Professor Feelgood

  “No, but that’s because he’s a garbage human, something that was reinforced to us both on prom night. Or did you block out the part where we found him fucking my girlfriend? Your friend.”

  My stomach tightens. Just one of the many memories I’ve blocked out.

  I never did find out exactly how long Jeremy had been cheating on me with Shelley, but part of me didn’t want to know. I felt stupid enough not realizing they were jumping each other right under my nose. Under Jake’s nose, too.

  Jake was even more furious than I was. He and Shelley had been dating for a few months, and even though I never got the impression she was the love of his life, I know he had real feelings for her. I wasn’t surprised when Jeremy came to school with two black eyes and a broken nose the next day. In fact, I got sick satisfaction from it. Jake also had his fair share of cuts and bruises, but if you stood him and his brother side by side, you could tell Jake came out on top.

  “Is he still in New York?” I ask. “Or did he and his mom move back to Michigan?”

  He shoves the collection of pictures back into their box. “I’m not talking about Jeremy with you.” He stops and fixes me with a challenging stare. “Are we done here?” The set of his jaw makes me turn away and change the subject.

  “I guess. Did you finish the writing exercise?”

  He walks back to the living room and slumps into his chair. “Yes. If you consider finishing as having come up with a bunch of crap.”

  I walk over to the couch. “I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think.” From everything I’ve seen so far, he’s incapable of writing trash.

  I pick up the notebook and read his paragraph aloud. “Once upon a time, a bossy queen tortured a sweet, innocent prince by forcing him to dredge up painful memories from his past. The prince tried to do as he was told, but every word felt like his pen was made of razor blades, and he was slicing the bitter truth straight into his heart. In the end, the prince gave up his excruciating self-evaluation and went and made himself a sandwich. The end.”

  I lower the notebook. “Really?”

  He shrugs. “I’m hungry. It’s a swing and a miss.”

  I rub my temples. Another headache is brewing, and this time it has nothing to do with my injury.

  FOURTEEN

  ____________________

  Snark and Smart-Assery

  I STRIKE MY RED PEN through the tenth consecutive page of Jake’s half-hearted ramblings and throw the notebook onto the coffee table. “Dammit, Jake, stop screwing around! I don’t want snark and smart-assery! I need you to focus and get in touch with whatever well of awesomeness you usually tap into when you write.”

  “I don’t usually have a fucking audience, and I only do it when the mood hits me! Right now, you’re expecting me to get a literary boner with a penis-eating Rottweiler standing over me.”

  I stand and put my hands on my hips. “Don’t call me a dog!”

  He stands, too. “Then stop barking at me!”

  Our voices ring loudly in the empty space, and I take a breath to calm myself. We’re both feeling the pressure of uncharted waters, but I’m the one who’s supposed to be steering this ship. Right now, I’m aiming us at a giant iceberg.

  “Okay,” I say, as I take my seat and try to shed some tension. “Let’s both just take a break.” I flip to a fresh page and put the notebook back on the table. “Would it help you concentrate if I left the apartment?”

  Jake rubs his eyes and sits on the edge of his chair. “I don’t know. Maybe.” He looks over at me, frustrated. “This writing-on-command thing isn’t easy, you know. Have you ever tried it?”

  “No,” I say, “but I’m not the writer here. You are.”

  “Bullshit. You’ve written more words than I ever have.”

  A mental image of the notebooks in my closet flits through my mind. “Why do you say that?”

  “Did you think I never saw you scribbling away during study hall or in classes when you’d breezed through all the work and had time to spare? I always wondered what you were writing about.”

  I feel creeping discomfort knowing my secret writing habit hadn’t been so secret after all. “Nothing. Juvenile stuff.” At the time, it had seemed important and big. If I didn’t purge how I was feeling into those pages, I felt like I’d explode. I guess it’s similar to what Jake said yesterday about his emotions choking him. Writing it down helped. I just never considered posting my stuff online like he did.

  “Having you watch over me is the problem,” Jake says. “What if we both tried to write something? We could set a time limit, get as many words down as possible, and then check out each other’s work, quid pro quo style.”

