I blinked, unaccountably disappointed. “Oh. I, uh... Nope, I’m good. Thanks.”
He tucked his hands into his pockets. “I’ll let you get to it, then.”
I’dtoldhim I needed to write, I rationalized, making myself comfortable against the square, hard pillows of his couch. I couldn’t blame him for listening to me.
He went into the kitchen.
I pulled up my five-thousand-word essay, “No Place Like Home: Setting and the Writer’s Journey.” I read it over, noting things I hadn’t seen before, dissatisfied with a labored phrase here, a forced analogy there. My style was so different from Sam’s. I wondered what he would think of it.
Tim made some noise in the kitchen. My mind drifted to what Reeti and Vir were doing (or not doing) one floor up. I shifted on the couch cushions. I was turning into a sex addict, that was my problem.
“That was pretty nice of Vir,” I said. “Coming to Dublin to see Reeti.”
“Perhaps.”
Right. Because Gray came to Dublin to see me. Or said he did. I focused on the words on the screen.The otherworldly fairy realm is rooted in the landscape of everyday life, with familiar obstacles and tests for the protagonist hero...
It was no use. I couldn’t concentrate.
“I liked what he said about Reeti being a lion,” I said.
Tim opened a cabinet. “Some blokes will say anything to get what they want.”
“But not you,” I said, testing.
“Words are overrated.”
I stared down at my blinking cursor, my eyes dry and hot.Black lines squiggled across the display. My mind flitted to Gray, the way he’d used his words to seduce and shame me. I thought of the fairy tales I whispered to Toni in the space between our beds and the stories I was learning to tell. Words had power, to wound or to heal, to define and create.
“Words are important,” I insisted. “Nothing tells you more about someone than what they say.”
“Except what they do,” Tim said, banging bowls together.
He was so annoying. “What are you doing?”
“Making muffins.” His head appeared in the pass to the kitchen. “I thought when you were done with your essay you might be in the mood for a snack.”
My irritation melted. So Tim hadn’t traveled across the Irish Sea to feed me pretty words of love. But he was making muffins.
“Tim Woodman, man of action.”
His eyes met mine. “Yes.” One word. It was enough.
I smiled. “What if—when I’m finished—I’m in the mood for something else?”
An almost imperceptible tension eased from his shoulders. “Then I hope you’ll tell me.”
“That’s it?” I teased. “That’s all you have to say?”
“That, and...” His mouth curved in that heart-stopping almost smile. “Write faster.”
Thirty
In May, I sent the first three chapters and an outline of my Kansas story—everything I had written so far—to the students in my writing workshop. The instructor followed this with a group email reminding us that while we were here to provide feedback and encouragement, we were supposed to be working individually with our supervisors to develop our portfolios and that “larger projects were best considered in small groups outside of class.”
I took this to mean I had screwed up by sending it out. Also that he probably secretly hated me. I spent the week before class feeling alternately depressed no one was going to read my story and relieved I wouldn’t have to face their critiques after all.
“Can’t you ask someone else to read it?” Reeti asked.
