Lizjumped when the phone rang, but as she picked up the receiver a look of good will crossed her face. It was her agent, Priscilla, she had spoken to the publishing house earlier that afternoon. Liz smiled, thinking that she had shown great progress over the course of her professional writing career, with this upcoming fourth book promised to be her best, and she was determined to make it so.

Priscilla droned on about the logistics of things, something Liz never really understood, so she let her mind wander over the character arc’s she had been working through. She turned to her desk to look over the notes she had made, Lawyer? No, too ambitious. An accountant? Not ambitious enough. She had been struggling with the love interest for her protagonist; usually the character’s fell into her lap, but this one, if it had fell, had missed her lap by about 100 yards.

Priscilla had been repeating her name for some time on the other line, so Liz turned away from her notes and focused back on Priscilla’s voice. Where there had last been a smile, years of mothering, stress, and the inability to make any best seller’s lists, began to show in the creases that outlined her once beautiful, youthful face. Now, she looked tired. Priscilla relayed the message from the publishing house, this was it. The last shot. Or everything would cease to exist; the contract, the income, and even Priscilla. She thanked her agent, and stifled a sob. It was only after she’d replaced the phone in its cradle that the full impact of what she’d just heard washed over her.

She decided not to wallow in her pain; the only way to write a great novel was to experience and she couldn’t be locked in her office anymore, her ideas being drowned out by the sounds of her children screaming and playing in the living room. She closed her laptop, careful to save the progress she had made, and turned for the door.

“Liz, you leave your cave for the night? What’s for dinner?” Mike called out from their bedroom, where he was inevitably watching whatever sports game was currently airing. Liz would ask what sport was on, maybe even who was playing, but it had been years since Mike had asked her how her writing was going, or if she even had any hobbies. The answer though, was that she didn’t. Her life was a never ending cycle of taking care of all of Noah and Lily’s needs and wants, writing, being told she didn’t make any accolade lists, making meals for her man-child husband, and finally, getting drinks with her best, and at this point maybe only, friend Leslie. She had no time for any hobbies. At the very least, she didn’t have time to watch a sports game while someone was supposed to be feeding their children dinner.

Liz opened the pantry, looking at the ingredients for meals she cooks once, if not twice, a week. There were cans strewn across the floor, shelves overflowing with fruit snacks, other snacks as empty as a Western town, and of course, no one had bothered to put any of the eaten items on the grocery list. She scanned the pantry for something new. She was sick of pasta, and the kids were definitely also sick of pasta. But all she seemed to find was different variations of said dish: spaghetti, rigatoni, ravioli, elbows, angel hair pasta. She sighed and murmured, “Fuck it.” She grabbed her keys from the counter and yelled back to Mike “Order a pizza for you and the kids, I’m going to Leslie’s for a few hours.” She grabbed her jacket, and a bottle of wine on her way out the door, making sure to shoot a text to Leslie for forewarn her she was coming. Though, they had started to do this so often, she half expected Leslie to be waiting for her by the door like a puppy waiting for their owner to return.

          ***

  “I just don’t know what to do. Writing used to feel so easy, like the words I had to say were just exuding from my fingertips with no real control over it. Now I have to try,” Liz and Leslie were two bottles deep at this point, and the conversation had finally come around to Liz’s conversation with Priscilla earlier that night. “I mean, how do you become a great romance novelist if you’re not sure if you know what love feels like?”

            Leslie was about to take another sip of her glass, but stopped when Liz had said that. “What? You’re married with two kids. You had the big white wedding, you have the white picket fence, what could you not love about that?”

            “Mike.” Liz took a gulp of her wine, finishing her glass, and reached for the bottle. Before she could grab the neck however, Leslie grabbed it first out of reach. Leslie gave a look Liz knew all too well. She wasn’t going to get the wine back until she spilled the beans. Liz sighed, “I don’t know. Sometimes I just feel like I have three kids instead of two. And you know we haven’t slept together in 6 months?”

            “No!” Leslie sarcastically gasped, “Not six months!” They laughed, “That’s marriage, some years you hate each other, some years you love each other. It’s getting through those years that you hate each other that counts.”

            “And how would you know? You’ve never been married. You haven’t even told me if you’ve dated in the last year. You don’t even like men,” Liz grabbed the bottle back, “it would be so easy if I just liked women like you.” Leslie dropped her eye contact with Liz, and grew very quiet. “What? What’d I say?”

