Total pages in book: 150
Estimated words: 143633 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 718(@200wpm)___ 575(@250wpm)___ 479(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 143633 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 718(@200wpm)___ 575(@250wpm)___ 479(@300wpm)
“Why don’t you release them?” she said. “You could publish them yourself. A load of the stuff I’ve listened to is self-published. People would love it.”
“They’d take an awful lot of work to get them to that stage,” I told her, once I’d scanned through a few more of my files. “They’d need some serious rewrites, and editing, and I know sweet FA about branding, or covers, or marketing.”
She shrugged. “So? You could do that, you could learn.”
I dismissed it, stroking her cheek.
“I love your belief in me, angel, but all I care about right now is you.”
She kissed my fingers. “And all I care about is you. Which is why I’m saying you’re so good at this, you were born for it.”
I scoffed a friendly scoff. “Hardly.”
“Definitely.”
“I wish you’d have been an agent when I was writing. Maybe my destiny would have been mapped out differently, but it wasn’t meant to be. Clearly.” I closed my laptop. “I became a lecturer, not an author.”
“Tell me this, then,” she said. “If you could be a writer now, would you want to be?”
I placed the laptop on the coffee table.
“I think anyone driven by creativity would want to be an author or an artist, or a dancer, or whatever else their soul called for.”
“I’m not asking about anyone. I’m asking about you.”
“I don’t know,” I answered, honestly. “I haven’t even thought about it in years.”
“Maybe you should.”
“Maybe one day,” I replied, and turned my attention back to her perfection.
I didn’t want thriller manuscripts. I wanted her.
Another night turned into another day, still insatiable. We stayed consumed in the world of just us, with no outside interference, for another night and another day after that, but I knew our isolation couldn’t last for ever.
I was having a cigarette by the window on morning number nine as Rosie typed in her regular message to her mother. She was conveying how she was having such a good time with Jenny that she’d not come home yet. How lovely it was to have a new friend, away for days at a time, exploring the country.
“Do you think she has any suspicions?” I asked her, pondering. “Surely she must. Has she asked who Jenny really is yet?”
Rosie shrugged. “No, I don’t think so. She’s too caught up with Scottie and their imaginary plans for a future.”
“I see.”
I took a fresh drag and felt the curiosity in Rosie’s stare.
“What about your imaginary future?” she asked.
“Sorry?”
She put her phone on the coffee table.
“Well, we can’t stay in here for ever, right? What do you want to happen? Between us?”
I’d been avoiding probing the question in my own head, so I didn’t have an answer for her.
I was trying to view only one minute at a time, savouring every second.
I kept up my policy of honesty when it came to her.
“We play until we peak, and then you set yourself free when we plummet. You can give me a wave goodbye as you move on to better things.”
She looked as though I’d slapped her, open mouthed.
“What?” I asked. “You have a whole future ahead, Rosie. I’m just a distraction at the beginning.”
She shook her head as though I was speaking the absurd.
“I’m not going to wave you goodbye and move on to better things. I don’t want to.”
I stubbed my cigarette out in the ashtray, pulling the window closed.
“I appreciate the faith and sentiment, but this isn’t your road ahead in the long term, I assure you. You’re only just beginning your adulthood. I’m approaching the end of mine.”
Her beautiful innocence shone through. She was still insistent, still shaking her head as though I was wrong.
“I’m not going to move on. And you aren’t approaching the end of yours. You’re forty-eight, not eighty-four.”
“And you’re barely approaching nineteen.”
Her shining light changed to frustration. I saw the shift before my eyes. She tensed up, shaking her head with a different energy.
“Stop it. Age means nothing.”
I closed the gap to sit beside her.
“You deserve someone to go on the full journey with you, not just take advantage of you at the end of theirs.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re not worth it, you’re the sick guy who shouldn’t be doing it, and I’m just a kid, and all that.” She sighed, and our choice to bury ourselves with no outside interaction showed its face. She was becoming confident around me, aided by the close proximity of a pressure cooker of one-on-one time. “I’m capable of knowing my own mind, thanks, and I want you.”
Again, her innocent enthusiasm was touching. I took hold of her hands.
“And I want you to get what you need from life.”
“What I need is right here. Right now.”
I tried to break the tension with a smile.
“Naked, playing with marker pens, and rope, with my cock on permanent display. I’ve barely even managed to cook you a meal.”