“That’s very cool—sort of like your mom, with the songwriting.”
“I guess the apple didn’t fall far from the tree,” she said, pursing those pink lips together. “How about you?”
“You won’t believe this,” I replied. “I’m a science teacher. Seventh grade.”
“You are? That’s cool.”
“I’m also an aspiring writer.”
“Stop it. Seriously?”
I held up one hand and placed my other hand over my heart. “Swear it.”
“What do you write?”
“I’m working on a novel. Science fiction, middle grade.” I left out the part about it being a father-son time travel novel: the son loses the father in the time warp, then has to figure out how to find him.
“Wow,” she mused. “What are the chances? That you’d also be a teacher—and a writer? That’s some coincidence.”
“Explains a lot,” I said. More words, just hanging between us, not fully explained. I couldn’t just come out and tell her that I thought it was fate or some kind of destiny, that I should meet another writer on my first-ever writing trip.
She looked at me with a shy expression beneath her hooded eyelids. “Maybe not alot, exactly. But it certainly explains why I like you already.”
My heart threatened to explode inside my chest. Myfingers went numb against my glass, and a chill enveloped my skin. “I like you too,” I managed.
Okay, so he’s a convincing liar. There was no hotel bar; there was only a swim-up bar in the pool. And poetry? Really? He never asked me to dance in the Cuban restaurant, and what was all that business about seeing each other back in New York? Only for him to not call me once we got back home? He seriously couldn’t manage so much as a text message in those first three days?
Creative, indeed.
I’m not sure what I was thinking. I’m just a gullible, stupid girl. I should have left well enough alone after being catfished on Tinder just before Thanksgiving. I swore off guys at that point, only to have it last, what, a month? Also, if I ever heard a friend say she’d met “Mr. Right” on some vacation in paradise, I would have asked her when the last time was that she watched aDatelinespecial. But when it’s me, I just lose all sense of myself. I’m lucky Beckett Nash didn’t murder me and dump my body in the Caribbean Sea.
“Isn’t that the whole point of fiction, though?” My mom’s sweet voice hums inside my head. “To make stuff up?”
“Yeah, but—”
“There’s truth in there. You were the one who told me that fiction is just the truth, hiding in plain sight.”
I sigh.
“You can find it, Pretty Girl. You just have to be open to receiving it. The pages will reveal the truth to you.”
“You sound like some kind of oracle, Mom,” I whisper to the empty room.
“I’m not. But I stand by what I said. You and Beckett had somethingvery special. You owe it to yourself to find out what happened.”
“It wasn’t worth it,” I mumble, heaving a sigh and blinking back moisture from my eyes.
“Pretty Girl…”
I close my eyes and try to feel her hand smoothing my hair, but—nothing. There’s an empty void in the space where my mother should be. “You should be here,” I say. The first tear spills onto my T-shirt.
“Hey,” a breathy version of her soul serenades me, “Iamhere. I’m always here, Melody.”
I bury my face into my pillow. “But you’re not,” I reply, my shoulders shaking. I push the book aside and give myself permission to soak the pillowcase until I fall asleep.
Chapter 15
It didn’t take long before we all fell into a routine.
