Page 27 of Not a Strong Enough Word

Well, that is as close to permission as I’m going to get. It’s practically the end of the day anyway. I grab my keys and am out the door before I can think better of it.

Ultimately, I settle on tacos. I would have gone for her favorite—deep-dish pizza—but I didn’t want to wait for it when my drive from the suburbs to her apartment was already going to be at least forty-five minutes, and there are too many bad jokes to be made about being the pizza-delivery guy.

One of the best dates we ever had was at a hole-in-the-wall taco joint where we ordered one of everything. The entire menu. So I find a similar spot on the way and order one of every kind of taco they have available, and that is how I find myself thanking someone in Scarlett’s building for holding the door for me—conveniently allowing me to bypass the buzzer—and making my way up to her fifth-floor apartment.

My heart is in my throat as I grip a full bag of tacos in each hand and wait for the elevator to take me up to her floor. Either her elevator is ridiculously slow or my nerves are altering my sense of time. Hard to say, because I felt the same way when I was here the other day, too.

Finally, the elevator spits me out on the fifth floor, and I walk the few feet to Scarlett’s door. I knock, then wait. Nothing. There’s no light filtering out from beneath the door, no sound of anyone moving around inside. It’s almost as if she’s not home. For a moment, I’m equal parts disappointed I won’t see her and overjoyed she’s venturing out of her apartment. If she’s going out, she’s okay. But I knock one more time anyway, just to be sure.

“It’s open,” comes Scarlett’s muffled voice. It’s hard to tell through the door, but she sounds hoarse.

The first thing that hits me when I open the door is a faint musky smell, like someone has left garbage sit for too long without taking it out. Sure enough, when I glance toward her kitchen, dishes are piled high in the sink, and several take-out containers litter the countertops.

When I step further into the apartment, I can see the television is replaying a silent teaser for a baking competition. Scarlett is sprawled out on her couch, her satin pajamas rumpled up over her calves. She has one sock on, and one foot bare, and her hair covers most of her face.

Papers are strewn about the kitchen table. I push enough of them aside to clear a space for the bags of tacos. She still hasn’t looked my way by the time I’ve deposited them onto the table, and I wonder if she’s been making a habit of letting anyone into her apartment who comes knocking. And then I wonder if anyone has come knocking, and the realization that no one has causes an ache in my chest.

“Not interested in watching actual baking?” I’m trying for lighthearted teasing, but the question sounds strained, even to my ears.

Scarlett’s body goes stiff at the sound of my voice. She clearly wasn’t expecting me, but she doesn’t make a move to lift herself from the couch or even turn in my direction. “I finished it. The bald guy won.”

“When did you finish?”

“What time is it?”

I check my watch. “Five thirty.”

She groans and turns her face so it’s buried in a throw pillow. “Three and a half hours ago.”

I don’t have a lot of experience dealing with people who are in a depressive episode, but my best guess is that if I act alarmed or shame her in any way, she’ll only sink deeper into whatever mood she’s in. So I simply walk around the couch and tap her feet in a signal for her to move them over. She does, and I sit far enough away so I’m not touching her.

“What’s going on, beautiful?” The nickname slips out, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She just curls her legs into her chest and stares at the television screen.

“Trina told me to take a break, so I did. But…” She trails off and swallows audibly. Her lips are cracked, and her eyes are half-closed. I consider sitting on my hands so as not to touch her, but I clasp them in my lap instead while I wait for her to continue.

“I don’t know what to do with myself when I’m not writing,” she finally says. Her voice cracks, and my heart cracks wide open with it. She draws in a shaky breath but doesn’t cry.

“What did you do after you quit?” If I can find out what has been working for her, I can help her replicate it, surely.

She huffs a laugh. “Traveled. And…this, mostly. For about a year until Trina dragged me to see a therapist. And a psychiatrist. Then…” She trails off again, then shakes her head slightly as if she’s shaking off a memory. “Well, I never stopped writing. Not really. It was never writing that was the problem.”

Before she disappeared, Scarlett had been frustrated with me for being unable to understand how publishing had ruined writing for her. Truth be told, I could never grasp how that could be the case. For me, the magic was in the revisions that came along with publishing. The way I saw it, she would write something for herself, and the editors would help turn it into something for an audience. It was a symbiotic relationship for everyone involved—Scarlett got to write, we got to revise and reshape, and the readers got to enjoy her work. But the further into the process she got, the more she hated it. I tried to tell her to hold out for the next deal. I even worked behind the scenes to push for a much better offer than they were going to give her. The hard work was going to pay off for her in a way she deserved. But it wasn’t enough.

“I’m glad you kept writing,” I say simply.

“Yeah, you’ve got another bestseller on your hands if you play your cards right.”

Even in all of our conversations before her breakdown, I don’t think I’ve ever heard her sound so bitter. It hurts to hear her sound so jaded. I frown down at her, but she doesn’t look at me. She just stares vacantly ahead.

Something about the raw vulnerability she’s showing me makes it all the more important for me to make her understand that it was never about editing a bestseller for me. “After you left, I didn’t know what to do with myself.” I don’t know why I decide to go down this road, but there’s no turning back now. “I kept going to work, but not because I wanted to. At first, I think the only thing that kept me going was sheer hope that maybe one day, you’d show up again. And then I needed to pay my bills, I guess. I signed authors, got promoted, did decently well. But none of those books were memorable in any way. Not like yours. And then Becoming landed on my desk. It woke me up, Scarlett. It meant something. I haven’t felt like that since the last page I read of yours.”

She rolls her head slightly so she can look at me. The bags under her eyes are intensely purple. She looks five years older than the last time I saw her. I want to pull her close to me and soothe away every negative emotion clouding her head.

“You’re so dramatic,” she teases, though the words come out flat, as if she doesn’t have enough energy to put any bite into them.

“Like you said, some things never change.”

A corner of her mouth tips up slightly, then falls. Her eyes drop with it, staring into space again. “Do you think I can change? Do you think I can ever publish books and be happy at the same time?”