“Well, your story sounds interesting.”
“No need for platitudes. It actually sucks.”
“Wait. What?”
“Yeah, I hate to admit it, but I’ve been riding the struggle bus for months.”
“You werejustsaying that being a writer is amazing. Now you’re saying it sucks?”
“Oh, no. Don’t misunderstand me. Being a writer is great. Well, mostly anyway. You get to make your own hours and work in sweatpants. What I’m saying is that mystorysucks. The one I’m working on.”
“Why? What makes you think that?” He sounds genuinely concerned, which is unexpected and sweet.
“Well.” I sigh. “The sad truth is, my plotline is a mess.”
“How come?”
“The protagonist—the Realtor—she’s behaving like a gold digger. Protagonists are supposed to be likeable. And, I don’t know,” I add, “I just can’t see through it to the end. I can’t figure out how to get to a happy ending.”
“Can you change it?”
“I’m not sure. My agent put me on a really tight deadline. I’ve got a publisher interested in my work. Like big-time interested.”
“How do you know?”
“They offered my agent a six-figure deal,” I say. “Or, well, they’re about to.” The words linger in the air, taunting me, as if now that I’ve said them aloud, they—and the money they represent—will surreptitiously disappear.
“That’s awesome! So obviously that means you’re a great writer, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe Iwas. But that wasbefore. Y’know, before everything with Scott destroyed my joy.”
“I understand that feeling. My world was pretty rocked when Elle and I split.”
“Elle?”
“My ex-wife,” he says. “She’s a literary agent, actually.”
“Really?” I consider this. I’ve never heard of an Elle Yarmouth in the industry before. Maybe she’s in children’s lit. “Small world.”
“Yeah,” he says.
“So how do you handle the hard times?” I ask.
“Huh?” he says.
“Now that you and Elle are splitsville. Do you drink the pain away, like me? Or do you have some other kind of secret weapon to get through the lonely nights?”
He laughs. “No,” he admits. “It’s not easy. I just keep telling myself that it wasn’t meant to be.”
“Does it help?”
“Not really.”
“Does it spill over into your work?”
Colin pauses. “Maybe a little. I can do most of this stuff on autopilot, I’ve been doing it for so long. But yeah, I guess. I mean, every now and then I’ll talk to clients who are elderly and have been married for decades, and when they share their end-of-life wishes, I can just feel how much they love each other,” he says. “I don’t know. I thought that was how marriage was supposed to be.”
His voice is soft when he says this. The sound—the softness—is more attractive than any physical attribute of his I can remember. “I agree,” I say. “I was expecting the same thing. Or at least hoping for something similar, y’know?”
