My week late July Flashfic for bsloths (Brandi). The prompt will be listed at the bottom.
Some of you might not appreciate this as much as others. It might depend on how faithfully you read me, but still, this stands alone too.
My only hope is that Brandi appreciates it. The pressure was tremendous!
Sam pulled up in front of the restaurant and killed the engine. Looking over at his wife, he smiled brightly before lying through his teeth, "I'm really glad you went with my request of a dinner with just you and the kids for my fortieth birthday, Ken." But even as he said it, he knew in reality that when he and his family walked into the restaurant they would be bombarded by family and friends.
If there was one thing that Sam had learned through years of being with Kendra, it was that when she got something in her head, forget it, you weren't changing her mind. And Kendra wanted an extravaganza. She had been the first of their group to turn forty and she had expected it for herself and he expected that she would give nothing less in return, though he could still hold a slight glimmer of hope that for once she had actually listened to him. But he knew in actuality that it was futile. He was the last of the six in their tight circle to turn forty and each of the earlier five had had huge productions. Though Casey, of course, had planned her own, since she still had an aversion to surprise parties being thrown for her.
If he had a suspicion of what was going on in there before, when he saw his oldest child Cameron hurry out of the vehicle and head straight inside, it confirmed his suspicions. Of course, Cam was all about eating, but in the last few months it had become more about being all about Whitney, Derek and Casey's youngest daughter. Now, he would move for food, but he would rush for Whitney and the boy was definitely rushing. Plus, he had probably been instructed by Kendra ahead of time to do so, so that he could notify the others that they had arrived.
Sighing in resign of what was to come; he exited the car and came around opening Kendra's door first and then the back to let his youngest child, daughter Addison out. Addie looked none to pleased at the moment, and he wondered if it had to do with the fact that she was going to be bored to tears for the next couple of hours and that she was there against her will, or that she would have to be cooped up in close proximity with Ian, Emily and Ralph's son, for that amount of time.
The moms in the circle, along with Cam and Whit, were working overtime to get the two together and Addie was fighting it tooth and nail. He would have loved Derek and Ralph to be out there at the moment so that they could placebets on how the seating was arranged so that Addie would be forced to be close to Ian.
He wished he could stall forever, but he knew that the quicker he went in there, the quicker it would be over. So he put his two favorite girls on either side of him and walked into the restaurant much like a lamb being led to slaughter.
Upon arriving and telling the maitre'd that they were there for their scheduled reservations, they were led back past the regular tables to a closed door. Sam took a deep breath and tried to ready himself for what was behind it. There was absolutely no telling what he was about to experience with his wife in charge, but he knew it would be huge.
Kendra pushed him forward, as if wanting to make sure that he entered first and he begrudgingly did so, all the while telling himself that if this made her happy, then it made him happy. She was a wonderful wife and he could survive one night of hell to keep that perky smile on her lips.
Sam took one more deep breath and then opened the door. The lights flew on and people jumped in the air and yelled, "Surprise". He felt his wife grab his arm and jump up and down. "Did we surprise you? Were you surprised?" she asked excitedly.
The grin he gave his wife was a genuine one. He loved that she had wanted to do something for him so badly. People had thought they were crazy when they had first gotten together, they thought that they were so opposite that they would never work, but they had proven them all wrong. Nineteen years of marriage and two kids said otherwise.
"This is great Sweetheart," he replied sincerely. "This must have taken a lot of planning."
And that much, he knew was true. The room was decorated almost floor to ceiling in black and silver. But he was really taken aback when he took in the sight of the back wall. There was a huge movie screen mounted there and above it was a huge banner that read, 'This Is Your Life, Sam Shepherd'. And at that moment, he knew this was going to be an experience. What kind of experience he wasn't sure of yet, but it was definitely going to be an experience.
He looked at the long tables that were joined together and saw all the important people in his life. There were his three older sisters, Stephanie, Sarah and Shannon, along with their spouses and all his nieces and nephews and Kendra's younger brother Keagan and his wife Dana. Then there was what he liked to call his extended family, which was Derek and a pregnant Casey, along with their daughters Whitney and Jenna, who also happened to be expecting, and Jenna's husband Jordan. There was also Ralph and Emily, along with their children Chloe and Ian. And then as he continued to look around, he saw various co-workers and people from their church. He knew how much planning Kendra must have put into all of this and it made another smile cross his face.
"Really Ken," he said as he turned back to her, "this is more than I could have ever imagined." And it was. He knew that there would be some sort of surprise, but he never really expected there to be this many people and then to have his sisters flown in from all parts of Canada, that was gift enough in itself.
