9. Aurora
9
AURORA
CURSORS AND CURSES
I had never been mocked by a computer before, but the blinking cursor on my computer screen taunted me with each passing second.
Maybe I just need to do some research . . .
A dust plume rose from the ancient couch as I shifted and tucked my foot beneath me. No matter how much I vacuumed and aired it out, it didn’t do a damn thing to combat the musty dusties.
I opened my internet browser, only to be met by another taunting screen: You are not connected to the internet. This page cannot be displayed. Please check your connection and try again.
I had told myself that an entire summer offline would be the disconnect I needed, but now it was just inconvenient. Sure , I had the data on my phone, but my thumbs would fall off if I had to do an entire book’s worth of research on a five-inch device.
Find nearby networks.
The prompt on the screen was tempting. Maybe there was a vacation rental close by with WiFi that wasn’t password-protected.
CedarIslandRental034
JollyDolphin203
PirateLandingGuest
Five Alarm Wi - Fire
I scanned the list of suggested networks and audibly laughed when my eyes landed on the last one.
It had to be Jack’s .
So, he was a hotshot and a pun nerd. I could appreciate that. I double-tapped on the network and paused when the password box popped up.
Should I just ask him if I could mooch off his internet? He’d probably say yes. Then again, he had left to go to the fire station this morning and, by my guess, he wouldn’t be back until tomorrow morning.
I could figure it out. And if I couldn’t, that would be the excuse I needed to bail on attempting to write.
I typed in the first thing that came to mind: the street name.
MermaidCourt.
No dice.
I tried again, adding a number and a punctuation mark.
Still nothing.
I probably only had a few attempts before it locked me out, which meant I had to make them count.
The network name was a cute play on words. Maybe the password was fire-themed too.
stopdropandroll.
Still nothing.
I added capital letters and added an exclamation mark for good measure.
Connected.
I nearly fell off the couch. No way was it that easy. But the bars at the top of the screen didn’t lie. The browser loaded in a flash.
Oh, he had good Wi - Fi .
My email inbox was overflowing, and the number of unread messages was growing by the second. I closed that tab and shivered.
My phone chimed with incoming texts.
Willow
Oh my God ! Are you back from the dead?! It just showed you were live in the group chat.
I glanced at the tab where our group chat was pinned. Shit . . . They could see I was online.
I loved Whitney and Willow , but they were crushing it. I was . . . stuck. I just wanted to lick my wounds in private.
Whitney
Yay! We were just about to get on a writing call! You in?
As much as I wanted to say no, I missed them. I typed out a quick response, saying I would join them, and waited to be looped into the call. I expected to see their matching smiles and boisterous conversation, but the faces that met me from the other side of the screen were anything but happy.
“You’re alive!” Willow said with a watery smile. She was putting on a facade, and I knew it.
“We were worried about you,” Whitney said. “ You’ve been radio silent in the group chat.”
I shrugged and adjusted the pages on my screen so the video screen split the space with my blank document. “ I’ve been focused on the house.”
“How’s it going?” Whitney asked.
“It’s fine. I got the mattresses out. I’m waiting for the dumpster to get emptied so I can fill it again. I’m halfway through scrubbing all the walls so I can spend the next three weeks inhaling primer and paint fumes.”
Willow grimaced. “ Please tell me that the hot firefighter is at least giving you something nice to look at.”
As distant as I had been from talking about anything and everything “work-related,” I had told them about Jack .
More specifically, that I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Jack .
“He’s not there right now, is he?” Whitney asked as she thumbed through her plot notes.
I wish I had plot notes.
I did have the foresight to bring my plotting notebook and my favorite pens, but I hadn’t written so much as a character name in it.
“No. He’s on duty,” I said while I pretended to look busy. Why had I joined the call again? I didn’t have any work to do.
It had been two weeks since I crash-landed on Cedar Island . Without even realizing it, Jack and I had fallen into a routine. He would come over the morning after he got off work at the fire station and check in to make sure I hadn’t stabbed myself with a screwdriver. Then , he would head back to his place to sleep if he had been up all night. He’d usually come back over and make sure I had eaten lunch, then pick a project off my list to tinker with.
If I were being honest, I didn’t mind having him around.
I . . . liked it?
That was a strange realization. Why did I like having a total stranger around? Jack didn’t know anything about my life. Jack didn’t know me.
Wait.
That was it.
Jack didn’t know me. And what a breath of fresh air that was.
I didn’t have to live up to any previous expectations around him. I didn’t have to be the daughter my mom thought I was supposed to be. I didn’t have to be the industry peer my friends believed I still was. I certainly didn’t have to be the long-suffering partner my ex had conditioned me to be, even through the end of it all.
Jack was also nice to look at . . .
