“Yes?”
“That heroine in your books—the one who won’t admit she’s in love until chapter twenty, even though it’s obvious to everyone else?” She smiles. “Don’t be her, hon. Real life doesn’t give you guaranteed happy endings. You’ve got to choose them.”
The bell chimes as she leaves.
I stand there, surrounded by books full of love stories, and my chest tightens.
Caroline leaves at six.I close up the shop, flip the sign, and head upstairs with Austen at my heels.
I start my normal evening routine of feeding the cat, changing into comfortable clothes, and then making tea.
And like I typically do, I pick up a book.
I try three different ones. A thriller I’ve been meaning to read. A literary fiction that won a bunch of awards. A comfort reread I’ve loved for years.
Nothing sticks.
I read the same paragraph four times and couldn’t tell you what it said. The words swim on the page, refusing to arrange themselves into anything meaningful.
Austen is watching me from the arm of the couch.
“I’m fine,” I tell him.
He doesn’t blink.
“I am.”
He jumps down and walks over to my laptop, sitting closed on the coffee table. Sits next to it. Stares at me.
“I’m not going to?—”
He meows. Loud. Insistent.
“Reading is fine. Reading is?—”
Another meow. He paws at the laptop.
“You’re a cat. You don’t even know what that is.”
He knows exactly what it is. He knows I’ve been avoiding it for years. He knows I wrote Coastal Quill—Scott—about how I was going to start writing again, and then I didn’t, because David’s voice in my head is always louder than my own.
Too impractical. Too romantic. Who do you think you are?
I set down the book I wasn’t reading.
Pick up the laptop.
Open it.
The blank document stares at me. Cursor blinking. Waiting.
I think about Scott, writing furious pages about whatever he’s writing about. I think about the letters, all that honesty pouring out of him in a way he couldn’t manage in person. I think about Mrs. Sanders saying he’s soft in the middle, scared, hiding.
I think about how I’ve been hiding too.
Different armor. Same fear.
I type a sentence. It’s terrible, so I delete it.
