The cottage was dark and quiet. She padded barefoot past the kitchen, up to her room, careful not to creak any floor boards. She was saturated with smoke, a smell she loved. If it weren’t for the risk of Dr. Smiley, Amateur Psychotherapist giving her weird looks, she wouldn’t have bothered washing it off.
But he would, so she did.
Rather than run the shower, she filled the tub for a nice, quiet bath and relaxed.
Then Smiley’s alarm went off and woke her from a half sleep. He always got up at the same time every day, weekday or weekend. He went running, came back, showered, ate breakfast, and then got to work. He was such a creature of habit Anna knew his routine by heart.
He was also cheating on her.
Yep, she wasn’t his only current basket case. Whenever he wasn’t holding her creative hand, he was on the phone or chatting with other clients, talking them down from whatever cliff they’d written themselves onto. Such a diligent multitasker.
Anna rinsed off, got out of the tub and dried herself. All nighters were a once in a month thing for her. It was about as often as she could handle going without her necessary-to-function eight hours of sleep. Anything other than what she’d done last night would probably have made her grouchy, but she could still hear the chorus of wolf songs, and feel the thrill of dancing naked around a bon fire. She felt happy. Walked taller and held her head up a little higher for having done it.
In the kitchen the counter was covered with Tupperware boxes full of baked goods. There were her three batches of cup cakes, and Smiley’s brownies, but also two more boxes of cookies they hadn’t talked about last night. Great, he’d gone the extra mile for something that wasn’t even real.
Not sure how to deal with that, Anna skirted the counter to the fridge and poured herself some juice for breakfast.
“Good morning.”
Anna almost choked on her OJ. “Morning,” she said between coughs. “What are you doing here?”
He raised an eyebrow. “My job?”
“I mean…” she had to set the glass down and turn to the sink, hacking up a liver, or at least the citric acid burning her airways.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded, thumped her chest and finally cleared her lung. “I mean,” she said again, clearing her throat to get her voice back, “you usually go running first thing.”
“Yeah well, you got that baking thing to get to, I figured I can skip a day and give you a hand with the boxes instead.”
He sounded weird. He looked weird too.
“Oh. That’s nice of you.” Anna smiled. It felt uncomfortable.
But the stretch of silence that followed was worse.
Finally Smiley cleared his throat, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Are we gonna talk about the elephant in the room?”
“Dunno what you mean.” But she couldn’t hold his gaze as she said it.
“Come on, we’re both adults here, right?”
Anna bit her tongue.
“There’s no baking auction in town.” It was a statement, not a question. To make it worse, he followed up with, “I talked to the priest. He said it’s not scheduled for another four months.”
Anna wanted to crawl under a rock and die. But wait… “You knew?”
“I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“Then why did you do all this?”
“He also said that you do actually donate a mountain of cupcakes every year so technically it wasn’t a full blown lie on your part.” Smiley shrugged. “Guess I was curious to see where you were going to go with it.” Giving her a quizzical look, he shook his head. “You are truly something…unexpected.”
She blushed. Not going there. Nope. Not going to ask if he saw me naked. Don’t wanna know. Ever.
“And now that you’re done with your shenanigans—which I hope you are—you have a book to write. So I am going to take all that processed sugar down to the elementary school baseball game, and you are going to get on that computer and write me a chapter. I want to see a minimum of four thousand words by the time I get back.”
Anna groaned.
“And don’t make faces. You owe me.”
Just to be contrary, she crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out at him.
Falling In Love: Not Just For Fictional Characters Anymore
By late dinner time the next day, she still hadn’t written a word and he still hadn’t let it go, and it was beginning to get on her nerves. “Let’s play a game,” he said.
“Because the last one worked out so great?”
“The objective is for you to win this time.”
Anna sighed and got up to add another log to the fire.
“Come on, I’m here, I got nothing better to do, use me.”
Might as well, right? It wasn’t as if anything else had worked. “Fine. What game?”
“Word association.”
“Oh, my God. What were you a psych major too? Will you be whipping out ink blots next?”
Smiles laughed and held his hands up in surrender. “Hey, it’s worked for me a couple of times in the past. Some of my repeat clients get so blocked they literally can’t compose an email, let alone a book. Random word associations get your mind off the brick wall in front of you so you can better see the door off to the side. Big picture thinking. See the forest, not the trees.”
“Okay, stop mixing metaphors. I surrender.”
He patted the couch. “Sit.”
She sat at the other end, tucking her heel underneath her. Facing him like this, with the fire crackling merrily, all they needed was a bottle of wine and some chocolate covered strawberries. Anna didn’t usually get this comfortable around people she’d just met, but he’d already seen her at her worst, puking her guts out in the middle of her kitchen so, eh.
“Okay, so you know the drill. Say the first thing that comes to mind. You can’t think about it, just say it.”
“Yes, professor.”
Smiley studied her face for a moment before he began. “Tree.”
“Forest,” she replied.
“Languid.”
“River.”
“Umbrella.”
“Dinosaur.”
