Page 88 of Business or Pleasure

I give her a miserable nod. “This whole thing was a terrible idea. I should have known it, too—I did know it, but I guess I liked the idea of being someone who could casually do something like this. And then move on emotionally unscathed.”

“Have you ever considered that maybe none of this is casual for him, either?”

Of course I have. The thought has been running on a constant loop in my mind since New York, since he mapped out everything he loved about my face and held me against him until we both fell asleep. I can’t even think about it without a terrifying tenderness rushing toward my heart.

“Maybe it isn’t,” I say. “But it doesn’t change the fact that we live in completely different worlds.”

She’s quiet for a moment, taking this in. “Even after having met him, it’s hard to disconnect him from The Nocturnals,” she says, “but honestly, he seems like a pretty wonderful guy.” That’s the worst of it. That on paper, he’s exactly the kind of person I’d want to be with. “I can’t even believe I’m saying this, but is there any reason a real relationship between you and Finnegan Walsh, star of the font-based romantic comedy Just My Type, wouldn’t work?” She tries for lightness, and I crack a smile to placate her. “Aside from the fact that you’re still working with him, but you’re just about done, right?”

Even though she doesn’t mean it to, it twists a knife just beneath my heart. Just about done. And then he’ll move on to new projects. New people.

“We don’t live in the same place,” I offer stupidly.

A flick of her fingernails against my knee. “Because no long-distance relationship has ever succeeded before. Next.”

“Our lives are incompatible. He’s always on the road, and I’m sure he’ll be touring once the memoir comes out, too, and I’m...” I grasp for the right word, not finding one. “And he’s obviously way more financially stable than I am.”

“You’re worried he doesn’t think you’re good enough? Successful enough?”

I hide my head in the pillow. I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. “Maybe that’s the reason Wyatt didn’t want me,” I say quietly. “He had his thriving journalism career, and I had... I don’t know, not that many inhibitions in bed?”

Noemie’s expression turns dark. “I think Wyatt really messed you up.” She moves closer to drape her hand along my forearm, giving it a squeeze. “Because you are brilliant and caring and funny and weird—I mean that as a compliment—and you’re a million times more than your sexuality.” Her eyes cling to mine, unblinking. “Especially with what you’ve been doing with Finn, I need you to know that isn’t all you have to offer someone. Not by a long shot.”

I want to believe her. I keep trying to connect the dots, but I might as well be using invisible ink. “I guess I’ll find out next week in LA. I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to keep hiding it.” Or maybe he already knows, and he’s using this time to figure out how to let me down easy. “You’ve been okay, though? While I’ve been gone?”

Her brow furrows. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Everything we talked about before I left. About how this was the longest we’d be apart.”

“Sure,” she says. “But I’ve been trying some new recipes, taking some new classes—you’ve got to try modern hula hooping with me. I’ve missed you, of course, but I haven’t minded being on my own. Not as much as I thought I would, at least.”

“That’s great. I’m glad.” I’m not sure what I expected—that she’d be falling over herself, begging me to never leave again?

Maybe it’s a sign things really are changing.

“I’ve got to help my moms with cleanup at their place,” she says. “The kitchen is a disaster zone. See you back at home?”

She slips outside after a hug, leaving me alone in my childhood bedroom with too many magazine cutouts of people I can’t remember the names of and a swirl of anxious thoughts.

But instead of letting them get too loud, I open up my bag and head over to my desk. Position my laptop there, exactly the way my ancient desktop was propped up through elementary and middle school, until I got a laptop my freshman year of high school and it seemed so sleek and cutting-edge.

The desk chair isn’t anything I’d pick out for myself these days; it’s light pink and covered with some of my mom’s extra hippie stickers. But as I sit down, I remember all the hours I spent here, doing homework and typing away at stories. How happy I was, before I decided it wasn’t a realistic career path.

I can’t just keep opening and rereading my book. I have to make some progress.

So even though I’m scared, I scroll to the end of the document and highlight a section that I know won’t work for the new direction I’ve decided on. Then I type a sentence. Not a good sentence, nothing profound, just a transition to move the plot forward.

There.

But something’s not right. I frown at it, picking it apart until I like it a little more, until it sounds better to my ear. It grows into a paragraph. And then another. I change the setting to Seattle, because that’s the place I know best, and when my parents call out that they’re going to bed, I wish them good night and keep writing.

Maybe cozy mystery won’t be the right genre anymore, because I want this book to be sexy, too. I make my protagonist’s love interest, a graphic designer whose work she sells at her stationery shop, even more irresistible, and I build more tension between them. I give him a mane of hair that’s always a little unkempt. Blots of ink on his palms and wrists, a detail she never fails to notice about him.

It’s cozy to me, and that’s what matters most.

Journalism let me forget that I once dreamed of this, and the deeper I got, the less it mattered. I went years without writing fiction, without writing anything for myself, and I convinced myself I didn’t miss it. Until the layoff, which might have been the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Until I opened a blank document and realized... this has always felt right. Not easy, necessarily, or at least not always, but right, like the words have just been waiting for their time to spill out and scatter across the page.

chapter

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