Jonathan Maberry's One Night Story
To celebrate the release of Bright Before Sunrise (it's out NOW!) I asked some of my favorite authors and blogger friends to respond to the book’s tagline One night can change how you see the world. One night can change how you see yourself by sharing a night that changed their lives.
Now, you may know Jonathan Maberry as the NYT best-selling author of the Rot and Ruin or the Joe Ledger series; as the writer of comic books and so many creepy stories, but I know him as the most supportive mentor a young author could wish for.
And this is his heart-warming One Night Story:
One night can change how you see the world.
One night can change how you see yourself.
Take a picture of this. A guy running hard at his fortieth birthday. Divorced. Dating around, but not enjoying it very much. Not much in the bank. Not much in the way of optimism or expectations.
Not a loser, but a guy who’s lost. A marriage that hit an iceberg and sank. Some health issues related to bad jobs he’s worked in the past. Bum knee, bum shoulders. Leftovers from getting stabbed while working as a bouncer in a low-rent bar and as a bouncer for drugged-out celebrities. Currently working in a call center. Not rock bottom, but looking at it close enough to read the fine print.
This guy thinks that he’s all about bad luck. He jokes that he’s the bad luck kid. He quotes that line from the old Country song: “If it weren’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all.”
So, one night he visits an old friend. Another person on the wrong side of the happiness door. Woman with two kids going through a divorce. He comes over to keep her and the kids company. They’re old friends. No romance. Just shared pain.
They take a walk, talking about how things used to be. Smiling at memories of happier times. Wistful that those times, like happiness, is past tense.
A woman comes jogging around the track. A little older than the guy. Fit. Beautiful. Red hair. A smile that could melt ice. She just happens to know the woman. They’re friends. They’re both single mothers. Both divorced. Both lonely.
The guy sees her. The redhead sees the guy.
Cue the music. Cue all of the corny tropes of love at first sight. Cue everything that the guy has come to despise as being either phone crap peddled by the makers of Valentine’s Day cards, or the product of Hollywood’s saccharine cynicism.
There’s a real connection there.
He sees her. She sees him.
Days like that should tremble when they begin. There should be something in the air. Something that can be measured.
He never believed in days like this. Not since he stopped believing in them. Not since he lost hope in hope.
But here’s this redhead. Smiling at him. Like she knows him. Or…maybe, like she just knows.
Something shifts inside the guy. He knows it. He feels it.
The bad luck kid just caught a train out of town. This guy –this new guy? He doesn’t know from bad luck. Not anymore. From then on, his luck was different. There were more colors in the sky. There was more breath in his lungs.
When he goes home that night, he calls a friend. Another woman he knows. A woman he’s dated, but for whom a friendship had grown where romance couldn’t. A trusted friend. He tells her, that very night, that he’s met the one.
His friend is so happy for him. She hears it in his voice. She knows him, so she knows it isn’t like him to say something like that. He prizes the truth too much to spin that kind of thing. He says what he believes.
In less than two years they’re married.
His luck never turned bad. Now he’s successful. He has more than he ever imagined he could have. Books on the bestseller list. A home by the ocean. A son.
His lady luck. And his light.
Can one night change how you see the world?
Can one night change how you see yourself?
That’s how I met my wife.
I’ve never been that guy again.
I’ve never been the same again.
The world is a different place, and I love living in it.
‘Cause the world changed for her, too.
