Chapter 3 The Writing Class
THE WRITING CLASS
A TESSA STORY
TESSA
My heart lodges in my throat, beating double time as Weston turns the page. He’s on the final scene now. I can see the blank space at the bottom of the paper from across the sunroom coffee table. It takes all my self-control not to dive onto the wicker couch with him and read over his shoulder.
Instead, I purse my lips and draw in a deep breath, trying to steady my nerves. I shouldn’t be nervous. It’s only Weston—my second self. He’s read everything I’ve ever written, including some extremely private love poems for his eyes only.
But I’ve never written anything quite like this before.
Wringing my hands in tortured silence, I take my attention off Weston and gaze out the sunroom windows to the swirling autumn leaves outside.
The backyard is an impressionist painting of wild colors—burnt orange and satiny gold and bright red.
My mind turns to the task of finding a new word to describe red.
Not bright; bright is too common an adjective…
The red maples flare like pockets of fire among the cool dark greens of the pines. I like that—pockets of fire.
The page flips again. My gaze snaps up to Weston, who stares at the back of the final page in disbelief, as if expecting some secret message to be written there.
“That’s it?”
An unexpected laugh stumbles out of me. “You wanted it to be longer?”
“Yeah. Come on, it was just getting started!”
I grin, hope taking flight in my chest. “So you liked it? You thought it was good?”
Weston nods, shuffling the pages back into some clumsy semblance of order. “Yeah, it was great. And I’m not a person who likes reading. In fact, I hate reading.”
“I know. It’s preposterous.” I spring to my feet and sit beside him on the couch. “So what did you like about it?”
Weston shuffles his hand through his messy blond hair, letting out a contemplative sigh. “Uh, well… I liked the girl a lot.”
“Mabel.”
He nods. “She’s you, isn’t she?”
“Well, she’s not me exactly.”
“Oh, come on. She’s blind, she’s sweet and cute and funny and has a great sense of humor—she’s totally you.” He winks. “And the good-looking war hero is me.”
“He’s not you.”
“Oh, come on,” Weston says again, grinning even more now. “He got his leg blown off. Who else could he be?”
“Only one leg, though.”
“Okay, so he’s fifty percent less badass than me,” Weston decides. “And he lost his limb saving his friend in the war, whereas I lost my limbs by doing something dumb to look cool in front of my friends.”
I tip my head. “Exactly.”
“But the roles are kind of reversed,” Weston muses, flipping through the pages in his lap. “I mean, it’s Mabel who has the good attitude all the time and makes the grumpy guy—Lieutenant Barnes—see that he needs to learn how to punch life in the face. So really, she’s me, and you’re him.”
“Okay, fine. It’s inspired by how we met,” I admit, leaning closer to rest my chin on his shoulder. “Do you think it’s too… unoriginal?”
“Are you kidding? You’re supposed to get inspiration from real life, I thought.”
“Yeah. You are, that’s true.”
“Except you might have to give me a cut of the profits for using my line,” Weston adds with a cheeky smirk, pointing out some dialogue at the bottom of a page. “When Mabel says, ‘There’s nothing you can’t do.’”
“You don’t own the rights to that phrase.” I laugh, shoving him playfully. “Besides, it’s not good enough to publish. Not like this, anyway. It’s just a short story—a rough idea.”
“Doesn’t seem ‘rough’ to me,” Weston says. “It’s awesome. It felt like watching a movie.”
“Really?” I light up at the compliment. “Which parts?”
“I don’t know—all of it.”
“Do you have any critiques?”
Weston shakes his head and shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m not a writer.”
“Yeah, but you don’t need to be a writer to see problems with a story. Was there anything you had to read twice to understand?”
He frowns thoughtfully, flipping back through the pages. “Uh, let’s see… This word here. ‘Multifarious.’ I have no idea what that means.”
“It means like… varied. Diverse. Lots of different things.”
Weston grunts. “Must’ve been one of those SAT words I threw in my mental trash bin as soon as I passed the test.”
I laugh. “I can change it.”
“No, no, I’m sure your readers will be more literate than me.” Weston turns to press a featherlight kiss to my forehead. “You’re like a walking dictionary. I learn a new word every time I hang out with you. And then I immediately forget it.”
I press my lips to his because I can’t resist when he’s this close and wearing his soft gray UFC hoodie and smells like crisp autumn air and that musky, spicy aftershave I love so much.
He’s started shaving all the time, for my sake.
I can’t stand the rash he leaves on my face after kissing me with even the slightest hint of stubble on his jaw.
