Page 155 of Where Roads Lead

“I don’t know. I guess I wrote it more for myself than an audience, and now I can’t imagine anyone else who might be invested in the fictionalized drama of my life.”

“Can I ask you something?” He leaned forward and didn’t wait for me to nod before he said, “If even one person read your manu-whatever—”

“Manuscript,” I added.

“Right. That. If even one person read it and got excited about it, wouldn’t that be worth it?”

“Well.” I mulled it over, thinking of a finished work with my name on it, the product of a lifetime’s worth of dreams in my hands. “Yeah. I guess it would be.”

“Then, why can’t that one person be you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, even if no one else likes it, or even reads it for that matter, if it’s something that made sense to you, then what’s the harm in seeing it through?”

“What if it never makes me any money?”

“Not much in this world ever does. The question is, are you writing because you love it, or are you writing it just to make a buck?”

“I love it,” I told him honestly. “I definitely love it.”

Subconsciously or not, I poured so much of myself into it, and knew that at any point in the future I could pick it up and be transported back to this specific period in my life. That was the power of words. The magic of writing that I’d always loved so deeply.

“Then,” he said, standing from his seat, “keep doing what you love. A happy life is better than a rich life, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, you think so?” I stared at him hopefully.

But Wayne just shrugged and headed for the door.

“How would I know? I’m thirty six and live with my mother.”

Despite my best intentions, I laughed.

“You tell Will I cheered his girlfriend up.” Wayne pointed a finger and a thumbs up in my direction. “Maybe he’ll throw me an extra few bucks.”

When he left, I sat down and wrote, filling pages of my notebook with everything that had been building up inside of me.

Some of it was good, some of it was decidedly less than, but the important thing was, I wasn’t doing it for anyone else.

I was only writing for me.

Chapter Forty-Five

Will

Iwish that the first family dinner I was bringing Elsie to was a normal Friday night dinner and not a national holiday.

Only because it felt like it added pressure, and I didn’t want her to be nervous. My family would love her. Ava would behave. And I would just be grateful she stayed in Colbridge with me.

Let’s just say that I didn’t poke too many holes in Elsie’s obviously fabricated excuses for why she wasn’t going back to Boston for Thanksgiving.

I didn’t want her to think too hard about it and change her mind.

The only regret I had was that Matthew wouldn’t be there.

It hurt knowing they’d never meet each other. They would never laugh together, or find some annoying bond they would inevitably form through taunting me.

I would’ve rolled my eyes at them, pretending to be annoyed, while secretly revelling in the fact that the two most important people in my life were getting along.