Turns out, Luka is an incredible conversationalist.
Even in a shirt.
In one of the most shocking twists since Gone Girl, Luka majored in business and comparative literature at NYU and now runs the modeling agency that provides the men on Desiree’s covers.
“I modeled to help pay my way through college,” he explains.
“I hired him for my Cowboy Christmas covers back in the day,” Desiree says. “Nobody remembers that anymore. Luka was handsome, while so many other models were pretty. You ever meet a pretty cowboy?”
Leah and I laugh.
“I never met an ugly one either,” Leah says.
Luka smiles at her quip.
“I continued modeling,” Luka says, “and then I bought a share of the agency. After a few years, I bought it outright with Desiree’s help. We provide all the models for her covers...” Luka hesitates and then winks “...and for her tours.”
“But I thought—” Leah starts.
“That we were dating?” Desiree laughs. “Honey, I’m a good writer and a great businesswoman, but I am not a cradle robber.”
“You had me fooled,” I say, “even after all these years.”
“It’s part of my brand,” Desiree says. She whisks her glass of rosé directly from the waiter’s hands and takes a healthy sip. “All of this is part of my brand, what I wear, what I drink, how I look. Let’s be real—I’m a writer. I sit around much of the day writing in sweats and a coffee-stained robe. I mean, I scare UPS drivers when I’m out of my makeup.”
I laugh.
Desiree continues. “I’m a romance writer. Readers buy my books because they love to believe in love, but they also want to believe that there are women out there in the world who are in passionate relationships, wearing beautiful dresses and going to dinner in Greece rather than sitting on their couch eating Ben & Jerry’s and watching 90 Day Fiancé. I give them that fantasy.” She looks at Luka. “He gives them that fantasy.”
“Wow,” I say.
“And do you want to know what I do most nights?” Desiree asks. “I sit in my pj’s on my couch eating Ben & Jerry’s watching 90 Day Fiancé. I write about love because I’m not good at it. I have beautiful men come with me on tour because it takes the pressure off an introvert who hates public speaking. I give readers what they want to see. But I still go home alone after all of this is over.”
“Have you ever been in love?” I ask.
Desiree picks up her glass and studies the wine. “I don’t know.”
We all wait expectantly for her to continue.
“Isn’t that the saddest thing in the world to say?” she asks. “It’s even sadder to realize. My grandparents were my world. They modeled true love and marriage to me. I never found what they had. The older I get I wonder if I had unrealistic expectations. I believe I probably idealized their relationship, and it was never as perfect as I believed. And now the older I am, I create suspicions as to why men might be interested in a woman my age. Money? Fame?”
The waiter arrives, and we order dinner—four specials of the halibut with parmesan risotto, shiitake mushrooms, herbs and arugula—in the purest of pure Michigan restaurants: fine food, great wine and white tablecloths set against knotty pine walls dotted with beautiful watercolors and oils of the lake.
Desiree sips her wine.
“Is it hard to write romance?” Leah asks. “Critics tend to assume it’s easier than other genres.”
Desiree cackles. “Do they now? Critics who have never written a book in their lives?” She eyes the busy bar and looks at Leah. “You already know some of my back story, but you may not know it all. In my thirties, I was real estate agent Trudy Williams. I had a lot of downtime during my open houses. Let’s just say I didn’t get the best listings. I would read book after book and think, ‘I can do this.’ So I started to take my old typewriter to listings, and that’s how I began writing.”
She continues. “I sent about a hundred pages of the novel I was working on to LuAnn Roth...”
“The Southern novelist?” Leah says. “I’ve always loved her books.”
“Me, too,” Desiree says. “She hosts a workshop for aspiring writers every year, and I was so honored to be accepted. There were a half dozen writers who went to Savannah, and LuAnn greeted us the very first minute with, ‘All of your work is terrible.’ I nearly died. When it was my turn, she took me to her patio outside. It was brick, and all these live oaks were lit and dripping with Spanish moss, just like in her books. It was an out-of-body experience. She looked at me and said my writing was good, but I had no voice. And then she gave me an assignment. LuAnn told me to write about the one thing that had always scared me, the one thing I even feared admitting to myself. And she gave me thirty minutes.”
“What did you do?” I ask.
“I wrote, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t think about how I should write, or what I should write, I just wrote, and my voice sprang to life.”
“Do you mind if I ask what your greatest fear was?” Leah asks.
“Dying alone,” Desiree says. “And nothing has changed. It’s just that now I have a voice for that fear. My books are my partners. I breathe life into them, and they breathe life into me. I am never alone.” She looks at Leah. “What is yours?”
Leah blushes.
“We’re all friends here,” Desiree says.
“That I will only be seen as an ex-wife and a mother,” she says quietly. “I will never be seen as the woman I am.”
