Chapter 37 - The Write Off

Present Day

New York is freezing when I land at JFK. It’s cloudy and gray in that way that screams seasonal depression. The subway line to my apartment is down, because that only ever happens on what is already the worst day of your life, and it takes more than two miserable hours to get home. Inside, my fridge is empty, the air smells stale, and there’s a pile of mouse poop in the corner by my bed. I have the jarring realization that I wouldn’t care about any of that if West were with me, followed by the even harsher understanding that he would be with me if only I’d asked him to come.

New York hasn’t felt less like home since my first summer here.

I never blamed Daphne for leaving the city, but I feel the sharp ache of her absence now more than ever. I’m so tired of being alone. I’ve learned to live with it, but at the moment it feels less like living and more like existing.

As I sit in the middle of my empty apartment, I scroll through the Notes app statements on my phone, unable to believe I’ve become such a cliché. Another author mired in internet scandal. I numbly delete the statements defending West. What I end up posting doesn’t mention his name at all.

Hi, Torchers! Festival schedules are often changed last minute and without any input from the participants, which is what happened to me at the Tucson Festival of Books. I will never tolerate or excuse any hate toward my readers, and I don’t associate with people who do. I’m thankful for all of you, and I can’t wait to see you on tour for my new book, Shattered, which hits shelves SOON!

I wonder if it’s vaguely tacky to promote myself in a Notes-app non-apology but decide that I don’t care. I type Love, Mars but delete it right before I hit post. For some reason, the move gives me a tiny buzz of vindication. The ones who will care about this note are the same ones who spent the last few days dragging West and me through the mud. I don’t have to love them right now. I just have to give them what they want.

Next, I email Whitney and tell her not to postpone the release or cancel my events. I swear that I’m mentally capable of handling the job and that my name won’t be associated with another scandal. I promise to keep my head down.

I’m too hollow to cry. My head and my chest and my limbs ache in a way that is unfamiliar and terrifying. Losing West has never felt quite like this. The days that follow are an endless stretch of gray wanting. At first, they move too slow. Every hour feels like ten. As my book tour gets closer, however, time plays tricks on me. I blink, and the sun has moved halfway across the sky.

The first morning of the tour comes too quickly, and I’m scrambling to get out the door. Just as I turn off the lights, I realize I have nothing to read on the plane, not even my Kindle, which I forgot at West’s. I scan my bookshelf for whatever will distract me from my life, but I’m not in the mood for any of it. I don’t want to read about people falling in love or casting spells or solving mysteries. I drag my finger across spines, stalling on a little black book I’ve never even opened. I put it in my bag with a heavy sigh. What could it hurt? I can’t possibly be sadder than I already am.

I sleep on the flight to LA, where a car picks me up and drives me straight to the first bookstore, giving me plenty of time stuck in traffic to stew in my own nerves. I write a dozen disaster scenarios in my head, each one ending in my utter humiliation because no one shows up, or they do and it’s a joke, or they film me saying the wrong thing, or, or, or.

The event is standing room only, with a line out the door. The store sells out of stock. People cry. (Not me.) I see fae ears and Fox T-shirts and a teenage girl with a tail. It gives me some reassurance to know that the fandom is alive and well and that these books exist in a universe that in some ways has nothing to do with me. A woman close to my mom’s age shows up with seventeen books for me to sign: foreign editions, movie tie-in covers, original hardcovers, and more.

This is exactly the moment I’ve been dreaming of since I wrote the first chapter of Shattered, my book about a magical world that’s lost its magic and the girl on a quest to restore it. I was broken when I started, but writing this book brought me back to life. It gave me a reason to get out of bed again. I carved out writing spots all over the city. I cried and complained with Daphne. I fell back in love with stories and characters and the feeling of writing something with zero expectations.

All that work and dreaming led to this moment. For years, this was my North Star; this success would make me happy again.

“You ready to go?” a voice asks.

“What?”

“We’re closing up the store.”

I blink back to reality. The bookstore is empty except for a handful of employees watching me warily.

