Chapter 1 #2
Which was a fluke, honestly. Getting into the residency, I mean. Another expensive gamble, dressed up as an opportunity. Another chance to drain money I didn’t have, in exchange for bunk beds and soggy cafeteria salads and the privilege of writing stories that weren’t going anywhere.
I’d realized that halfway through the trip after a rejection from a well-known literary magazine who was one of many proclaiming my writing just wasn’t what they were looking for.
The residency unfortunately wasn’t going to be some magical leap forward into my writing career.
That no one was going to “discover” me. That it might just be another line on a résumé no one would read.
So, yeah, I had gotten a little distracted.
His name was Jimmy. Thirty-eight. Salt-and-pepper hair that he always wore pulled back into a low ponytail with a soft elastic he kept on his wrist. Hair long enough to tug, once, and he had laughed—low, with that amused, knowing sound deep in his throat, like he wasn’t surprised, like he’d expected me to do it.
He was writing a nonfiction case study on rural health infrastructure in Appalachia—very serious.
He made sure I knew it too, though he’d leave out pages for me to read by the coffee maker in the shared lounge.
The pages were heavy. Earnest. Full of numbers and suffering and statistics with no clear solution.
His voice in them was calm and compassionate, the kind that made you think he was probably better in writing than in real life.
We weren’t really supposed to get involved with each other—technically. But it was one of those unspoken things. The kind that happened when people are trapped in too-close quarters with too many feelings and not enough distractions. It felt inevitable.
It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even lust. Not really.
It was more like gravity. Like leaning too far in and not catching yourself in time.
He told me once, lying on his back in bed, that I reminded him of someone. He didn’t say who. He didn’t have to. I thought we both knew I wasn’t going to be the person in his story. Just a person. A paragraph maybe. A single striking detail.
Still, there was something about the way he looked at me after I read one of my pieces aloud during the workshop. Like he’d been holding his breath and didn’t realize until the end that he started breathing again.
That part I kept.
The rest? I didn’t know. We’d slept together a few times.
We shared a bottle of bourbon on the porch during a rainstorm.
Once, he kissed me in the hallway like it was an apology.
Another time, he left early from a critique session without saying goodbye.
I thought we both knew it was going nowhere, but still, it felt necessary at the time.
Necessary in the way that mistakes sometimes were, especially when you were pretending you still believed you were going to be a writer, not just a glorified secretary who used to have potential.
Now, it was just a fuzzy blur in my memory. Not unpleasant, just vague. Like when you tried to recall the exact smell of a place you’d only visited once. You remembered the feeling more than the details.
And maybe that was enough. Maybe that was all it was ever supposed to be.
I didn’t write about Jimmy afterward.
I told myself I might. That I was saving it—that it needed to settle, steep like tea or bruises.
But really, I didn’t know what the story was.
There was no arc, no revelation, no elegant metaphor to tie it all together.
Just a handful of scenes that kept playing in the back of my head, like a film reel slightly out of order.
His laugh. His hands. That thing he’d said about my writing voice being “quiet in the way you have to lean in to hear it.”
Basically meaning, you had to want to care.
Another one of Gina’s new art friends, with the tiny astrological tattoos in the spaces between his knuckles, hissed, “A residency lover doesn’t count.”
And most people didn’t care for the whole story.
“It’s like … an affair,” Brent added. “It doesn’t count.”
“I’m pretty sure affairs count,” said Melanie.
“Not like affairs, affairs. Like … love affairs? They’re stories you get to tell your grandchildren to scandalize them when you’re, like, eighty or whatever,” Brent said before returning his attention to me.
I had enough issues right now. I didn’t need anything from my life to be referenced as “an affair.” It sounded dirty.
Gina hugged my shoulders again. This time, I let her. If anything, I needed a little support as we pivoted away from this conversation. “My girl wants a good, sweet man to spoil her.”
Or not.
I shook my head. The lighting was dark enough here that no one had to see my flushed face—and not only from the absurd amount of alcohol in my mug.
“Come on, just have us all set you up with someone,” Gina suggested.
“I thought you were on my side.”
“I am on your side.”
Melanie sighed, leaning over the table, propping her chin in her hand. “The side of love. No, better. Holiday love.”
“Is that really a thing?”
“Of course it is!”
“All of you want to set me up with the same guy?” I cocked my head at them. Foreheads creased around me at the proposal. “Are we living in a fairy tale now?”
“No.” Gina shook her head.
“I don’t know,” said Brent, blinking down at his cup before taking another sip. “I kind of feel like Gina might’ve just poisoned us all.”
Gina rolled her eyes. “Different guys, Bri. All of us will set you up on a date. One each. Or more, of course, if things go well.”
“If you have to find more than a few guys to go out with me, I’m pretty sure things would be going the opposite of well,” I murmured.
No one seemed to hear me.
“Did everyone hear that?” asked Gina.
A few more heads—half in our conversation, half in their own—turned to focus on what was being plotted around me.
“That would be, like, a dozen people,” I said.
“A dozen chances,” Gina corrected, as if that made a difference.
That was a lot of chances. So many chances that it would be more than pitiful if none of them made it to a second date.
“You all know that many single guys?”
Melanie opened her mouth—
“Scratch that,” I cut her off. “Decent single guys who want to date someone like me?”
“What? You have the plague?” Brent asked.
No, but for some reason, it sure did feel like I had been cursed my entire life, no matter how optimistic I tried to be … in spurts.
“I’m sure we can pull something together. So, what’s the problem?” she asked.
Melanie shrugged next to her. “Girl’s gotta have options.”
“Like blind dates,” Brent agreed.
“Me, on blind dates?” I hiccuped and quickly covered my mouth. Though it appeared that nearly everyone else must’ve been just as plastered as I was feeling. This was getting out of hand.
No one noticed, except for one of Gina’s coworkers behind us on the couch, who remained sober.
She handed me another glass of water.
I offered a wave to her in thanks.
She already had an amused smile. Actually, everyone had a glass of water in front of them now.
What would we do without this new friend I didn’t know the name of?
“I shouldn’t be worried about guys right now,” I said.
“But aren’t you?”
I didn’t answer. Was I slightly worried that, eventually, Gina was going to run off with one of her clients and elope in Croatia, leaving me to figure out life on my own as a lonely, unemployed homeless person who wouldn’t even be able to make street friends all that easily? I mean, I wasn’t not worried about it.
Gina didn’t let it go. “Have some fun. Enjoy yourself. You’ve been too focused on your job hunt.”
“Because I need a job,” I said before clarifying, “A real job.”
“The jobs will be there,” said Brent, who had a very well-paying job from what I understood.
“I think what Brent is trying to say is that one or two or twelve dates aren’t going to cause your job applications to be deleted,” said Gina.
She had a point.
I shrugged, looking between Gina and the rest of my well-meaning, slightly red-cheeked friends. “All right.”
Her eyes expanded in almost shock.
There was a whoop from a few of our other friends around us, already naming people they had in mind or crossing them off their mental lists after they already got married or were in long-term relationships.
“This is much more fun than doing a Secret Santa,” someone said in the group.
“For real? We’re doing this?” Gina asked one last time to give me an out. She raised her eyebrows imploringly.
I let the moment sit between us all as they waited for my answer.
I nodded.
Brent nudged his mug against mine. They clunked together, and a few drops fell over the edge and on my jeans. “Cheers to that.”