Chapter 11 – dorian
eleven
dorian
I don’t know what compelled me to start apologizing to Piper, but now that I’m knee-deep, I have to finish.
She’s staring at me with uncertainty, making me second-guess myself.
“It was a long time ago,” Piper says weakly.
I shake my head. “That doesn’t excuse my cowardice.”
“Interesting choice of words.”
“That’s what it was.” I give a helpless shrug.
“I told you I was diagnosed with ADHD later in college, but I didn’t know about it as a freshman.
Those first few weeks, when you tried to sit by me, you took all my focus.
I couldn’t—it was impossible to pay attention to my teachers.
But I didn’t know how to explain it to you.
I didn’t know you well enough. And the better I got to know you, the more intimidated I became. ”
Piper stands against the wall, her mouth parted and eyes pinned on me. I give her a second to cut in and tell me to stop, but she doesn’t.
“I made stupid decisions. I couldn’t tell you how I felt—we shared friends, but we didn’t really know each other. I was shy, and I didn’t understand how to explain what I was feeling. I still struggle with that sometimes.”
“You’re doing a good job right now,” she mutters.
I can’t help but laugh. If only she knew all the things I wasn’t telling her—how hard I’d fallen, how consumed I’d been, how difficult it was to watch her date other guys.
“Hardly. But the point is, you were hurt, and I never meant for that. I figured you wouldn’t notice, really.
Who was I, anyway? Just some guy in your classes. ”
“Yeah,” she says. “Some guy I had a crush on. It was mortifying being rejected.”
Wait, what? My thoughts screech to a halt. There’s no way I heard her correctly.
She gives her head a little shake, like she’s clearing her thoughts.
“That all makes sense, but it doesn’t explain why you never stopped.
You didn’t have to pay attention to the teacher when we were going bowling or hanging out, but if I was around, you would avoid me or leave.
It was baffling. I could never figure out what I did to you. No one could.”
I stare at her. “You were dating Kyle.”
“So?”
I swallow, revealing more than I’d planned. “It was hard to watch.”
Piper draws in a quick breath. “But not long after that, you were dating Hannah Brandt.”
“I tried to distract myself, but it didn’t work, so I broke things off. I liked you, Piper.” I take a small step closer, careful not to come on too strong. “I like you.”
She stares. Her green eyes are deep pools, trying to read my thoughts. “So when something’s hard for you to face, you just don’t face it?” she asks, like she’s trying to understand.
“Maybe back then. But this has been pretty freaking hard to say to you, and I’m still doing it now.”
“Why?”
Why is it hard? Or why am I telling her this? “If I have to explain why I’m sharing my feelings, then I’m definitely doing something wrong.”
She laughs. “No, not that—I just mean, why was it hard to say now?”
“No man wants to put himself out there and be rejected.”
“People ask each other out all the time.”
“Not women they’ve had a thing for since they were eighteen. The stakes are higher here. You’re not just some hot chick in a bookstore I can avoid if you turn me down.”
“You haven’t even seen me in, like…what? Nine years?”
She’s right. I haven’t been pining that entire time, of course.
I’ve thought of looking her up occasionally over the years, but never managed to take action.
When I ran into Elena a few years ago and she told me all about Piper’s new bookstore endeavor, it planted a seed.
I could walk into the store—pick up a book. Accidentally run into her.
But even that felt impossible. Convincing myself to do it was difficult. It wasn’t until the book tour that I saw a golden opportunity and locked myself in, hoping she would still be the same Piper, that she would still be single, that maybe I’d be lucky enough I hadn’t missed my chance.
Looking at her now, I realize how lucky I’ve been. “I had high hopes about seeing you again, but I didn’t really know what to expect. The moment I stepped into your store, though, it all came rushing back to me. I felt eighteen again and totally smitten.”
“I get it,” she says, sagging back against the wall. “I felt similarly.”
My pulse takes on a life of its own. “So, can I take you out this weekend? Friday?”
“Like on a date, Mr. Darcy?”
I grin. “My brother is the one with the Pemberley house, so if you’re just an arrogant gold digger, you’ve got the wrong McConkie brother.”
