Chapter 6 Luke
LUKE
I’m not used to women running away from me.
Usually, they’re running toward me, camera phones out and squealing.
But Anna ran like I’d accused her of grand theft, not stalking. Which, in hindsight, probably wasn’t my smoothest opening line.
Never thought I’d see the day when I was the one left standing, speechless and stunned. Welcome to rock bottom, Luke.
I wiped water from my face, grabbed the towel I’d left by the pool, and wandered toward the pool house.
A shower sounded good. A little peace before I figured out how to deal with my unexpected “neighbor,” who, for some inexplicable reason, had run away from me like she’d seen a mouse.
The inside of the pool house was small but neat. I tossed my towel onto a chair, kicked off my flip-flops, and headed straight for the shower.
The place was stocked with fresh towels and fancy soaps. Nice touch. Probably the housekeeper’s doing. Honestly, I respected the effort.
A few minutes later, I stepped out of the bathroom, still damp, wearing just a towel. I headed toward the chair where I’d left my clothes. That’s when I noticed it.
The wall.
I froze mid-step.
It was covered in paper.
Dozens of sheets of paper, maybe hundreds, pinned in rows like a bizarre art exhibit. I squinted at them, water still dripping off me onto the floor.
“Thank you for your submission...”
“Unfortunately, we are unable to accept...”
It was a wall of rejection letters. A sea of polite “no’s.”
And some that were not so polite. One with a handwritten P.S.: “This gave me flashbacks to high school English. That’s not a compliment.”
A particularly crumpled letter read: “Your protagonist was certainly unique. I hated him immediately.”
I blinked at the wall, unable to stop myself from reading more. There were rejections for everything.
A story about a cursed lighthouse? Rejected. A submission about a girl who fell in love with a ghost pirate? Hard pass. Something described as “Kafka-esque, but the Russian greats would be rolling in their graves?” Yep, rejected.
It was a staggering collection of failure. I couldn’t tell what type of writing the author specialized in because the genres bounced from romance to dystopian horror to whatever one letter described as “a bold reimagining of ‘Great Expectations’… but with robots? Please don’t contact us again.”
I couldn’t help but stare. The sheer volume of rejection was almost impressive. Whoever the writer was, they’d tried everything, and the universe just kept sending back a firm no.
The salutations were missing from the rejection letters, leaving me to wonder who had written these doomed manuscripts.
Were they Topher’s? He was always full of business plans.
But creative writing? Not a chance. My best friend’s idea of a gripping story probably involved a spreadsheet showdown and a shocking twist about market trends.
Maybe they belonged to the housekeeper. Could she secretly moonlight as a novelist?
Or Anna. She had the wit to pull off being a writer. But if they were hers, why would she hang up rejection letters in the pool house?
“WHAT are you doing here?”
I spun around. Anna was standing in the doorway, her eyes wide and accusatory.
My infuriatingly judgmental, very real neighbor, holding a coffee cup in her hand. It was shaking slightly, like she couldn’t decide whether to throw it at me.
What was I doing there? “Uh… showering?” I gestured to the towel like it wasn’t obvious.
Her jaw dropped. “In my shower?”
“I thought this was the pool house,” I shot back defensively, though I wasn’t sure that excuse was helping.
She crossed her arms, her coffee mug wobbling dangerously. “It’s not the pool house.”
I glanced around, taking in the tiny space. The desk, the wall of rejection letters, the distinctly non-pool-house vibes, and I blurted, “But it’s too small for someone actually to live here.”
Her eyes narrowed into a glare so sharp I almost took a step back. “Well, someone does live here, and you’re dripping all over my floor.”
I glanced down at the puddle forming beneath me and winced. “Right. Sorry about that.”
Her glare could’ve peeled paint. “Get. Out.”
I grabbed my clothes from the chair, backing toward the door like a man escaping an active crime scene. “You’ve got quite the setup here.” I gestured toward the rejection letters. “Are you a writer?”
Her eyes narrowed. “No, I just like collecting rejection letters for fun.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Just go,” she interrupted, her tone leaving no room for argument.
The door slammed behind me with impressive force, leaving me standing on the porch in a towel, holding my dry clothes and wet swim trunks.
I stared at the door for a second, still not quite sure how things had spiraled so quickly. But as I turned to leave, my eyes flicked back to the cottage, to the wall of rejection letters I’d seen.
Something about it wouldn’t let me go. Maybe it was the sheer volume of rejections.
There was enough to wallpaper a room. Or perhaps it was the determination of someone who’d been told “no” so many times and still got up every morning to try again.
But mostly, it was the notes themselves.
A theme had started to jump out at me, scribbled in red ink and typed in tidy little platitudes: “Write what you know.”
I remembered her at the bar, so fiercely protective of New Orleans, a city she’d clearly loved like it was part of her soul. I could still hear her voice, so defiant and dripping with pride. I would never leave this place.
It hit me then, hard and sudden: she’s a real person. Like Topher had told me that I needed to find.
Not someone trying to get something out of me. Not someone who cared about who I was or what I’d done. Just a woman stubbornly chasing a dream that wasn’t handing itself over without a fight.
And wasn’t that precisely what I was supposed to be doing? Getting to know real people? People with grit, stories, and something to say?
I stopped, turning back to the door. This was an opportunity. One I couldn’t ignore.
I knocked once, a little too loudly.
The door flew open, and she stared at me with an expression that said she was two seconds from launching her coffee at my face. “What now?”
“I have a proposition for you.”
Her eyes narrowed, suspicious. “If it involves you showering here again, the answer is no.”
“Relax.” I held up my hands in surrender. “I’ve got an idea you might like.”
She stared at me, torn between curiosity and her apparent desire to slam the door.
“Just hear me out,” I said quickly. “You’re a writer. You’ve got rejection letters from half the country telling you to ‘write what you know,’ and I know for a fact you know this city better than anyone.”
She blinked, clearly caught off guard. “And?”
“And for my next movie role, I need to get to know real people. Real stories, real places. If you act as my tour guide and help me see this city the way you do, maybe you’ll be inspired, too. Then you’ll be able to write what you know about: this city.”
She stared at me. “You think dragging you around New Orleans is somehow going to help me?”
I shrugged, smirking just enough to keep it light. “It’s worth a shot. You clearly love this place. Maybe you need a reminder of why it’s worth writing about.”
Her lips pressed into a thin line like she was considering all the ways that this could blow up in her face.
“Of course,” I added, “I’ll have to be in disguise. Can’t exactly go wandering around looking like, well… me.”
Something shifted in her expression. Her eyes narrowed, but not in anger this time. It was almost like inspiration. Like I’d just handed her a plot twist she hadn’t seen coming.
And that’s when I knew I had her convinced.