Page 153 of Where Roads Lead

“I know,” she insisted, wide-eyed and surprisingly genuine. “So, looks like you guys worked things out then, huh?”

“Looks like it,” I agreed, not wanting to discuss anything about my relationship with Elsie with her.

It felt private. Like something sacred to protect.

“So, she’s staying then?” she couldn’t help but ask.

“I hope so,” I told her bluntly. “But I don’t know. And I don’t want to give her any excuse to not, so whatever it takes for you to be okay with it, I need you to do that. If you want things to be good between you and me, you need to fix things with her. Okay?”

She stared at me, as if sizing me up—trying to see just how much I meant it.

But I wouldn’t waver. I was more serious about this than I’d been about anything else in my life.

I guessed Ava could see it because when she responded, it was one word. Acknowledgment and acceptance, all at once.

“Okay.”

Chapter Forty-Four

Elsie

Iwas stupid to think I could slip seamlessly into a brand new life without any obstacles.

One of the most urgent being the balance on my checking account, which was dwindling down to nothing.

Will fed and caffeinated me. But even with all those massive expenses lifted, it was glaringly obvious that I couldn’t sustain this life for much longer.

I’d paid for the rental until mid-December, three months from the date I arrived, because I thought working on a time crunch might help to motivate me.

But now, with just weeks to spare, I was scrambling for options of what to do next, being both penniless and unemployed.

I couldn’t tell Will, because he would want to fix it, and no matter how well things were going between us, I couldn’t drop the bomb that his girlfriend of three days was practically bankrupt.

Thinking it over, my plan had never made any sense in the first place. I was supposed to come here, write a manuscript, and prove to myself that I had it in me to do what no one in my life thought me capable of doing.

Finish something. Follow my own path. Create something for myself by myself.

Stupidly, I assumed that following my dreams could lead me toward a life that might not quite be what my mother envisioned for me, but still successful in its own way.

Part of me had some delusional idea that maybe I could present her with a finished story and say, look, I did this. Are you proud of me now?

But as I read it over, I realized how ridiculous I’d been all along. Why would my mother care about a silly novel? How would that make my rejection of her carefully laid out plans for my life any less obstinate?

Her friends’ children were lawyers and CEOs, and doctors. They had drive and ambition and focus and all the things she’d always reminded me I lacked.

And she was right. I was twenty-six years old, damn it, with absolutely nothing to show for it.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I said, ripping pages from my notebook of meaningless fluff. “No one is ever going to want to read this. All I did was waste my time.”

And as someone in their twenties, wasting time was just about the scariest thing in the world.

Second only to the sound of your door flying open while you stare at it, helpless and unmoving, wondering if maybe Michael Myers really was real after all.

“Geez, lady, you don’t look so good.” The man walked into the kitchen, staring at me skeptically as he made his way toward the fridge.

My heart only stopped its erratic pounding when I realized it who it was.

“Geez, lady?” I gasped incredulously. “You threw my door open like a maniac, Wayne. What are you doing here?”