Chapter 2

When Spencer heard the news about his ex-girlfriend, Melissa being cheated by her boyfriend, he couldn’t help but smile.

“Now she knows how it feels to be cheated on,” he thought. “Karma caught up with her.”

Reaching out, Spencer picked up a nice chunk of cherry, a mature piece with good grain showing. The hunk of wood was irregular, but turning it over, he could almost imagine the tall, delicately fluted bowl inside, just waiting for him to rasp away the surrounding wood and let its true beauty emerge.

He fitted the piece into his lathe, got it spinning, and began gently, carefully cutting away pieces of the wooden block using a heavy chisel. As his hands moved over the spinning, tumbling block of wood, his mind wandered back in time.

Spencer and Melissa had grown up together. They were childhood sweethearts. By high school, they had decided that they wanted to marry one another. They were going to have their happily ever after.

When they finished high school, Spencer headed off to Portland to major in business administration as they have talked. But Melissa didn’t follow the plan. She was determined to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. She had been an enthusiastic member of the theater group in high school, but Spencer never thought she was serious about acting. He always thought Melissa’s interest in acting was just a hobby like his leisure activity was working with wood.

Her decision to go to California took Spencer by surprise.

“What happens with our plan, Mel? What about our dreams?”

“I’m still going to marry you, Spence. It’ll just take a bit more time. I need you to do this for me. Acting has always been my passion.”

“What about US?” he emphasized the last word. “You know pretty well that the vast majority of long-distance relationships are doomed to fail.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck, kissed him long and hard, and said, “We are not like the vast majority of people, Spence. What we have is real. We’ll make it work.”