This Is My Brain in Love - I. W. Gregorio Page 0,68
but I’m still hurt that she edited my script, and I don’t think I could stand it if she overruled me again. After the third time I answer, “Whatever you think,” she stops asking.
“Well, I’ve gotta get going. The Patel wedding is tonight, and my mom wants us to go do Mehndi and hair with the cousins.” Priya rolls her eyes. Normally, I would groan and commiserate with her about how annoyed she’s going to be by her cousins, but today I can’t do more than just smile tightly. There’s something raw festering inside me, and I’m afraid that if I open my mouth, all that ugliness will ooze out.
I had planned on doing a script breakdown after Priya left, maybe double-checking her shot list, but just seeing the Pot Sticker file on my desktop is like picking at a scab. Instead I bring up Word and look at the draft that I wrote of my statement of purpose for JBP. I stayed up well past midnight to finish it, using a strategy one of my English teachers gave us for dealing with writer’s block: She told us to turn off our monitors so that we didn’t let what we had already written interfere with what we were going to write next.
Mrs. Wilson had a lot of other pithy little things to say, little literary pep talks. “Remember that the enemy of good is better. Don’t let your quest to be perfect stop you from being great. Never be afraid of writing a cruddy first draft.”
Me, perfect? As if.
Still smarting from Priya’s comments on my script, I can feel the sense of inadequacy welling up inside me as I look at my personal statement. Except maybe that’s the wrong metaphor. It’s not a hole that I need filled with positive reinforcement; it’s a gap in the weave of my life—something that affects my whole fabric.
I’m staring at my mess of a first draft, wondering how the heck I’m supposed to turn it into a marginally readable second draft, when there’s a knock on our door.
It’s Will, and seeing him makes my heart do a little jig despite my mood. It makes me feel off-kilter to have my soul in the dumps when my heart is singing. I glance at the clock when I open the door. “Alan should be back in a few minutes. His friend’s birthday party should be winding down. I know my mom was on her way to pick him up.”
“No, that’s okay,” says Will, grinning crookedly. “It’s nice to see you. Does that mean…” He glances around our living room.
“Yeah, no chaperone for the next few minutes. I finished a draft of my essay, I think.”
“Really?” Will says, eyes wide. “Want me to take a look at it?”
On the one hand, I feel so vulnerable that I can’t stand to expose any other parts of myself right now. On the other hand, Will’s a writer. And inexplicably, he sees the best of me. Maybe he’s the only one who can help.
The instant I blurt out “Sure!” I second-guess myself. But there’s no going back—Will’s already leaning toward my laptop, eyes glued on the screen. I feel a faint sense of nausea. I’m suddenly terrified that he’ll think that it’s horrible, that it will completely and irrevocably ruin his opinion of me. I mean, what could be more of a turnoff to an editor than a piece-of-shit writer?
“You know, maybe this isn’t the best time,” I say as he sits down. I reach out to shut my laptop, but it’s too late. Will’s hand gently holds my arm away, and he exclaims, “That’s a terrific lede. What a great first line.”
I watch helplessly as he hunkers over my laptop, brow furrowed, eyes darting. He’s concentrating so hard his mouth opens a little. After a grand total of five seconds, I have to look away. I walk over to pick up the catalog on our coffee table and page through it.
I can tell when Will sits back in his chair that he’s done. He doesn’t say anything at first, and I want to die on the spot. He must have hated it. My eyes are fixed on the stupid little hangnail on my left thumb, and I’m a millisecond away from saying that I have to go to the bathroom and curling up in the fetal position on my bed, when Will calls my name.
“Jocelyn.” His voice is so soft, so filled with wonder that it stops my