            Leslie spoke so softly Liz had to lean in to hear her clearly, “How dare you. You know, for being a writer, you’re not very observant. We’ve been doing this for months –” Drinking wine? Being friends? Liz thought she must have been stupid because whatever Leslie was implying was not computing with her. Then she caught Leslie staring at her out of the corner of her eye. There was that look she thought of earlier, she did look like a puppy waiting for their owner to return. Leslie grabbed the bottle from Liz once again, and finished it off, opting not to pour herself a last glass, but instead drank straight from the bottle. “I haven’t dated in over two years, actually, if that’s what the real question was. I haven’t dated because every time I see you my heart swells like the dumb Grinch, but when you leave to tuck your children in for the night and sleep next to that man, who really we could start calling a child, my heart grows so cold and small, that I don’t think any stethoscope would be able to find a heartbeat.” The words Leslie recited were muffled to Liz, her mind was elsewhere. She should have known. The looks. The touches. The long nights where they seemed to talk about everything and nothing, all at once. She would be lying to herself if she said she hadn’t thought about something with Leslie before. She didn’t want to think that she had thought about a relationship or a life with Leslie, that felt like cheating. She still had a family at home. Two children that she loved dearly, and wanted to watch them grow up and be involved in their lives. But, with the family also came Mike. She had never thought so frequently or so much about how unhappy she really was with him. When she looked at him she no longer got the butterflies in her stomach that had carried her through their relationship up to the altar when they said “I do.” She no longer longed for him when his presence was not near. And in that moment, it became clear to her that she was not in love, and maybe never in love at all.

            “I don’t love him.” Liz blurted it out before the thought could complete itself in her head. She smelled the Merlot that fell from Leslie’s mouth when she gaped in shock. The merlot. The smell brought Liz back in a whirling feeling, through all of the nights her and Leslie had shared, the wine bottles that signified their time together, the wrinkles they could not get rid of from laughing so hard. The feeling of complete and utter euphoria and it struck her like a bat. “I don’t think I’ve ever loved him. I think I’ve been in love with the idea of writing love stories so much, that I tried to write my own. But I messed up, I did. That’s why everything I write sucks,” Liz was crying now, she could no longer see Leslie as the tears had blurred her vision but she continued, “Because I’m an idiot who was blinded by a white picket fence.” She sobbed. The air in the room was so still that they were both too afraid to stir it. Until Leslie made the first move.         

            Liz felt Leslie’s arms wrap around her with a warm familiarity. This time was different. It wasn’t just a hug from a friend, there was a depth to it. Leslie was holding her tightly, her right arm slowly caressing Liz’s shoulders and upper-back. While her left arm stayed firmly grasped on Liz’s waist. Leslie whispered, so the room once again, filled with the aroma of Leslie’s merlot breath, “I would never ask you to leave him. I would only ever ask you to love me like you want to.”

It had been 3 months since Liz’s conversation with Leslie. The leaves on the trees were starting to brown, every gust of wind threatening to knock them from their branches signaling the beginning of winter. She picked her pen tip up from the paper, read through what she’d written, put the cap back on her pen, folded up the letter and put it in an envelope, licked the envelope and smoothed the crease. She had thought about this for some time and was finally ready to pull the trigger. She could no longer live in a marriage that brought her no joy, that stinted her creative mind from being able to flow. She could no longer live in a marriage with no love. She had packed her bags, as the house was in Mike’s name, and she was the one ruining their family, she felt it only right that she was the one who had to start over. She thought over her plan: leave the letter on the kitchen counter where Mike was sure to see it, seek refuge at Leslie’s, and return in a few days to see the children, she wasn’t abandoning them and didn’t want them to feel that way. She was escaping a situation that no longer brought any positives, and that would be hard for Noah and Lily to hear, but one day they would understand. Whether that day was sooner or later, she didn’t know. But she had to do this for herself.

Liz sighed, and returned to her office one last time to double check she had packed everything she needed to finish her book. She reminisced on the books she had written in this room; the good and the bad, the short and the long. This room, for so long, had served as her creative solace. Now, it felt like a type of creative imprisonment, her own personal hell of writer’s block. Soon, she couldn’t stand to be in there anymore, and Mike would be returning with the children soon. She wanted to be gone before then, to lessen the blow. She placed the envelope on the counter and turned for the door. “There, that’s done,” she thought.

