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“You look soooo tired.” Lindsey leaned her face closer to the tablet’s screen. Jill had been in the middle of a deep sleep when Lindsey called for a video chat.
“Gee, thanks.”
Two hours before, after making Lucille a plate of food and then one for Rick, who had some business emails to return, Jill had carried her own plate up to the apartment and scarfed down the delicious casserole in a few big bites. Afterward, she’d taken a lightning-quick shower, slipped on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, then slogged over to the bed with still-damp hair and plonked down to disappear into the oblivion of sleep.
“I am,” she confirmed to Lindsey. “Very tired. It’s not always like this. But Lucille hurt her ankle early this morning, and I pitched in to help with the cookies all day. And now Rick is going to help out the rest of the time...”
“Rick, eh?”
“Yes. He’s been a godsend, and that’s all this is,” she fibbed, knowing there was more. She was secretly thrilled to be handed an excuse to be rotating inside Rick’s handsome-and-slightly-mysterious orbit for the next few days. She steered Lindsey toward a new subject. “What are the local stations saying about the storm?”
“It’s bad, Jill. They’re calling it the ‘storm of the decade.’”
“They always call it that. For dramatic effect.”
“This time, they mean it. ‘Historic,’ they keep saying. I’m worried about you traveling back here. The system is supposed to arrive in Denver on Friday, and it might be headed south after that. You have plenty of time to drive here, safe and sound, if you leave tomorrow, ahead of the weather. But after that, all bets are off. You could get snowed in for a while.”
Jill already knew her answer—she couldn’t leave the next day, not after her lengthy plea to Lucille a few hours ago about wanting to finish out these orders. And Jill couldn’t leave Rick to fend for himself with the cookies.
“I need to stay put. I’ll risk getting snowed in. And maybe the storm won’t be as bad as they say,” Jill reasoned aloud. “Once it passes, the roads could be cleared fast enough for me to come home on schedule. Or close to it.”
“Well, whatever you do, stay safe and keep me posted on your plans.” Lindsey paused. “I think Charlie’s calling me. Sorry to wrap this up, but we’re going to a late dinner...”
“No problem. Go! Tell him I said hey.”
“Will do. Love you, miss you!” Lindsey blew the screen a kiss.
“You too.”
Jill clicked off and watched her friend’s face disappear from the screen. While she was in phone-talking mode, she might as well try her mother again, to catch up and see where on earth she was at the moment. Her mother didn’t know how to video chat, so they always spoke the old-fashioned way. A minute after dialing her number, it went straight to voicemail. Again.
“Mother, it’s me, calling to see how you are and what you’re up to. I’m on vacation right now in a Texas town called Morgan’s Grove. It’s a long story, but Dad’s ancestors apparently founded this town! I’ll fill you in later. Let’s touch base, and I can tell you all about it. Take care!”
Clicking off, Jill didn’t even know where exactly to picture her mother. She was only a week into her Bahama cruise, but where she would go after that and what her Christmas plans were was anyone’s guess. Jill would have to be satisfied with not knowing.
A few minutes later, praying the iced cookies hadn’t dried up too much during her unexpected nap, Jill tapped downstairs and headed to Lucille’s kitchen. The original plan was to eat her casserole upstairs, wait about half an hour, then return and bag up the cookies.
When she opened the door to Lucille’s kitchen, Jill saw an image she didn’t expect. Rick sat at the breakfast table, squinting while he tied a ribbon around a packaged cookie. As Jill approached, she realized he’d bagged up nearly half the cookies already.
“What’s all this?” she asked.
“I wanted to get a jump on these.” Rick lifted his eyes, but then his face changed. He stared hard at Jill.
Horrified, she realized what he was staring at. Her hair.
After her shower, she’d fallen straight asleep. No makeup, no hair straightening. Heading to the kitchen, she’d assumed she would be entirely alone, that Rick and Lucille would be sound asleep from such a tiring day.
But instead, Rick was observing Jill in her most natural state. She wanted to slink away and make him un-see it, somehow.
Thankfully, she felt the scrunchie still on her wrist and deftly swept her hair up into a bun, tucking away loose strands. Better, at least. “You’ve never seen me like this. My hair.”
“You look different.”
The kiss of death. Different.
“I mean...” He tried to recover.
“I know. It’s horrible. Frizzy and unmanageable.” Perhaps mocking her own hair might diffuse the awkwardness in the room. “We can apparently blame Morgan herself. She had naturally curly hair, too.”
“It’s not horrible. It’s just... not what I’m used to seeing. It’s usually straight. I mean, how do you...” He pointed hesitantly toward her head, trying to work it all out.
Jill remembered that men knew next to nothing about women’s hair care. At least he was trying to understand. It was endearing, actually, which relaxed her. He wasn’t one of the bullies, poised to call her a name. He was Rick, seeing her in a completely different way than he was used to seeing her. Nothing more.
“Well, there’s this product called a hair straightener,” she explained. “It’s like an iron for my hair. Every morning, I plug it in, take my hair in sections, and straighten out the curls.” She demonstrated hypothetically by curving her arms up toward her neck and miming the all-too-familiar motion. “Voila! Straight hair. But tonight, I was too tired to mess with it. Sorry for scaring you.” She managed a half-grin.
“You didn’t scare me. I like it,” Rick assured her, every trace of shock in his face having already disappeared.
“You do not.” He had to be lying to make her feel better. The only other person on the planet who genuinely liked her curls had been her father. She still had a strong impression of herself at maybe five years old on his knee, where he’d wrapped a ringlet around his finger and called her “my little Shirley Temple.”
