Page 110 of Drawn Together
When the first month passed by, it was clear that Ryan began unraveling faster than any of them had expected. One evening, tucked in stiff hospital sheets, Ryan asked Fletcher to lean in close as he pulled out a series of Word documents—outlines, character sketches, plot arcs—all revolving around a name that meant little to Fletcher at the time: Cedric Brooks. One Google search later, Fletcher realized the name carried weight—an established author with a devoted following and a legacy that spanned five decades.
And without hesitating, when Ryan asked for Fletcher to take on the next role of Cedric Brooks, he did so happily. He knew how to content write articles and website clippings and interview features, that was all. Everything about reading fiction was for him, but nothing about writing it ever felt like it was in his line of sight.
So, every morning Fletcher slipped into the hospital cafeteria, grabbed his best friend a blueberry muffin, and they split it while discussing all things Cedric.
Once Ryan was gone, the only thing Fletcher was left with was an outlined book he had to pick up and finish. And for him, it was going to be the best book this Cedric Brooks had ever published in his fifty-year-long career.
The only qualm? No one was good enough for this. Not for Ryan’s very last wish. This book cravedand demanded perfection. No editor, no agent, no publishing house was worthy of his best friend's creation left in the palm of his hands. And no illustrator, either.
It wasn’t the fact that he knew Flora’s desperate situation that made him decide to keep having her work on Threadbare. But it was the fact that because he knew her in person, he knew just how determined the woman could be. He’d seen it in trivia nights and persistent querying of friends and searching for something more around her. How even in the most grave of situations with her heart torn in two, she hadn’t given up on love being out there. The grit behind the gentle. Meanwhile, Fletcher hesitated to believe it even existed in the first place. It was her mind, too. She had the most beautiful one. Kind and forgiving and caring and still, in there deep down, a ferocious need to be better. An inner critic that told her she was too much, placed there by a man that Fletcher wanted nothing more than to wipe off the earth and out of her head.
And if it took Cedric Brooks and his ‘hatred of exclamation marks’ to show her just how incredible she was, then so be it. Not for pity or because he wanted to take sympathy on a beautiful, lonely soul. But because he refused to be in a universe where Flora Anderson didn’t learn to love herself.
Thirty-four
Wordoftheday:thantophobia
Definition: the fear of losing someone you love
“So, after you knew it was me working with you—what then?”
“I waited a few days, trying to think if I wanted to tell you now or wait. And it was in the closet when I decided I had no choice but to tell you. I asked Todd for the regulations on the NDA.” Of course he did. Fletcher Harding was never going to break a contract. “And he made it clear it wasn’t possible. Breaking the NDA for anyone that wasn’t directly approved by the publishing house would end in a lawsuit of up to three million, and if I couldn’t pay that, then ultimately, jail.”
A cold dread wraps around my chest, and I struggle to draw a breath. Fletcher pushes a glass of water closer to me, and I take a sip with my eyes never leaving his.
“So, I just kept pushing. I kept asking for changes, and since you were working on the project, I thought maybe we could find a loophole. I hired two different lawyers to go through all the papers and find some kind of slip up where I could tell you andjust leave it at that.” He grabs my hand and laces our fingers together. “I didn’t care about anyone else knowing, but I needed you to. You have to know that. I never wanted to take this kind of role on, especially without you knowing.”
“You could have told me. I never would’ve said a word. Not to my family or Lennon or anyone.”
Fletcher shakes his head frantically, “Of course you wouldn’t have. I know you, Flora. You are the most loyal woman I’ve met. Loyal to a fault, really. I didn’t want you to know and carry this weight of trying to make everything perfect for someone like me.”
“So…”
“So, I had a meeting with Todd and my editor, and we decided the only other choice was retirement. Which meant retiring Cedric Brooks as a whole.”
“Fletcher—”
“And retiring,” he goes on, squeezing my fingers, “meant I could not tell you until the announcement was official at a ‘press conference,’ of sort.”
“That’s why Lennon came up with the idea of the event?”
“I thought maybe it would help out the store and wrap up the whole Cedric Brooks thing.”
“Why would you retire and leave all this behind, just so you could tell me?”
“I don’t want there to be a world where I don’t get to tell you my every thought.”
The silence between us is a plea of sorts. Of wanting more and not knowing enough and dying for a thread to pull us closer.
“I used to write at night, you know,” he says, throat hoarse. “I would spend all day doing normal, mundane tasks, then as soon as night fell, the world would come to a close so easily around me. Now,” his laugh is a tired one, “I’m in bed by eight. Trying so hard to fall asleep, because I know the second I wake up, I getto run across the street and see you again. My eyes close and it’s like I’m…time traveling to a place where I know you are, and I can’t get there fast enough.”
Fletcher’s thumb raises, swiping along my cheek bone, and it comes away wet from a stray tear.
“It’s funny,” he takes one of my curls and gently holds it there in his palm, “how my favorite thing in the world has been so easily replaced by someone I met just months ago.”
My mouth falls open, then closes just as quickly. What do you say to that? What do you say to a man so…Fletcher?
“You understand why I couldn’t tell you, right?”
