I mime zipping my lips.
“Enough about them. What are you working on now?”
Should I tell her the truth? I haven’t been able to write anything good in at least six months. The moment Dad’s diagnosis came in, a solid wall went up, blocking me from getting any new, original, good ideas. “Nothing.”
“You said that last time.”
“It’s still true. I just can’t…nothing good is coming to me.” I fill my mouth with chicken pot pie so I don’t have to keep talking about it. Dad’s mortality and the diagnosis of his heart condition brought me crashing down to earth in a hard way. Developingworlds and stories where people are fighting for their lives against psychological warfare hasn’t felt as motivating since I started watching my dad fight for his actual life.
They just don’t seem to matter anymore.
Why should I care if Logan Oakley finds his missing sister and takes down the fictional mob boss threatening his small town? If I stop writing in the middle of the book and Logan never finds his sister, no oneactuallygets hurt. She doesn’tactuallydie. It’s not like real life, where people face real catastrophes every single day.
Dad’s diagnosis? Now that’s real stakes. It made all the fake stakes in my fake stories feel inconsequential.
But a double-bypass surgery saved his life. Here we are, three months later, with our priorities straightened out, and I still can’t seem to write.
I’ve lost my mojo.
“Something good will come to you again,” Mom says confidently. “You have a gift.”
She’s my mother. It’s her job to think I can do anything.
“I’ve agreed to help out at Piper’s Books with a writing class for the next few weeks. Maybe that’ll break something loose in my brain.”
“Maybe.” She removes her reading glasses and sits back, appraising me. “This is the same Piper you knew in college, right? Paisley told me she got to meet her the other night. Really nice girl.”
Girl? The woman is thirty.
“Super nice,” I agree.
“Single?”
My pie looks really interesting all of a sudden. “Doesn’t matter. I’m helping her in a purely professional capacity.”
“It’s okay to have friends, Dorian. You can open your mind without putting pressure on the woman to have a full-blown relationship.”
Says the woman who just asked whether Piper’s single.
I shove a bite of pot pie into my mouth. “I don’t want any relationship with her,” I lie. The moment I saw Piper, every old feeling from college came rushing back to me. But the truth is, I don’t know if she’s single. I don’t know anything about her life right now or what she’s been through in the last nine years. All I know is that she runs an incredibly cozy bookstore, looks adorable in cat PJs, and gets an intelligent look in her eyes when she concentrates that gives me an unaccountable yearning to break into a smile.
Yes. I am so into her. Always have been.
I couldn’t even sit next to her in class because I knew she would take my focus a hundred percent off the teacher, and I would learn nothing. I was later diagnosed with ADHD and discovered this thing called hyperfocusing. But even now, properly informed and medicated to level out my brain chemistry, it was difficult to focus on the line of customers, knowing she was somewhere in the building during my signing.
“How’s Dad today?” Rerouting the conversation works because Mom dives into details about his doctor’s latest advice and how closely he is and isn’t following it. She finishes her sandwich while I eat the reheated pot pie, filling my soul with the smells, sounds, and warmth of my childhood home.
I leave her to finish paying her bills and check out the loose step on the back porch, which takes five minutes to secure. But then it takes another half hour to sit and listen to the birds in the early spring air and breathe.
By the time I need to head to the bookstore, my battery feels completely recharged.
“I need to get going.” I lean over where my mom is standing at the sink doing dishes and kiss her cheek. “The step is fixed. No one should trip again.”
“Thanks, hon. Dad will be so grateful.”
We’re all stepping in. I’m just doing my part.
The drive back to the edge of town, where Piper’s Books is located, takes about twenty minutes, and I use every one of them trying to think up a plot for a new story. When I arrive, I still have nothing.