Without warning, Luka reaches out and touches her arm. “I see you,” he says.
Leah looks at him, stunned, and then at me. I smile.
“Thank you,” Leah finally manages to say. “What about you, Luka?”
“My greatest fear is that I will never find true love,” he says. “Women treat me as a sex object, and men treat me like I’m an idiot. I’m just a guy who’s worked hard his whole life to be successful.”
Our dinners arrive, and we chat about Desiree’s newest work, what’s next and how difficult it is for authors to stay on top in this business.
As Leah and Luka chat, Desiree catches my eye and asks, “What about you, Susan? You never got a chance to answer the question. I think that was by design.”
“You writers never miss a thing,” I say. I begin to speak, but my breath hitches in my throat. “I think I’d have to show you my greatest fear.”
Desiree looks at her watch. “I’m buzzed, it’s only 8:30, and I’m always down to help a girlfriend.”
“This is my greatest fear.”
Desiree looks at Jordan. She scans the room, blinking in time with the beep of the heart monitor.
“I don’t understand.”
“I fear that I will be forever like him,” I say, my voice barely audible. “I fear that I’ll be trapped for eternity in a state of perpetual inertia. I fear that I will be trapped in a nightmare, forever alone with my shame.”
I stop.
“I fear I already am.”
Desiree turns her intense gaze upon me. She looks so out of place here, so majestic, so beautiful, so alive. And yet I feel—seeing her out of a bookstore or nice restaurant—that I am seeing her for the first time. I can see the makeup, hairspray and clothing are just a disguise and distraction—much like Noah’s humor, Leah’s careful analysis, Holly’s outrageousness and my cautiousness with dating—to keep people from getting too close.
I look out Jordan’s window that faces the parking lot. A snowplow driver makes his way through the lot, pushing piles of white, the beeps from his truck matching those in the room. Within seconds, a wall is formed.
I tell Desiree the story about how my parents were killed, and how it continues to haunt me. I fill her in on this milestone year and anniversary in my life.
“I knew about your parents, but I just didn’t know how it happened. I never asked. Shame on me.”
Desiree pulls a chair from the back of the room next to one in front of Jordan’s bed, takes a seat and pats the empty one.
“No, shame on me. I’ve come here every Christmas for the last few decades. I prayed for him to die, and then I prayed for him to wake up miraculously.”
“Why?” Desiree asks.
“So he would apologize.”
I let out a shuddering sigh.
“Oh, dear Susan.”
Desiree puts her hand on my arm.
“I wish I could rewrite your life story, but I can’t. I can only do that in fiction. I want you to hear something, okay? You can’t—and shouldn’t—excise the awful stuff in your life. It makes you who you are.”
“Not this, though. I can’t help but feel I killed my parents.”
“You were a girl. It was a terrible accident. You had nothing to do with this.” She grabs my hand. “You had nothing to do with this, Susan.”
Maybe it’s because Desiree is a semi-stranger, maybe it’s because she’s strong, maybe it’s because her strength reminds me of my mother and grandmother, but I lean my head onto her shoulder and weep.
“I can kill all the darlings I want in my books, leave out the parts I don’t like or need or want, but we can’t do that in life,” she soothes. “I want you to listen to me. I know in my soul—as a writer and a human—if this man could wake up and apologize, I guarantee you he would. If he could take back that night, that last drink, that reach for his keys, I know in my soul he would gladly give up his own life to return your parents. Perhaps this is God’s punishment, Susan. But I don’t think so. I prefer to look at this as God’s teaching.”
“How?”
“I believe in life we’re forced to confront our grief or succumb to it,” Desiree says. “I was forced to confront mine after my grandparents’ deaths. I nearly succumbed. But I believe in the ripple effect of kindness in this world. Just look at the impact LuAnn Roth had on my life in just two short days. We can either magnify the pain we feel and choose to make that our ripple to inflict hurt on others, or we can learn from the pain we’ve experienced and choose to magnify goodness to help others.”
Desiree rubs my back. “When I take off this wig, I’m little, ol’ Trudy Williams from the Ozarks, who sleeps alone in her bed every night. But when I put it on, I’m a force of nature whose ripple effect as a writer is escapism, hope and love. What’s yours going to be?”
I lift my head and dry my eyes with the back of my hand. I shrug like a little kid.
“Jordan’s not the one who needs to apologize, Susan.”
I look at her.
“You do,” Desiree continues. “To yourself. For your guilt at what happened. Look at Jordan, Susan.”
I take a deep breath.
“Really look at him.”
I do.
“You’re the only one remaining with a brain and a conscience. You’re the one who has legs that function, a heart that aches, a voice that still works. You can either run, or you can forgive yourself. And him. You have to.”
“And what if I can’t?”
“Then you’ll be as trapped as he is forever.”