"Well get ready, because you're about to be taken on a trip back in time. You're going to get to relive the last forty years," she said as she walked him to the seat of honor. She sat down beside him and almost laughed out loud when he glanced over and found that he had indeed been correct, Addie was sitting with arms crossed and the pout that she had inherited from her mother was perfectly gracing her lips, as she sat directly beside Ian. Leave it to Kendra to not leave out the tiniest detail.
Kendra nodded towards his sisters and all three of them took their place at the podium.
"Now, a lot of you think you know Sam, but the question is, do you really?" his oldest sister Stephanie began.
"You see, I think we're the only ones in here that knew him before pre-school," his middle sister Sarah went on.
"But," Shannon, the sister closest to his age, just being three years older, finished, "have you known Sam like this?"
Then behind them on the screen was a picture of a probably three month old Sam, in a pink frilly dress that had probably belonged to one of their dolls. He also had a white ruffled bonnet on.
He heard Derek bust out laughing at this point and yell out, "So that's how you got Sam to get in touch with his feminine side and spout all that feminist propaganda when we were in high school. You brain washed him early."
"Sorry to burst your bubble D," Ralph called out, "but I think that can mostly be attributed to Casey's feminist propaganda and his urge to impress her."
Sam's sister Stephanie, seeing that this could get out of hand quickly with Sam's best friends trading shots, interjected, "Our dad quickly put a stop to this and this is the last surviving picture of Sam dressed in our doll's finest. But Sam was a great little brother. He would play tea party with us and let us carry him around and act like he was our baby and really he was our baby. We love you little you brother," she said with tears in her eyes, as a picture of his complete family appeared on the screen. It was one that had been taken two years ago at Christmas. Soon after that, both of their parents had been killed in a tragic automobile accident and the funeral had been the last time that they had all been together before tonight.
Then, the three sisters' proceeded to come over to Sam and hug and kiss him senseless. And he didn't mind it one bit, he unashamedly loved his big sisters.
But the love fest was quickly over when he saw Ralph get up to take the podium. Clearing his throat and moving the microphone up so that he didn't have to bend down, he grinned wickedly in Sam's direction. "I see you squirming a bit in your seat there Sam, you're not worried are you?"
"Why would I be worried?" he called back. "You're supposed to be one of my best friends; you wouldn't embarrass me would you?"
"That's right, I'm one of your best friends, but not only am I one of your best friends, I'm your first friend," he said with added emphasis on the word first, as he looked over at Derek. "See Derek didn't join our little group until grade one. Well, actually it was round two of grade one for Derek, but Sam and I already had a history by then, because we went all the way back to pre-school."
A picture of a three-year-old Ralph and Sam was flashed onto the screen and everyone oohed and awed over it. "I know, we were handsome devils, weren't we? We were babe magnets even then, and do you know why? Sam's crying, that's why. See Sam, well he hadn't ever been away from his mom before and pre-school was really scary to him and he cried the first couple of days. Who knew that even at age three, girls already dug a sensitive guy who wasn't afraid to show his emotions?"
Everyone laughed again and Sam's face turned a few shades of pink. "So, all the little girls would gathered around Sam, trying to get him to not cry and I saw this as my opportunity. I thought to myself, if I go and make friends with this kid and make him stop crying, then all the girls will think I'm great, so that's exactly what I did. And we had our pick of girls that year didn't we Sam?"
Sam nodded his head yes and Derek threw his two cents in by adding, "So sad Ralphie, you peaked at three."
Everyone laughed once again as Ralph threw a look at Derek. "Well, since Derek is so keen on giving his observations on all things Sam, I guess I'll turn it over to Derek for a review of primary school."
Derek got up from his seat and stuck his hand out to Ralph, and of course Ralph took it knowing that this was their relationship. They bantered and barbed, but they unfailingly supported each other. It was a brotherhood for the three and it had withstood the test of time.
"So," Derek said as he took the podium, "as Ralph said, I didn't join the group until grade one. And like Ralph also so graciously pointed out, it was my second go around at it. And in all honesty, it was pretty intimidating. Going into class, the teacher had assigned us all seats and mine happened be right in between Sam and Ralph. Now, in hind sight, I'm sure that the teacher rued the day she did such a thing, but it was one of the best days of my life."
At this point, a picture of the three boys at about the age of six or seven was flashed onto the screen. Each of them had various teeth missing, but they stood arm in arm grinning brightly at the camera. Derek had to pause for a moment to let their three wives get out the collectives sighs that came from seeing the picture.
"We were inseparable from that day on and we've never missed a beat. We've had each other's backs ever since grade one, well, almost always."
A picture of the three boys, along with some others, at about age ten, was flashed on the screen. They all had in-line skates and helmets on, along with hockey sticks in their hands. "Do you remember that day?" Derek asked Sam as he referred to the picture.
