Page 23 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
Where’s the man underneath?
I found him. He was in an elevator, in the dark, telling me things he’d never have said aloud if he’d known who I was. He was honest and vulnerable and…the complete opposite of everything I know about Beckett Benson.
I stare at the scene I’ve been stuck on for three days. Jake is trying to say something romantic to the heroine, and all I can think of is something about cannibalism, and clearly that does not belong in a rom-com! Sheesh, pull yourself together, Everly.
Maybe I need more chocolate.
My phone buzzes. Bree’s name flashes on the screen.
I should not answer that. Then again, maybe she can help me through this slump. I swipe the screen and answer.
“Tell me you’re writing,” she says.
“I’m writing.” Liar, liar, pants on fire. Really, the entire house is burning down.
Bree lets out a heavy sigh. “Why must you lie to me, Everly?”
Aw, am I that easy to read?
“Okay, I’m thinking about writing. It’s almost the same thing.” The blank screen goes dark, and I jiggle the mouse, bringing it back up.
“Margot wants a progress update by Friday.”
“Tell Margot I was eaten by wolves. Tell her a sinkhole opened beneath my desk and swallowed me and my laptop and all evidence of my existence?—”
“What’s the block? Still the hero?”
“The hero has the interior life of a brick. I’ve been staring at the same scene for three days, and the most compelling thing on my screen is the cursor.”
Bree pauses, her voice softening. “Have you tried writing what actually happened?”
I go very still. “What do you mean?”
“Everly. You went to a gala. Got stuck in the elevator with the very man your story is based on, and came out looking like you got trampled by rhinos.” A beat. “Something happened with him.”
“You know, I’m really regretting telling you about that.”
“Doesn’t matter. Whatever happened between you and him—put it on the page.”
She hangs up. I stare at the phone. Then the wall. Then the manuscript.
Write what actually happened.
What actually happened is that I stood in a dark elevator with a man I’ve hated for seventeen years, and he said things that made my bones hurt and made me question everything I knew about the hero in my story.
That’s what happened. And I can’t write it, because it’s not fiction. It’s just true.
I let out a breath and push my chair away from the desk.
You win again, empty page.
My socks muffle the sound of my feet padding toward the kitchen. The afternoon light pours through the massive windows overlooking a slushy, half-melted yard while I scrounge through the cupboards in search of brain food.
That’s when I remember the envelope.
It’s sitting on the kitchen counter where I abandoned it yesterday, my initials typed on the front in Stratton Publishing’s standard forwarding label: S.B. It came in the mail yesterday, passed along by Bree with some other reader mail.
I haven’t opened it. Opening it means reading words from Beckett Benson that he doesn’t know I’ll read as Everly.
