Page 47 of People Skills

‘Which ones have you read?’

‘What would happen if I said I’ve actually read none of them?’

‘You would have your degree rescinded and your author bio updated accordingly.’ And I definitely should never have kissed you, I mentally add.

‘I’ve seen the movie.’

‘The movie? Which one?’ As if there is one singular Jane Austen adaptation.

‘The Pride and Prejudice one. From the nineties.’

‘The BBC miniseries was from the nineties, the film you’re thinking of was ten years later. Anyway. Start with Northanger Abbey, and we’ll work our way through them all in the order she wrote them.’ My neck is almost hurting from how stiffly I am holding it, keeping my eyes on his face and refusing to look at his naked chest.

‘And what’s this for?’ He holds up the notebook.

‘Your ten minutes of writing.’

‘I was hoping we could forget about that.’

‘The actual writing part is kind of important to overcoming writer’s block. Hold the pen to the paper, move it and just keep going. Don’t think about it. You can just write the same word over and over.’

‘What’s the point of that?’

‘Muscle memory. Get your hands moving and your mind will follow.’

‘Has this worked for anybody you know?’

‘It’s a version of morning pages. From The Artist’s Way.’ He has spent four years faffing around and not even bothered tackling the classic craft books. For god’s sake.

‘Okay,’ he says.

‘Goodnight.’

‘Wait,’ he says, as I turn away.

I turn back. He spins the pen in his fingers, and it speaks to the absolute weakened state of my mind that I find this sexy. Apparently now anything he does is sexy.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t write. Not yet. I just…can’t.’

‘Okay, lie on your bed and think about what you might write about if you could write.’

He smiles at my drunken babble. ‘Think about what I might write about?’

‘Yes. Think about notable events of your day, that could go in a novel.’

‘Notable events of my day, huh,’ he says, raising his eyebrows, and I feel my face flush.

‘Not the, not what happened on the beach. Don’t think about that. Ever again. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ he says, grinning.

‘Just go to bed and go to sleep,’ I say, and then I reach out my hand (mistake) and push his bare chest (second mistake), so that he steps back into his room. He smiles at me, and I reach in and grab the door handle and shut his door.

My hand feels hot where I touched him. I press it to my cheek, which is definitely still flushed and hot. Damn it.

Later, I lie in bed, tossing and turning. I feel wide awake, a knot of adrenaline still in my chest. Why did I touch his hair? Why did I kiss him? How am I going to make sure it never happens again? Should I tell him to move out? No, I just need to make sure we never drink wine again and we never play chess again and he never plays the piano again and we never walk on the beach at night again. Was it the specific combination of those activities or could any one of them lead to kissing? I need to bring the screens back. Double our screen exposure, get more screens in here. I should go out and just buy some huge computer screens and set up a desk with three monitors running. Screens in every room.

I pick up The Deep, and start reading it. This book is nothing like The Bird House. It’s about a man who gets the bends after diving, and his symptoms get weirder and weirder as he descends into a kind of madness and his life falls apart. It’s tense, and strange, and sometimes funny, and claustrophobic. The book itself is good. It draws you in immediately, but it doesn’t give you the same feelings as The Bird House. It’s creepy, it’s uncomfortable, and the focus is so singularly on one character, it’s hard to invest in anyone else. I underline good sentences as I read. There are lots of them. I can see what he’s doing, and he’s not doing it badly, it’s just such a jarring departure from the big, warm family saga of his first novel that his fans felt betrayed. He didn’t understand what they wanted from him, or maybe he did and he didn’t care. Maybe he thought, you want warmth and humour, well here’s a weird, unlikeable man going mad instead.