  I get simultaneous shivers of excitement and dread. This is a wonderfully terrible idea. “Once again, this is the part where I remind you I’m not a writer.”

  “Then you have nothing to lose. Just think of it as a technique for motivating your author. Slap some words on a page in an attempt to show me how it’s done.”

  I must admit, the idea of challenging myself around Jake is enticing. Right now, I feel like all the respect in our relationship is tipped in his favor. It might make it easier to whip him if he respects the hand holding the leather.

  “Okay,” I say, becoming excited about limbering up my creative muscles. “You’re on. Give me a prompt.”

  “How about the day we met?” He seems sincere, but I know there must be more to this. Nothing is ever that simple with Jake.

  “Wouldn’t that be boring reading considering you were there?”

  “True, but I want to see how you remember it. If your truth stacks up to mine.”

  And there it is. He’s testing me.

  “You’re so sure that your version of our history is the right one,” he says, making the challenge clearer. “Prove it. Put it in writing.”

  I know very well this is a trap, but I’m also aware I can’t refuse without him calling me out. So, despite my better judgment, I hold out my hand.

  “Deal.” He looks at my hand for a second before reaching out and clasping it. We both seem shocked by the contact. Yesterday, we shook hands in the meeting because it was required. This time, it’s voluntary and it feels alien and confronting. When we pull back, we glance away.

  “Time limit?” I swallow and open a new document.

  “Ten minutes.” He pulls the notebook off the table and props it up on his thigh. “Prepare to have your ass beaten.”

  “Title of your sex tape,” I say, quoting my favorite comedy show. I watch him bring up a timer on his phone. “Aaaand, go.”

  He taps the start button then leans over the notebook and gets off to a cracking start.

  Okay, wow. This is working.

  Feeling the pressure, I stare at my blank document and will some words to come.

  Okay, the day I met Jake. Easy. Just close your eyes and remember. All my memories have been pushed into the dark for so long, letting them see daylight again isn’t easy. I have the hazy outline of what happened, but that’s no good for a descriptive paragraph. I have to remember details, smells, colors, feelings.

  Gingerly, I crack open the door in my mental basement and head down the stairs.

  _______________

  “Time.”

  When Jake’s voice cuts through my concentration, my fingers are flying over the keys, and the sudden distraction causes me to hit all the wrong letters. If my writing flow were traffic, Jake just caused a ten-car pileup.

  “Just a sec,” I say, backtracking so I can fix the slew of typos. There’s no way I’m giving him an opening to criticize my grammar.

  I finish up correcting the paragraph and then exhale. “Okay, done.”

  I look up at him and hold out my hand. “Show me what you’ve got.”

  He shakes his head. “Oh, no. Ladies first. I insist.”

  He gets up and comes to sit beside me before pulling my computer onto his lap and scrolling up to the top of the page. He starts to read it out loud, but
I hold up my hand.

  “God, no. Too weird. Silent reading, please.”

  He nods and turns back to the screen. I feel too embarrassed to watch his reaction, so instead I scan the words again, just to make sure I caught all the mistakes.

  The first time I laid eyes on Jacob Stone, he was peeing on my mother’s favorite rose bush. There was a chain-link fence that separated our broken-down row houses, and when I came out onto our lopsided porch, there he was, tackle out, squinting as he gave mom’s favorite Arctic White a good watering. He was three with dark, unruly hair, and even darker eyes. He stared at the rose bush as he relieved himself, and the intensity of his expression made it seem as if he was angry with the world.

  When he’d finished, he fixed himself up and then looked over to examine me with a combination of curiosity and wariness. It was the same way I studied insects in my bug catcher, always trying to figure out if they were harmless or harboring hidden stingers. In nature, as in life, there’s a fine line between friends and foes.

  I was fascinated by the depth of his dark eyes, but his intensity made me nervous. I remember saying a silent prayer that he would like me.

