Page 123 of Debugging Love

Now I’m curious. “You keep your diary in a three ring binder?”

“No.”

“It’s not your diary?”

“More embarrassing than that.”

I set my books down and approach her cautiously. “You don’t have to tell me what’s in it.”

“Good.”

“But now I won’t be able to stop thinking about it.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to assume it’s full of your boudoir photos.”

Danni steps back, her cheeks glowing red. She’s stifling a laugh. “You won’t be able to stop thinking about my boudoir photos?”

My cheeks heat up. “That’s not what I meant.”

She tucks the binder under her arm and points at me. “That’s exactly what you meant.”

“Um.” I claw at my hair. “Should we get back to work?” I grab a few more books and carry them to the couch.

“It’s a manuscript.”

Now I’m curious again.

She lowers herself to the carpet and sits cross-legged with the binder in her lap and begins flipping through the pages. I join her on the floor.

“What kind of manuscript?” I ask.

“A dumb one.”

I laugh at her statement, not at her. “I doubt that.”

“It’s also a bunch of worldbuilding. All written by hand.”

“It sounds interesting.” I hope my encouragement will give her the confidence to tell me more.

It does. “I made up a steampunk world with a detective who fights crime. I wrote half of the first book, got stuck, and quit. Now it’s just a bunch of handwritten gobbledygook that I can’t manage to throw away.”

I grab it out of her hand. “You can’t throw it away.”

She eyes me warily. “You haven’t read it,” she says, and then grabs it back. “Maybe I should keep it, though, to remind me why I gave up my dream as a writer.”

I snatch the binder out of her hands again. “You can’t give up.”

“Yes.” She tugs at it, but I won’t let go. “I can.”

“You just said it was your dream. You can’t give up on your dream.”

“I’ve had a lot of dreams, including learning the trapeze and traveling with the circus. Granted, I was little and that dream didn’t last.”

“Exactly. You cared enough about this dream to handwrite an entire binder full of words. That means it’s important to you.”

“I read better than I write.”

---