Page 15 of It Couldn't Be You
“Your dream?” he asked like he could read my mind.
“I don’t know,” I said, hating how much I had said this phrase the last twelve hours.
“Well, I know ‘the dream’ we always talked about was you being a writer.”
“Yeah, that’s true. I guess this job ispartof the dream. I just don’t know if it’sthe dream. It kind of worries me because I don’t know where I even go from here,” I said, surprising myself with my honesty. It was like words just tumbled out around this man.
“I will say, you used to talk about magazine writing far more than newspaper writing.”
“But I don’t know how to do that from Sweet River.” I blew on my coffee.
“You can write from anywhere.”
“I can’t afford freelance; I need the reliable pay.”
“Well, have you thought much into the future? Beyond what doesn’t work?” He set his mug down, putting his full attention on this conversation.
“Not really,” I admitted. “Jordan has his life mapped out in all these steps. I feel like I let myself get swept up in his steps sometimes,” I said, verbalizing my thoughts from last night.
“How’s that?” He cocked his head.
“He’s always encouraging me to try and like become the editor at our paper. So, I’ve just made that my next step, my next goal. It sounds right.” I took another sip.
“But your favorite part is the stories,” he said like it was a fact.
“Yeah, I know. But it seems like that’s the only forward momentum for me.”
“That’s not true. That’s the only momentum at this particular job, but when we were taking our writing classes, you never said you wanted to write for the local paper. You said you wanted to write forVogue TravelorLand & Sea, and you wanted to write from hotel rooms in NYC.”
“We both know dreams and goals change from when you’re a freshman in college,” I said as Gabe walked over closer to me.
“Dreams change, for sure. I mean, look at Katie, look at me. We’re evidence of that. I went from wanting to write novels to pitching stories about living out of a backpack—but that’s ’cause what I wanted changed. Did your dreams actually change? Is becoming an editor what you want now?”
“I tried that original dream, and I got rejection after rejection. The local paper is the door that opened. Sometimes dreams don’t want you back. Sometimes, it’s not that dreams change…it’s that they flat-out reject you, Gabe.My dream ghosted me.”
“You got like two rejections.” His words were hard, but his voice was soft. “Then you moved back home.”
I swallowed. I hadn’t consumed enough coffee for this conversation. I wrapped the blanket tight around me. “You don’t understand.”
“Make me understand.” He was now standing beside me, his face so close I could smell his shampoo, fresh pine and something warm and musky.
“I felt really grateful for this job. It felt like I had passed a test or something. I was also grateful to be in the same town as Katie.”
He was quiet. Waiting.
“I just… I feel like I took the job and did the opposite of my boyfriend. Instead of making steps and planning my future, I just stayed put. I accepted the job, rented the apartment, and then was done. I just stopped planning, stopped taking steps.” I held my hands up as if to gesture the big halt my life had come to.
“You’re only twenty-four. You have time to come up with the steps now.”
“But how? I think I didn’t come up with them because there aren’t any to take.”
“Excuses.” He leaned across the counter to grab the cup of coffee he’d left behind. “There are a ton of opportunitiesif you want them. You have to start looking, start writing, and start asking around.”
“Says the famous Gabriel Hernandez fresh off his latest project.” I wiggled my eyebrows.
“Hey, you’re still my favorite writer.” He took another sip of coffee while I blushed. “She didn’t look back, but she did look up, and there were those stars she always saw in his eyes.”
“God, you remember the poem I wrote at fourteen?” A poem about him, I thought silently, embarrassedly to myself.
