CHAPTER NINETEEN – A DATE AT THE RESTAURANT #3
Avery doesn’t look up when I approach, but I can feel him watching me from the corner of his eye. He snaps his briefcase closed with a crisp click, then slides on his glasses and surveys me like I’m an ungraded final.
“Mr. McKnight,” he says, voice thin and reedy. “Welcome to my humble classroom.”
I pause, momentarily thrown. “You know my work?”
He gives a half-smile. “I know your publisher. And your agent. Also, I’ve read the first two chapters of Angel’s Share, though I’m told the best parts have yet to come.”
I laugh, but it’s not entirely at ease. “Sorry to drop in unannounced. I’ve heard a lot about your classes.”
He tips his head. “From Katherine, I suppose. I appreciate that. But tell me: what brings the King of the Modern Thriller to my humble hall of self-flagellating undergrads?”
I think about disseminating, then decide there’s no point. “I wanted to get your opinion on a matter dear to my heart.”
He considers this, then gestures to the battered folding chair next to the podium. “Have a seat. I’m partial to honesty, even when it’s not a good story.”
I sit, and for a second we just look at each other, two men who could not be more different but who are, at base, chasing the same goddamn thing.
Professor Avery gives the impression of a bumbling academic, but I know beneath the absentminded demeanor is a sharp, discerning mind.
I’m bigger, broader, and resemble a burly woodsman with muscular arms and roughened hands, but in fact, I create the written word for a living.
Avery leans in. “Tell me: are you here for my opinion, or my approval?”
I don’t flinch. “I’m here because I wrote something I wasn’t supposed to. And it hurt someone I care about.”
He raises one eyebrow. “So you want exoneration.”
“No,” I say, meaning it. “Just perspective. Maybe a sentence or two to help me think about what comes next.”
He drums his fingers on the desk, then steeples them.
“You know the history of confessional literature? Most of it is garbage. There’s no craft.
Just wound-licking and solipsism and a desperate need to make the world feel as much as the writer does.
” He pauses. “But the best of it? The best of it is a gift. Not because it tells the truth, but because it tells the truth beautifully.”
I nod, following.
He fixes me with a look. “Your book was a gift to Katherine. At least the first two chapters were. It was messy, unedited, sometimes repugnant. But honest. The only real sin you committed was being so damn readable.”
For a moment, I feel a release I didn’t know I was holding. I lean back, let out a breath. “Thank you.”
Avery grins, slow and wolfish. “Don’t thank me yet. The sequel is always harder. No one cares about the man who wins the girl; they want to see if he can keep her.”
I stand, feeling both chastised and emboldened. “I’ll try not to let you down, Professor.”
He laughs, a short bark. “Just don’t plagiarize my lectures, and we’ll be fine.”
I walk out of the lecture hall, the weight in my chest a little lighter, the sky outside bright as a new page.
Kat is waiting on the steps, perched like a bird, legs crossed at the ankle. She’s tapping her phone, but looks up as I approach.
“How’d it go?” she asks.
“Not as weird as I expected,” I say. “I think he liked me.”
She giggles, then slides her arm through mine. “Professor Avery told me once that writers are the only people on earth who can simultaneously love and hate themselves. He’d probably take you as a project.”
I squeeze her hand. “You jealous?”
She grins, all teeth. “Not even. I’d win any custody battle.”
We walk across campus, the wind blowing the last leaves into little whirlpools at our feet. There’s a sense of thaw in the air, like the world’s about to wake up. I want to say something meaningful, but I can’t find the words.
So I settle for the simple stuff. “You hungry?”
She shrugs, but her eyes are soft. “Always.”
We wind up in a coffee shop near the library, the kind with battered armchairs and a bathroom graffiti wall that’s become a running campus joke.
Kat orders a chai, I get the darkest roast on the menu, and we squeeze into a two-top by the window.
It’s warm and loud and alive, and for the first time in months I don’t feel like a ghost in my own life.
She pulls out her notebook, flips to a page scrawled with doodles and lists. “I’ve been thinking,” she says, almost shy. “About the cabin. About going back.”
I try not to let my hope show. “You want to?”
She nods, tracing circles on the paper. “Yes, but on my terms. No secrets. No weird power games. Just us.”
I reach across the table, cover her hand with mine. “I’d like that.”
She smiles, but there’s still something holding her back.
“What is it?” I ask.
She looks away, out the window, where a girl in a pink hoodie is feeding bread to a flock of pigeons. “Simone thinks I’m crazy,” she begins. “She thinks I’m setting myself up to get hurt again.”
I nod, letting the silence speak for itself.
She turns back, and there’s a fierceness in her gaze. “But I think we both need a do-over. Not just to rewrite the story, but to live it for real.”
I squeeze her hand. “Deal.”
She holds it, then adds, “If you mess up again, I’ll let Simone run you over with her car.”
“Fair.”
We sit like that, hands tangled, the world roaring around us. For a second, I imagine the future: holidays in the woods, inside jokes, the two of us against the universe. I’ve never wanted anything more.
Later, as we leave, Kat pulls me close, her voice a whisper in my ear.
“You know,” she says, “I never told you the real reason I answered your ad.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Why?”
She smiles, a little shy, a little wicked. “I wanted to see if a man could actually live up to my fantasies. Imagine: a hulking, brawny woodsman who was also a wizard when it comes to the written word.”
I laugh, holding her tight. “Did I?”
She shrugs, pressing her face into my neck. “Ask me after the sequel.”
We walk home together, the campus lights flickering on, the air crisp and bright. For the first time, I feel like I’m exactly where I belong.
And when we reach the front steps of her building, I pause, look up at the stars, and say a silent thank you—to the muse, to the pain, to the weird luck that brought me here.
Because the best stories aren’t the ones you write.
They’re the ones you get to live.