Page 21 of A Storybook Wedding

“When you said that books can’t hurt you like people can.”

“Oh. That.” I shuffle my feet. “Yeah. But it’s all good. Remember? I said it was a glass-half-full situation.”

“You did say that.”

The conversation fades out, and I’m met with an awkward pause. “Well, I’m going to head out,” I say. “Good seminar, by the way.”

“Thank you,” he says.

I walk toward the exit, and just before I cross the threshold, I turn around and hold up my hand in a little wave, surprised to see that he’s still looking at me. An unexpected warmth fills my belly, but I quickly ignore it.

I’m sure it’s just the bad fish, I tell myself.

CHAPTER 4

Nate

Something happens in the days that follow. I’m not sure how to pinpoint the shift, but all of a sudden, I’m able to write. It’s like a door that was jammed is busted open, and words rush through it like a biblical flood.

I get up early and walk out to a picnic table overlooking the water, the glow of my laptop illuminating the space around me like a force field until the sun comes up. I get into this very calm, zen space in the solitude of the morning. The crickets in the grass arrange a private symphony for me with the waves that crash against the rocks along the perimeter of the retreat center. I do this every day for the five remaining days of the residency. With the stress of my seminar gone and the four days of workshop over, I am merely a participant here, and somehow this unlocks my creative juices. I write for three hours each morning, from 4:30 until 7:30, when the scent of bacon wafts out of the kitchen and mixes with salt air in the atmosphere of my outdoor office. I pack up my things and drop them in my room, then head out for a run to digest the morning’s work. Come back, shower, grab breakfast, and because I only have to lead a workshop for the first half of the residency (after which point, the students are placed in a second workshop with a different faculty member), I find myself free for another three hours from 9:00 a.m. to noon.

So I write some more.

I manage to cram almost fifteen thousand words into five days of writing, and I realize, Alice Devereaux be damned, I love this place.

In the afternoons, I host an office hour so that I can be interviewed by students as a possible mentor choice for the semester. It feels a little bit like what I would imagine speed dating to be like. They come in, sit down, ask me a bunch of questions off a list, and decide whether we would “be a good fit,” which is funny to me in that it should really be mutual, but evidently I am just the writing equivalent of a piece of meat at the butcher shop.

On the last day of the residency, a hilarious if tragic thing happens. Mentor choices, which have the entire student body in a tizzy, are posted on the whiteboard during breakfast, so as soon as the clock strikes 9:30 a.m., students and faculty are welcome to go and check out who they’ve been assigned to. The expectation is that once you know who your mentor is, you’ll seek them out prior to the end of the day (which is abbreviated so that folks have time to ferry over to the mainland to catch connecting flights or pick up their cars and drive to wherever they hail from). Students are to, at the very least, exchange personal contact info with their mentors or—best-case scenario—they should come up with a semester plan.

So I’m walking to the North Wind building at around 9:15 a.m. on this final day, as faculty are allowed fifteen minutes of whiteboard time prior to it being available for students, and who’s barreling down the hall toward me but my favorite student, CJ. (She hates that I’ve persisted with this nickname, but it suits her and makes her laugh, and she’s the only person besides Dillon who I actually like here, so CJ it is.) Lucy has just finished writing out all the mentor pairings—a lofty assignment as there are seventy-four students to match—and is en route to the dining room to inform folks that the board is available for viewing. This leaves me standing there, alone, with a bewildered and frazzled CJ.

“I overslept,” she whines. “I never oversleep.” There’s panic in her eyes as she searches the board. Her full name is written under Dillon Norway. “Oh my gosh!” she exclaims. “I got paired with Dillon Norway!”

“That’s great,” I say. “He’s awesome. I think he’ll be a really good mentor for you.”

“He was my top choice,” she confesses. “No offense.”

“None taken.”

“Who’d you get?” she asks, scanning. “Oof.” Her face drops. “I don’t know these two”—she points—“but you got Tim and Gurt.” Her face turns solemn. “You’re going to learn a lot about hamsters and passive-aggressive behavior this semester, I guess.”

I grin. “Yup. I’m actually eager to hear about what an awful roommate you are. I have no doubt that Gurt will provide me with endless stories about you.”

She swats my arm. “You stop that,” she chides me. “Listen, I’ve got to get something in my stomach before workshop. I’ll catch you in a little bit.”

“You got it,” I say.

Then CJ spins around so quickly that her massive backpack sweeps against the whiteboard, taking at least a third of the names with it. She looks over her shoulder in horror. “Oh, shit,” she seethes.

I die laughing. I can’t help it. “Go,” I tell her in an exaggerated whisper. “Hurry—before anyone sees!”

“Everyone’s going to be so mad at me,” she cries.

“Nobody has to know,” I insist. “Just go. Your secret’s safe with me. You go to the dining hall, and I’ll go out the other door. It’ll be fine. But get a move on!” I shoo her out the door, tears forming in my eyes from giggling like a child.

Poor CJ leaves, her small frame speed waddling like a third-trimester penguin under the weight of her gargantuan pack, now marred with the scandalous evidence of red dry-erase ink that will hopefully go unnoticed. Like a salmon swimming upstream, I watch her enter the dining hall just as the rest of the student body spills out onto the walkway to come find out who they’re assigned to work with for the semester.

I duck into Room B to hide and hold in my hysterical guffaws as I listen to the wails of students who cannot locate their names in the red-streaked mess.

---