Page 66 of Staying for You

“Thank you. It’s my specialty, I suppose.”

She takes another bite and moans. “I can see why. Holy crap. I could eat one of these every single day.”

“You need a moment alone with your burrito?”

Another bite. Another moan. Then she wipes her mouth with a paper towel. “I guess you can stay.”

“How very generous of you.”

“I agree.”

We finish eating and clean up then move to the living area in front of the fire again.

“It’s still snowing,” she remarks.

“It is.”

“Is this… normal? Do you always get this much snow?”

“Not always. This is a little extreme, for sure. But yeah, we do have a lot of snow.”

She cuddles up to me, resting her head on my shoulder. “I love it.”

I wrap an arm around her and kiss the top of her head. “You do?”

“It’s so pretty and there’s something about it that, you know? It’s romantic.” She tilts her head up so she’s looking at me. “That’s not exactly the right word.”

“It’s exactly the right word,” I correct her, giving her shoulder a light squeeze. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“What brought you here?”

She stiffens but relaxes quickly. “If you don’t want to answer, you don’t have to. I’ve been curious, though. It’s not exactly common for someone to stay with me for six weeks, especially in the winter months.”

“I do enjoy being the exception to the rule.”

“Ha! That you are.”

“Part of what you said earlier is true. I came here to somewhat lick my wounds from my divorce. How do I write about love and romance when I know not a single thing about it myself?”

“You know…” I begin to interrupt her but she shakes her head.

“I know. I know. It’s just what I wondered. My own head got in my way. So then my books started sucking. Like, big time sucking. And that’s not me playing a woe is me card or looking for compliments. It’s the truth. You can ask your sister, she’d tell you.” She giggles and I sit quietly. I’m not sure what to say to that because anything I say wouldn’t change the way things are.

She blows out a breath, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and lies back against the couch, fuzzy sock-covered feet up on the coffee table. Unfortunately, we put clothes on before we started eating breakfast. She’s wearing a pair of my joggers with the waistband rolled over a few times and one of my flannel shirts. There’s definitely something to seeing her in my clothes that I like more than I should. “I came here to… find inspiration. I was lacking that back home, and it was showing. I love writing. It’s what’s in my soul and suddenly I just had no desire. Depression was threatening to take over. Between my failed marriage and books that no one enjoyed, I was sad. Frustrated. I knew something needed to change, not only with my marriage but in my life in general, but I just had no idea where to start.”

Looking at her profile while she stares off at the flames roaring in the fireplace, I let her words settle over me. The crackling of the fire the only noise around us and I love it. For me, it’s calming. And the way she’s relaxing into the couch, expression softening even though I can tell the things she’s saying would normally cause her to feel tense, makes me think it has the same effect on her.

She turns to look at me again, ready to continue. “To lose my passion for writing, it was the worst. That’s when I knew I’d reached my breaking point.” There’s a pause and she grins wryly. “My best friend, Gretchen, was yelling at me one day.”

“What for?” I chuckle.

“Because, as we established, I take care of people to the point where it becomes a burden on me as well. I allowed my ex to take advantage of my kindness for too long and she’d had enough of it on my behalf. Once she convinced me to kick him out of the house, she also told me to do something for myself. Get away or take a vacation. I think she was expecting me to go somewhere with a beach and she could convince her husband that she needed to come visit me.”

“I don’t blame her.”

“Yeah, I don’t either. I kept thinking that I needed an escape and as much as the beach sounded good, I really didn’t want to be around so many people. I went to my computer and typed in escape and guess what popped up.”

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