Page 112 of Trip Me Up

“No, I—I think I’ll order room service and stay in. I’m going to try to write.”

Gabi stared at me, unbelieving. I’d been too afraid to tell her. Afraid of jinxing it. Maybe I no longer relied on a muse, but I hadn’t given up every superstition I held about my writing.

For a week after I’d learned the truth about Sam, I’d moped. My so-called muse had turned out to be anathema to everything I loved, everything I stood for. Everything Iwas.Intentionally or not, what she’d created had the potential to destroy it all. To destroy me. All my friends in publishing. The farm, Grandpa, and Mom, too. Not all at once, but in a smaller advance here, fewer copies sold there. Until we gave up.

Then, when I’d seen that press conference with Heidi standing beside Sam’s graduate adviser, rage rose hot inside me and flamed out to the tips of my hair. Heidi should’ve been on my side, not that computer scientist’s. Not Sam’s.

I’d been in Phoenix. Drinking a beer at the bar in the middle of the afternoon, steaming not because of the desert heat but because of Sam. And I’d decided I didn’t need a fucking muse. I didn’t need to wait for my fingers to tingle. I needed discipline. That’s what my father had needed to turn an idea into a global business. What Sam had used to produce that A.I., CASE. No one ever complained about programmer’s block. And wasn’t my job just as real, just as valid as hers, despite what she thought?

I’d stomped upstairs to my room, dug out a notebook from the bottom of my satchel, sat at the desk with my back to the sunny window, and wrote. I didn’t bother to question the quality; it was words on the page, something to start with. Eventually I’d be brave enough to hand the pages to Gabi and find out if the new ending toBattle of the Wood Elveswas uninspired garbage or the start of something good.

Gabi shrugged and slid her keycard into the slot. “Suit yourself. I’ll be in the restaurant downstairs if you change your mind.”

“Thanks, Gabi.” I did need her. And I was glad she knew it.

When I opened the door to my room at the end of the hall—after only two tries to get the key to work—I gazed out the window through the clouds and the misting rain to the glow of the Space Needle. The light on the antenna flashed slowly.

If she were there, would she gasp at the view? Would she sit beside me on the sofa, holding my hand and watching that light blink?

Sam.

Sam.

Sam.

Each flash was a turn of the screw inside me, tightening my chest.

I shook my head. Ridiculous. Sam was on her way, Ph.D. in hand, to that postdoc in the middle of nowhere, far from the consequences of what she’d done. Far away from me.

I dropped my suitcase at the door and pulled a notebook from my satchel. I wheeled the chair to the other side of the desk so my back faced the window. I flipped the notebook upside down and began to write.

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