Just one more.
I was good at romance. Great at it, even. But I couldn’t for the life of me write this one. Every time I tried, it felt wrong.
Like I was missing something.
It should’ve been easy—a grand romantic gesture, a beautiful proposal, a happily ever after. The kind my parents had, and I’d spent my entire life looking for one just as grand. I wrote them into novels while I looked for my real-life equivalent in men at bars wearing sloppy ties or wrinkled T-shirts, and strangers who stole glances at me on the train, bad idea after bad idea.
I just wanted what my parents had. I wanted to walk into a ballroom dancing club and meet the love of my life. Mom and Dad weren’t even assigned to each other as dance partners until their respective partners both came down with the flu, and the rest, they say, was history. They’d been married for thirty-five years, and it was the kind of romance that I’d only ever found again in fiction. They fought and disagreed, of course, but they always came back together like a binary star, dancing with each other through life. It was the small moments that tied them together—the way Dad touched the small of her back whenever he passed her, the way Mom kissed his bald spot on the top of his head, the way they held hands like kids whenever we went out to dinner, the way they defended each other when they knew the other was right, and talked patiently when they were wrong.
Even after all of their kids moved out, I heard they still cranked up the stereo in the parlor and danced across the ancient cherrywood floors to Bruce Springsteen and Van Morrison.
I wanted that. I searched for that.
And then I realized, standing in the rain that April evening, almost a year ago exactly—I’d never have that.
I took another gulp of wine, glaring at my screen. I had to do this. I didn’t have a choice. Whether it was good or not—I had to turn in something.
“Maybe . . .”
The evening was soggy, and the cold rain struck through her like a deathly chill. Amelia stood in the rain, wet and shivering. She should’ve taken her umbrella, but she wasn’t thinking. “Why are you here?”
Jackson, for his part, was equally as wet and cold. “I don’t know.”
“Then leave.”
“That’s not very romantic,” I muttered, deleting the scene, and drained the rest of my glass. Again.
Nighttime on the Isle was supposed to be magical, but tonight’s rain was especially cold and heavy. Amelia’s clothes clung to her like a second skin. She wrapped her jacket around herself tighter, to shield against the biting cold.
Jackson said, his breath coming in a puff of frost, “I didn’t think the ice queen could get cold.”
She punched him.
“Yeah, great job.” I sighed, and deleted that one, too. Amelia and Jackson were supposed to be reconciling, coming back from the dark night of the soul, and stepping into the light together. This was the grand romance at the end, the big finale that every Ann Nichols book had, and every reader expected.
And I couldn’t write this fucking scene.
I was a failure, and Ann’s career was dead in the water.
There was little more depressing than that, save for the state of my refrigerator and cabinets. All that we had left was dino-shaped mac and cheese. Perfect depression food, at least. As I pulled the box from the cabinet, my roommate burst in through the door, slinging her purse down on the couch.
“Fuck the man!” she cried.
“Fuck the man,” I intoned religiously.
“All of them!” Rose stormed into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and began to stress eat carrots out of the container. Rose Wu had been my roommate in college, but she’d graduated a year early and moved up to NYC to pursue a career in advertising. A year ago, she had a spare room. So, I moved in, and that was that. She was my best friend and the best thing about this whole damn city rolled into one.