Page 7 of Suddenly Dating
“So?” Sara pressed her.
Lola knew what she wanted. She was writing a book. She’d never told anyone but Casey because it seemed so unattainable. Lola squirmed a little, could even feel her cheeks warming as Sara watched her so intently. “It’s stupid,” she said.
“Is it?” Sara asked, perking up. “I’d like to say nothing is stupid, but we both know that’s not true. I’ll reserve judgment until you tell me. Come on, Lola, what is it?”
“I don’t want to say,” Lola demurred.
“Tell me!” Sara cried, and thumped Lola’s arm.
“Ow.Okay, fine. I’m writing a book. I want to be a writer.” There, she’d said it. She’d admitted her dirty little secret to someone.
But Sara looked puzzled, as if she was quite unfamiliar with the concept of writing. “Like... a legal book?”
“No! A novel. I would really like to be a novelist.”
Sara’s eyes lit up. “Nowthatwould be cool. Lola,youwould be cool if you wrote a whole book!” she said happily, as if Lola were uncool now.
“Well, thanks, but cool isn’t exactly what I’m going for.”
“What are you going for?”
“I don’t know... fulfillment? It’s just in me,” she said, gesturing to herself. “I have this need to write. So I do.”
“What’s the book about?”
“It’s about a woman around our age, who is like every woman you’d ever know. She’s someone’s BFF, and she’s a good friend, and a good daughter, but she’s just pissed about life and why she never gets the guy. She’s also part psycho, and when a guy breaks up with her, she loses it and kills him. And it’s so easy, she does it again. And again.”
Sara stared at her for a moment. “That issoweird, I would read it,” she said thoughtfully. “Can I read it?”
Lola laughed. “I haven’t finished it. You asked what I want to do, and that’s it. I want to finish this book. And write a bunch more.”
“So finish it already,” Sara said with a shrug.
“It’s not that easy! I work full time and I have a lot of obligations.”
“You mean you have a lot of siblings that always need something,” Sara scoffed.
That was true, but in the absence of parents, Lola was all they had. “I’m just saying, there are only so many hours in the day. I’m working on it, but it takes time and concentration.” And she was stuck. She’d written ten chapters and she was frozen with indecision about which way to go with her book. She kept fantasizing about spending a week on a beach with nothing to do but think.
“You can find the time if you really want to do it,” Sara said confidently. “What about this weekend? Can you work on it this weekend?”
“Notthisweekend,” Lola said, as if that were a preposterous suggestion. “I’ve got too much to do.” She couldn’t even begin to name all the things that she had promised her siblings. For one, there was her nephew Braden’s basketball game.“You have to come, Aunt Lola!”Two, her brother Ty needed some help cleaning out his flowerbed because his wife refused.“I make the babies around here. The least he can do is clean out the flowerbed,”Jaycee had said. Three, Casey needed the zipper in her favorite jeans fixed, and, four, of course her youngest sister Kennedy needed a ride to Ikea for some bookshelves. None of that included checking in on her mom at the home, either.
Sara frowned, studying her. “You know what? You need to quit your job and commit to your dream.”
Lola laughed. “While I live on the streets?”
Sara suddenly grinned. “What if I told you I have a great place? What if I said it’s on a lake and you could live there all summer,rent free? What if I told you that all you had to do was feed yourself and write your book?”
“I’d say, sign me up,” Lola said cheerfully.
“I’m not kidding, Lola. Have you ever heard of East Beach?”
Of course Lola had heard of East Beach. Everyone had heard of East Beach. It was about an hour or so train ride from the city on the shores of Lake Haven, a place where the rich and famous escaped in the summer. “Don’t make me laugh,” she said, and sipped her coffee.
“I’m serious,” Sara said. “I have a lake house that no one is using. Technically, it’s on the list of things Zach and I can’t touch until the divorce is final. So it’s just sitting there, collecting dust. It’s perfect for writing books, Lola. I mean, it would have to be our little secret, but no one would ever know.”
“What? How can no one know?”
