Taking this dialogue to the NEXT LEVEL!

Fun story! So, a long time ago (well, actually a few months ago) I started writing this really long story in the present tense. I've picked it up every now and then in the last few weeks, and somehow in the intervening time I had switched the tenses from present to past. Without noticing! I have rarely been so pissed off with myself, so I've decided to write all these exercises in the present tense until I learn to suck less.

Third-Level Dialogue

Amelia walks in through the front door, drops her duffel bag, and is immediately set upon by the two golden retrievers with sloppy tongues and unconditional love in their eyes. As they jump and try to lick her face, she scratches behind their ears and hears a clatter and an excited shout from the kitchen. A second later Bill is enfolding her in an embrace about as clumsy and frantic as the dogs' attempts.

"I'm sorry," he says, squeezing her and almost lifting her off her feet. He smells like a frozen pizza. "I should have picked you up the airport."

"You bastard," she whispers, smiling and crying.

He tells her to sit down while he makes dinner. She takes off her camo jacket and watches him fix the frozen pizza and go through the nightly song and dance with the dogs and their food. Finally, he sets down a slice and a glass of milk in front of her and the four of them fall into a companionable silence as they all eat their dinners. It isn't until after everyone has finished, when the dogs lie down contentedly in a corner and Amelia puts her jacket back on, that Bill speaks.

"So."

She smiles.

"Flight go all right?"

"All right. Flew out of Germany in the evening."

"Oh. I thought you might come from, like, Kuwait or something."

She shakes her head. "Nope."

"What was--I mean, how was the weather?"

She almost laughs, but she manages to simply raise an eyebrow. She remembers the blast of heat in her face that rose from the streets of Baghdad to greet her every morning. "Like manna from heaven, after how long I was stuck in the desert."

He grins. "I always knew you weren't suited for all that heat, babe. God, how did you do it?"

She feigns ignorance. "How did I do what?"

He looks like he wants to say survive but instead he plays with his uneaten pizza crusts and mumbles, "You know. How did you deal with it all? All that shit. The killings and the heat and the... uncertainty."

She considers while taking a finishing swig of her glass of milk. "One day at a time, sweetie. That's all you can do. They pass you the ball and you gotta run with it, even when everyone else is piling on you," she says, carefully not indicating who "everyone" could be.

He nods. He can appreciate the sentiment, but it doesn't seem to satisfy the curiosity he's working so hard to cover up. "Your emails were always so generic. Not in a bad way but, I mean, quiet. Not like you. I know you were busy."

She nods. "I was. I mean, it was sort of cool at first. You know how when it first snows, and you're sort of charmed by it, but then by the time February rolls around and it's still snowing you just want to die? It was kind of like that. Still, I mean, the desert's not that bad. It's just...." She trails off and all the faces of of the desert swim before her eyes. She sees the surprised face of the man killed by a dirty bomb, and his arm lying on the other side of the street. She can still feel the punch to the gut and the sand blowing in her eyes and she can hear her own stupidly high gasp, which seemed to echo inside her own head. "Deserted."

He nods and still does not understand. He grabs her hand. "Were you lonely?"

"I guess," she says, and crawls down on the floor to pet the dogs some more.