Jill shifted to sit down at the table and peered across at Rick with wide, skeptical eyes.
“I really do. Like it.” He was serious. “Curls look good on you.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this. It goes against everything I’ve believed. I’ve had this deep complex about my hair since I was a kid—I was bullied and teased about it relentlessly, called all sorts of names.”
“Kids can be cruel. I think you should wear it that way more often. Natural, I mean. To spite the bullies. Don’t let them win.” Rick set aside the finished cookie and reached for a new one, back to business as usual. “Maybe I’m biased, though. I’ve always had a thing for curly hair.”
Jill felt a blush rising to her cheeks, and she was glad Rick’s focus was elsewhere so he wouldn’t notice.
One of the corgis sighed deeply in the corner of the room, and after another beat of silence, Jill realized it was the end of the curly-hair conversation. Part of her still felt that old, strong urge to dash upstairs and straighten her hair. But the other part, the one that was starting to trust Rick and feel comfortable with him, won out. She would sit there, fighting her insecurities and helping him with the rest of the cookies, wearing her curly bun.
Scanning his accomplishments, Jill realized that Rick had not only carefully tied the ribbon in the same technique she always did, but that he’d attached the label in the right spot as well.
“These are very professional,” she whispered.
“Shocked?”
“Let’s say pleasantly surprised.”
“I’ve seen you and Gran do this. You don’t think I pay attention. But I do.”
Jill didn’t want to interrupt his process more than she already had, so she began attaching labels to the rest of the empty bags.
“Did you get some sleep?” Rick asked.
“Yes! I didn’t know how exhausted I was. I’m a new person.”
Rick nodded. “That’s always how it is for me. I work myself to the bone some nights, for hours, and then wonder why my brain is in such a fog. But sleep after working hard is the best kind of sleep.”
“I totally agree. Especially after I’ve finished a part of a novel where the creativity is flowing. It’s like time disappears. I get exhausted after that, but it’s a good exhausted.”
“What’s it like, writing a book? That’s a broad question. I guess I mean—creating characters and worlds, diving into your own story. It must be the best form of escapism.”
“It can be.” Jill attached a label and smoothed it out with the tips of her fingers. “There are these rare times that writing is this smooth, easy process, when the Muse dictates everything and I’m there to catch it. When that happens, I can spend hours typing chapters, nonstop. I even forget to eat! It’s like the world melts away, and it’s just me and the page. It’s the best kind of feeling.” Jill paused and frowned, realizing what she was saying. “Not that I would know, lately. Like I said, it’s rare. And I miss it...”
“Yeah, you mentioned you were between books?”
She looked across at him and decided to trust him—again. Jill was tired of holding it in. “Well, that was my subtle way of saying that I have a raging case of writer’s block.”
“Really?”
She shrugged and tried to look matter-of-fact. “It happens. But it hadn’t happened to me until I ended my series. I thought it would come easy, the next book, the next idea. I assumed it would be there, waiting for me. But it never materialized. I mean, I’ve brainstormed a thousand ideas in the last several months. But all of them stink. I don’t like any of them. And it makes me doubt myself.”
“How do you know when an idea is good or bad?” Rick slipped another cookie into another bag.
“I feel it in my gut. Whether an idea will work or it won’t.” She peeled off another label. “It sounds completely unscientific—and it is—but that’s the best way I can describe it. I get this... rush, this little high. And when I chase an idea down, when I keep exploring it, and it keeps giving me that rush... well, I know it’s a good one.”
Rick paused his work. “It’s sort of that way with me, in business. A deal or a concept can look great on paper, with all the figures and budgets and research. But something in my gut will tell me, ultimately, whether I’m in or out.”
“So you do understand.” I only wish my agent did, Jill thought. She sighed quietly at the thought of him, eager, years before, to sign her first novel. But his interest in Jill had waned lately, as well as his inquisitive texts. In fact, he’d recently signed a new and promising author. She wondered if she would soon be replaced, cast aside.
“Well, you’ll get there,” Rick assured her. “With the new novel, I mean. You’ve written, what, five of them?”
“Four.”
“So, it’s not like you’re a one-hit wonder. You’ve proven you’re capable of writing four full novels. That’s pretty incredible. Most people couldn’t do what you do. I know I couldn’t. It’ll happen. Keep being patient.”
Somehow, that unexpected brush of praise from an unexpected source gave Jill’s self-esteem a much-needed lift. He was right—she was too hard on herself. She had written and published four novels, a worthy accomplishment at her age. And she could write a new one. She was capable of it. It was only a matter of time.
“Thanks for listening,” Jill told him, feeling suddenly vulnerable, barely able to make eye contact. She realized she hadn’t spoken that frankly with anyone else about her writing fears, not even Lindsey, Miranda, or Lucille. But Rick had made it easy.
“Anytime. Creativity is pretty fascinating to me. I don’t feel like I have a creative bone in my body. I get that from my granddad, I guess.”
“Oh, I beg to differ. Look at what you’ve done right here!” Jill’s fingers grazed the bagged cookies between them. “This process takes loads of creativity.”
“Well, I’m not sure about that.” Rick grinned.
Jill silently counted the bags and realized there was one extra cookie left over.
“I’m curious...” She picked up the cookie and chomped on its head, letting the flavors settle on her taste buds. When she finished the bite, she admitted, “I was hoping the icing would cover my flaws.”
“And?”
“See for yourself.” She snapped the rest of the cookie in half and handed Rick the other piece.
He took a bite. “Mm. It’s good.”
“Still not as good as your Gran’s, but they’ll do.”
“We’ll get it right,” Rick assured her, “together.”