There was something about his name, too. It was strong. Masculine . No -nonsense. It was probably because of the hard consonants.
But when I closed my eyes and let the whisper of his name float along the sea breeze when I knew he wasn’t near, it was a caress. Soft and safe.
“Earth to Wander ,” Willow said, waving her hands from her side of the screen.
“Sorry. What was the question?”
Whitney cocked her head to the side and studied me.
Ah, shit. I knew that look.
While Willow was the social butterfly of the three of us, Whitney was the quiet, insightful one, and I was the curmudgeon.
We were, seemingly, the full gradient of the personality spectrum. Somehow , it worked for us. One of us was always ready to step in to balance the others.
“Okay, I’m going to ask something and you can totally plead the fifth,” Whit said. “ How are you really doing?” She glanced at Willow . “ Because you kind of dropped off the face of the planet after your book tour, and we’re . . .”
“Worried,” Willow chimed in. “ Like . . . really worried. You always bounce to the next thing after a book comes out, and this time you’ve . . .”
“Failed.” I said the word for them.
“What the hell is going on, Wander ?” Willow asked as she scooted closer to the camera.
Whitney closed her notes. “ And why is this the first you’re saying something about it? You know we’re always down to talk, even if it’s not about work. Hell , I think we talk about life more than work most of the time.”
She wasn’t wrong in the least bit.
But it wasn’t something they could fix. Honestly , if I knew how to fix a mental break, I’d do it myself. But I was pretty sure brain Band - Aids weren’t a thing.
I didn’t want to saddle them with my burden, even though I knew they would jump at the chance to carry it.
But more than that, I didn’t want to admit that I was carrying a burden in the first place.
Willow fluffed her newly blue hair. “ Is it just the writer’s block? Or is it the house or the breakup or the?—”
“Okay, I think that’s good. She doesn’t need a reminder of everything going wrong,” Whitney squeaked.
I dug my hands into my hair. “ It’s not the house or the breakup. I mean, I want Terry to pay me back, but we all know that’s not happening. He’s gone, and that is relief enough. I’ll figure the financial stuff out.”
“So . . . the writer’s block?” Whitney guessed.
It was now or never. What did I have left to lose? My pride should have dissolved along with my publishing contract, but somehow it stuck around.
“Kind of. I got dropped by my publisher because I missed all my deadlines and had to pay back my advance.”
“Wander . . .” Willow cooed with kindness and concern. Maybe a little shock.
“So, yeah. I’m done,” I said with a huff.
Whitney screeched as she fell over in her chair. Literally . The rolling wheels upended, and her feet were where her head used to be. Her socks disappeared, replaced by her hands as she used the edge of her desk to pull herself up off the floor. “ Geez . Don’t scare me like that. I thought you were serious for a second.”
“I am,” I said. “ I don’t have any more books in me. I’ve tried, and I can’t do it. It’s like trying to squeeze water from a rock. I peaked. I’ve accepted it.”
“I don’t think you’ve peaked,” Willow said. “ Maybe you just need to?—”
I shook my head. “ I’ve tried all the mental exercises. I’ve tried all the plotting techniques. I even saw a sports psychologist to see if he could fix me.” I shook my head. “ It is what it is, and I’ve made peace with it.”
Whitney’s face tightened in concern. “ Have you, though?”
I shrugged. “ I’ve been through anger, denial, and bargaining. I think I’m firmly in the depression era, and I’m fine with that. At least I have a house I can take it out on. I have a crowbar and a sledgehammer. It’s like my own personal rage room.” I glanced behind me at the sagging kitchen cabinets. They were my next victims.
Heat and pressure built up behind my eyes.
I had been angry. I had been determined. I had given up. But I hadn’t cried over the death of my career until now. The comfort of having characters take up residence in my mind was gone. The safety of escaping into imaginary worlds when the real one was too much to take had disappeared.
I felt like a stranger in my mind. Like a time traveler who had been dropped into the present and had no idea where they were or what was going on.
When I glanced back at the screen, I couldn’t bear the sight of the girls’ sad eyes.
Tears welled up in mine. “ I should go. I need to get a little more work done outside before the sun sets. I don’t want to keep you guys from being productive.”
Willow and Whitney jumped in, one on top of the other. “ Wander? —”
“I’ll talk to you guys later.” Before they could say anything else, I logged off.
Tears streamed down my cheeks as I threw my laptop onto the end of the couch.
I didn’t feel like pulling weeds and traversing the dilapidated boardwalk to the beach. Instead , I slipped through the divot in the hedge where Jack had been cutting across every day and used his path to the beach.
The sand was soft and warm, retaining the heat of the day, even as the sun disappeared.
I sat on the dune and hugged my knees to my chest. The steady crash of waves was the percussion to my funeral song as I mourned the death of the person I used to be.