By the age of ten, Derek and Sam had learned to love the game of hockey. It was their passion. But Ralph, he had decided that he wasn't that crazy about it and had quit pee-wee hockey the year before. But he still played street hockey with them and the other boys in the neighborhood.
School had just gotten out the day before, so it was officially the first day of summer for them. Grade four was behind them and they were feeling their oats. They were going to be the big dogs on the playground next year and they couldn't wait.
Derek had by now established himself as the ring leader, but Sam was firmly ensconced as his right hand man. His wing man so to speak, and Derek always made sure that he and Sam were on the same team. Now this was totally unfair to the other team and everyone knew it, but no one said anything. After all, no one questioned Derek Venturi, even back then.
The game was heated and down to the wire. Derek already had a following of girls surrounding him and he had put one of them in charge of keeping up with the score and game time. They heard her call out thirty seconds left and Derek took a pass from a kid named Chad and seeing Sam wide open, passed it hard to him. The girl was now hollering out fifteen seconds and Sam reared back, sending the puck sailing. It flew straight over the make shift goal and directly through the window of a car parked on the side of the curb.
The alarm on the car started blaring and Derek yelled for everyone to get out of there. Everyone followed Derek's lead and began to either skate or run as fast as they could in the opposite direction of the offended car. Everyone, that is, but Sam.
Derek looked over his shoulder and hollered for Sam to come on, but he just stood there staring at the car. Derek, giving up, was soon out of sight, getting away at just about the same time that the owner of the car came out to see what was going on.
"Yah D, I remember it quite well. I picked up soda cans and mowed yards all summer to pay for that window."
"You should have listened to me and ran," he threw back at his friend.
Sam just shook his head at his friend's cavalier attitude, even after all these years. "See, there's a problem with that. I, unlike you, have a conscience and I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if I'd left. I would have just been back a couple of hours later, knocking on doors and trying to figure out who the car belonged too."
"Hey," Derek replied hastily, "I have a conscience."
"No, you have a Casey. And you didn't have a Casey at the time, therefore, no conscience at all."
Derek shrugged his shoulders at the statement as if conceding that it was true. "Okay, I have a Casey, which is actually the perfect segue for the next installment of 'This Is Your Life, Sam Shepherd', so without further ado, my beautiful wife, Casey."
Derek moved over to help Casey out of her chair and up to the podium, before sitting down.
"So this is the Sam I came to know," she said as she pointed to the screen where a picture of a fifteen year old Sam came up. He wore a goofy grin and his trademark toque that no one really ever understood. They had always just chalked it up to a crazy fad that they were happy to see pass about a year later.
"Sam was one of the first people I met when I moved to London and I have to say, he seemed like the first normal person here. Unlike his counterpart," she said with an obvious glare directed towards her husband, "I found a sensitive side of him that I truly loved and when I was going through my Klutzilla phase, he was one of the only ones to try and make me feel better."
"Hey, I'm the one that got him to stop you from reading your manifesto on hurting peoples feelings in the hall that day," Derek said, acting as if he was highly offended by her words.
"Yes, but he was the one who actually got me to stop. I still don't think you would have done anything about it at the time if he hadn't acted at your urging," she argued back.
Kendra cleared her throat to get the couple's attention. "This is all fine and good, but could we get back to the subject at hand," she said as she pointed at her husband.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I'm blaming it on these crazy hormones," she said with an apologetic grin.
"Anyway, Sam was a great friend. It didn't take us long to figure out that we weren't cut out for the whole girlfriend/boyfriend thing, but he was one of the first people to truly make me feel at home in London and I'll never forget him for that."
Next was a picture of D-Rock, taken at the talent show they had lost to Sheldon Schlepper back in grade ten.
"I never thought life could be the same again after being forced to move, but moments like these," she said as pictures continued to flash of the group through high school, "prove that life is ever changing and I'm so glad that I've got to spend the last twenty-five years of my life knowing a guy like Sam Shepherd," she said as she began to get teary eyed.
Derek jumped up from his seat and made his way over to his wife. "I think you've said enough Sweetie, we don't need to turn this into a cry fest," he said as he guided her to her chair.
"Don't be condescending to me Derek. Sam's a great guy and I can cry if I want too," she said as she grabbed her napkin and blew her nose.
Kendra jumped up from her chair and made her way to the podium. "Well, I guess that makes it my turn. Thank you Casey, for such a heartfelt sentiment," she said before continuing on.
"I guess that brings us to the next phase of Sam's life, and if I do say so myself, the most important one, me!"
Everyone laughed at Kendra's enthusiasm for herself, but it surprised no one in the least.
"As most of you know, I became acquainted with Sam through my dark days with Derek," she said with a shudder.
This brought a roar of laughter from the gathered crowd and a groan and a roll of the eyes from Derek.
