Chapter Twenty-Two
Nick
Watching her walk away from me—again—is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I feel like I’m watching a piece of myself breaking away, pulling away from me, and leaving me with a Jess-shaped hole in my chest.
I sink into the closest armchair in the lobby, not wanting to head back to my room in case she changes her mind and comes back. I know she’s not going to, but that doesn’t stop me from checking the front door every thirty seconds, just to be sure.
I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting there when a hand lands on my shoulder. “You’re still here.”
I finally pull my eyes away from the front door and turn to look at my editor, Gina. “Still here.”
Her brow furrows. “Everything okay? You look like someone just told you Santa’s not real.”
“What do you mean Santa’s not real?” I inject false humor into my voice, not really wanting to get into this whole situation with someone who is, in some ways, my boss.
“Okay, that might convince someone who hasn’t spent hours and hours with you working out character development.” She sits in the chair across from mine. “What’s going on?”
“I think I just had my heart broken.” I know I shouldn’t confide this in her, should keep our relationship professional, but she’s here and I know she cares about my mental well-being—at least as much as it pertains to me being a functioning writer.
“Ah. The real-life second-chance romance didn’t play out the way it would in a book, huh?”
“Maybe it played out exactly like it would in one of my books. And that’s the problem.”
Gina settles back in her chair and levels me with a look. “You know, I hate editing the endings of your books.”
Not much could snap me out of this funk, but hearing my editor—someone I consider my partner in this whole writing game—tell me she hates a major part of my books does the trick. “You hate the endings?”
She nods, lacing her fingers together and resting them in her lap.
“Then why do you let me write them?”
“It’s not my place to tell you what to write. I’m here to make your books better, Nick. Make your plots stronger and your characters deeper. But I’m not here to change something that’s so fundamentally who you are as a writer.”
“The funny thing is, it’s not who I was as a writer. At least it wasn’t in the beginning.” I think back to the days when all my stories ended happily. I loved finding the thing that broke my characters apart, but I loved putting them back together even more.
“What about this new book? The holiday second-chance romance. Did you and Jess end up collaborating?”
“We did. I don’t know where the project is going to go, though. I think that’s kind of up to her.” I tap my fingers on my knee. “We still have to figure out how it ends.”
“I think you know how it ends.” She straightens the hem of her pencil skirt, which she’s wearing even though we’re technically trapped on a work vacation. “Would it help if I told you I may have mentioned the idea to the higher-ups while I was forced to dine with them against my will, and they loved it?”
“How much did they love it?” It doesn’t matter for me so much, but I know what this could do for Jess.
“Enough to get your girl off the midlist.” She stands, adjusting her shirt, though not a stitch is out of place. “I’ll be in touch with more after the holidays. Now might be time to start planning your grand gesture.”
“What do you mean?”
She rolls her eyes. “You know, that thing that’s missing from most of your books, when the person who messed up—usually the hero, if we’re being honest—does something big and impressive to prove how much they love the other person? It’s the thing that leads to all those happily ever afters.”
“And you think I need one? To get Jess back?”
“Certainly couldn’t hurt.” She pats my cheek. “You also might want to think about shaving.”
“Haha.” I capture her hand with mine and squeeze tightly. “Thank you, Gina. I really appreciate you and I hope you have a good holiday.”
“Thanks to your book sales and my resulting holiday bonus, I usually do.” She throws a wink over her shoulder as she heads out the front door. “Do what you need to do to write a good story for yourself, Nick.”