“It wasn’t some noble calling,” she says finally. “I didn’t sit up one night and think, ‘I want to devote my life to writing memoirs for wellness influencers who think drinking chlorophyll cured their depression.’”
I smirk. “You sure? Sounds poetic.”
She laughs, dry and soft. “It just fell into my lap. A friend of mine from a writing group got offered a ghostwriting contract she didn’t want. She passed it to me. Said, ‘You’re good at sounding like other people.’ I needed money, and it wasn’t self-publishing poetry that no one read.”
She says the last part like it’s a joke, but her voice goes a little hollow at the end.
I angle my neck to better look at her face. “But you kept doing it.”
She shrugs, eyes still fixed on the horizon. “It pays the bills. And it got easier to sell other people’s truths than keep digging around for my own. There’s a weird kind of relief in that. Like… if the words flop, it’s not really your failure. And if they fly, you just pretend you weren’t even there.”
I let the silence sit.
After a while, she says, “It was easier to hide behind other people’s voices than admit mine wasn’t loud enough to matter.”
I shift closer. “Well, too bad. I’ve heard it now, it’s fuckin’ beautiful, honey.”
Annie giggles, and I want to bottle the sound up to pour over pancakes at a later time. She turns sideways and snuggles deeper into my lap. I’m not sure she realizes she’s doing it, but she’s rubbing her cheek against the hair on my chest with her eyes closed. Maybe she ain’t used to cuddling because she hadn’t met me yet, either. “Nico,” she says suddenly.
“What, baby?”
“I’m dying to know about the surprised duck,” she says, poking it with her finger.
I smile. “Mallard.”
Annie’s body grows tense in frustration. “There’s a connection that’s been on the tip of my tongue for days now but I can’t fucking get it.”
“It’s a mallard, Annie. A mallard having a reaction.”
She looks up at me with gorgeous eyes. “Maillard reaction.”
“Yup.”
A pause, then, “That’s the corniest fucking thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
I bust out laughing. “It’s amazing. It’s hilarious. You love it.”
“I hate it.”
I spank the side of her ass. “Lie.”
“It’s okay,” she grumbles, eventually.
We ended up hitting the road way later than I’d planned ‘cause Annie fell asleep on my arm while lizarding, and despite the jagged bits of rock digging into my ass and skull I was not gonna move her. We’ve gotta haul ass now, ‘cause we’ve got a big six hour push to Savannah.
Annie’s got her laptop on her lap and has been barraging me with questions for the last few hours.
"Okay," she says, fingers still clacking, “explain the difference again between caramelization and the Maillard reaction. But this time, say it in the Nico voice.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I mutter. “My voice is my voice.”
She huffs out a laugh. “I want your actual voice in this thing. I want it to sound funny and sexy.”
I glance at her. “You think I’m funny and sexy?”
She ignores me. “This book needs to feel like you. Not a version of you dressed up for a publishing meeting. I want people to read this and hear how you talk about pan-searing like it’s foreplay and emulsification like it’s an enemies-to-lovers relationship.”
“I do not talk about emulsification like it’s an enemies-to-lovers relationship.”
