Chapter Twelve
Nick
I have made a huge mistake.
Jess is pissed.
Jess is beyond pissed.
Jess is fucking livid.
The second the door to our room shuts behind us, I hold up my hands to ward off the attack. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything without checking in with you first.”
“You think?” Her voice is so loud it makes me wince. “What the fuck, Nick? You think we can write a book together? You think we can just put everything that has happened between us aside and write a whole fucking book?Together?” She emphasizes the word with venom and menace.
“Okay. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t think it through.” I keep taking the blame, knowing it’s what she needs in the moment. Once she calms down—not that I am going to advise her to calm down because I’m a big fan of breathing, and I can’t die whileSurvivoris still on the air—she’s going to see that this is really the perfectsolution. I want to point out all the reasons why this could work, lay out my argument with clear and precise logic, but it’s not logic that’s holding her back. It’s feelings.
And maybe I’m a delusional fool, but I can’t help but think that her emotions about the proposition are actually a good thing, for me. She doesn’t trust herself with me.
Because she still has feelings for me.
But I don’t let myself follow that train of thought, focusing instead on the work. The book we’ve both been working on, and struggling with, from the sounds of it. Between the two of us, it sounds like we have almost a whole manuscript already written. Obviously merging our stories is going to take some finesse and a lot of editing, but when we’re done, we’ll have a book. A damn good book, if I know Jess’s writing.
She spends a few minutes pacing around the small room, muttering to herself. I sit on the edge of the bed and observe, trying not to smile because I know the turmoil she’s working through right now is real, and she deserves to feel it.
She’s just so fucking cute when she’s angry.
I don’t give myself the time to puzzle through what it is that I’m feeling in the moment. It’s obviously not great that I went and did something to make her furious—again—but I still don’t think I would change anything about the situation. Sure, there’s a good chance that working on this book together doesn’t bring us any closer to forgiving one another and moving on. But there’s also a good chance that it does.
I don’t keep track of the time, but it doesn’t take as longas I expect for her to collapse into the armchair with a defeated sigh. I open up my laptop, copying everything I’ve written so far and pasting it into a Google doc. Her phone chimes with an alert when I send her an email with the share link.
Glaring at me, she reaches for her own computer. A minute later, I receive a link to Jess’s work in progress.
A tense silence fills every corner of the room as we read through what the other has written. I get lost in the story, in the world and the characters Jess has created, but that doesn’t stop me from searching her face every so often as she reads my work. She tries to hide it, but I see the smiles, the suppressed giggles, the squishy eyes I know signal she’s reached the point where the hero declares his love for his former girlfriend.
It should be unbelievable, how closely linked our stories are. But between our history and the DMs and everything unresolved between us, it’s like we knew somehow this is where we would end up.
I was never one to believe in fate, but if I were arguing in support of it, this would be some compelling evidence.
“This is really good, Nick,” she says, not entirely unbegrudgingly, an hour later.
“Thanks. Yours too.” I move my computer to the bed so I can shift my position, so we’re directly across from each other. “Your voice is so sharp, and your characters are perfect.”
“Our characters are perfect, you mean.”
So she caught that, that both of our female main characters are funny and sassy, with a supportive family and aclear sense of purpose. Our heroes are both more withdrawn, outsiders, with a sometimes-gruff attitude hiding a sensitive soul.
“If you really don’t want to do this, you don’t have to. I’ll take the blame. Say the whole thing was my fault, and a terrible idea.” I suck in a deep breath. “I’ll write something else, come up with something completely different. Even if it means missing my deadline.”
She looks up from her screen for the first time. “You would do that?”
“Of course.” I try not to lose myself in the emotions swirling through her eyes. She was never very good at hiding her thoughts, especially not from me.
She sets her computer on the small side table, leaning forward, her elbows resting on her knees. “If we do this, Nick, I need for one thing to be clear.”
“You have no intention of giving me a second chance.” It hurts just to think the sentiment, let alone say it. But if the past couple of days have shown me anything, it’s this.
I didn’t come into this whole thing expecting a second chance. I didn’t even know if I really wanted a second chance. I couldn’t even allow myself to really want it, because I knew it would be so far out of reach.
