Chapter 8 Single-Lane Roads #2
Sage shuffles out of her bedroom on the morning of her eighth day in Skye to be greeted by gray skies and freezing temperatures.
She goes through her morning routine—starting the coffee brewing, grabbing a blanket to ward off the chill, staring out the window contemplating the meaning of life while said coffee brews—and wonders if today will finally be the day she has a writing breakthrough.
One week. One week solely dedicated to trying to take a hammer to the brick wall stifling her creativity and get something decent on the page, only to fight like hell for every word she pulls from the tar of her mind.
She tried relocating to a small coffee shop in town but ended up spending most of her hours there staring out the bay window and watching people pass by on the sidewalk.
Her word count is still abysmally low, low enough that her spreadsheet that tracks how much she needs to write each day to reach her deadline is ridiculously off, but her brain remains too frozen to think even though she traveled nearly five thousand miles to reboot it.
But maybe today will be different.
She lets out a sigh as she takes the first sip of her coffee.
She hasn’t quite adjusted to the bitterness of drinking straight espresso, but if she pours some water in it and stirs in enough sugar to give Margot (and herself) a heart attack, it sort of tastes okay.
It’s caffeine, and she needs it to bury her brewing panic as she tugs her laptop toward her while she settles on the barstool in the kitchen.
For a moment, she simply stares at her draft, a blur of black words on a white screen that should resemble something coherent but just makes the buzzing in Sage’s brain hum louder.
That’s fine. She can ease into it with some admin work. Just a few minutes to get warmed up, then she’ll throw on a Pomodoro timer and get going.
It’s fine.
She opens a new tab on her browser, intent on making that buzz recede.
The next thing she knows, there’s a knock on her door that has her dropping her phone as if she’s stolen it. She glances at the clock to find three hours have passed and she’s done nothing but create a few rudimentarily designed book quotes she’s going to post on Instagram.
She also unlocked a new level in the baking game she plays Noah in.
It’s their favorite form of communication. So, like, it’s very important she keep up with it.
Sage twists in the barstool, her back cracking after sitting in the same position for so long. Another knock sounds.
“Coming!” she calls, glaring at her laptop screen like it’s personally offended her, because it has. She slides off the stool and pads to the door. A burst of freezing air hits her as she opens it, and there’s Edgar, blinking owlishly, his face red from the cold.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Um.” She glances back at her laptop, feeling as confused as Edgar looks. “Writing?”
He bats the word away with his hand. “The match!”
“What?”
“Scotland versus England!” he yelps, his voice increasing in volume and octave.
“Pride is on the line!” His eyes are shining with fervor, and for a moment, Sage thinks he might grab her by the shoulders and give her a vicious shake.
Maybe she needs one. Maybe she’s actually asleep at her computer and this is some strange, midafternoon dream.
“Sorry, what are you talking about?”
“The. Match.”
Sage looks down to see a jersey beneath his jacket, stretched across his portly figure. He beams with pride as he follows her gaze.
“Ah,” Sage says, leaning against the doorframe. “There’s a soccer match on?” Edgar’s mouth pinches, and she hurries to correct herself. “Football! Sorry, sorry. There’s a football match on?”
“Not just any match. It’s the qualifiers,” he explains, as if this has any meaning to her.
“Right.”
“Right. So you’ll join us, then?”
Sage likes Edgar. She truly does. But sometimes, she feels like they speak two completely different languages. “You’re … going to the match?”
Edgar looks at her like she grew a second head. “We’re watching the match. Greta’s fixing food for it. It doesn’t start until later. You have a few hours to wrap up whatever you’re working on.”
“Oh.”
It’s amazing, really, how versatile a single word can be. Because Sage doesn’t mean oh, as in, Oh, I understand. She means oh, as in Oh, how do I explain I need to be working even though my brain is empty?
She probably shouldn’t writer’s block dump all over Edgar. He doesn’t deserve it. So instead, she says, “Gosh, Edgar, I really wish I could, but I just hit my stride, and this will probably take me all afternoon.”
She feels a bit guilty for lying through her teeth, especially given most of what she’s written over the last week has been her forcing choppy sentences onto the page that she knows she’ll have to cut. But maybe simply saying it aloud will manifest some burst of brilliance.
Edgar’s brow furrows again, as if he knows what she’s thinking and he seriously doubts her capabilities. She can’t say she blames him.
“You’ve been typing away for days,” he remarks.
“I’ve taken in some sights. I saw the houses.
” He cocks a brow, and Sage waves a hand in the general vicinity of town—or where she thinks town is, anyway.
“You know, the colorful ones by the harbor.” Edgar still doesn’t seem convinced.
“Besides, I have time. I’m here for a month and a half,” she continues.
“The match is only today.”
“Go blues?” she hedges, glancing down at Edgar’s jersey. He shakes his head in dismay.
“You’ll work yourself to death if you’re not careful.”
There’s an America/capitalism joke somewhere in there that’s ripe for the taking, one that buries the uncomfortable itch that’s starting at the back of Sage’s neck, because she actually hasn’t really accomplished much at all since she’s been here, and that’s the whole problem.
But she doesn’t know Edgar well enough to pluck the quip from the branches of her mind and actually say it, so instead, she finds herself making some vague promise to get out of the cottage soon.
Edgar leaves, and Sage …
Well, she knows she really couldn’t have asked for better people to be renting from.
Edgar and Greta might be perhaps a little too aware of her comings and goings, and too involved in …
everything … but she doesn’t mind it as much as she thought she would.
It’s nice to know that if she were to actually drive into a loch, someone would at least know to search for her body.
But it’s not enough to get her to stop staring at her laptop and watch a match with them. Sage has an entire book to write. Besides, there’s something about purposefully not writing that feels even worse than how much she’s accidentally been not writing today.
She doesn’t choose avoidance; avoidance chooses her. Or something.
Sage sighs as she grabs her laptop and settles on the couch. She exits out of the Internet browser, puts on her Do Not Disturb settings, and pulls up her manuscript, the cursor blinking on the last tweak she’d made. She weaves her fingers together and flips her palms, flexing her hands.
“Let it be bad,” she commands herself.
It’s a game she tries to play when she finds herself fighting with every single word.
How fast can she write five hundred words of complete trash?
It’s the only way she knows how to break out of a rut.
Sage never settles for bad. Not unless doing so means she wins something else.
It works … sometimes. If she can turn the perfectionism off—which is admittedly rare—she can get herself to at least get something down.
“Let it be bad,” she repeats softly.
And then she begins to type.