  After a few moments of frowning scrutiny, Jacob seemed to come to a decision. He stepped forward, tipped his chin at me, and in a clear, strong voice said, ‘Hey’.

  That was it. No introduction. No smile. Just, “Hey.”

  That’s all it took for us to be friends.

  I guess Jake and I read at the same pace, because as I finish, so does he. He pushes the computer back over to me, weird tension in his shoulders.

  “So, that’s how you remember it?”

  “Yes, because that’s how it was.”

  He nods, but the way he grips his hands together tells me he doesn’t agree.

  “Not bad. Decent word count. A solid seven out of ten.”

  It feels so odd that he’s the one giving writing feedback and not the other way around.

  “Okay, then, Dostoyevsky,” I say. “Hand over your brilliance.”

  “Sure.” He hands me the notebook. I look down at what he’s written.

  Wow. He’s filled an entire page.

  Dear Malevolent Overseer,

  Right now, I’m writing mindlessly, because I can feel you watching, and there’s no goddamn way I’m going to sit here and admit that even direct competition with you isn’t opening my wordy floodgates. You’ll probably chew my ears off for engaging in this Theater of Deception, but fuck it. I can’t give you silk if all I have is sawdust.

  As for you, this challenge seems to have lit a fire under your ass. You’re typing a mile a minute, and you’re doing that thing you always did when you were concentrating on something super hard. I call it ‘thinking tongue.’ You plant your tongue in the corner of your mouth so a little bit pokes out, and if you’re really focusing, you kind of chew on it a bit. It looks ridiculous, by the way. It always did. Still, you seem to be getting a decent number of words down, so the tongue thing must be working for you. Maybe I should try it.

  Honestly, sitting here trying to give my story any sort of coherent beginning is torturous. Did it start when the woman I loved left me? Or is that when it ended? Have all the words I’ve written since served as the eulogy for a dead relationship? And at what point does the bitterness and loss that I bleed onto these pages enable me to just let it the fuck go?

  If you could answer any and all of these questions, then you might earn some semblance of gratitude from me. Until then, you need to figure out how the hell to make the clusterfuck of my life into something people want to read, because I sure as hell can’t.

  Anyway, time is almost up, and yet again, I have nothing valid to say. I blame you. It’s probably not your fault, but I blame you anyway. That’s what you get for being the boss.

  I think the best course of action right now is for us to go eat. I haven’t had breakfast, and I’m starving. You want words? Feed my brain. I’m thinking the 10th Street deli and that you’re buying.

  Let’s go.

  I close my eyes and sigh. “Jake …”

  He grabs my computer and shoves it into my bag then hands me my coat and heads toward the door.

  “You can yell at me on the way to the deli. I’ll have a foot-long sub with everything and a Diet Coke. Got to watch my carbs.”

  I’d bother arguing if I thought it would do any good, but it’s clear this morning’s writing session is a bust. Also, with all this talk of food, I have a wicked hankering for a roast beef bagel.

  “Fine. I’m letting you do this, but right after lunch, we start afresh.”

  He pulls the apartment door closed behind us and leads me down the stairs. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say, boss lady.”

  FIFTEEN

  ____________________

  A Tax on Hope

  JAKE PUSHES AWAY HIS plate and wipes his mouth with a napkin. He ended up eating a foot-long plus a cheeseburger, then topped it all off with a piece of apple pie and ice cream. If I ate that much, this restaurant would look like the chest-bursting scene out of Alien. As it is, I barely made it through half of my bagel before I unfurled the white flag.

  Jake gestures to what’s left on my plate. “You going to finish that?”

  I roll my eyes and push it across to him, then roll them again when he attacks it like he’s been on a month-long hunger strike.

  “Where the hell do all those calories go?” I ask, incredulous. “How does a gluttonous pig such as yourself have three percent body fat?”

  He smiles around a mouthful of food. “Self-loathing burns a lot of energy.”

  I cross my arms and mutter, “Tell that to my thighs. I’ve loathed them for years.”

  He swallows and wipes his mouth. “Don’t do that.”

  “What?”

  “Be the girl with the perfect body who trashes herself so others will contradict her.”

