Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 97073 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97073 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
I hold up a finger. “I’ll bring you something.”
“Maybe some coffee as well?” he says with pleading eyes.
“Coffee. Yes. I’ll be back.”
I close the door and hurry down the stairs. I don’t want to take long. I imagine he’s starving, so I whip up eggs and ham and buttered toast. I pour a piping hot cup of coffee filled so close to the brim that I have to carry it up the stairs separately or risk scalding myself.
When I toe his door open, Nate is writing again. The floor creaks beneath me but he doesn’t even flinch, and I take it as a cue that I shouldn’t interrupt him. I can’t imagine how good it must feel to be in a flow after wondering for so long if the words would ever come again. I could cry for him, hug him, but I can’t be a distraction.
As it is, I set down his food and coffee on his desk, and then I tiptoe back out of the room. Just before I close the door behind me, I glance back at him and watch.
Even before I met Nate, I was a huge fan of his books. It occurs to me now that I have a front-row seat to his creative process, and it’s a little like watching Van Gogh swirl colors onto canvas, only the world Nate is crafting is completely hidden from view. I’m desperate for his story. If he asked me to glance over a single paragraph, a sentence even, I would jump at the chance.
He pauses and I worry he’s aware of my attention on him, so I shut the door quietly and go down to clean up breakfast. The next few days continue on like this: me staying completely out of Nate’s way while trying to be as useful as possible. I mark up the summary with line edits only because it gives me something to do. I vacuum downstairs and give the kitchen a good scrub-down, going after the counters, sink, and floors.
A week after he started writing, around lunch, I hear the shower run upstairs, so I hurry to make Nate a sandwich and drop the plate off on his desk while clearing his breakfast dishes. His laptop is asleep, the screen’s black, or else I would try to steal a peek at what he’s writing. I bump the desk just a smidge, but the laptop doesn’t stir awake, and anything beyond that would feel like crossing a line. Dammit.
Nate doesn’t emerge from his room that day until I’m prepping dinner. He whips past me, grabs his coat off the hook behind the door, and barely mutters something like “Going on a walk” before he’s gone.
I hurry to the window and watch him stomp down the path. I have no idea where he’s headed, but by the time I finish making a chicken and rice soup and some flaky soda bread to pair with it, he’s still not back. I leave the pot of soup simmering on low so it’ll be warm for him. Then I reclaim my cozy spot by the fire and eat while I read.
I jump out of my skin when the back door opens a half hour later. Nate’s covered in snow flurries, the tip of his nose red from the cold, his blue eyes bright and sharp.
“Where’d you go?” I ask, hurrying to stand so I can get him dinner.
Nate yanks off his coat. “Nowhere. I just needed to walk. It helps sometimes.”
The moment his boots are off, he heads back up the stairs in a rush. Not another word, no pleasantries. I don’t realize how hopeful I was for his company until I hear his door shut behind him. The cottage is so lonely with him stuck up in his room. I deliver his dinner and he mumbles a thank you, his eyes never straying from his computer. I can’t help but feel invisible.
I wonder if this is the way he always works, frantically getting words down, or if this is the result of suffering writer’s block for the last few years. Maybe there’s a fear that at any minute, the well will dry up.
There’s a strange mixture of emotions swirling inside me. The InkWell employee and developmental editor and Nathaniel Foster fan is dying over the fact that he’s in there working on book three right now. The woman Nate slept with the other night, the person sharing a home with him is feeling juvenile and insecure and frustrated. I understand that we agreed what happened is best left in the past, but it seems like moving on completely has been a little too easy for him, like it’s no hardship at all to cast me aside.
I can’t dwell on the hurt though. This is objectively good on all sides. I don’t want to continue acting unprofessional with Nate. I don’t want to have to resist his advances, mostly because I know I couldn’t. If he so much as looked at me with a warm expression, I’d fling myself at him, and I hate knowing that. I feel weak and naive.