She packed her bags in the car, and got in the driver’s seat to begin her new life. She searched for her keys in her purse, but she was blinded by the tears that had welled up in her eyes. She knew Leslie made her happy, she knew she was in love, but why did this feel so wrong? She should go back, face Mike in person. “No, you idiot,” Liz called out to no one but herself in the cab of the car. That’s why she wrote a letter, because if she were to face Mike, her mouth would be at a loss for words, when instead her hands have always had too much to say. She took deep breaths. In… Out…. In….Out. This was right. Part of her thought that Mike would expect this. They had barely spoken in the these last 3 months, only to ask what was for dinner or who had to pick up the children from school. Or maybe, that’s how it had always been and she had just started paying attention. She checked herself out in the rear view mirror, clearing the mascara and snot from her face, and turned on the car. This was it. A new life and muse, “Cheers to maybe being able to write something worth a stupid list.” She began to cry again, but this time her sobs were drowned out by her own laughter. This felt good. She pulled out of the driveway and didn’t look back.

“How would you say this novel has been different from your others, besides the Sapphic trope you seem to have integrated?” The reporter held out her iPhone toward Liz so she could capture her response clearly on her voice recording app. The Barnes and Noble was full of reporters and readers buzzing in excitement. It had been so long since someone from Northern Virginia, specifically Centreville, had made the top 10 best seller list. The town was bustling with excitement. There were school aged girls, angsty teenagers, mothers, single women, even a few men were in attendance. When Liz was asked by Priscilla to do a reading and question and answer, Leslie had to convince her. Part of Liz thought that someone had doctored the bestseller’s list, and no one was actually reading this book, after so many other failed attempts. She was wrong.

“Well, I don’t think it’s a trope,” Liz awkwardly laughed, “It’s pretty obvious the two main characters are gay. Did you miss the sex scene, or should I read that aloud?” The crowd erupted in laughter. Liz had never felt like this – she commanded the room. She set the tone, and they followed. “But seriously,” and the room grew very quiet, “this past year, I had discovered my muse. Something that I thought I had for years, but really it was infatuation. To write stories of love, I think it’s imperative to have felt it at some point. To have longed to see your person when they’re not near, to wake up each morning with a smile on your face because you know you made the right decision, to instinctually make two cups of coffee in the morning instead of one, even if the French press takes more effort than a Keurig. But heartbreak is also imperative to stories of love too. Without heartbreak or the feeling of being alone, where is the elation in love? There is no love if there is no lonely. And you can’t be lonely if you have never felt love. And I felt both this year. I wrote about both this year. This book is different because it’s not fake, and it’s not trying to fit the mold of some box. It’s just trying to mold itself to be.”

“Thank you, Ms. Evans,” the reporter sat back down. The crowd began to applaud. The rest of the question and answer was a blur. Liz was lost in pure euphoria. She answered questions thoughtfully, at least she believed she did, but among the euphoria was an incredible waft of feeling like she made it. Liz had tried for so long to prove she could do it; to the publishing house, to Priscilla, to Mike, but most importantly, to herself.

She signed copies of her book until her hand ached and she was re-thinking the cover. Was it ugly, or had she just seen the cover be flipped so many times in front of her face that the sight now made her motion sick? She thought that every author who went on a tour must have the same feeling, and decided to be happy she was sick of it, there could be no cover, after all.

Even Mike showed up with their children, she was able to see them every weekend, but it never felt like long enough. There would be no custody hearing, instead, once she was settled in her new house with Leslie, the children would come to stay every other week. And Mike had started dating again, secreting Liz’s thoughts that this was the right choice after all. Everyone was happier.

When everyone had left that night, it was just Liz, Leslie, and a few of the employees left in the store. Liz’s display was upfront, a whole shelf of just her book. They were close to smacking customers in the face, as soon as they walked in the door. Leslie took pictures of the display, while Liz stared and took it in. All night long she had felt like she had made it. But now with her work in front of her, her muse by her side, and a cramped hand, she knew that she had everything she could ever want. Leslie took her hand, “You know, first drafts are never good. Sometimes you have to write your love story twice to get it right. And I think you did just that.” Liz kissed her lover, and smiled.

“My first drafts always did suck.”