Page 105 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
EVERLY
It’s an unexplainable feeling when the writer inside you comes alive. It’s like you were seeing in black and white, and suddenly you’re in a Technicolor world again. Today…is not that day.
Nope. But it’s okay, because it’s been a full ten days since the mall, and I’m doing something I haven’t done since the morning after the mall: working on my thriller.
Mostly because I finished my rom-com in earth-shattering record time. What can I say? When you’re hot, you’re hot.
But now I have my laptop open. E.J. Hartley thriller on screen. Cursor blinking, just a little judgment in each blip.
Back off, oh cursor. I’ll figure it out.
The thriller has been waiting. Patiently. The plot sitting exactly where I left it weeks ago, the protagonist frozen mid-investigation, the entire fictional world in suspension while I switched my focus to finishing Ice Cold Heart in my pajamas while eating tubs full of dairy products.
But today, I’m showered. Dressed. I’m back at it. And the words are coming. Slowly. Reluctantly. The way words come when the writer has been through something and the sentences have to navigate around the rubble. But they’re birthing, one word at a time.
I’m writing the scene where the protagonist breaks into an office. Drops into the hall from the ceiling—a little trick I learned from Beckett—cobwebs caught in her wild, crazy red hair.
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, but every author does it. There’s a little slice of us hidden in every character we write. That’s a universally known fact.
The scene goes on:
The heroine tries the door—locked. She?—
The doorbell rings.
Bree Holloway is standing on my doorstep holding two things: a latte from Brew & Rumor and an envelope.
“Before you say anything,” she says, extending the latte with the practiced gesture of a woman who knows editors who bring an offering of caffeine are more likely to be admitted, “I come bearing gifts. And news. And”—she holds up the envelope—“this.”
I take the latte because I am a writer, and we are physiologically incapable of refusing free coffee.
I eye the envelope.
It’s plain. White. But addressed in handwriting I recognize immediately.
Something in my chest shifts. The sudden full-body tense of having salt pressed to an open wound.
“This came to the office today,” Bree says. “Hand delivered, in fact. By a man who is significantly taller and more attractive than our usual mail carriers and who, according to Janine at reception, stood in the lobby for approximately four minutes before approaching the desk, which Janine interpreted as either nervousness or unfamiliarity with the concept of a reception area.”
“Bree—”
“She also noted that he was”—she makes a gesture that I think indicates burly, but could also be interpreted as hairy—“and that he asked very politely if the envelope could be forwarded to the author and then left without providing a name, which was unnecessary because Janine has a Blue Ox calendar and he is, apparently, Mr. November.”
“Bree!”
“Right, sorry! Anyway, here.” She hands me the envelope, and immediately I know it’s not just a letter. Something jostles inside, across the bottom. Bree does not wait for an invitation—she settles at my kitchen table with her own coffee and folds her hands.
She waits. Patiently. The way a police siren wails quietly. Not.
She smiles at me, eyes shifting to the envelope and back as though to say Go on, then, I’m waiting.
I sit. I open it.
The letter is two pages. Front and back. The handwriting starts controlled. By the second page, it loosens—the letters leaning harder right, as if whatever is being said has gained enough momentum to override the control.
Dear S.B.,
I mentioned someone in my last letter. A woman from my past. One who treated me exactly the way I always thought she would and broke something in me anyway.
