The room seems to tilt. Not dramatically in a way anyone else would notice, but I feel the world as I know it—or believed it to be—shift inside me.
“All of the challenges you set for yourself...” My voice sounds like it’s coming from somewhere far away. “The fact that you were terrified and did the things anyway. It changed you.”
“I guess in the moment.” She shrugs. “But it didn’t transform me into a different person. I wrote about my experiences. That’s what writers do.”
“But it felt real.”
“All of it was real,” she says defensively, then sighs. “But real and life-changing aren’t the same thing. I faced my fears, and then I came home and went back to being the same person who was afraid of everything.” She laughs like we’re both in on the joke. “I just had a fat bank account to show for it.”
“Good for you,” I answer, because what else am I supposed to say? I squeeze my hands into fists, digging my nails into my palms like that will disrupt the pain cutting across my heart. “I hope that when you do finish the next one, it’s just as big a hit.” Nice. That sounds normal, like we’re colleagues making small talk instead of whatever this is.
Kristen snorts and glances at the closed laptop. “Hard to recreate the magic, you know? Lightning doesn’t strike twice.”
I nod, although I don’t actually know. I’ve just spent the most amazing days of my life with a man who makes me feel like lightning could strike as many times as we want. Becausewe’rethe magic.
“If I’m being honest, I don’t want to be anyone’s hero,” Kristen says, and there’s a gentleness in her voice now that almost makes it worse. “I’m glad the book helped you. Truly. But whatever you took from those pages, I can’t take credit. That wasyou finding whatever bravery you needed. My words were just the vehicle.”
“Okay,” I agree numbly and stand up, because sitting in this luxurious bungalow for another second is going to make me cry in front of a stranger. I refuse to do that. “Thank you for your time,” I manage, and my voice cracks a little. “I appreciate you being honest.”
“Of course. Take care of yourself, Sloane,” she says and plucks her phone out of the robe’s deep pocket, already engrossed in the screen before I’m out the door.
The stone path feels longer going back, and I walk past the reflection garden and manicured grounds on autopilot. At the valet stand, I hand over my ticket and wait while a guy in a pressed polo jogs off to retrieve my car from whatever back corner they tucked it into, away from the Range Rovers and Audis.
The tears I’m expecting don’t come as I pull away from the lodge. It feels like a small victory, until I realize it’s because I’m too empty to cry.
25
SLOANE
I drivefor a while without any destination in mind. Around the lake, past cabins, tourist shops, and families with beach gear spilling out of their cars. And for a minute, I hate all the happiness and sunshine and even the blue water for being so beautiful when I feel this hollow.
My parents forgot my seventeenth birthday when they were in Jordan on a dig, so I celebrated by going to a random party and drinking until I couldn’t feel the sting from their disinterest. Because it felt more like a response to my inherent lacking than any deficiency on their part.
When I got my diagnosis, I went home and reorganized the entire fiction section of Cover to Cover, staying up until three in the morning, because shelving books by subgenre gave me a thing to control when my own cells had taken up arms against me.
Filling empty spaces is what I do. With a drink, a project, my friends, and community. I throw myself into all of it so I don’t have to sit with the silence long enough to hear what it’s actually saying.
Kristen Quinn’s book was one of those things. I underlined passages and dog-eared pages, which is kind of a cardinal sin in myline of work. I memorized her words and whispered them to myself on the nights when the nausea was so savage I couldn’t keep water down. I told myself that if this woman could face her fears and come out whole on the other side, so could I.
And I guess she did face them. But by her own admission, the transformation I projected onto her was all in my head. I needed a hero, and she was right there on the shelf, conveniently packaged in palatable snippets of inspiration that promised what I was desperate to hear.
I should have stuck to silence. If it all meant so little to her, why did it mean so much to me?
A couple of hours later, I pull into the driveway of the rental house and turn off the engine, but don’t go inside.
The lake appears silver through the trees, and I watch dappled light make its surface glow while the car’s interior grows stifling, baking in the afternoon sun. I feel stupid and rejected in a way I haven’t let myself since I was a kid. The girl who believed that if she just tried hard enough and showed up with enough enthusiasm, the people she adored would see her and love her back.
My mom used to look at me with this expression I could never fully decode—half-amused, half-bewildered, like she couldn’t quite figure out how she’d produced a child who cared so much about everything.You feel things too deeply, Sloane. It’s going to hurt you one day.
Lots of days, turns out.
And here I am again, as if her words were more prophecy than warning. I allowed my feelings for the words of a book to transform the author into my Emerald City, then drove across multiple states for her to admit that she’s nothing more than the woman behind the curtain.
Dorothy Gale much?
I press my forehead to the steering wheel.
Here we are, back to my sorry habit of attaching myself tothings and people and ideas because I can’t manage to believe I’m enough on my own.