A car drives me to the hotel. I’m too tired to keep my eyes open—until the second my head hits the pillow. I stare at the ceiling and wait for sunrise.

The next day, I do it again.

* * *

The day before the premiere, Daphne flies into LA and takes me dress shopping at the Grove.

“How do you want to look?” she asks as we sort through evening gowns in the dressing room at Nordstrom. “Dramatic? Whimsical?”

I push aside dresses with sequins and bows and pretty, iridescent fabric. “Invisible.” The last thing I want is to be perceived. My plan is to show up, watch the movie, check this off the to-do list, and move on to my next event. Two signings in, and I’m already counting down the days until this tour is over.

Daphne turns to the sales associate. “We’ll try a little bit of everything. Color, silhouette, and style. She’s dressing for revenge.”

“Not true,” I say.

“Anything for you?” the sales associate asks Daphne.

“I’m all set. I made my dress.” She shows off pictures of the dress she designed, and the employee squeals in delight and asks if my dress should match. “I’m her plus-one, but she’s walking the red carpet alone. No need to match,” Daphne says brightly.

With instructions and my measurements in hand, the associate sets off, and Daphne slips her sandals off and tucks her feet up under her legs on one of the dressing room’s soft lounge chairs. “Have you heard from West yet?”

“He won’t call,” I say as I try on a black V-neck ball gown with spaghetti straps and a fitted bodice. It fits like it was made for me; it doesn’t even need to be altered. “And I don’t want him to,” I add as an afterthought. Daphne audibly scoffs. “You don’t like it?” I turn to see the low back in the mirror.

“The dress is stunning. Your statement was ridiculous.”

I make eye contact with her reflection in the mirror. “It’s over, Daph.”

“Except it’s never really over between you two.”

“You only think that because your view has been poisoned by mine.” I wasted hours of her life ranting about how much I hated him, and she saw right through it.

“Or maybe it’s because when we were all trapped in that Martha’s Vineyard house together, I saw the way you two looked at each other. Or because I’ve read Torched and Drought. Or because I heard the giddiness in your voice after you ran into him in Tucson. Believe whatever you have to tell yourself, but you two still have unfinished business.”

I sigh. “West and I both held on to the hope of ‘maybe, someday,’ but when someday finally arrived, it wasn’t the right time.”

“Why not?”

“We weren’t ready.”

“Except he was ready,” she says.

I don’t have an argument for that.

* * *

It’s almost midnight when I take Oasis out of my travel bag. I’m alone in a hotel room, and I can’t stop replaying my last conversation with West.

I’m done with first kisses. I can’t keep losing you.

The thought that West and I will never have another first kiss makes it impossible to sleep. Daphne was right about West and me; even when there was nothing going on between us, there was always something going on between us. That sliver of hope is what allowed me to spend nearly a decade building a life without him. I chased every dream and chance of happiness, knowing that at the end of a horrible or wonderful day, I could fantasize about a future with West.

Faced with a world where I might never speak to him again, I’m scrambling to hold on to any piece of him that I can, which is why I’m finally brave enough to read his first novel.

I open the front cover, and a folded piece of paper falls onto my lap. I pick it up, assuming it’s a receipt from the bookstore, but it has torn edges and printed lines like it was ripped from a notebook. I unfold the pages and smooth it out on top of the hotel bed.

My jaw drops when I see West’s familiar handwriting. The words are smudged from his left hand dragging across wet ink. It’s dated eight years ago in December. Before Martha’s Vineyard, before the article.

Dear Mars,

I’ve found myself writing this letter more times than I’m willing to admit, and each time, I’ve thrown it away—crumpled it in the trash, buried it beneath drafts of stories that never turn out and endings I’m trying to rewrite. As embarrassing as this is to admit, even more humiliating is the circumstance that has led me to write it. There’s an indie bookstore on Fulton that agreed to carry a single copy of my book, and I return every couple of weeks to see if it’s been purchased. Last time I stopped in, an employee who I suspect feels sorry for me told me that she was holding it for a customer—“a famous writer!” she said with a wink and a smile. The store had a stack of freshly signed copies of Torched on the front table, and, well, here I am—with regrets piled up and a pen in my hand.