"But we really didn't have that much to do with one another and then I graduated and went off to U of T and didn't give him a second thought. Well, until the night of their championship game in grade twelve. My brother was a second stringer on the team and even though I knew he didn't have a chance in hell of playing in the game, I came home to lend my support."
"Your kindness overwhelms me Sis," Keagan hollered from the back of the room.
"Now remember," she went on, ignoring her brother's sarcastic remark, "I hadn't paid much attention to Sam in a while, but all that changed when I saw him that night. He was taller, he was stronger and most importantly, as Casey has already pointed out, he had lost the toque. His hair was shorter and I could see those beautiful eyes. I got butterflies watching him warm up and from that point on; I was a woman on a mission."
"After they won the game, I made sure I congratulated him and made a connection with him again. There were scouts all over the place and most of them were directing their attention towards Derek, but a few trickled over Sam's way and they should have. I'm still convinced Derek looked so good that night because of Sam's passes," she said proudly.
"Anyway, all the guys went out for pizza that night after the game and then Sam had the whole team, well everyone but Derek, because he had wimped out because he was so love sick without Casey there. But still, the rest of the team went to his house. This worked into my plan perfectly, because my brother couldn't drive yet and it gave me the perfect opportunity to go by and get reacquainted with Sam when I picked him up."
A new picture appeared on the screen and looked to be one that had been taken that night at the celebration. It looked like one where Kendra had held the camera out and towards them and had taken it herself, because it was a close-up from the shoulders up.
"And the rest, as they say, is history," she said brightly.
"Yeah, what she really means is, she snared him in her evil web and spun her black magic where he couldn't get away," Derek hollered out.
"Still bitter after all this time because I literally left you all tied up, huh Derek?" she asked as she crossed her arms.
Sam could see that things were about to get out of hand and for the sake of his guests, he interceded, not wanting them to have to witness a Derek/Kendra throw down. He had had to witness the carnage on several different occasions throughout the years and it wasn't a pretty sight by any means imaginable.
He quickly got up from his chair and moved to where his wife stood, leaning down to give a kiss and then smiling brightly at her as he pulled away. "So, is that the end of the slide show? I've still got twenty-two years to go from that picture?"
"Oh no," exclaimed excitedly. She then clicked the button and the next pictures came.
There was one of them on the University of Toronto campus. Sam had taken one of the scouts up on his offer and he had played four years for them, all the while developing his relationship with Kendra.
There was a picture of their wedding day and it included the inner circle of friends who had of course been a part of the wedding party. And also included in the picture, sitting on a step holding a pillow, was Derek and Casey's then four year old son Gage, as the ring bearer.
Next was a picture of a very pregnant Kendra. Cameron had been their honeymoon surprise and Sam grinned at the miserable look on her face. Kendra was by no means a pleasant pregnant woman and he almost shuddered at the thought of being in Derek's place with Casey and having a pregnant forty year old Kendra to deal with.
The pictures continued on throughout their life, with ones adding Addie to their family and of his graduation from law school.
There was one of them moving into their current home and one of him and Kendra taken on the beach in Hawaii last summer, when he had surprised her with a belated fortieth birthday trip there.
And then the last one was a picture that had been taken the October before at Jenna and Jordan's wedding. It was of the three families all together in one place, which was a rare occasion. Gage had left and gone off to college and now lived in New York and played quarterback for the Giants, so it was an indeed rare occasion for them all to be gathered together. They had asked George, Derek's dad, to take the picture, and as Sam looked at it now, he realized how blessed his life had truly been.
He had grown up in a loving family, with parents and sisters that adored him. He had made life long friends at an early age and that core group had been added to as the years passed until he now considered them family. And as far as he was concerned, he had the best wife and kids a man could ask for.
He looked at the sign that hung above the screen one more time and read it again, 'This Is Your Life, Sam Shepherd'. This was indeed in his life and he wouldn't change one thing about it, even if he could.
Prompt #1: Sam has a personality now, yes, but he still has very little back story. Create one for him. A day in the life of Sam…whatever the heck his last name is. Include his family, Ralph, Derek, hockey, and some childhood flashbacks. Pairings are your choice.
Okay, so you can see, I massacred this prompt. But Brandi, Allie and Cat know of my love for Sam. But Sam is now so engrained in my mind as, LCM and MioL Sam Shepherd, that I couldn't do it any other way.
So think of this as a stand alone one shot to MioL. And Brandi can thank herself (or curse herself) for this. We were talking about Addie and Ian yesterday and how I could work them in more to MioL and she said why not write a stand alone one shot.
Well, this isn't their one shot, but it did give me the courage to write this one. I hope you're not too disappointed. I bow down to you and Cat as the queens of Flashfic and to write for you literally made me sick with dread.
But here it is, almost a week late, but finished and I hope you find something in here that you like!