AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Of course,” I told her. “But if my dad was a famous actor, you better believe I’d be riding his coattails.”
She laughed and nudged me playfully. “I don’t believe you.”
The line inches forward, calling me back to the present.
Outside the floor to ceiling windows, planes take off and land in the gorgeous glittering Californian sun.
I think about mom out in the garden, leaning over the flowerbeds, in full hippie mode as she tends to her paradise.
“Are you going to work on the play?” Millie asks.
“I’m not sure. Sometimes I think I’m better just focusing on acting. It’s difficult enough to hone all those techniques without adding a bunch of writing on top, you know? Maybe I should leave the writing to other people.”
I can almost see the pensive way she’s stroking her chin. She always does that, even when I lightly tease her about it. “I know what you mean. But I do a little acting even if my main focus is writing. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
The line inches forward even more until I’m face to face with the airline employee. She gives me that blunt hurry the hell up look that seems to be their specialty.
“Listen, I have to go.”
“Okay,” Millie says. “And again, I’m—”
“Don’t you dare apologize again. See you later.”
“Bye, bye.”
I go through security and let my mind flit to what I’m going to do when I get to the cabin… That’s what Millie said, cabin, but somehow I don’t think it’s going to be a simple humble wooden structure.
But then again, I don’t know. Millie and I never discuss money, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
It simply isn’t part of our friendship.
As I board the airplane, I can’t help but think about Roman Robinson, Millie’s dad. Even if he’s one of the most successful writers in the world, I have no idea what he looks like. He’s been very careful about never releasing an image of himself, and Millie has never shown me a picture.
I know he raised Millie alone after her mother died in childbirth. I know he used to be an incredibly prolific writer until recently. He hasn’t released a book in the last three years, and Millie’s made hints here and there that he’s suffering from writer’s block.
It’s part of his mystique, part of what makes him so famous – his utter refusal to participate in public life.
It’s a testament to just how incredible his writing is too. What other author could get away with never appearing in public or online?
As I rest my head against the window and watch the ground drift away, I can’t figure out why my mind keeps returning to this mystery man. Perhaps it’s because I finished one of his books last night, a thriller called Sometimes in the Rain, and the last paragraph keeps bouncing around and around in my head.
There is a pain that will never leave, he wrote. It’s a pain that will hammer into you every second of every day for the rest of your life. And that, my friend, is the pain of not taking a chance: of not acting when the opportunity arises. It’s a pain that will haunt you long after you are gone, corrupting the flowers which attempt to grow around your grave. It is a pain…
And then the novel freaking ended, leaving me feeling enraptured, curious, and changed in some way, a feeling only great novels can achieve.
But none of that matters, I assure myself as the plane soars through the air.
This summer break is about relaxing and spending time with Millie.
Not thinking about her dad.
Chapter Two
Roman
I let out short puffs of air as I slam my fists into the punching bag, rocking it on its frame as I duck from side to side. It squeaks as it moves back and forth, beads of sweat flying from my bare chest and hitting the gym’s floor.
It’s like I can block out the thoughts with every punch – the thoughts that I can’t write a single goddamn word, can’t drag anything out of me.
I sit at the keyboard and stare at the screen and nothing happens.
All my life – I reflect as I pick up speed, hammering my fist like I’m pummeling my worst enemy – I’ve been able to sit at a computer and simply type.
That was all I had to do, sit and type, and as if by magic the words would flood the page, filling it up, up, up, until sometimes it felt like somebody else had written the book. It was like hypnosis or mindfulness or whatever the fuck people want to brand it.
I didn’t care what people called it, as long as it worked. As long as I could get rid of this clawing need inside of me, the need that’s always been there, this hole I’ve only ever been able to fill with writing.