There are a hundred million things I want to say to you—a lifetime’s worth of words built up over a handful of years. I kept track of them in a notebook for months: books I read and loved, books I read and hated, stupid jokes that I thought would make you laugh, things I should have said before you left. Even now, I have so much to say, but I’m scared it will come out wrong. We both know how words are, how easily they slip into a shape that’s not quite the one you meant.

I live in the city now, and I think of it as your city; I can’t help but imagine that you moved here and immediately stepped onto the path of world domination. I still find myself envious of the strength of your convictions. You knew that you belonged here from day one. You never questioned if you could keep up with the pace of New York. Meanwhile, I spent years in limbo, unsure which path to take, searching Tucson for something that was no longer there, trying to make sense of something that has no shape or resolution.

I should be writing about other things—new ideas, new worlds, new characters. But no matter how hard I try, you slip through the cracks of every story I write. I should be reading new books, but instead I reread yours and find you tucked between the pages. I hear the words in your voice. My mind is a maze of haunted hallways. I drive myself crazy, remembering.

It was easier to be happy then, don’t you think?

Do you remember the morning we hiked Sabino Canyon and watched the sun rise over the horizon? You had a way of infusing magic into my ordinary world—like how the sound of your voice transformed the dry, brutal heat into something soft, almost sacred. Or how your smile turned the desert into an ocean—I was always a little lost in it. The mole above your lip was my religion. Losing you, my crisis of faith. I think, deep down, I never expected that the horizon would change, but it has, and I’m still trying to find the edge of it.

I have this dream that feels like a memory, of running into you in our old spot on campus. Some coincidence or twist of fate has brought us both back to Tucson, and I find you in the place where we met and had our second first kiss. Sometimes I let myself believe it’s possible.

If we ever find ourselves there again, I’ll look for you under the palm trees.

The critique I always get is that not enough happens in my stories. They need more plot. With that in mind, Mars, I’m getting to the plot: I think about you all the time, and I miss you more than is reasonable. I assume that as the years have stretched on without anything to hold us together, you don’t feel the same. That’s okay, but I’ll close with this.

If you ever find yourself thinking of me, I’m asking you to call.

Love, West

Tears roll off my chin onto the letter, blurring the already-smudged ink. I move it to a safer position and wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. I read it again and again until the words are hazy to my exhausted eyes. Each time I finish, I’m drawn back to the same sentence.

If we ever find ourselves there again, I’ll look for you under the palm trees.

He held on to that sentiment for years, and on my first return to Tucson in nearly a decade, he went straight to our spot. He was waiting for me, even after all that time.

It was easier to be happy then, don’t you think?

Yes, it was.

I’ve been hunting “happiness” for so long that I forgot what it feels like. I expected that when I hit whatever goal I was chasing, my life would magically transform into a “happy” one.

But happiness has always been in the fleeting moments that occur between all the other necessary shit that causes the world to turn. It’s stargazing with West and making him laugh. It’s falling asleep on his chest. Writing something I’m proud of.

It’s not the immediate, suffocating pressure of getting a book deal or the relief of hitting the bestseller list or even the overwhelming moment of seeing my characters on-screen. It’s a feeling that comes with no strings or angst attached, and that, for better or worse, has never, ever been related to my success.

I can’t believe it took me more than thirty years to understand something so painfully obvious.

I gather the letter, my signed copy of Drought, and the unsent apology that I never bothered to unpack. I trace my fingers over each one, marveling at the fact that West has been writing me love letters and sending them out into the universe for the better part of a decade. What a tragedy that it took me so long to receive them.

It was easier to be happy then, don’t you think?

No wonder it’s easier to write when West is in my life. Everything is easier with him. My natural state is one that is tightly wound with equal parts ambition and anxiety, but his presence unspools me like a typewriter ribbon.

If you ever find yourself thinking of me, I’m asking you to call.

It’s the middle of the night, and I have a red carpet in twelve hours, but I pick up my phone and I call.