can’t mean much to him. But I still want to help him. I hate seeing him stuck and weighed down, and he so clearly is. “How about we get out of the house?” I suggest, since he is clearly struggling.
“Leave the house?”
“Yes. Do the impossible. Leave the house.” Being inside all the time can’t be good for him. All that stale air in that stuffy room. He needs fresh air, and I’m surprised he doesn’t know this. “It will be good for you. I’ll come with you, if you like.”
“And go where?” At least he’s considering the idea.
“To a coffee shop. Or a bar. Or, heck,” I throw my hands into the air. “We could even have dinner outside.” I should be mad at him for being so uncaring, and yet this is who I am. I do care that he’s struggling. I don’t want him to be stuck. I want him to get his book done on time. I want him to be happy.
Why can’t he act like he wants all these things for me?
“Dinner?” He wrinkles his nose, the idea is clearly not appealing.
I’m romantic and foolish and desperate to move what we have out of the bedroom and have it be more like a normal relationship. “We can do anything you want.”
He’s not even listening to me. His gaze is somewhere else, as if he’s thinking. “Maybe I should go and revisit where I used to live.”
This is unexpected, him sharing something personal with me. I leap at the opportunity. “We could do that. We should do that. It will be nice!”
“Nothing about it will be nice.” He clings to the handrail, his knuckles so tight that the skin is stretched taut.
“Then why do you want to go?” I ask, softly.
“Rob thought it would be a good idea.”
“You don’t always have to do everything Rob says.”
“He knows me better than I know myself sometimes.”
That hurts. Because I want to know him better than Rob does. “Then maybe we should go. It might help with your writing. Help you to get unstuck.”
He starts to go downstairs.
“Is that a yes?” I call after him.
“I’m still thinking about it.”
One day, when I’ve stopped working for Ward and he returns to New Orleans, I’ll tell Jamie what went on between me and the author he so admires, but I won’t tell him how much he breaks my heart.
Chapter 36
WARD
I’ve got my writing flow back now that I’m not frustrated or distracted. This new arrangement has been working. Mari’s rewards motivate me, as sick and perverted as it may seem. I no longer procrastinate because the carrot she dangles works, but lately, something new bristles beneath the surface of my skin and I can’t pinpoint what it is. The words come, but a melancholy sweeps through me and it affects me enough that I consider Mari’s suggestion to go outside.
I decide to do the thing I’ve been putting off. Although my mom died in a hospice far, far away from here, memories of the once happy home of my childhood still gnaw at me. It’s time to go and face it for one last time. Maybe that will help me put a lid on this part of my life so that I can move on. At least I now have a taste of new things to look forward to: Mari, finishing a book, having a film release, a return home.
I catch her by surprise at lunchtime when I tell her that I want to go. “Do you want me to come along?” she asks.
“Only if you want.”
“I don’t have that much cleaning to do.”
That settles it. I give her the address and she agrees to drive me there but stepping out of the house together, just the two of us outside of our roles, it feels strange. Is our relationship tied to the confines of the house and, more specifically, the bed, or can I dare to envision something more with this woman?
As she drives, Mari is quiet, as if she too can sense the awkwardness, because she’s normally a chatty person.
When we get there, I climb out of the car and stare up at the dilapidated building. It looks so much smaller from how I remember it. The paint is chipped and the door is a different color. The grass is straw-like and a pale, patchy shade of green. I remember how my mom used to take pride in this little patch of green. How she would water it and tend