  I almost laugh. “I’ve never had a perfect body. That honor went to Eden.”

  He stares at me. “You’re joking now, aren’t you? It’s hard to tell, but you must be.” He takes another bite of food. “Fucking ridiculous statement.”

  On the table, both of our phones buzz at almost the same time. We pick them up to check the screens, then look at each other.

  “Sidney’s sent out the press release about the book,” I say. Suddenly, my lunch sits in my stomach like a block of wood. “In a few hours, the news will be everywhere.”

  If possible, Jake looks even queasier about it than I do. “Great. Just in time for this event we’re going to tonight. You cool if I drink myself into a stupor?”

  Almost immediately, his phone starts buzzing with dozens of notifications arriving in quick succession.

  “Looks like the Feelgood Fans are celebrating,” I say. “That bodes well for sales.”

  “Uh huh.” He turns off the phone and places it facedown before taking a sip of water. He looks a little green.

  “You okay?”

  “Yep.”

  He wipes his hands on a napkin and stares at the table. The carcass of what’s left of my sandwich lies forgotten on the plate.

  “Jake?”

  He wipes his hands again, before gripping his water glass so tightly, I fear for its structural integrity. “I know this is probably just your average Thursday, but don’t you find it goddamn terrifying that they’re announcing a book that hasn’t even been written yet?”

  “It’s not something that happens a lot in publishing, no.” I sound more confident than I feel. “But for books by celebrities? Yeah … it’s a thing. It’s a way to get fans fired up and excited to fork over their cash.”

  “Celebrities. Right.” He runs his fingers through his hair, and somewhere in all his hand wiping, he missed a piece of bagel crust that’s now clinging to a few strands. “And what happens if we figure out I can’t write a book? That all I’m capable of is a bunch of poems?”

  I can’t drag my eyes away from the hair-crumb. It’s big. How does he not feel it? ??
?That’s not going to happen. Don’t get discouraged about this morning. It’s day one. Nobody expects you to hit the ground running.”

  Not entirely true. Serena, Mr. Whip, and I are expecting big things from him, and the prospect of him not delivering is making me sweat in inelegant places. Of course, if I were more experienced, I’d be more successful drawing words out of him.

  He shakes his head then drains his water glass before refilling it. “I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking when I agreed to this.”

  “Maybe you were thinking that your words touch people. Over three million people, to be precise.”

  Unable to ignore it any longer, I reach over to brush the crumb out of his hair. Super quick, he grabs my wrist and frowns at me.

  “The fuck? Personal boundaries, please.”

  I twist my arm free. “Says the man who was all over my injured head yesterday without permission. Chill.” I pluck the crumb and show him. “See?”

  “How is your head by the way?” he asks, raking his fingers through his hair, I’m guessing to dislodge any other rebellious crumbs.

  “Never had any complaints.” It’s out of my mouth before my brain can stop it.

  Oh, sweet Jesus. I just made a blowjob joke in front of Jacob Stone. Just kill me.

  Jake’s eyebrows raise. “Wow. Happy for you, but no need to brag.”

  I cringe. “Eden and I always use that old joke whenever someone mentions head. It’s force of habit. But to answer your question, my cranium is okay.”

  He gives me a dubious look. “Uh huh.”

  We lapse into silence, and I use the opportunity to gesture to our waitress to bring us the check. When I look back at Jake, he’s staring out the window with a troubled expression I’ve seen many times before. In this situation, any normal person would have some self-doubt, but Jake has a habit of strapping his ever-present self-saboteur to a mental gurney and blasting it full of gamma rays.

  “Listen, Jake …” I take a breath before my next sentence, because I haven’t given him a compliment in a long time, so the words feel foreign in my mouth. “I know this process is going to be demanding, but second-guessing yourself is pointless. No matter how I feel about you as a person, I love your writing, and I know that if we get this book right, it’s going to be huge. And I’m not alone in thinking that. It’s the reason there was a bidding war. You write from your heart, and people respect that. Hell, even I respect that.”