“Dinosaur?” He laughed.
“You said not to think. This is what happens when I don’t think.”
“Okay, ceiling.”
“Mascot.” She smiled, remembering her high school homecoming dance. They’d taped the mascot costume to the gym ceiling and scared the hell out of the teachers and school counselor. The entire class had been suspended for two days. Good times.
“Face,” Smiley said.
“Mirror.”
“Heroic.”
“Death.”
“Lover.”
Anna started at his tone. “Fantasy.”
“Partnership.”
“Transaction.”
“Romance.”
Those were so not random words. Anna met his gaze. Was she imagining things or was Smiley leading this game somewhere specific?
“Don’t think, just answer. Romance.”
There went the tone again. “Love,” she answered.
“Wish.”
He was looking into her eyes and Anna got a sinking feeling in her stomach that this wasn’t a game at all. Or at least not the one he said it was. She deliberately threw him a word, curious to see if he would associate. “Unfulfilled.”
He did. “Desire,” he said.
Shocked at how quickly the tables have turned she scrambled for a word to get him off this topic. “Dinner.”
“Date.”
Oh, God. He wasn’t moving on. “Fireplace.”
“Intimate,” he said, not seeming to realize that he was responding to her now, not the other way around.
“Hotel.”
“Lonely.”
“Hero.”
A wry smile. “Tragic.”
“Host.”
“Beautiful,” he said and leaned his elbow on his knee on the couch.
r /> Anna shook her head slowly. “Night.”
Smiley’s gaze dropped to her lips. “Bedroom.”
“You’re not starting to fall for me, are you, Smiley?”
He leaned even closer. “What?” Then, as if he just woke up, he shook himself. “What?” He straightened in an instant, all the way back to his corner of the couch.
“I think we should call it a night,” Anna said, watching his face carefully. “I’m exhausted.”
Smiley rubbed his face as if his growing shadow of a beard itched and nodded. “Yeah, you’re right.” He cleared his throat and awkwardly got to his feet. “Uh, good night.” Hands stuffed in his pockets, he made a quick exit to the guest room.
“Good night,” Anna said belatedly.
She poked at the last piece of wood to burn down faster and put the screen in front of the fire. Feeling a hundred years old Anna climbed the stairs to her bathroom, turned on the shower and let it heat up while she collected her pajamas. By the time she got back the mirror was already fogged over and she had to wipe off the mist to see herself. Please, she thought, please let me be wrong.
But her reflection and gut instinct told her she wasn’t.
Characters were her life, after all.
Denial: A River In Egypt, Among Other Things
They survived one week of this nonsense without killing each other. How hard could another be, really? If Anna had learned anything from all of those books she’d written, she never would have asked herself that question.
Having silently agreed not to talk about the word association game, Anna and Alex now walked around two giant pink elephants in the house. They were big and fluffy and every time she brushed past one, its fur grazed against her skin and made her shiver with dread. Sooner or later, this was going to blow up in both their faces. She could already see the fuse burning ever closer.
And while she ruminated over the inevitable destruction of a reality construct, Alex embarked on a crusade of usefulness and impress-the-hostess…ness. Since he woke up before she did, he’d decided to start making her breakfast. He’d vacuumed the house a couple of days ago and went grocery shopping. He’d organized her boxes of books into bookshelves by genre and author. He’d cut the grass and chopped firewood, cooked dinner, washed windows, laundered his clothes (since she’d refused to let him near hers)… the list went on and on.
The best thing he did was go to town on shopping and errand runs. Anna appreciated that more than all the other things he’d done combined since it got him out of the house for a little while and she got some much needed peace and quiet.
But the call inevitably came in one warm summer evening on day ten and deprived her of even that little comfort.
“Hey, Miss Big Shot Author!”
Anna smiled. “Hey, Mina.” Mina Sherwood was the local high school history teacher; the kind Anna wished she’d had. She made students want to learn more, told stories instead of reciting facts and she had the most charming penchant for referencing historical events in every day conversation which had instantly endeared her to Anna. They’d been best friends since Anna had moved in.
“So who’s the on-call hottie running errands for you around town?”
Another thing Anna usually loved about the woman—Mina didn’t waste time with small talk. “The bane of my existence,” she retorted. “He hasn’t been causing trouble, has he?”
“Are you kidding, he’s the town sweetheart. Real boy scout. He helped Mrs. Walsch with her groceries the other day and fixed that crooked sign on Mr. Roland’s hardware shop. Seriously, where did you dig him up? Are there more?”
Anna laughed. “I’ll ask my agent. She’s the one who tacked him onto me. Can’t get rid of him for another four days. You want me to send him your way when he’s done here?”
She could imagine Mina making a face. “Normally I would turn my nose up at another woman’s castoffs. But in this case I might be willing to make an exception.”
“How charitable of you.”
“Yeah, well, he won’t be interested. He’s all googly eyed for you.”
Anna almost dropped the phone. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, damn. Wasn’t supposed to say that.”
