Page 1 of The Detour

1

Harley

“Why are Dasher and Dancer always taking coffee breaks?” the radio disc jockey asks as I lower my head and squint as if the action will allow me to see through the darkened, snow-filled night just beyond the hood of my car. “Because they are star bucks.”

His laugh echoes out of the speakers while I roll my eyes so hard that it’s unsafe because they’re off this godforsaken road for way too long.

“Not funny,” I mutter.

“It’s funny. Come on. You know it is,” his smooth voice says to everyone listening but makes me feel like he's talking to me directly.

“No, it’s not funny, Bob. It’s cheesy. Just like this damn holiday is. Too much cheer. Too much stress. Too much damn everything.” I glance over my shoulder as some jerk flies past me at about forty miles per hour as if he’s impervious to the road conditions.

“How can you not like Christmas? The laughter. The love. The baked goods and the few extra pounds they add to help you keep warm in the cold. Being around those you love and the selfless act of giving.”

“Sounds like a load of crap to me,” I mumble.

“Can you believe it’s in five days? The big countdown is on. Before I start this next set of holiday favorites, what is your one wish this season? To visit a long-lost family member? To spread cheer to those who are doing without?”

“How about finding my writing muse again and if it’s not too much to ask, have some hair pulling, back scratching, toe-curling sex while I’m at it to help cement that muse in my head, huh? Can you guarantee that for me, Bob?” I say out loud, his name coming out as if it’s a slur. “That would really add some cheer to what’s been a shitty year.”

Because isn’t that what it boils down to? And by it, I mean my current, more than crappy state of mind.

It’s been a month since I walked in on my boyfriend screwing someone else. Someone named Gary.

I’d been putting up with my ex’s mediocre bedroom skills for so long because he was incredible in every other sense of the word. While his love for cooking, cleaning, and matching Tupperware lids was more than a bonus, he was my best friend and biggest confidant. But his penchant for allowing me to soak in long bubble baths, never giving me flack for wanting to hang with my girlfriends, taking regular spa days with me, and not caring when I went shopping should have been a sign that I was his cover so his family didn’t know his true self.

And oddly enough, I’m okay with the breakup (for obvious reasons). After a rocky few weeks where I felt betrayed, I came to the realization that it’s a pretty awesome breakup. I still get to keep my best friend in my life since I have no real reason to hate him, and for the first time in his, he gets to be his true self since I sat with him, holding his hand, as he told his parents the truth.

Win-win all around.

The problem?

Now I’m stuck in a state of bleh.

The kind of bleh that leaves me unable to find my writing muse again. The writing muse I need to finish the manuscript due to my publisher over a month ago.

A dozen books on the New York Times bestseller’s list, and I’ve lost my mojo.

Well, not exactly my mojo. I sit down to write every day. A laptop in front of me, a complicated Starbucks order to my left, and a notebook and pen to the right . . . but hours later and the same blank screen with the same blinking cursor blurs before my eyes.

Sure, words have been written and deleted what feels like a hundred times, but at the end of the day, my word count is nonexistent.

How does a romance writer succeed and finish a book when she hasn’t been able to string coherent sentences together for weeks on end? How does she meet a deadline when typing every single word feels like she’s scraping it from the bottom of a cluttered barrel only to realize it doesn’t fit anywhere on the page?

Add to the misery that incredible tropical vacation said ex-boyfriend/best friend and I were going to take to shake the winter blues? Yep, he’s taking Gary instead of me.

Good for them.

Miserable for me.

The question is, how do I get rid of this feeling of bleh?

Sex.

And not just any sex, but rather some old-fashioned bed shaking where I don’t have to think or care, only feel.

Hell, it’s not like I’ve been serviced properly in the two years I’d been with my ex, so I feel like this is a needed thing. Doesn’t everybody deserve some incredible after breakup sex?