Beau let out a huff at that and gestured to the food as he sat down across from her. “Be my guest.”
Izzy supposed he meant that as an invitation to serve herself, so she did. She even poured herself some more wine. Why not? She took a bite of a taco and almost let out a moan. These might be the best tacos she’d ever had. Had Michaela made all this, just spontaneously? And with a sprained ankle? She tried the slaw and opened her eyes wide. Wow, rich people really did have great lives. She’d only given herself two tacos, but she was already looking forward to her third. Maybe even her fourth. She might as well take advantage of this while she could.
She took another sip of wine and glanced at Beau. Why was he looking at her like that? Like just the sight of her made him mad. He was the one who had invited her to dinner, or did he not remember that? Well, if that counted as an invitation.
He looked away for a second and then looked back at her. “Okay, go,” he said.
Izzy tilted her head and looked at him. Wow, that tone in his voice infuriated her. “Excuse me?” Had no one ever taught this guy to say please or thank you? “Go?”
He nodded. “Yes, go. You said you gave great pep talks. Well? Show me what you can do.”
Izzy stared at him for a moment over her glass of wine. Fine, okay. She would show him what she could do.
“Okay, you want to get right to it.” She set her wineglass down on the table. “Great. Why don’t you tell me what your struggles have been with the book so far? When I know what you’re dealing with, I’ll be better able to help and to give advice.”
Beau picked up a taco. “No,” he said, and took a bite.
Izzy took a deep breath. “No?”
He finished chewing. “No. I’m not going to tell you my ‘struggles.’” That sarcastic tone in his voice made her want to throw her glass of wine in his face. She took a gulp of it, just to remind herself not to waste good wine. “I don’t have to tell you anything. That wasn’t part of the deal. The deal was that you give me a pep talk. So, like I said. Go.”
He’d apparently invited her to dinner just to make her perform for him. Luckily, she was good at this. In college, she’d worked as a writing tutor, and while a lot of that work was on the page, even more of it was talking to writers, encouraging them, listening to their problems and helping them figure out solutions. It was one of the things that had made her good at this part of her job. Izzy took another long sip of wine and set her glass on the table.
“Okay. One thing I often tell writers is to just get words on the page. It’s impossible to work with a blank page, but as long as you have a first draft—no matter how bad you think it is, or how much work you think it needs—that’s a victory right there. I know it feels overwhelming to write a whole book—don’t think about it like that. Just think about it step-by-step, page by page.”
He was looking straight at her, and seemed to be…listening? Paying attention? She hadn’t really expected that. She drained the wine from her glass and kept going.
“Just give yourself an hour a day to start with: You can even break it up into thirty minutes at a time, or even fifteen minutes, if you’re feeling antsy. Just write as much as you can during that time, and don’t let yourself edit or stress about it, just go.”
Izzy was getting invested in this. Maybe, despite everything, she could actually get through to Beau Towers.
“You also don’t have to write in chronological order! I know that trips people up a lot—they hit a difficult scene, or in a memoir, a difficult period in their life, and they just stall. Instead, you can jump around. Write your way into it. Start with favorite memories as a kid, or a pivotal moment in your life, a conversation you overheard once that you always think about, a time you stayed up all night, whatever stands out to—”
Beau burst out laughing. It was that mean laughter again. Directed at her.
No wonder this jerk lived alone in this house. He’d clearly been expelled from society.
“Is that all you’ve got?” he said, still with that mean look on his face. “Start with a pivotal moment in my life. Wow, what insight. Anything else?”
Izzy looked at him for one long moment. She forced herself to blink back the angry tears that had come to her eyes.
She was furious at herself for almost crying because of something Beau Towers, of all people, said to her. But she was even more furious at Beau Towers for saying it.
She didn’t have to do this. She was already sick of her job, and she’d already done far more than she’d had to here. She neither wanted to, nor had to, smile at this asshole.