Page 26 of Guys Can't Write Romance
Chad did. For all of twenty seconds before he began clicking his teeth and tapping his pen.
Daisy shot him a frown. “What is it now?”
“Did you know studies have shown that quiet is a creativity killer? It sucks creativity away like a giant black hole. The brain needs background buzz to function properly.”
Daisy rolled her eyes. “Seriously? A black hole?”
“Yeah. It’s like every time I try to form a thought, I can feel the silence sucking it out of my head.”
“Shhh!” came the rebuke from an elderly man two tables over, accompanied by a disapproving scowl.
Chad lowered his voice but continued, undeterred. “See? That guy just proved my point. Instead of focusing on his book, he’s focused on policing noise levels. The quiet makes people tense.”
Daisy glanced around uneasily, noticing several pairs of eyes now fixed on them with varying degrees of annoyance. The elderly librarian behind the reference desk — Mrs. Finch, according to her name tag — was already watching them like a hawk eyeing particularly troublesome mice.
Daisy winced and turned back to Chad. “Let’s try something,” she whispered as quietly as possible, feeling the watchful eyes of Mrs. Finch on her. “I bet you can’t sit still and write quietly for five minutes.”
Chad chuckled, earning another sharp ‘shhh!’ from somewhere behind a bookshelf. He winced, mouthing an apology, then leaned closer to Daisy across the table.
“Come on, Fields,” he said, managing to dial his volume down a bit. “I’m a professional. Five minutes is a cakewalk.”
“Let’s see you do it, then. I’m setting the timer on my laptop. And... go.”
For the first eighteen seconds, Chad managed to keep it together, writing a single sentence in his notebook before scratching it out entirely. By the thirty-second mark, his legs began to twitch under the table.
The silence grew louder.
By the one-minute mark, he tapped his pen against his notebook, staring blankly at the page like the words might appear if he begged hard enough.
At a minute thirty, the pen turned into a drumstick, rhythmically tapping against the edge of the table. Daisy side-eyed him without saying a word.
By minute two, Chad leaned back in his chair dramatically, pulling at his collar as he whispered, “Is it me, or is the air too still in here?”
“Focus,” Daisy whispered, not even looking up from her screen.
At two minutes thirty seconds, he began dramatically fanning himself with his notebook.
Minute three arrived, and Chad leaned forward. “Is that timer even counting down? This feels like five days.”
“Yup,” Daisy murmured, typing steadily. “You ready to concede defeat, McKenzie?”
“Not a chance. I got this.”
Three minutes and thirty seconds was where the real unraveling began.
Chad blew softly at the pages of his notebook, watching them billow up, then settle back into place. His pen tapping turned into quiet clicking, which turned into him accidentally spinning it off the edge of the table.
At almost four minutes, he was pantomiming self-inflicted asphyxiation, pulling dramatically at his collar like he couldn’t breathe.
Daisy finally glanced up, her lips twitching with reluctant amusement. “You’re not about to projectile vomit like the girl in The Exorcist, are you?”
Chad considered this. “Not sure. Might be. The quiet is definitely doing something weird to my head. I think I can hear my brain cells crying.”
“That’s called thinking. Most people do it occasionally.”
“No, it’s more like...” He made a strangled sound and slumped forward onto the table, nearly knocking over a stack of books.
Daisy just rolled her eyes. “Unbelievable.” She looked at the timer on her laptop — only one more minute to go of this ‘silence.’
