Page 34 of The Now in Forever
MONDAY, JULY 1ST
Ispent the last week trying to unravel some of my plot problems and avoiding Ed. Not that I’m upset with him, really. I just needed some space after the critique. And it felt like he was going to talk about our long ago day together, which means then he’d want to talk about six months later, and I’m not ready for that. I needed time to process my feelings without being influenced by his electric eyes and intoxicating citrus scent.
Waking up extra early so I wouldn’t bump into him on my runs, working in my room, at the coffee shop in town, and at The Vern. Kyle even started plugging my laptop in for me behind the bar when it was running low on battery.Every time I sit to work on fleshing out my main character, I hear another voice instead. A young woman working at a bookstore, desperate for something to shake up her life. I push the voice away. She won’t work in my mystery.
I applied to three more jobs, most of them in Portland. One closer to my grandma, for a middle school, and I honestly don’t want it, but it would be nice to be close to her.
Work on my novel has been slow. Rereading Ed’s comments, I realize they are annoyingly insightful, well thought out, and just stupidly right. I don’t know how I couldn’t see it myself. My maincharacter needs a fatal flaw. Right now, she is too perfect, too flat, one dimensional.
I’ve been working on an exercise where I’m writing her diary from when she was a kid. None of it will make it into the manuscript—probably not, anyway—but hopefully it helps me understand her better, and while we may share some of the same traits, I need to make her separate from me. I was up late last night working on it and am getting out the door for my morning run a little later than usual because of it.
Warming up with a little, stretching and a walk on the beach, gets the blood pumping. Too excited to wait any longer, I begin my run. The sun is already lighting up the sky in streaks of gold, with one long bloodred cloud slashed across the horizon. I’m staring at it and nearly run into Ed standing in the middle of the beach, phone pointed at the horizon.
“Whoa!” I stop mid stride, arms windmilling like a cartoon. I usually think of myself as a pretty graceful person, but around Ed, it’s like I’m doing a bad impression of Mr. Bean.
Not that it matters, because Ed doesn’t seem to notice, his eyes fixed on the sky. “Look at that.”
“It’s beautiful.”
I continue running, and he falls into step next to me, tucking his phone into his waistband pocket. “And a little terrifying. It looks like the end of the world.”
Looking again at the red slash, dark gray clouds rolling in from far off in the distance, it does look ominous.
Ed keeps talking. “You know the saying? Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning?”
“You think everything looks like the apocalypse.”
Ed laughs. “You got me there.”
We run in silence until we get to the trail. Ed clears his throat. “Have you been avoiding me?”
“No,” I say automatically, but even to me it doesn’t sound convincing. Robin and Nathan went on a trip to visit Nathan’s family. They leftyesterday but should be back for the Fourth. Anh and Melissa should be here by then too, and we’ll finally all be together. So far, this celebration of our twentieth year of book club has been lacking in girl time. It’s just been Ed and me in the house since yesterday, and it was pretty blatant I was trying my hardest not to be in the same room with him.
“Are you pissed about my comments on your work?”
“I’m not mad.” I sigh, not sure how to explain without making him sound like a jerk or me sound like a baby. Maybe Iambeing a baby.It’s not really what I’m upset about at all, but I’m going to take the out. "It takes me a while to acclimate to feedback. I’ve just been letting it sink?—”
And just like that, I’m airborne. I wasn’t looking where I was going, too focused on choosing just the right words, and my foot hit a root. Bracing myself, I thud to a stop on the dirt trail, my bare knees taking the brunt of the fall. I roll onto my back, and Ed is by my side in the dirt before I even open my eyes.
“Holy shit. Are you okay?”
My pride stinging more than my scraped knees, I open one eye, then the next. “I’m fine.” I go to sit up, and Ed put his hands gently on my arms.
“Slowly. Did you hit your head?”
“No. I just tripped on the root.”
Ed runs his hand up my calf slowly to the delicate tendons behind my knee, and suddenly my scrapes don’t hurt as bad, my body distracted with other more pressing sensations. My breath catches in my throat. He blows the dirt off my knee lightly, and goose bumps cover my arms.
“Does that hurt?”
I don’t remember what pain feels like anymore. “No.”
When I study his face, it’s the same as that day ten years ago but so different. Somewhere along the way, his jaw got squarer, his face and body less gangly and more muscular. He looks like a man. Heisa man.
His eyes are fixed on my knees. He grabs his water bottle from hisrunning belt. “I’m going to pour a little of this to get the rest of the dirt off, okay?”
“Okay.” The cold water stings my knees, and I suck in a breath as he does the right and then the left. There’s the pain. I remember what it feels like now. Ed pries a little rock off the left knee.
