of the couch, watching television or listening to an old jazz album. Then she would abruptly force any good memories of him out of her head. He didn’t deserve to be the subject of such kind, fond thoughts.

It was summer on the Jersey Shore. The quiet, and ordinarily sparsely populated beach town, had swelled to a temporary population of over 35,000 people. The shoobies, or shoobs for short, swarmed the shore every Memorial Day, every year. They came from Philadelphia, Manhattan, Hackensack, Newark, East Orange, and everywhere else that wasn’t wet, pleasant and sandy. They ate, drank, made babies, trashed rental properties, and enjoyed themselves immensely, while landlords and business owners made so much money they and their families could spend winters in Miami.

On Labor Day the exodus to browner, darker, more malodorous locales began. They left in droves on the Garden State Parkway, the Atlantic City Expressway, and the New Jersey Turnpike. Michelle had been a shoob once upon a time. Now she wasn’t. She was going to live in Stone Harbor for a while; at least until she felt safe enough to leave.