Piper throws her head back and laughs, and I want to inject the sound directly into my veins. “Foiled!”
I reach for her, letting myself act on the impulses I usually suppress. She takes my hand, and I brace the other against the wall just behind her head, hanging my head so I can keep her eye contact. It’s obvious the moment her breathing grows shallow.
Would I be a total Wickham if I kiss her before our first date? It’s not like I don’t know this woman. During all four years of college, it felt impossible to get away from her. We’ve spent a lot of time together over the last two weeks, too.
Her eyes drop to my lips, causing my heart rate to skyrocket. I wait for permission, giving her time to push me away, and move so slowly toward her lips that I can savor every millisecond of this moment.
“Piper, honey, are you back here?” a woman calls, most likely her mother.
We spring apart. I shove my hands into my pockets, watching Piper’s cheeks flush red.
“Yeah, Mom. Just putting chairs away.”
“Oh, good—” Mrs. Monroe stops when she rounds the corner of the shelves and sees both of us. “Well, there you are. I was just about to head out. Shauna doesn’t see well on the road after dark, you know.”
“Neither do you. Want me to drive you home?”
“No, silly. Just give me a hug. I’ll see you Sunday?”
Piper crosses the room and hugs her mom. “Of course. Tell Dad hi for me.”
“I will.” Mrs. Monroe shoots me a look. “I’ll tell him all about my night.”
“Okay, Mom, I think I hear Shauna calling you.”
“Hm?”
Piper gently turns her mom around and starts directing her out of the storeroom. I follow them, unable to hold in my grin. Maybe I haven’t kissed her yet, but there’s no mistaking that she wanted me to.
I have a feeling it’s going to be very hard to concentrate during class tomorrow night.
Lori chose a seat front and center for tonight’s class. I try to keep my gaze off her, but every time I look at her, I see her string of emails. Wildly inappropriate, suggestive emails.
I mean, I met the woman for all of thirty seconds last week.
It’s not that I worry for my safety or anything, but I don’t really know what I’m going to say to her when class is through.
So I tactfully watch Piper instead, who is paying attention to the guest teacher.
Dr. Potts’s lecture on dialogue is well constructed and thorough. Pens scribble furiously around the room as he explains his points, and keyboards clack away while I sit near the front and watch Piper focus on her computer at the back.
Every so often, she lifts her gaze and peers directly at me, a tiny smirk on her lips. Caught.
The woman can probably feel my stare.
This is why I avoided her in school. She wrecks my focus.
“Another trick is to read it out loud,” Dr. Potts says.
“Find a partner if you want and read the lines. Do they feel natural? Choppy? Dialogue can make or break a story, and there’s nothing worse than making characters sound like they’re just characters in a book.
You want to create an immersive experience so your reader feels like they’re inside the story—that they are the character. ”
His dos and don’ts are listed on a slide on the wall now, and everyone scrambles to finish writing them in their notes.
“Now, I want everyone to take five minutes and write out a scene. Two characters—three max. Your prompt is up on the board now.”
I glance up to read it: Two people discover they are assigned to the same seat.
This will be interesting. Dr. Potts sets a timer on his phone. “Begin!”
The keyboards go crazy. He crosses the front of the small stage area and takes a seat beside me. “The time is yours once this exercise is through, but I planned on having a few brave souls share with the class first so we can dissect them. It should only take a few minutes.”
“Take all the time you’d like. I planned to segue into voice next, but you’re welcome to take the entire hour if you’d like. It’s an important topic.”
“So is voice,” he counters. “You know, I’ve read your books, Mr. James.”
My spine straightens on impulse as I await the verdict. I’ve had all sorts of interactions with readers, and I do very few events—everything from adoration to loathing. One man even pulled me aside to give me a list of everything he would have done differently in my debut novel.
It was my debut. There’s an entire list of things I would do differently if I were to rewrite that story today. But I’m still proud of it, and I digress. This topic never fails to give me a wave of foreboding. It’s a horrible game of Which Way is This Going to Go?
Dr. Potts’s wrinkled eyes look sincere. “Love them. The two I’ve read were so gripping I couldn’t put them down. You should be teaching this dialogue class, young man.”
My relief is nearly palpable. “They get enough having me each week.”
