Crazy Girl(54)

“Think I’m going to get rid of some of this furniture. You got any interest?”

Her mouth was full as she chewed, but she lifted her brows. When she swallowed, she took a sip of her beer before answering. “That’s nice of you to offer, but I don’t need anything.”

I motioned a hand at my love seat. “I’m probably just going to give it away. Are you sure?”

Her gaze fell to her burger resting on grease-covered foil in her lap. Quietly, she responded, “No thank you, Wren.”

I wasn’t going to push. Biting into my burger, I hoped my expression didn’t show what I was thinking because if it did, she’d see I was annoyed. She had no furniture. I had furniture and no place to keep it. Seemed like a win-win to me. So why wouldn’t she take it when I was giving it to her for free? I thought about our conversation when she’d first arrived; what she’d said about not wanting to own things anymore. I understood the concept of minimalism, but to go without furniture—not even a small couch or recliner to sit on—that seemed a bit extreme. Though, minimalism wasn’t quite what she’d touched on. I decided not to delve into the subject with her. If she didn’t want it, I wouldn’t force it on her. But I could not deny it bothered me for some reason I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

After dinner, we decided to call it a night since I had to work early the next morning. Or at least turning in was the plan, but as we settled down in bed, her body spooned to mine, and it wasn’t long before we were naked and Hannah sang for me again.





“Lie. Put down on paper the most interesting lies

you can imagine…and then make them plausible.”

-Chris Bohjalian





The next day, after working for my brother, I sat at a corner table in the Black Bean Coffee Shop near the gym where I played volleyball with a hot cup of joe and fingers itching to tap the keyboard of my laptop. I had two hours to kill before my game, and I intended to use them wisely. But before I could write, I checked my emails. It still boggled me I ever did anything someone else might admire. So when I received emails or messages from readers telling me how much they loved my book, or how my work affected them, it was a high like no other. I wanted someone to pinch me, so I knew for certain it was true. I cherished my readers and in some way, that’s what had made the last couple of years so hard. I felt like I had let them down, especially with my last released book. It wasn’t my best, and they deserved better than that. But even with my misfortunes in life, I would still receive lovely words from readers, or find touching reviews on sales sites, and I knew I was damn lucky for that, too. Even in one of the darkest times of my life, not all was lost. And I desperately wanted to reward them for their faith in me with something beautiful. I had to give them this. Redeeming myself with a stellar book was my goal.

After responding to readers’ emails, I messaged with a few of my author friends. We had a signing coming up in a week, and though financially it was daunting for me to go, I was crazy excited to see them and our faithful readers. Aside from my best friends, these were the ladies that understood me the best. For all things bookish, of course. I’d die if any one of them knew about my personal life.

I chuckled as I responded to a group message from Lynn Evans, an author I admired greatly for her work, but also respected like hell on a personal level.

LE: When is everyone getting in? How much rum should I stock?

Oh yes. It was going to be a good time.

Me: I’ll bring the soda.

Closing out of the group chat, I sighed. I wanted to chat with everyone longer, but writing could not wait. I had to get this story out of me. What happened the night before between Wren and I was burned in my mind. I felt like I’d explode if I didn’t write it down.

My WIP, or work in progress, was starting off nicely, though I wasn’t writing in my usual pattern. Normally, I’d sit down and write a book from beginning to end. Some writers created a timeline to keep them on track, but that had never worked for me. I wrote day to day, and created the story as I went. That’s not to say I didn’t have an overall idea of what my story was going to be about, but even with an ending in mind, I found more often than not, my story changed as I wrote.

I’d named the hero in my story Alex and the heroine Katrina. Both characters were loosely inspired by Wren and me. I wondered if modeling a character after myself wasn’t a sign of desperation in my writing—an indication I was grasping for straws—but Katrina was like me in many ways, but also different. Both characters, no matter how inspired by real life people, would be embellished, therefore Katrina wasn’t entirely me. The same could be said for Alex, he wasn’t entirely Wren. I also argued with my inner critic that every book had parts of me in it; little pieces of myself tucked away within the story; parts of my heart laced within sentences. Keeping this in mind, I forged forward, happy that, regardless of my concerns, I was writing again. It felt good to have something to put down. That had to count for something.

This time around, I was writing in chunks. I wrote scenes to be placed somewhere later when my manuscript started coming together. This was new, and I wasn’t sure if I’d regret it later. What if I spent all this time creating these scenes, stressing myself to write them down, and later realized I couldn’t use them, or they just didn’t fit? But that was writing. How many thousands of words had I deleted in my other works? It was simply par for the course. After taking a few sips of my coffee, I pulled out my journal from my purse and opened it, reading over the notes I’d made. Then I let my mind lead my fingers across the keyboard and began trying to write about what Wren did to me in his car the night before, but from Alex and Katrina’s perspectives. Just the thought of it made my cheeks heat. After we’d gone to bed, and after we’d lost ourselves in each other and Wren had fallen asleep, I slipped out of his room and crept quietly downstairs where I’d left my purse. Using the light of my cell phone, I jotted down everything I could about our drive home.