Finding Mr. Write (Business of Love #5) - Ali Parker Page 0,16
the kind of stress that will turn my stomach into knots.”
“Am I not your target audience? I’m good at constructive feedback. I swear.”
He licked his lips.
“You don’t have to,” I said. “I’m just curious. And I love to read. And I want to know just what kind of writer you are, Wes. You’re tricky to figure out.”
“Women like a bit of mystery, don’t they?”
Damn him for always having a sly question prepared. “Sometimes.”
He surprised me by sliding the notebook across the bar to me. He patted the cover before flipping it open. Random scribblings filled the first two pages. Most of it had been aggressively crossed out. There were small notes written in the columns. Then as the pages went on, the scratch-outs grew fewer and farther between, like he’d found his rhythm.
I looked from the book up to him. “You’re sure?”
“Go ahead.”
I leaned over the notebook. His writing was elegant and somewhat old fashioned. It reminded me of the kind of writing one might see on an old love letter a soldier sent his woman back in the first or second World War.
A blue bird with a white puffed-up chest chirped outside the window while she swept the broken pieces of china into the dustpan. Fragmented flowers made a messy puzzle in the pan and she paused, staring down at it, lips turned down in a frown.
It had been the last one left of her mother’s china set. The first broke two years ago when a family friend knocked it off the coffee table. The second fell from the cabinet when she hit the leg with the vacuum cleaner. The third broke in the sink when it was struck with a metal pot. And now the fourth had crumbled to pieces after she hurled it at the floor.
She remembered drinking tea out of the flowery cups after dinner on special occasions with her mother and grandmother. Sometimes, they would have shortbread cookies or biscotti. Sometimes, they would talk. Sometimes, they wouldn’t. Regardless, the memories were fond and the cups were whole.
Unlike now.
She rose to her feet, opened the cupboard under the kitchen sink, and poured the debris of her mother’s last china cup into the garbage can. Her throat tightened, her eyes burned, and she closed the cupboard fiercely so she didn’t have to face what she’d done.
What she’d lost.
Why did everything she touch fall to ruin? Why couldn’t she keep things together? Why had she been plagued with the inevitability of destruction from the moment she left him that night, staring after her under a blanket of stars as she drove away in the back of a taxi that smelled like breath mints and cigarettes?
Why hadn’t she stayed?
Why hadn’t he fought for her?
Katelyn slid down the length of the cupboard, drew her knees to her chest and her hands to her face, and cried out the years of frustration that had turned her heart to stone.
I looked up from the page where the words ended and frowned. “That’s all there is so far?”
“There’s more before this. Plenty more. But it’s not refined. This is…” Wes trailed off. “It needs less work than the rest of it. Let’s put it that way.”
“It’s really good.”
“You have to say that. I’m sitting right here.”
“I mean it,” I pressed. And I did. The words were beautiful and sad. The woman was as broken and hollow as the cup she’d broken and I needed to know who this man was that she’d left behind—and I needed to know why he hadn’t followed her. “What happens in the end?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
I blinked in surprise. “What do you mean, you’re not sure? It’s your book! They’re your characters.”
Wes laughed and took his notebook back. “Yeah, you’re right. I have an idea of where it’s going. A destination, so to speak. But when I write, I have a tendency to take back roads and sometimes they lead to unexpected places. For all I know, this could end entirely differently than I see it in my head.”
“Which is how?”
“You’ll just have to wait until it’s finished to find out.”
It sounded to me like I might have just made my first friend in New York City. “Deal.”
Wes slid his notebook into his bag and checked the watch on his wrist. “Damn, it’s getting pretty late. This place closes in another half hour.”
“I should get back to my motel anyway. I have a big day ahead of me tomorrow.” I slid off my stool and collected my jacket.