Page 31 of The Write Stuff

“That you’re messy.”

“Um … everybody I’ve ever met.” I paused a beat. “Including you.”

I swear, for a moment, it was as if he’d been punched in the gut. His shoulders jerked, and his eyes went to the window. When he focused on me again, he looked determined.

“If I ever said that, I’m sorry,” he started. “I was a teenager when we last spent any solid time together. The little meet-and-greets when we were in college don’t count because they were 15 minutes at the most. Teenagers are little jerks.”

“I was never a jerk.”

“No, you were an angel.” He looked momentarily rueful. “I hated that my mother was fonder of you than she was of me.”

I almost jerked myself right out of my shoes. “That’s not true.”

“It is, and I hated it.” He held out his hands. “I was doing that typical jock thing where I thought I was too good for the convention stuff. They were all geeks, right? I’d been seeing them for the bulk of my life, and I was determined that they were all losers.

“That’s not on you, though,” he continued. “I shouldn’t have called you messy. That was mean.”

“I was messy, though,” I replied. “I still am.”

“Wylie —”

I vehemently shook my head. “It’s true. I can’t even put my foot down with Lucy. Do you know that she hasn’t held down a job for more than three months for her entire life? Like, that’s not even an exaggeration.”

The conversational shift clearly threw Huxley, and he took a moment to collect himself. “Well, knee-kicking aside — which I’m still not over — perhaps she doesn’t know what she wants to do. I went through a period like that where I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Writing didn’t seem like a good fit because I knew everybody would assume I was just following in my mother’s footsteps.”

“Is that why you decided to write romance?”

He shrugged. “I knew I had a good gimmick with the romance. I don’t mind writing it. Anything else I did was going to be scrutinized. Like, if I wrote high fantasy, that was too sci-fi adjacent. Mysteries and thrillers were too far removed, but there was at least some crossover with readership. The only way I knew I wouldn’t get any crossover was with romance.”

It made a strange sort of sense. His plan was smart. He was obviously a gifted writer, too, because nobody could top the charts as many times as he’d done if he wasn’t.

“You don’t have to try to make me feel better,” I offered. “I know I’m messy. Savannah was supposed to be my big chance to start over. I was going to not be messy right from the start.”

“But Lucy,” he guessed.

“Lucy,” I agreed grimly. “I love her, but Mom and I ruined her.”

“How?”

“She’s spoiled rotten.”

“Ah.” He smirked. “Have you considered the tough love approach?”

“Last time we did that, she hitchhiked through multiple states. I mean, who hitchhikes in this day and age? It wasn’t even safe to hitchhike back when everybody was hitchhiking.”

He chuckled. “Do you think it’s possible she did that to send a message?”

“Oh, most definitely. She doesn’t see beyond that message, though. She just wants her own way.” Why I was complaining to him was beyond me, but he was the only one in town who knew Lucy. I had to complain to somebody. “She won’t get a job. She goes out partying every night. She stole the money for the laundry delivery.” I definitely hadn’t meant to say that last part out loud.

“Kick her out,” he ordered.

“Excuse me?” I laughed as if he’d said the funniest joke in the world.

“Kick her out,” he repeated. “You’re not her mother, Wylie. It’s not your job to raise her. Your mother should have raised her.”

“My mother was too old to be Lucy’s mother,” I said before realizing I was going to say it. “That’s not Lucy’s fault. Mom just didn’t have enough energy for her.”

“It’s funny, because your mother had enough energy for Mick.”