Page 5 of Not in My Book

“Simon didn’t value you or your passions. Simon couldn’t have cared less if you spoke the same language.”

“I wish Aiden spoke a different language than me,” I muttered.

A couple walked in at the other side of the restaurant. Alexa patted the bar and said, “Duty calls. Don’t let him get to you.”

As she walked off, I started to organize the glasses and liquor bottles.

The Hideout was one of the best restaurants in Flatiron. It was a bit of a hike from our place, but the pay and tips were great. On weekdays there was usually a small crowd of regulars, but the weekends were wild. I refused to work them—even if they guaranteed a week’s worth of pay in one night—because the staff shuddered every time they talked about it.

Paying for school and rent was a struggle. I spent my nights eating free meals on a box of dried food in the storage room at the back of the restaurant. I hated that I would have to drag out my MFA for years longer than anyone else. But even though I wasn’t the New York socialite I’d dreamed I would be, I washere. And that was all I had ever wanted.

My ex-boyfriend Simon and I had met freshman year of high school. Almost immediately, I fell head over heels. Even now, I couldn’t really explain why. Maybe because he seemed put together and wasn’t a complete jerk like every other guy at fifteen. Maybe it was because he had swoopy hair that he combed every morning.

We didn’t end up dating until sophomore year. He was my best friend and one night after I confessed how I felt, everything changed so quickly. Suddenly it wasn’t Simon the Best Friend, but Simon the Boyfriend. I was so happy to finally be with him, to be SimonandRosie, that I let myself become blind to the red flags.

He encouraged me to go to our local college together and skip out on Barnard College, insisting that you didn’t find what we had twice, and we had to hold on it. He hated when I talked about New York orhow I dreamed of being a novelist. He thought it was ridiculous and that I should either do something practical like teaching, or just stay home and raise our children. And even then, I still spun it in my mind as romantic that he wanted to have a family with me.

Once we graduated, he became even more controlling. It was frustrating, but I just assumed that every couple fought. Everyone had preferences and differences, and this was where ours lay. But as time went by, Simon still didn’t propose, citing he “wasn’t sure yet.”

Then I read Ida Abarough’s article “Why We All Should Read Romance,” and my long-lost confidence in writing romance was suddenly regained. She eloquently expressed why women read romance and how it showed women taking control in their lives while still being desired instead of wholly objectified. And how it had expanded to include different gender identities and become a safe space for people of color. No matter how bad life got in the romance novels, there would be a Happily Ever After that proved nothing was unfixable.

That night, I developed a two-step plan: get into NYU, then take as many of Ida’s classes as possible. I had been listless the few years after graduating, still working in my town’s diner. I knew this would get me on track and by a miracle, luck, or something in between, just after my twenty-fifth birthday, I was admitted into the MFA program.

When I told Simon I was admitted to NYU, he laughed. He thought it was some prank I was playing on him and when I told him it wasn’t, he said, “Rosie, you don’t have to go to school to sell those kind of books. Slap a hot guy on the cover and the work is done for you.” Everyone in my life, Simon included, deemed romance a “guilty pleasure.” You didn’t go to school to study it, and you certainly didn’t uproot your whole life to do it.

But I went anyway. The first class I registered for was a Fiction Craft lecture with Ida.

Simon and I tried long distance for a while. I’d always thought long distance was the true test of love. If you loved someone, you’d stay up late even if you were tired. You’d put in the hours and the work. But every time Simon and I spoke on the phone he said, “Rosie, when are you going to forget this pipe dream and come back?” Every time I texted him and he didn’t text back, I told myself he was just busy.

I’d never thought the long distance would break us, but ultimately I’m glad it did. Reality hit me hard my first fall in New York, and I sometimes I felt like I was still reckoning with the whiplash.

But Ida’s class had opened a new cavern in my heart, pouring out a new love for writing. At the end of lecture one day, she said, “If you have any questions, about this lecture or otherwise, come by my office hours and we can talk about it.”

Perhaps this had been an empty gesture. But it was my opening, and I came every week and stayed for hours, all but forcing a mentorship onto her.

I would pore through all my ideas, and at first, she’d shake her head, smile tightly, and say, “Rosie, maybe you should spend this time writing or go talk to your workshop professor.”

I had only smiled and said, “I’m only taking the craft class. I’ve got nowhere else to be.”

It took a while, but I slowly peeled back the layers of Ida. I knew shehatedwhen we called her Professor Abarough because it made her feel old. She’d just gone through a nasty divorce but she won her dog, Buster, in the settlement. She always kept a Lisa Kleypas book in her desk (Marrying Winterborne) to flip through when she got overwhelmed.AndI knew that she secretly loved having me as a mentee even if she acted like she didn’t.

Today, like I always did, I headed toward her office at the NYU English Department on Greene Street. But when I noticed a flyer on the bulletin board near her office, I gasped, snatching it off the board and reading it carefully.

It encouraged students to apply for the Sam Frost Fellowship that would payhalfof next year’s tuition.The Frostwas a prestigious national literary magazine on par withThe Paris Review. If I got this, I’d not only be able pay my rent and become a full-time student, but I’d get my name out there. I stuffed the flyer in my bag before entering Ida’s office without knocking.

Her office space was tiny, her desk and chair facing a wall of books of different genres and colors. She generally tried to keep it clean, but clutter always took over her desk in the form of stacks of papers and coffee cups. As soon I stepped through the door, I fell into my usual chair.

Without looking up from her laptop, she said, “We need to talk about that chapter.” Her red hair was pulled back into a bun, her blackglasses sitting at the tip of her nose as she typed away on her computer.

“I know. Not my best work.” I pulled out my workshop notes and first chapter, laying them across the edge of her desk.

“Can I ask what you wereattemptingto do here?”

“You know.” I waved my hand vaguely in the air. “Angst.”

She gave me a flat look. “Try again.”

“I’m waiting for something to stick.”

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