How To Win Sam Wheeler

three

It was already two days later after the incident with Will Davis. We hadn’t come across each other in the hallways – though I was glad, because chances are I’d be juggled at no time.

But I wanted to see him, anyway.

“Hey,” I said to Caitlin, when she emerged from the bathroom. “I just talked to my Publisher.”

“Oh,” She nodded. “And.. are they keeping you?”

“Maybe,” I said. “They changed the deal.”

“Really,” She arched an eyebrow. “What’s it this this time, two pages per hour?”

She was joking, I know that. But it had stung, because it felt like that. Like they really need me to come up with a good idea in a minute, otherwise they’ll let me go.

“Not exactly,” I said. “By the end of the month, I need to give them a draft. Or an idea at least, on how the story was going to flow.”

She sat down, like she got the feeling this would turn into a mid-long conversation in a matter of seconds.
It did, by the way. But not as long as I would’ve expected – which I have her to thank.

“So, give them what they want,” she said. “Its not like you have a hard time coming up with ideas.”

“Easy for you to say, you weren’t the one they hired to brainstorm immediately,” I sighed.

“Like you’ve had a writer’s block before?” She said.

“That’s the point. I hadn’t. This is the first time,” I said. “And I’m helpless.”

She chuckled lightly. “Trust me, you aren’t. You’re just stuck in a hole.”

She was leaning near me, trying to comfort me, while drying her wet hair with her light blue towel.

“Gee, thanks,” I said. “I must’ve looked like I really needed the reminder.”

"I won't remind you, then," She said. "I'll leave you to your own vivid imagination to portray love, and other mischiefs."

"Why does it feel like life itself is the mischief?" I whined.

She laughed. “See? At least you still got humor.”

“Humor doesn’t solve anything,” I said.

“No it doesn’t,” She sat up, hanging her towel by the nearest chair. “But it helps you live. And its what makes most books realistic, because they have a sense of living. And its what readers look for that they find in books: the sense of life.”

I looked at her. "Where have you beem and why haven't you written a goddamn book for me already?"

She chuckled. “All I'm saying is: some read to escape the reality. Others make the books their reality, making it a reason to live.”

She left me alone after that, leaving me to reflect the whole future ahead of me. I know she didn’t need to, but I guess she felt like it.

Like she need to leave, at some point in my life, in order for me to find myself.

And maybe I did.

=

“Where the hell have you been?” I asked Stacy, retreating from the cash register.

“Oh don’t give me that look,” She said, throwing her jacket off. “I was out for a run.”

“You’re late,” I said, crossing my arms.