“No, my lady. He said everything was settled between you the last time you and he spoke.”
Charlotte’s heart sank to the floor as she forced a smile.
“Yes, thank you, Mr. Flincher.”
I write until four in the morning. My eyes are burning, my back is bent, I’m a touch delirious, but I keep working. I run out of steam right before I reach the finish line. The last chapter. The happy ending. It’s right there, but I can’t reach it. I check my inbox and Sam has sent me five URGENT, SOS emails.
Time is running out.
Writing without Ryan hasn’t been easy. If he was here, I might have been done. My manuscript might have been sent off weeks ago and in years to come, he and I would remember how he helped me through my toughest project. How our team won. When he’s with me, my writing runs riot. When he’s gone, it all stands still.
Sitting in the early morning darkness of my dining room, I think back to Liam’s suggestion of setting myself up for success. If I wanted to do that, Ryan would have to be here. It’s impossible, of course, but there might be another way.
Maybe he can help me one more time and we can finish this book together. I know what I’m about to do is nuts, but normalcy hasn’t been hitting any home runs for me lately.
Screw it.
I get up from my chair and tiptoe back down the hallway to my bedroom. Liam is passed out in a deep, drunken sleep as he sprawls out on my bed like a starfish, and I quietly pull the door shut.
Slipping back down the hall, I stop midway and go into the bathroom, looking at myself in the medicine chest mirror. I’m tired and solemn and fully committing to my decided course of action. I take a step over and reach into the shower, turning it on as high as it can go. I pull the curtain closed but leave the door open. Returning to the dining room, I stand in front of the window air-conditioning unit. I look at it for some time until I reach forward and turn it on to the coldest setting, full blast. The icy air pours out and cuts into the skin on my arms. I let the chill soak through me until it hits my bones, and I sit back down in my chair with my laptop on the table.
A writer’s imagination is a powerful thing. We feel what our characters feel. We hear people talking in our heads. We allow ourselves to be carried off and whisked back again from strange and beautiful places. It’s surrender and it’s something not quite sane and I need to let it happen to me now.
I need to picture a new reality—a reality where Ryan is here. I take a deep breath and clear my mind.
The shower water is still running. Splashing and misting, I can almost feel the steam. Ryan originally planned on showering tomorrow morning but after we went sightseeing, drank too much at dinner and walked farther than we expected, he decided not to wait.
He loves Italy as much as I do. The plane ride was...trying, but we got through it. He took something for his motion sickness, we watched Rudy twice on my iPad and he squeezed the life out of my hand for the full nine hours. Still, we made it.
I can’t believe he was able to take more than a month’s leave from work. He wasn’t kidding when he said he never took days off and I’m so thankful that he didn’t. He has one week left before his flight home and tomorrow, we leave for Sorrento, a beautiful town along the Mediterranean.
I check my email confirmation from the hotel we’re going to stay at, and check-in is at one o’clock. Another SOS email from Sam catches my eye and I wince a little bit. She is going to kill me. I’ve been so busy gallivanting around Rome with Ryan that I still haven’t written the last chapter of my novel. I need to wrap that up now before I become her worst client and she hates me forever.
Final chapter. Time to give Charlotte and Robert the ending they deserve. I take a confident breath and try to look inwards, drawing on all my feelings from this last amazing month as I move my hands to the laptop keys.
I remember Ryan waking me up this morning—his hand in mine, his mouth leaving soft kisses on my neck. I remember the cooking class we took yesterday—half the class had their eyes on him, but he only had his eyes on me. I remember him standing behind me the first time we saw the Trevi Fountain—my back pressed to his warm chest as he wrapped his arms around my front, whispering into my ear that life could never be better than this.
I take all the love I feel for him and send it from my heart, through my arms and out the tips of my fingers. I start to type, knowing what Ryan said was true. Life really couldn’t be better than this.
21
Last month, I finished my novel by the skin of my teeth. My minor psychotic break/serious imagination exercise where I pretended Ryan came to Italy proved successful, and even though I cried for an hour straight once I was done, my last chapter turned out just how I needed it to.
I’ve definitely turned a corner of some kind. After a year of nerves and guilt, I forgot what it felt like not to have a deadline follow me around like a menacing shadow. Suffice to say, I’m happier now, but I still don’t feel like my old self. I’m starting to question if I ever will.
Liam and I spend even more time together after our first and last date. We’re keeping things strictly platonic, both agreeing that as convenient as it
