Page 51 of The Lost Book of First Loves

“Are you sure? You look... strange.”

You have twenty pictures of me in a photo album tucked in a drawer.

“Thanks,” she managed to say dryly. “Sorry I’m not one of your exotic girlfriends from your YouTube videos, with their barely there bikinis and their tans that go on for days.”

“I didn’t mean you lookstrangestrange. Only that you seem... distracted or something.”

“Totally fine here,” she lied. “Only wondering why it’s taken you so long to throw all this away.”

And why do you have so many pictures of me?

“I guess I just never got around to it. My visits home were always brief, and I didn’t want to waste my time with my family clearing out my bedroom. Sylvia and Lindsey offered several times to do it for me, but I didn’t want them to have to deal with my mess. You don’t have to, either.”

“I don’t mind,” she said. “We’re almost done. Only the bookshelves and your dresser drawers to go.”

She tried not to focus too much on that photo album as she finished going through the other drawers. Instead, they chatted about the trip they were planning into the mountains, about items they boxed up that brought back specific memories, about upcoming plans.

“If you’re not taking Giselle with you, will one of the other supermodels go?”

He frowned. “I don’t know any supermodels.”

“I mean the hordes of gorgeous women you feature on your travel videos.”

“They aren’t supermodels. And there aren’t that many. For the record, I’ve only had three women travel with me over the past four years and I was only dating one of them. Giselle. The other two were only good friends.”

“Really?” she asked, skeptical.

“Really. One of them, Liza, is gay and deeply in love with her partner, who doesn’t like to travel, and the other one, Claire, is the fiancée of my video editor.”

She raised an eyebrow. “And he didn’t mind you traveling with his bride-to-be?”

“No. Because he went on that trip to India, too. My pal Marcos. He preferred to be behind the camera, not in front.”

She thought of how much she had resented those lovely women when she would watch those uploads, a sensation that surprised her as much then as it did now, in retrospect.

She wanted to ask him again about the photo album, but somehow she was afraid that if she brought it up, she would change the dynamics of their relationship forever.

She cared about Xander too much to risk anything that might damage their friendship. Instead, she remained quiet and pretended she hadn’t seen it as they finished cleaning out his room, though she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to discard the memory nearly as easily as he discarded his old things.

Chapter 17

Juniper

June spent the entire next day hunched over the kitchen table of the cabin, losing herself in the personal perspectives of a man she had long admired.

She was humbled and honored at the trust Alison and Beckett had placed in her, giving her unfettered access to the journals of a man as loved as Carson Wells.

What was it about these people who gave their trust so freely to her? She still couldn’t figure it out.

At first, it felt intrusive, sneaky almost, to poke around into the inner thoughts of a man she had never met. After only a few pages, though, she became fascinated by his thoughts and observations.

She started at the beginning, the journals he kept while writing his first book. They were filled with an unexpected self-doubt, a writer who perhaps sensed instinctively he had talent but hadn’t yet gained the confidence to believe in his ability to tell a compelling story.

I can’t believe the manuscript is finished. It feels like I’ve ripped open my chest and spilled everything onto those pages. There’s excitement, but also this gnawing fear. What if it’s not good enough? What if I’m not good enough? I’ve poured years of my life into this story. What if no one cares?

Using the abundant collection of sticky notes she had found in a kitchen drawer, she had marked at least twenty entries in the first journal she read, all of which she thought Carson’sreaders would find as touching and meaningful as she did, detailing his journey toward publication.

She loved reading what he wrote about his parents’ disappointment in his decision to leave his university studies and focus on his writing, about his troubles finding an agent to represent him, about the writing conference he went to in the Midwest where he was treated like a child trying to sit at the grown-up table.

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