walk. What are you going to do?”
“Drink coffee. And try to ignore my overly perky roommate.”
“I’ve got all this energy!” To prove it, she turned two tight pirouettes.
He answered that with a sleepy, sour look.
“I’ll go shower and change first. That’ll give you time to wake up before bacon and eggs.”
“Deal. Take your perky self upstairs. I’m going to take this coffee . . .” He circled a finger at the door.
“Outside.”
“Yeah, there.” He rubbed his eyes, managed a smile. “It’s annoying as fuck, but perky looks good on you.”
“Feels good. Breakfast in thirty,” she called out as she bounded from the room.
She served it on the patio. It might’ve been a bit chilly, but not too. And it wasn’t raining. Yet.
“Blog’s good, Breen.” He shoveled eggs in his mouth like a man starving. “Just gets better and better.”
“Because everything’s better and better.” She looked out at the water, softly blue as the sun pushed light through the clouds, and at the birds that skimmed along, the boat—red as a stop sign—plying its way.
“I love it here. I know it hasn’t even been a day, but I love it here.”
“It suits you.” He studied her as he bit into a slice of the brown bread she’d toasted. “What you wrote at the end of your blog? I think that’s true.”
“I hope it is. I do want that walk—and I need to get a bird book to go with my flower book. There are so many of them, and I want to know what they are. And it’s a little scary, but I want to sit down today and try to write. Not blog, but write a story. Or start to.”
He hefted his coffee mug, tapped it to hers. “Then that’s what you’ll do.”
“You aimed me that way, toward writing. Trying to.”
“Maybe.” Then he grinned at her. “You can give a girl a nudge, but she has to take the step, right? Anyway, I’ll stay out of your hair so you can concentrate. I think I’ll take a trip into the village. I can poke around, scout out someplace we can go when we want to eat out, where there’s music.”
“That would be great. There are lots of places to see, and we can plan routes.”
“But not today.” To prove it, he shot out his legs, crossed his ankles. “Close to home today.”
“Exactly. Remember that pledge we made the night we moved into our apartment?”
“Oh yeah. If neither of us find the love of our lives, you and me live together forever.”
“Still on?”
“Damn straight, girl.”
She’d be happy with that, Breen thought as she set out on her walk. In a lot of ways, Marco was the love of her life. Just minus the sex. And sex wasn’t that big a deal—especially when you weren’t having it anyway.
She walked along the narrow strip of beach first, letting the wind stream over her hair, her scarf, her jacket. And letting her mind roll toward the story she wanted to tell.
Maybe she didn’t know exactly how to start, but it was time to sit down and try. In fact, it was past time. Though she looked with considerable yearning toward the woods, she walked back to the cottage.
No excuses, she told herself. She had an empty cozy house without distractions and a solid space of time. Maybe it was good the entire idea of trying to write, of trying to be a writer made her anxious.
Maybe she’d write better nervous.
She took a jug of water to her desk, opened her laptop.
She spent what felt like hours staring at the screen, fingers poised on the keyboard.
Then her fingers began to move.
A blue moon rose the night the visitor came to call, and Clara’s life changed forever.
That first sentence cracked open a dam inside her, and Breen wrote in a flood for two hours.
When she surfaced, she found herself astonished to see she’d filled eight pages with words.
Some of them—most, she thought—were probably terrible. Or worse, even worse, just silly. But she’d written them.
She poured a glass of water, downed it. She got up, paced the room, walked outside, paced some more. And realized she wasn’t done.
This time she got a Coke to fortify her, used the little buzz to write for another two hours.
Though it terrified her, she went back to the beginning, began to read. She caught herself second-guessing, fiddling, even considering tossing it all out and starting again.
Then realized she had to stop, step away, let it all just sit. She’d pick it