Chapter 84

I get back from Frannie’s party to find Korgy lying despondent on the couch in a fetal position. An empty bottle of scotch is on the coffee table in front of him right next to his printed-out manuscript.

“Did you finish your novel?”

“No,” he says, staring vacantly at the shut-off TV. “I quit it.”

“What do you mean you quit it?” I ask.

“It’s bad. It doesn’t work, Waldo,” he says. “The excitement I felt toward you, toward us, made me believe I could do something that I can’t. But I was kidding myself. Deluding myself. I’m not a writer. I’ve never been one.”

I open my mouth to convince him otherwise, to give him the pep talk that I feel like I should, the motivational speech that will make him believe he’s all the things he wishes he was, but no words come out.

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