He says it makes him feel more “manly” to keep his face clean for “his woman.” I always object to being called his woman, but secretly, it gives me the urge to crawl inside his hoodie and smother him with kisses.
“I want to know what happens next,” Weston whispers against my lips, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.
“Does the lieutenant learn to live again? Does he tell Mabel about his leg? Do they fall in love?” He nuzzles my neck, fingers cradling my waist. “Do they make out? Hop in the sack together?”
“Weston—!” I laugh, holding him back—although the urge to climb into his lap and kiss him harder is becoming increasingly difficult to resist. “I can’t tell you what happens next. I don’t know.”
“But you’ve thought about it.”
“I have…” I lower my gaze, threading my fingers through his. “I’ve had some ideas for turning it into something longer, like… a novel.”
His eyebrows rise. “A novel?”
“Crazy, I know.”
“It’s not crazy. That’s a great idea.”
“You think so?”
He nods without hesitation.
“But I don’t know the first thing about writing a novel,” I confess softly, tracing the rough and calloused spots on Weston’s hand.
They’re strong and much bigger than mine.
A fighter’s hands. The knuckles of his index and middle fingers are more pronounced than the others, from years of punching heavy bags.
I’ve been obsessed with these hands since the day he first guided me, back when I was blind.
“Seems to me like you already know a lot about writing,” Weston says, lifting one shoulder. “You’ve got a talent for it, Tes. You always have.”
“Well, thank you. I appreciate you saying that, and I know I have some talent, but… that’s not enough to be a master at something. I feel like I need to learn more about it all. There’s so much I don’t know.”
Weston tips his head back against the couch, narrowing his eyes speculatively at me. “Why do I get the feeling this is building up to some kind of announcement?”
I groan, tipping my head back. “Because you can read my mind before I even tell you what I want to tell you!”
“Tell me,” he says, his eyes full of mischief. “Or I’ll tickle it out of you.”
“Don’t—don’t you dare.”
He’s the most brutal of ticklers and likes nothing more than pushing me to the laughing brink of violence, at which point I will start aggressively grappling with him to make him stop.
The last time we descended into such a wrestling match, I ended up leaving a visible scratch on his neck.
He relished the chance to display my “love mark” for the rest of the week.
To avoid a repeat of that embarrassment, I come right out and tell him my news. “I signed up for a creative writing class.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Like a real-life, in-person class. In a classroom. With other people.”
My shoulders sag. “I’m not as sheltered as you think.”
He laughs, unconvinced. “I’m just surprised you didn’t go for, like, an online class or something.”
“Well, it was partly my mom who convinced me to do a class in person. She thinks it would be good for me to meet other writers and stuff.” I shrug.
There’s a nervous flutter in my stomach when I think about braving a classroom of strangers.
“It’s three nights per week, and the classes are held at the college.
I was wondering if you’d mind driving me, since you’ll be in town anyway for work.
The schedule lines up perfectly with your shifts at the gym. ”
“Sure, I’d be happy to drive you,” Weston says with a nod. “Think you can handle socializing that much every week?”
“I’ll survive. And we’ll make up for it by cuddling and watching movies together when we get home.”
“Sounds perfect.” Weston sets my short story aside and scoops me into his lap, as if eager to get a head start on the cuddling. “There’s nothing like coming home after a brutal training session to fall asleep on the couch with you.”
“Yeah, you only make it, like, ten minutes into a movie before you pass out.”
Weston laughs. “What can I say? Bruiser works me like a dog. And you always smell so good, like fresh laundry and coconuts…” He buries his face in my neck and breathes me in, his mouth dangerously close to my skin. I wrench his head back.
“Don’t you go doing anything nasty to me before my first appearance in class,” I warn him, pressing one finger to his lips.
“What, you’re afraid I’ll give you a love mark?”
“I wouldn’t put it past you.”
But Weston only laughs and tips his head back, toying with the ends of my hair. “When’s your first class?”
“This Monday, at six. I’m kind of anxious about it, honestly. I wish you were doing it with me.”
Weston grunts, like he can more easily see himself taking a class on pig farming or asteroid mining. “I’d be about as far outside my element with a bunch of literary nerds as you’d be in the boxing gym.”
“Hey, I could learn how to fight if I really wanted to.”
“You could. Absolutely. You would look like a total badass in boxing gloves.” Weston’s eyes twinkle at the mere idea of that, a smile twitching at his lips. “But it’s not you.”
I grunt. “No. It’s not.”