Which is what reading was. Or used to be. How did he know? All those times I’d hidden in the library or curled on the floor between the wall and my bed, lost within the covers of a book. All those stories I’d told Toni or myself.
“I don’t need to escape my life anymore.”
He took a step back. “Of course.”
“It’s just this one class is giving me a little trouble.”
“Right.”
“It’s Dr.Ward. The instructor. She thinks I should start something new.”
Tim regarded me steadily, not speaking.
“She said my writing is derivative,” I said to fill the silence. “That I don’t have anything to say for myself.”
“Clearly untrue.”
“Ha.” I swallowed. “The thing is, I can see... You know. Similarities. Between my work and”—Gray—“other writers. It’s possible I’ve been influenced. Inadvertently.”
“Perhaps you should try reading different writers.”
“It’s hard to read anything anymore. For pleasure, I mean. If it’s a bad book, then I spend all this time fixing it in my head. And if it’s a good book...” My throat swelled. I swallowed, my doubts rushing in like a pack of flying monkeys. “If it’s a good book...” I inhaled through my nose. “I think,I’ll never be that good. Ever. And when I pick it apart to see what’s working, when I try to be better, to be like that, then I’m not really writing, I’m not creating, I’m just copying someone else’s style.”
He handed me the dish towel. Apparently I was crying. Again.
I blotted my eyes. “Say something.”
“I have to go now.”
I sniffed. “Oh. Okay.”
“The scones are burning.”
“Oh.”
He retreated to his apartment, leaving the door open behind him. In invitation? I was still clutching the dish towel. I had to give it back eventually. So I followed.
Tim’s apartment was laid out like Reeti’s, with an opencounter providing a view of the kitchen. I watched as he slid a baking sheet from the oven.
“When I was in rehab, I needed to learn to walk with crutches,” he remarked out of nowhere.
Wait. What? Oh my God.“When?”
“Five years ago.”
He became a consultant five years ago, he’d said. Before that, he was in the army. “Were you hurt? Wounded? What happened?”
He set the pan on top of the stove. The scones were a beautiful golden brown, I saw with the part of my brain that wasn’t picturing him lying in some hospital. Not burned at all.
“Suicide bomber,” he said briefly. He cleared his throat. “Anyway, afterward, I couldn’t... My legs wouldn’t do what I wanted them to do. I was pretty frustrated for a while.”
“Of course you were,” I said. “Tim, I’m so sorry.”
One by one, he removed the scones from the baking sheet to a cooling rack, focusing on his task. “My point is, the therapist told me I had to keep moving, get the fluid in the joints flowing so I didn’t stiffen up. The crutches were a tool, he said, to strengthen the muscles until I could walk on my own.”
The scar on his knee, I remembered. “Are you okay now?”
“Yes.”
