November 9: A Novel(10)

“Oh, my God,” she says. “You can’t come to Pinkberry and just eat toppings.” She looks up at me like I’ve killed a kitten. “Are you even human?”

I roll my eyes and nudge her shoulder to turn her back around. “Stop berating me or I’ll dump you before we even find a table.”

I pull a twenty out of my wallet and pay for our dessert. We maneuver our way through the crowded restaurant, but there aren’t any free tables. She heads straight for the door, so I follow her outside and down the sidewalk until she finds an empty bench. She takes a seat on it cross-legged and sets her bowl in her lap. It’s the first time I take a look at her bowl and realize she didn’t get a single topping.

I look down at my bowl—full of nothing but toppings.

“I know,” she says, laughing. “Jack Sprat could eat no fat . . .”

“His wife could eat no lean,” I finish.

She smiles and spoons a bite into her mouth. She pulls the spoon out and licks frozen yogurt off her bottom lip.

I wasn’t expecting this today of all days. To be sitting across from this girl, watching her lick ice cream off her lips and having to swallow air just to make sure I’m still breathing.

“So you’re a writer?”

Her question gives me the footing I need to pull my mind out of the gutter. I nod. “Hope to be. I’ve never done it professionally, so I’m not sure I can call myself a writer yet.”

She shifts until she’s facing me and props her elbow on the back of the bench. “It doesn’t take a paycheck to validify that you’re a writer.”

“Validify isn’t actually a word.”

“See?” she says. “I didn’t even know that, so you’re obviously a writer. Paycheck or not, I’m calling you a writer. Ben the Writer. That’s how I’m going to refer to you from this point forward.”

I laugh. “And how should I refer to you?”

She chews on the tip of her spoon for a few seconds, her eyes narrowed in contemplation. “Good question,” she says. “I’m kind of in transition at this point.”

“Fallon the Transient,” I offer.

She smiles. “That works.”

Her back meets the bench when she faces forward. She uncrosses her legs, allowing her feet to meet the ground. “So what kind of writing do you want to do? Novels? Screenplays?”

“Hopefully everything. I don’t really want to put a cap on it yet, I’m only eighteen. I kind of want to try it all, but my passion is definitely novels. And poetry.”

A quiet sigh leaves her mouth before she takes another bite. I don’t know how, but it feels like my answer just made her sad.

“What about you, Fallon the Transient? What’s your life goal?”

She shoots me a sidelong glance. “Are we talking about life goals now or what our passion is?”

“Not much of a difference.”

She laughs half-heartedly. “There’s a huge difference. My passion is acting, but that’s not really my goal in life.”

“Why not?”

Her eyes narrow in my direction before she looks back down at her container again. She begins stirring at the frozen yogurt with her spoon. She sighs with her entire body this time, like she’s crumbling to the ground.

“You know, Ben. I appreciate how nice you’ve been since we became a couple, but you can stop with the act. My dad isn’t here to witness it.”

I was about to take another bite, but my hand freezes before the spoon hits my mouth. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, baffled by the nosedive this conversation just took.

She stabs at her yogurt with the spoon before leaning over and tossing it into a trash can beside her. She pulls a leg up and wraps her arms around it, facing me again. “Do you really not know my story or are you just pretending not to know?”

I’m not really sure which story she’s referring to, so I give my head a slight shake. “I’m so confused right now.”

She sighs. Again. I don’t think I’ve ever made a girl sigh this much in such a short amount of time. And they aren’t the kind of sighs that make a guy feel good about his skills. They’re the kind of sighs that make him wonder what the hell he’s doing wrong.

She picks at a piece of loose wood on the back of the bench with her thumb. She focuses on the wood as if she’s talking to it, rather than to me. “I got really lucky when I was fourteen. Landed a role in a cheesy, teenage spin on Sherlock Holmes meets Nancy Drew called Gumshoe. I starred in that show for a year and a half and it was starting to do really well. But then this happened.” She motions to her face. “My contract was pulled. I was replaced and I haven’t acted since. So that’s what I mean when I say that goals and passions are two separate things. Acting is my passion, but like my father said, I no longer have the tools it takes to achieve my life goal. So I guess I’ll be looking for a new one soon, unless a miracle happens in New York.”

I don’t even know what to say to that. She’s looking at me now, waiting for a response, but I can’t think of one fast enough. She rests her chin on her arm and stares off behind me.

“I’m not very good with on-the-spot motivational speech,” I say to her. “Sometimes at night, I’ll rewrite conversations I had during the day, but I’ll change them up to reflect everything I wish I could have said in the moment. So I just want you to know that tonight when I write this conversation down on paper, I’ll say something really heroic and it’ll make you feel really good about your life.”