He winks. “Doubt that.”
I avoid looking at Lori.
“Besides,” I say, the words spilling out before I can shovel them back in, “I’ve been dealing with a bit of writer’s block myself lately. I’m hoping to learn a thing or two from you.”
Dr. Potts’s eyebrows furrow. “You don’t say?”
“It hasn’t been the best year for me. My editor isn’t breathing down my neck, and I haven’t heard from my agent in a while, so I’m fortunate in that way. But I know there’s another book on my contract so I won’t be able to put the publisher off forever.”
I didn’t tell Piper I was late to book club because I’d been trying to write the story of my dad—and it hadn’t really worked. There was no unlocking of the writer’s block. No massive weight lifted. No magic spell demolished.
He rubs his chin. “You’ve tried all the regular things? Taking a break, writing for you, reading outside of your genre?”
“Yes.”
“Reading inside your genre?”
I think about the Clancy Calloway thriller I just finished. “Yes.”
“You probably just need time.”
“The one thing I might not have for much longer.” My editor and agent are being patient with me now, but that can’t last forever. I still have a contract and one last book remaining on it.
The timer blares on Dr. Potts’s phone, and he jumps to his feet. “Time! Now, who’s brave enough to share with the class?”
A woman in the center row raises her hand.
“Yes!” Dr. Potts claps once. “Wonderful.”
Her dialogue is about two people who are both assigned the same seat on a flight, and one of them is bumped to standby but has to be carried from the plane. It’s pretty good. The only point Dr. Potts makes is that she uses “said” in every single tag, which bogs it down a little.
A handful more share. One is a train ride through Germany, but they end up sharing the compartment and hook up—that was Lori.
Another is about two people who are both assigned to the same seat in an award show and argue until the man gives it up, only for him to turn out to be the guest of honor.
There is an array of locations and situations.
Quite a few are romantic. One is a set of brothers.
By the time Dr. Potts hands the baton over to me, we have twenty minutes left in class. I touch on the importance of matching the narrator’s voice to the genre and vibe. We go over genre expectations. None of it dives very deep.
With one minute left on the clock, Piper raises her hand.
“Yes, Ms. Monroe?”
She comes to the front of the class. “I doubt I’m alone in feeling like I was just stuffed full of great information, tricks, and tools.
But while our teachers have given their time to be here, they can’t stick around all night.
So we’re going to open the floor for a few minutes to have a bit of a Q&A and then we’ll let them slip out. ”
Disappointment slides through me. I’d rather stay here and hang out with her, but I recognize the favor she’s doing for me. The crowd that gathered last week was most of the class. If I’d spoken to each of them, we would have been there another hour, easily.
“So, any questions for either of our teachers tonight?”
A smattering of hands goes up.
“Yes?” Piper asks, pointing to Todd, the man from the first night who had been disappointed to hear I was replacing the other teacher.
Todd clears his throat. “How long does it take to make any money at this job?”
Dr. Potts coughs.
Piper doesn’t give either of us a chance to answer. “That depends on the author, the books, the route they take. There is no one path or surefire way to be successful in this career.”
She looks like she’s about to move on, but the professor stops her.
“If there is one thing I’ve learned from years and years of mentoring writers, being friends with authors, and the one book I nearly published thirty years ago, it’s that you can’t be in this for the fame, glory, or money, young man. ”
Young man was a stretch, but Dr. Potts did have white hair mixed in with his dark.
“You have to do it because you love it,” he continues. His gaze shifts to me, but he keeps addressing the group. “Because you can’t do anything but write. Maybe there are exceptions to the rule, but if you want contentment in your career, do it for the love, and the rest will level itself out.”
Do it for the love. I always have. Writing is in my blood.
So maybe that’s where I’m off. I’ve been forcing the wrong thing, trying to give my publisher the book they need.
Using stakes the readers will like, but that I don’t care anything about.
Maybe I need to listen to Piper’s advice and follow what Dr. Potts is saying.
Not just write my dad’s story, but write what my heart is screaming to get out.
Forget the stakes I think I need. Maybe if I let it loose, I’ll be free to tell any story I want to again.
It certainly couldn’t hurt to try.