“Hey,” Liam says, walking up to me and putting his arms around my shoulders.

He startles me and I jump.

“Sorry, sorry. I didn't mean anything by that.”

“No, it's not you. I was just drifting off. I haven’t had my tea yet.”

“Tea is a very good idea,” Liam says. “But coffee is better.”

We take a few long steps while we smile at each other with our eyes.

“So, were you writing just then?” I ask.

He nods.

“I thought that you said that you usually dictated.”

“I do, but I can only really do it when I'm alone. I need some privacy. So, it was nice to actually put my hands on the keyboard.”

“I saw that you had the timer going.”

“Yes. I rely on the Pomodoro Technique. I work in little sprints. Usually fifteen, twenty, or twenty-five minutes. Sometimes I take breaks in between, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I walk over to a beautiful woman, kiss her, and have a cup of coffee.”

He takes a step closer to me and our mouths meet.

I lose myself in his kiss briefly, before pulling away and realizing that the feeling of knowledge in the pit of my stomach is not going to go away until I talk to him.

He tries to kiss me again, but this time I pull away.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

I look down at the floor. It's black and white alternating tiles. The white ones are a lot less clean than they should be.

I'm not much of a homemaker and when I was growing up, we always had a housekeeper. It has been quite an adjustment to realize that the house has to be cleaned every week or so, that is if you actually want it to be clean. I now schedule in my vacuuming on Wednesdays, but it's the end of the week and the kitchen tends to get a few crumbs here and there.

“Is something wrong?” Liam asks, taking me out of my trance.

“I have to talk to you about something,” I say quietly. I'm tempted to lead him to the bed, but I’m afraid he’ll say no.

“Okay, go ahead.”

“My boss wants me to do a follow-up story on you,” I say.

“Whaaaat?” he asks, elongating the word.

“We're getting a lot of reads on that article and it’s being reprinted by a lot of other publications. There's a big conversation on Twitter about it. People want to know more about you. She wants me to write another follow-up article with more details.”

“Like what?”

“Well, in the first one, I just found you. We talked about your writing, but there weren't too many personal details about who you really are, like your parents, where you went to school, and basic things like that. She wants an overview of the story by early next week and then a draft soon after.”

Liam takes a deep breath and turns away from me. I wait for him to respond, but he doesn't.

Instead he just stares out the window drinking his cup of coffee and watching a little girl play hopscotch on the street corner.

The sun streams through the window illuminating his face, but it doesn't make it any easier to read his expression.

I wait and I wait some more.

“The story is very important,” I say, clearing my throat. “Before I wrote this, I was stuck writing quizzes and basically little fluff pieces to fill in the gaps in the magazine. All of the little mini stories of about two hundred words about styling your bedroom. Few words and many pictures. She only let me write the story because she thought that I would fail. Now that it took off and actually has a chance of saving the magazine, I feel like things are different between us.”

“So, that's why you want to do this?” Liam asks, looking out the window. “To please your boss?”

“This is my career, Liam. This is what I do for a living. I'm a journalist.”

“I thought you worked for a lifestyle magazine and you wrote stories about styling bedrooms.”

His voice is detached and distant. He doesn't even turn around to say this to me.

“You don't have to be so cruel. That's what I was writing, but that's not what I want to write. It was one of the only places that was hiring. I wanted to be a writer so I thought that I could do other stories if I showed them what I was capable of. Finally, this story landed on my desk. I just happened to drive out there and find you. You just happened to talk to me.”

“The only reason I talked to you was because you were Alex's fiancée or ex-fiancée. Whatever the hell you are. The only reason I talked to you was because we had met earlier. I trusted you. I had no idea that every single thing I said was going to show up in print.”

“I don't understand why you're doing this. Everyone else out there wants promotion, marketing, and stories to be written about them. Why don't you want anyone to know anything about you?”

14

Liam

I look at her, unable to believe what I'm hearing. All I want to do is stay in that moment after we made love. It was sweet, comforting, and everything that I have missed in my life and had, frankly, given up on.

Now talking about the article again and how far she went without my permission, it just makes me feel regret for everything that has happened.

A part of me thinks that she should know the truth.

She deserves to know exactly why I can't have anything about me out there.

Another part of me resists that.

She's pushing me.

She wants what she wants and in the heart of that, the more she pushes, the more I withdraw.

“I don't owe you an explanation,” I finally say. “You want a story and you want to save your career, but the reasons why I don't want anything written about me are mine alone and that's it.”

“I don't understand,” Emma pleads. “Authors want to be known. They tell stories to become famous.”

“That shows how little you know about people and writers in particular. I like my privacy. I like to do a conference when I want to and not be bothered the other ninety-nine percent of the time. I don't need people poking around in my personal life. I don't need to be in magazines and newspapers. That's not why I write.”

“Why do you write?” she asks.

“For me. For my readers. For my characters. I have all of these stories inside my mind. I create fantasy worlds to talk about what I see going on in this world and to show people what is really going on. None of the storytelling has to do with me.”

“Of course, it does,” Emma says, shaking her head. “That's what you just said. You see the world in a particular way and you write novels that try to show that to your readers.”

I sigh deeply.

I turn my body away from her.

“I thought that we had something nice here. I had no idea that the only reason you slept with me was to get a story.”

I start to put on my shoes, and she grabs my shoulders.

“That's absolutely not what happened and you know it,” Emma says sternly like a teacher talking to her first-grade class.

I want to believe her, but I don't.

“To tell you the truth, Emma, I feel used. I thought that we made a connection. I like kissing you. I like doing everything that we just did, but I don't like this. I don't like this pressure.”