Oh, no. Not the audience. From Melanie.
“Ha! Oh, Evan.” Melanie tries to cover up my blunder. “We both know it’s finished.”
My eyes skip from Melanie’s face that reads you-better-fix-this to Rachel, who appears curious, and I like the way Rachel looks right now more than Melanie does.
“Well, the manuscript is turned in, yes,” I add. “But it still has to go through edits, and you told me that it hasn’t yet gone to publication, so I have time to work on the ending.”
I watch Rachel’s interest perk slightly more.
“Editing can change a lot of things,” I continue. “Plot lines, characters, relationships.”
Melanie laughs. “Well, your edits are rarely dramatic. Your writing is always almost perfect from the first draft.”
I smile at Rachel, and I watch her, seeing her intrigued as she smiles back, as if she knows what I’m trying to say, as if she’sreading between my lines like she once said she knew how to do. I'm really hoping she is now.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I reply. “There’s a first for everything. I’d kind of like to rewrite a few things.”
I don’t know what Melanie is doing right now because all I can focus on is Rachel as her smile widens, and nothing about it is staged.
“I like editing,” Rachel replies. “It’s where you get to dig a little deeper and understand your characters better.”
“Ah, well,” Melanie begins. “We’ll just have to see what happens with Barrett, I guess.”
But I’m not talking about Barrett, and I know Rachel isn’t either.
Rachel tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and it’s the smallest movement, but it hits me like a freight train. Because she doesn’t look scared by the stage or the spotlight. She’s just looking at me. Listening.
Melanie clears her throat. “Well, audience questions are next.”
Rachel leans forward slightly. “Before we do,” she says softly, and her voice is more confident than I’ve heard it on this tour, “can I ask Evan something?"
Melanie looks surprised but she nods approval.
Rachel looks at me—really looks at me—with all the warmth of her smile and the light of her presence, and the whole room fades to black.
“Do you ever get to an ending and wish you would have rewritten the beginning? Change the story completely?” she asks, and her question isn’t just curious; it feels like an ache.
The audience is hushed now. I don’t think anyone but us even understands the question.
I swallow, processing. “Sometimes I get to a point in a story where I realize I wrote so many things wrong, but the worst partis realizing that you can’t rewrite everything. Not without losing what matters, too.”
She doesn’t look away. “So, what do you do?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “I think I stopped writing what mattered because I was scared of messing it up.”
Rachel’s eyes soften, and there’s something flickering in the emerald of them—pain, maybe. I see a tear roll down her cheek, and I know she just saw something real in me, and it’s because I let her see it.
“I don’t think we’re so different,” she says.
Melanie shifts between us, clearly unsure what kind of interview she’s suddenly moderating. “Well,” she says with a half-laugh. “I think we just turned this into a therapy session. Let’s line up for questions, and these two can discuss whatever this was later.”
A few laughs ripple from the crowd, but Rachel and I don’t laugh. We just look at each other, and I think we both know we can’t rewrite our beginning, but we just might be able to take a pen to the rest.
I don’t even care that I just said the messy part out loud, when I’ve never said the messy part out loud, and in front of a thousand people. And that’s how I know…
I’m ready to try again, and not just try with anyone. With Rachel.
And the thing is, when I decide to do something, I don’t do it halfway. I give my whole self to it. But I think if anyone can see the good in me among all my bad…it’s her.
