He clears his throat and scratches the back of his head.
“I think you write what feels the most natural to you.”
“Do I just picture it?”
He nods but doesn’t look up. “In a sense, sure. Think of how you feel, what you see, what surprises you, and even the smells surrounding you in that moment.”
Like his wintergreen breath last night when I was in his lap.
“All right, what if?—”
“Stop talking and write the scene,” he says, pointing at my computer.
“Ah, are you going to be this bossy the entire time we write?”
“Do you want me to be?”
I shrug. “Maybe, yeah.”
“I can do that.”
“Good.”
“Natalie?”
“Yes?”
“Please start writing.”
I smile and do as I’m told.
An hour later, we have officially switched scenes. His writing is captivating and sucks me in with just the first few lines. As he said, he wrote two scenes. One version has the couple meeting, and neither knows who the other is. The other has them meeting, but the heroine knows exactly who the hero is. She tries to resist him, but he’s funny and charming. She falls for him, and they have a one-night stand. Tobias notes in the next scene that she ends up getting pregnant. But surprise, the hero is still getting over his ex and has changed all his contact info so she can't find him to tell him about the baby. Two years later, he shows up in her small town to buy her family’s winery.
“I like the version where she knows who he is—it has higher stakes,” I say quickly. “And since it’s from the hero's point of view, we could use my scene as the second chapter. It could be the one-night stand from the heroine’s point of view.”
I rest my chin in my hands as I wait for him to respond.
“That could work. The setup is there, and it takes the reader right into the spice, which we want throughout the entire book.”
He doesn't look up when he says this, which bothers me. I wanted him to say more about my scene and not just the setup. Hell, it was my first scene. I want to know what he thinks about my writing. Am I any good? Is this all some dream of mine that will stay just a fantasy because my writing sucks?
“That’s it?”
He presses his lips into a thin line and nods. “Yeah.”
“How was my scene?”
I get up from my desk and move to stand next to him.
The bottom of my document is on his screen, so I know he read it.
“Was it that bad?” I ask, sitting on the edge of his desk and letting my shoulders drop. “I knew it.”
“No,” he clears his throat. “It’s good.”
I roll my eyes.
“You’re just saying that because I’m clearly sad now. This whole thing was stupid, wasn’t it? I’m such an amateur compared to you.”
