Chapter 2 #2
Everything about this should have been strange, but it wasn't. There were just two authors on a bridge railing, understanding each other almost without words.
The tension created by our eye contact, especially when one of us delayed responding, was impossible for me to ignore, and the tingling sensation in my stomach immediately returned.
“Authors often pretend to be heartless and cruel.” I kept my gaze fixed on the right corner of his mouth, which moved upward again before the reflection of the lanterns drew me back to his eyes. “Yet they are the most empathetic individuals you could ever meet.”
I wasn’t sure whether the truth or his optimism prevailed in that statement. What if he wrote children’s books... or newspaper articles?
His gaze wandered down to the floodwaters, and I finally dared to follow his gaze.
The bubbling water was still crashing against the sharp rock edges, rushing down the steep stream path down to the town, of which only a few lights were visible from here due to the tall deciduous trees.
“I've stood on this railing before.”
Fake Plastic Trees
Radiohead
My breath caught in my throat.
He was still looking down at the water.
Was he just admitting to me that he had wanted to jump too?
My heart tightened again, this time painfully, accompanied by the urge to move closer and squeeze his hand.
“Why didn't you jump?”
His eyes looked glassy, but he seemed to have better control over his lacrimal glands, even though he avoided my gaze.
“I had too much to lose.”
I just nodded, even though he couldn't see me. He was so focused on staring down, as if he were considering coming back here to jump.
The fact that he was older than me didn't reassure me much. Thoughts like that just came and overwhelmed us. And if he had once stood on the same fragile brink as I had, there was no guarantee that he had ever really escaped it, or if he had simply suppressed it.
“How did you get through it?”
I wanted to know that he had gotten through it, wanted to make sure that he really wouldn't come back here and jump. But who was I to worry about him? He had done fine without me all these years, probably had a loving family, a wife...
The urge to pull my hand out of his grew, accompanied by feelings of shame, but his grip tightened around mine and, as if he had gained control over my body, I felt my cheeks fill with even more heat.
He wouldn't let go of me until he was sure I wasn't going to jump. And that fact alone was enough to make me feel less alone.
“I think I've ended up on a hamster wheel.”
Ouch.
He laughed softly, looked down at my hand, pulled it further onto his thigh, and I swallowed as he placed his other hand on my bare palm while he continued talking as if all this were happening subconsciously.
My heartbeat quickened. Could he feel it? Did he know what this well-intentioned touch was doing to me?
“It actually helped to write less, to focus on real life, to have a demanding job.”
“But you miss writing...”
I knew what it was like for me, knew how much my grades at school had suffered during my intense writing phases, how I had lost myself day and night between an unhealthy number of coffee cups, smudged notes, and Post-its in front of the computer Thomas had given me, until I had stopped caring about anything in my real life.
To the point that I hardly noticed that I'd had to repeat the school year.
With enormous effort, I had forced myself not to write for a month, to concentrate on my grades instead of words.
I'd never forget the frustration and inner emptiness that had crept up on me when the words I hadn't written down had built up inside me.
The flood of words that burst out of you when you could finally let your feelings bleed onto paper through the ink again after a long time.
“Not writing is like being able to live underwater without having to breathe. At some point, you miss breathing, you miss the feeling of air in your lungs.”
“You survive instead of living.”
When I looked up from our hands, our eyes locked.
He didn't have to say anything. I understood him. It was as if I could feel the pain in his chest, even though I didn't know what his life had been like, what highs and lows he had gone through. Knowing that he had been writing, that he had realized I was writing, was enough.
He held my gaze, even as his fingers began to move dangerously slowly over my wrist.
Goosebumps ran up my bare arms.
I swallowed and his gaze immediately moved to my throat, lingering there, but I didn't move, staring back.
No man had ever held my hand like he did. And I had only known him for an hour.
What if someone was waiting for him at home? Someone who deserved his undivided attention, while I, someone half his age, was holding his hand, wondering how his fingers would feel against my thighs...
I cleared my throat quietly and broke eye contact, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to ask the next question.
“Did your family help you get out of it?”