In her writing nook, Alex leaned back from his computer with a sigh and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He rolled his shoulders as if whatever he was dealing with was trying his patience but when he saw her looking at him, his entire posture relaxed and he gave her a half smile.
Anna quickly removed herself from the room and went down the hall to close herself in the coat room. “Mina, you tell me right now, or I am ATVing down there to get it out of you in person.”
Mina sighed. “Okay, don’t start freaking out like you do. But he was sort of, um, asking questions. About you.”
“What? What sort of questions? And what did you tell him!”
“I didn’t tell him anything!” Mina protested. “And it wasn’t like he was being a stalker psycho or whatever. He just heard about the bakeoff and tried to cover for you that you must have gotten the dates wrong—yeah, right. But then he and Father O’Malley got to talking and he might have let slip about you helping out with the town pageant and subbing in for the English teacher a time or two. And, uh, yeah then Mrs. Holcombe might or might not have happened by.”
Anna groaned. Mrs. Holcombe, the town matron and full time chatterbox, was always after her to “find a good man and settle down.” She was old fashioned enough that the concept of an independent woman not needing a man to take care of her was incomprehensible and she never missed an opportunity to corner her and talk up some eligible young man or another. Oh, she must have loved getting her hands on Alex.
Anna rubbed her forehead. “How bad?”
“Let’s just say that by the time he left, the guy had a smile on his face and a spring in his step.”
“Shit.” Deep breath. Damn it!
“So I take it the feeling’s not mutual?”
“Not exactly.”
“Why? What’s wrong with him?”
“As far as I can tell nothing. Maybe that’s the problem. He’s too perfect.”
“Nah, that can’t be it.”
Anna chuckled. “It’s the fact that all this is a transaction. It’s an act he’s getting paid for.”
“But what if it wasn’t?”
“It is.”
“Nym, don’t be difficult with me. I know you know what I mean.”
“Yeah. He’s not paid indefinitely. At some point this won’t be a job anymore.”
“Right. And then?”
“And then…” She sighed. “It’ll still be a job. I mean, it would be different if I was an accountant or something, you know? But as a writer I’d basically be a client he’s sleeping with. It’d be like a doctor dating a terminally ill patient. He’d never get a day off or time to relax because when he’d come home it would be work all over again. And you know me. I keep the house tidy because I have to but that’s as far as I venture into the real world. I’d neglect him and he’d let me because that’s what he’s always done with authors, and we’d end up resenting each other. It’s inevitable.”
Silence answered her and stretched for so long she thought Mina’s phone had died. But then her friend answered in a contemplative tone, “You know, if I heard that from anyone else I’d call bullshit. But you’re right. I can see that happening too easily.”
“Exactly.”
“Do you want me to come over and run interference?”
“No, I can handle it. He’s only here for four more days.”
“Anna, a lot can happen in four days when you’re living hand-in-glove with a guy. You need to be straight with him.”
“Yeah.” That would be a fun conversation.
It’s Not You… No, Really…
All day long Anna stressed about how to broach the subject. It was one thing to write a character getting rejected and another to reject someone in real life. Alex was off in his o
wn world of hysterical writers most of the day, answering emails and chats, texting on his phone… how he managed to keep all the conversations straight was beyond her. Anna was good at multitasking but when she got deep into one thing she hated being interrupted and was liable to take someone’s head off for breaking her flow.
In any case, she took this as a sign that it wasn’t time yet.
Then came lunch time.
“You know, I was thinking.”
“How’d that work out for ya?” she retorted and winced. Her grouchiness was getting the better of her. “Sorry.”
He waved that off. “Anyway, you wrote six books in this series, you have to have some side characters you can write about.”
“Yeah, I do. But like you said, there are six books already. Trust me, they have all said their peace.”
Alex shook his head. “There is no way every last subplot is done and every loose end tied off. There’s got to be something.”
Anna thought back through the six book saga and mentally ticked off her characters. Married, married, dead, married, dead, outcast and dead, cursed and dead, married and dead, divorced and remarried, dead. “Nope, they’re done.”
“Well, how about the bad guys? I’ve had desperate writers turn bad guys into good guys—with varying degrees of success, but still.”
“I don’t leave bad guys running around with a pulse.”
“Children?”
“Too young.”
“Time moves on, you know. You could push this ten or fifteen years into the future.”
“Yeah, that’s called a spinoff series and the problem is they tend to retell the original series with different character names. I refuse.”
“I think you’re overthinking this.”
Anna raised an eyebrow. “Is that what I’m doing?”
“Yes.”
“Fine, then you give me something to write about.”
“All right.” Alex set down his utensils and leaned back, arms crossed, studying her. “How about the fulcrum? There is always a central force moving characters in a story. You focused on all individual lives, now pull back and look at the big picture. Maybe there’s a woman at the center of it all, turning the wheels and spinning the tales of destiny.”
Anna snorted.
“She could be the originator of all those happy endings, but never got one of her own. After watching everyone around her find their mates, she’s bound to have some issues, feel some resentment, or at the very least loneliness.”