Chapter 10
Scarlett
For the next week, my days and nights are consumed by two things: bicycles and Ryan Whitlock. Thoughts of the two of them circle around and around, as if each occupies alternating spokes on the wheels of the very bicycle that is the object of my obsession. As they turn faster and faster, they blur into something one and the same—each inextricable from the other.
By the end of that first week, I’ve done more research on bicycles than any normal human would ever need. Everything I’ve found, no matter how seemingly unimportant, is printed and strewn about my desk and floor. Some papers have made it to my bed where they mingle with various red-inked pages of my manuscript. I make a habit of curling up there in the evenings with my research and Ryan’s notes, adding my own responses to the margins and edits between the lines before going back to my laptop and typing up a more refined version. I work well into each night, falling asleep on top of the words and awakening with the sun to start the process all over again.
More of my time than I’d like to admit is spent staring into space and flipping through the pages in my mind until I land on a place to add a scene, but when it clicks, I jump out of bed and type furiously, unaware of the time or my body, completely lost in my work.
The words fly from my brain to the keyboard almost faster than my fingers can keep up. It’s a high unlike any other, and I’m addicted to the feeling. This is exactly as it used to be, when I would write and write and never need to come up for air. No, writing was the air, and I needed it like I needed to breathe.
I don’t know how I lived without it for five years.
The truth is, I didn’t really live for those years. Not well anyway. Giving it up was akin to cutting off oxygen. I had thought writing was like a drug and giving it up cold turkey was best for me in the long run. And who knows. Maybe it was for a while. If the way I’ve fallen right back into old habits is any indication, there might not be a way for me to do this job with any kind of balance.
But it’s different this time in one very important way—Ryan is only involved at the surface level. The emails we shared at the start of the week were exhilarating. Bouncing ideas back and forth with him again was as easy as…well…riding a bike. But that’s all this is. Even though I unblocked his number and texted him that it would be okay to come by again, he doesn’t. He wouldn’t have any notes yet anyway, since I’m still working through the first round, but that never stopped him before. His absence is all the reminder I need to keep my head down and the words flowing.
Different book. Different Scarlett. Different outcome.
Even if they are the same late nights and early mornings. The same dwindling groceries and forgotten meals. The same lost count of how long it’s been since I’ve showered.
The same man. The same emails. The same quips and repartee.
I loved him once. But I loved writing once, too. Love for the latter has crept back slowly, in the lines and the margins, but love for him was never meant to be. The loss of my love for him is so completely intertwined with the loss of my love for writing then. Despite all the work I’ve done to separate the two, there’s still a thread that holds them tightly together.
Yet as I sit cross-legged on my bed with my phone face down and buried in the comforter and pages strewn about, I chew on the end of my pen and wait for the dread that had been the third spoke of the wheel all those years ago. The knowledge that I couldn’t sustain this if I wanted room in my life for anything but words. That there were things I wanted that I could never have with the schedule I was put on. That even Ryan was secondary to my work.
But the dread doesn’t come. Instead, it’s more like a piece of me that had been missing has found its way back and snapped into place. Like a lost earring found under a cushion. And instead of being painful to look at, Ryan’s familiar, red-penned handwriting is comforting in the dead of night, like an old friend. The lack of sleep propels me forward rather than drags me down. Newton was right—a body in motion stays in motion. When a writer starts, she can’t stop until the job is done. I’ll sleep and eat when it’s over. It’ll be worth it again, just like it was before.
It has to. Because I’m starting to realize I don’t fully know who I am without this.
As Friday night bleeds into Saturday morning, I finally send off the updated manuscript to Ryan and Trina and expect not to hear anything until Monday when they are both back in the office. I flop over onto my bed without bothering to remove the laptop from it and relish in the accomplishment.
My elation is rudely interrupted simultaneously by my growling stomach and several dings from my phone. Bleary eyed, I look around the bed, figuring it’ll be easier to stop the noise from the phone than that from my stomach if my last raid of a mostly-empty pantry is any indication. I pat the comforter and shift papers around, eventually shoving them off the bed since I don’t need them anymore anyway. The phone dings again, which is when I realize the sound is coming directly from underneath me. Sure enough, when I scoot my ass over, I’ve been sitting on it. Thank god no one was here to see that. Ryan used to give me shit about that kind of thing all the time. For some reason, that reminder is painful, and an otherwise-forgotten memory comes clearly into focus.
“How is it you knew exactly where page sixty-nine was when I asked you about the concert scene half an hour ago, but you can’t remember where you put your phone?” Ryan poked my ribs teasingly.
I rolled over to my stomach and leaned my chin against his bare chest, waggling my eyebrows suggestively. “Probably had something to do with the page number and the promise of one such action if I finished early tonight. Which I did.”
He cupped the back of my head and kissed my forehead. “Your big, beautiful brain remains a mystery to me.”
My phone rang again from wherever it was hiding. “Well, it’s a mystery to me, too, apparently,” I said before we both jumped up to turn the comforter out. The phone hit the ground on Ryan’s side with a thud. He picked it up and handed it to me with a cocked eyebrow.
I shrugged and laughed. “Hey, you found it.”
His answering smile was warm and indulgent, as if he loved even this messy part of me. As if he could spend the rest of his life with me, between sheets and pages and words, discussing symbols and looking for my phone.
And maybe I could let him.
An unexpected pang of sadness at the memory catches me completely off guard. I rub at my chest as if that could ease the pain there, but my lungs squeeze all the air out of them when I click the screen on and Ryan’s name appears with three messages.
Ryan: Scarlett, it’s 2am.
Ryan: Please tell me you haven’t been working this whole time.
Ryan: This book isn’t that important.
He’s clearly worried, and I should ease his fear about me falling back into my old ways, but the truth of the matter is, minus his physical presence here, this is exactly how it used to be, no matter how hard I’ve tried to tell myself it’s different this time. He knows that because he was here with me then, even if he’s not now.
What bothers me more is how easy it is for him to dismiss the importance of this book. It’s not a comeback for him. It’s not really anything for him except another part of the job he already has—the one he’s had this whole time while I’ve been trying to find any kind of purchase on a cliff that seemed determined to move all the footholds just out of reach. For me, this book is everything. My work, my art, my identity. Who am I if I’m not Scarlett Frye, best-selling author? I’ve spent five years trying to figure that out, only to come to the conclusion that I’m no one and nothing without my words.
And so, here I am again. Back where I started and having to come to terms with the fact that this might be how it always is.
Scarlett: It’s important to me.
The message is too simple, even as it holds volumes of words unsaid.
Ryan: I didn’t mean that. I meant that it’s not more important *than* you.
I should be touched by the sentiment. It should be a revelation and a warning to me, that I’ve gone too hard again and am going to pay the price. But what he doesn’t understand, what he could never understand, is that my work is me. We are one and the same. It might have felt different this time, but that’s a tenuous foothold on the same cliff I’ve been hanging from for five years.
I think of over a million different things I could type back, but ultimately, my growling stomach and good sense win out. I power down the phone and toss it somewhere to be found in the morning. I smear the last of the peanut butter on the last tortilla in my fridge and shove it into my mouth before finally collapsing face down on my bed.