✍️ Ivy & Bill’s Almost-Meet-Cute

Let’s talk about that scene: You know the one. Ivy’s lost in Salisbury, hungry, frazzled, phone is dead, and basically, she’s one bad turn away from yelling at the world.

So what does she do? She follows her nose into a pub, loses her hair clip on the floor…and tries to grab it, but nearly gets stepped on by him. Bill. The man she wasn’t ready to see—but deep down, kinda hoped she would.

When I wrote that scene, I was curled up in my writing nook (read: the comfiest corner of my couch) with my third cup of reheated coffee and a slice of toast that might’ve been cinnamon-sugar—it’s a go-to snack, so don’t judge.

I’d just taken an online class about using Google Earth for scene scouting, so I’d “walked” the streets of Salisbury earlier that week—virtually sniffing out where Ivy might land if she got lost and hangry. You know that kind of hungry. The kind where you’d eat pretty much anything within reason.

The rest of the scene? It came from the quiet thrill of what it’s like to see someone before they know you’re there. Not in a stalker kind of way, but in that way where you can eavesdrop or peek into their lives for just a short bit before they know you’re there and you see them behaving honestly with their friends.

Ivy’s subsequent text to Bill poured out of me like I was sending it myself. And when he picked up the phone and saw her text? Excited and confused in the best way! Well, I smiled so hard my face hurt. BUT….it wasn’t how I’d originally written it. Not even close. This version is far better and so much like Bill—the golden retriever excitement really shines here.

But, that’s the magic of writing love stories later in life: the spark might come slower, but oh boy, it burns brighter, and it usually comes with memories of things that have happened to you at some stage in your own life.