I knew she was being sarcastic, but I answered honestly. “No. It’s going terribly.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s depressing as shit.”
“Then why don’t you write something different?”
“What?”
“If it’s no fun, why not write something else?”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
“Okay then,” she said. “What happens when you finish?”
I slid my hand down my dripping beard. “I have to go back to Seattle in…” I did the math. “A month and a half." Whether the book happened or not, there were vital things there I needed to get back for. “I’ll just either go back a complete failure or…” Or something else. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. What would I feel? Triumph? Vindication? Or would it just be one more thing that left me unfulfilled? Would I carry on as I had for years, like a machine? A man striving for happiness that felt just slightly out of reach?
“… or I don’t know. I’ll go back a man with a liberated fucking heart, I guess,” I finished.
Winona rolled her eyes. “So until then, you’re a tortured artist. Is that why you’re acting like you’ve lost your damn mind?”
“It’s a lot of things.”
“Why do you need me to stay? Because I don’t think you give a shit about your pipes.”
My lips turned up for a brief moment. They dropped again. “Because the thought of you leaving feels like something scraping out my insides.”
She blinked, her throat moving as she swallowed. She looked up at the sky, as if the dark clouds might give her an answer. Then they did. They rumbled, loud and low.
I held my breath, waiting for her to say no. To tell me once more that I was out of my mind.
“Okay,”
“Okay?” My heart skittered upward.
Winona narrowed her eyes. “Just until you dry my clothes. That is, if you know how to do that yourself?”
I nodded. “I can do that.”
Even though I was nearly shivering from the cold, my chest was on fire, alight with something I hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
I think that thing was hope.
CHAPTER 12
Terrible, Wonderful Ideas
WINONA
“Here, uh…” Mitchell cleared his throat as he held the door open. “I’ll show you to a room where you can change.”
I walked in, thinking I’d very obviously gone off the deep end, so to speak. I should be back at home right now, in a hot shower. Tucked into bed with a book. Texting Cher about what happened tonight.
What even did happen out there?
I was still processing it. I was still upset about it.
“I’d apologize for dripping all over your floor,” I said. “But it’s your fault I’m wet.”
