Page 60 of The Truth About Love

Coincidentally, my cursor’s imaginary voice is the exact same condescending drone that belonged to my creative writing professor in college.

“You’ll never make it as a writer,” he’d told me more than once. “You probably have enough talent to get a couple of poems published in an anthology, maybe even a short story in The New Yorker, but you’ll only wind up in a classroom just like this one, teaching a group of pathetically hopeful students how to structure manuscripts that have no hope in ever being accepted by a publishing house.”

I’d been so desperate to prove him wrong, but gradually over the last eighteen months my confidence has waned. The blinking cursor on the blank page delights at this, of course. But I still show up every evening, hoping that today is the day inspiration strikes and the words pour freely from my fingertips.

“Come to bed, babe.”

Small feminine hands reach over me from behind and slide down my chest. I sigh and rest my head on the back of the chair to look up at my girlfriend, who bends down to drop a soft kiss over my mouth.

I stroke my hands down her arms and rest my thumbs on the pulse point at her wrists, tugging her closer to feel her lips on mine again. Her dark hair falls around us like a canopy as our tongues meet, the kiss growing feverish as it does every time.

Cara and I met six months ago at a bar in downtown Tallahassee. Memories of the past were heavy in my mind that day and I was looking to drown out the noise of them with several fingers’ worth of amber liquid. I’d drunk until I couldn’t see. Then I’d eaten from a steaming plate of grease that Cara had set in front of me to sober me up and afterwards I’d taken her home and used her body to forget what the liquor had failed to.

It didn’t work.

But then, five years of trying has taught me that nothing does.

I guess the difference between Cara and the other countless women I’ve used in the same way since the end of senior year is that she refused to accept it was a one-time thing. So, that one night became two, then three and before I knew it, it had been three months of seeing each other multiple times a week and I was suddenly referring to her in conversation as my girlfriend.

And the craziest thing? It didn’t feel wrong.

The jasmine scent she always left on my bedsheets, the hair ties scattered around my apartment, even the hairs clogging the drain in the shower, none of it bothered me. In fact, after such a long time of being on my own, I even came to find the constant reminders of her comforting. I actually came to like them.

Now, she spends more nights in my bed than she does her own.

When I pull away, Cara’s cheeks are flushed and her pupils are blown. I let her spin the desk chair around, snapping my laptop closed as she rotates me. She takes my hand and leads me across the tiny studio apartment to my king bed, tumbling us onto the sheets in a mess of tangled limbs, wet kisses and wandering hands.

The moonlight streaming in through the parted curtains sets her body aglow in silver light. She’s stunning with her porcelain skin, dark eyes and rosy mouth. She’s like a real-life Snow White, possibly one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever known, but it’s not her I see as I sink inside her body.

It’s not raven hair fanned out on the pillow below her, but gold.

It’s not brown eyes looking up at me, but the deepest green.

And when she comes, it’s not Cara I hear sighing my name, it’s the girl who broke my heart.

***

I leave Cara in bed in the morning with a soft kiss to her forehead and head out to work, diving into Starbucks on the way to pick up two triple-shot venti lattes with soy milk, no foam and four pumps of hazelnut syrup.

The first time I’d been forced to order my boss’s obnoxious coffee, I’d almost died of shame. The second time, I’d spilt it on the way into the office and almost faced disciplinary action. By the third, I’d learnt my lesson and ordered two of the same over-caffeinated cups of vegan crap with my head held high.

Two years on and I’ve grown accustomed to the taste. I haven’t needed to make use of the backup coffee since that second day, but I’d still rather drink the shit stuff than order what I actually want and have another accident.

Martha Goodman, CEO and founder of Goodman Publishing Group, didn’t get to where she is today without being a hardass and believe it or not, despite my daily trip to Starbucks, I’m not her personal assistant. But being the youngest junior editor in the company seems to have landed me the coveted position of being her coffee bitch.

Not that I’d ever argue.

I respect everything about Martha, but I’m not ashamed to say that she terrifies me to the very core. So, I’ll carry on humiliating myself in Starbucks every morning, buy two of the same piss-tasting drinks and spend more time making photocopies than doing my actual job, simply because I don’t want her to yell at me in front of everyone. Again.

I make it to the office building twenty minutes before my official start time, waving at the blonde behind the front desk who blushes as she does every morning and take the elevator up to the fifteenth floor.

For a publishing company with such a large, infamous client list, Goodman Publishing Group only hires less than fifty members of staff. I was lucky enough to land an internship right out of college, which eventually resulted in the offer of a full-time position. And though I know how incredibly fortunate I am to be able to work here, it’s not what I really want to be doing.

What I really want is to write.

I want some chump like me at a publishing house to spend hours editing my manuscript. I want to see my books displayed in a store window, or spot someone reading one on the subway or sitting at a bus stop. I just want to make a living doing the thing I adore.

If only I could get some words down on a page.

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