He blinked, looked away too, and I was overcome by a sinking feeling that I was right. After all, I was in Maplecrest. A town full of desperate trophy wives and sexist adulterers.
“Yes...” he said, sounding more thoughtful than embarrassed. “My daughter.”
Oh.
That was a twist. So, he had a child. Why was I surprised?
Great, Quill. You're the perfect home wrecker for this town.
“And your wife?” He looked up, and I realized too late that I might have gone a little too far. “I'm sorry...”
“No.” He smiled, but there was something sad and absent-minded about it.
“It's okay.” He cleared his throat as if the subject made him uncomfortable before staring back at the waves. “My wife left me a long time ago. She couldn’t handle living with someone who wanted to feed his family by writing books.”
“Ouch.”
This story reminded me of Lara’s family.
My best friend’s mother had simply taken off with all the money her father had saved, and her father had had to raise her on his own.
Except that Lara's dad wasn't an author, but a busy law professor who had made a lot of money for his daughter as a former lawyer.
Three months ago, Lara had offered me to move in with her and her father, but I had declined because I didn't want to be a burden to her, nor to her father, whom I didn't even know personally.
And so, I had ended up with my father's family. It couldn't have turned out worse for me.
“I survived it,” he said, pulling me back to the present with an amused thoughtfulness in his voice.
He looked at me again, holding my hand more loosely now, and the fear that he might let go because he realized that this conversation was a mistake spread through me far too quickly.
“Do you have a husband?” He cleared his throat. “Or a boyfriend...”
Could it be that he thought I was older than I actually was?
Amused, I suppressed a smile and pushed aside the strange feeling that whispered to me that he would run away if he found out my actual age.
I wanted to ask him how old he was, but then I risked him asking me the same question, so I concentrated on the question he had asked instead.
“It's hard to love an author.”
Carry You
Ruelle, Fleurie
It was easier to be a usable body that could satisfy the desires of lonely men and let me forget myself for a few minutes. Anything else would be madness.
My ex was proof that I was unlovable. A complicated burden best left alone if one wanted to lead a well-regulated picket-fence dream or experience a wild life full of travel and hustle.
I fit neither into the picture-perfect family category nor into the big-city party lifestyle category. Too much of a free spirit for the one, too sensitive and withdrawn for the other.
“Why do you think that?”
His gaze was pleasant. Or was it the hand that wrapped itself more tightly around mine?
A sad smile crossed my lips, because I knew that this intense and strange moment would not last. Whatever this was, it was a blink of an eye in which you weren't yourself – or maybe you were?
– for a few seconds and threw all your principles overboard.
It was one of those moments you really lived.
The ones that left you thirsting for more, in a desert without oases.
“Why do you think we write?”
Clouds were gathering in front of the moon, almost covering it.
He laughed softly, and that was all I needed to know that he was different from all the men who had ever paid me any attention.
“What did you study?”
The question took me by surprise.
Caught off guard, I wrapped my other hand tighter around the steel rope.
Everything in me wanted to be honest with him, to open up more. It was as if I didn't have to fear his judgment. But there was something inside me that wanted to savor this moment. Something that feared that he might let go of my hand and leave me alone on this bridge if I said the wrong thing.
I would never see him again. So why embarrass myself and roll out my long list of failures in front of him?
“Literature...”
I bit my tongue.
Maybe in another life.
Uneasiness threatened to overwhelm me.
He couldn't possibly be the first person I found it difficult to lie to. It felt like I was hurting him without him even noticing. A wound that ate away beneath his skin and would only reveal the marks it left much later.
But what was I thinking? We would never see each other again.
“Here...” I said quickly, taking one hand off the steel rope and the other out of his to open my black bag, which was still hanging around my neck, before he had a chance to ask any more questions that I couldn't answer honestly without tears in my eyes.
“Normally, people exchange books at events like this.”
I pulled out the book, grateful that I could give it to someone after all.
He raised both eyebrows, took it, opened the first two pages, and examined the cover.
“A first edition of Margaret Atwood?”
It sounded like it was a first edition of Jane Austen, and I couldn't help but grin.
“That's all I got.”