Page 67 of Myths and Manuscripts
She was my happily ever after.
Chapter 28
Willow
Now that my little writing side quest was over, I could focus on what truly mattered to me. The apothecary shop was busier than ever, giving me the perfect excuse to dive into work and not think about anything else. Herbs needed grinding, plants needed watering, and orders needed packing. It all felt so wonderfully familiar.
Or it would have if there weren’t so many strange things in the shop that hadn’t been there when I left. Notebooks full of unfamiliar handwriting, a garbage bin labeled “failures”, and shelves of elixirs marked for training next to the old flash cards I’d used when I was studying as a teen. I leaned closer, staring at the handwriting in the notebook.
“Is this all Thorne’s?” I asked Gran after she finished up with a customer. “Were you training him?”
“Of course. Did you think I’d keep a terrible apprentice like him around otherwise?” Gran harrumphed but smiled fondly at the section of the shop that seemed to be Thorne’s now. “He messed up every single task I gave him for the first few days, making nothing fit for consumption and setting fire to more than one project. But he was determined to help, and I didn’t have the heart to say no.” She moved closer, resting her hand on my shoulder. “I assume he did it for you...”
I trailed my fingertips over the label on a bottle of energizing tonic, pausing at the little note that saidFor Willow.
Tears pricked my eyes. He’d spent so much time helping Gran when I was too busy pretending to be a writer. I should have been the one here, not him. I gripped the bottle tight, forcing myself to empty it in the failure bin.
Gran gasped. “What did you do that for? That one was practically usable!”
“He won’t be coming by anymore.” And yet, I couldn’t seem to bring myself to dump out the rest of the bottles. My eyes were so blurry that I could barely make out his little corner of the shop. “Sorry we wasted your time, Gran.”
A pained look was her only response and that bothered me even more. I shouldn’t be worrying her like this. I wiped my eyes and grabbed my mortar and pestle to grind up some fresh ginger root. I pounded the plant over and over, crushing it to loosen it up. The harsh sound of the pestle slamming against the mortar was oddly satisfying. Gran had promised that if I hated writing she wouldn’t bother me about it anymore. So at least I wouldn’t have to feel like this ever again.
“I’m done writing, Gran.” Ginger juice splashed against my hand, but I kept slamming the pestle down over and over. “And I’m done with Thorne too.”
“Oh Willow.” Gran grabbed my hands, forcing me to stop and look at her. “He was a good man. I’m sorry.”
She pulled me into a hug that made it all so much worse. I thought I could just leave the book and forget about Thorne, but remnants of him were everywhere, even in how she talked about him. Tears ran down my cheeks, soaking into her cardigan. Gran patted my back as my shoulders shook and I finally let it all out.
“I don’t even know what happened,” I said, half sobbing still. “One minute we were great together and the next we were arguing about the book. Then I was back in the library, and itall fell apart.” I took a deep breath and pulled away from her, wiping my eyes. “He hated my version of the story, and he didn’t even bother following me when the library finally pulled me out. That’s all I really need to know I guess.”
“Is it really? I feel like there’s probably more to the story.” Gran stared at me with that intense look of hers that always made me squirm, like I was a kid and she was trying to get me to admit I’d broken a jar. “Let’s close early today.”
“But we never close early.”
“Well today we do.” She made her way to the front door and flipped the open sign to closed, turning back to me with her hands on her hips. “The Demon Lord was here almost every day, remember? That man went from lost and kind of sad to confident and glowing with happiness. I know that was because of you, so if you felt even a little bit of what he did, I can’t imagine you’d just give up on the book you two were working on that easily.”
My mouth dropped open. “You think I’m the reason he was glowing with happiness?”
“Of course, he’s in love with you.” Gran put a kettle of water over the fire while I stood there, dumbfounded. “You’re always so focused on work that you miss what’s right in front of your face. I’ve watched every man who falls for you go from excited to downright gloomy once they realize you’ll never pay them the kind of attention you pay your work. But that demon’s different.” She glanced back at me, her expression soft and kind. “You made him happier the longer you were together. Was it the same for you?”
“Just how much time did you spend together?” I muttered, heat sweeping over the back of my neck. “We weren’t in love. We barely even dated. We were just stuck together and we let the excitement of the book get to us.”
“Don’t do that,” Gran chided. “Don’t belittle his feelings oryours.”
She was right. Even as I said the words, I knew they were a lie. I did have feelings for him, strong ones. Nobody had ever made me feel like that before, which was why it had stung so much when he rejected me. Well, rejected my ideas, but those felt like one in the same at this point.
“It doesn’t matter if I liked him or not.” I grabbed two mugs and sat down at the table. “I put everything I had into that book and he still didn’t like it. He actually just skipped to the climax and didn’t even bother reading the rest, which is so rude.”
“Well, that is rude, I agree.” Once the kettle started whistling, she carried it over to the table and added a few scoops of tea leaves to it. “What didn’t he like about it?”
“That I wrote him killing the King.” I crossed my arms on the table and rested my chin on them. “I don’t get it though. We talked about him being a morally gray character and then he seemed so shocked when I wrote it that way. He said it wasn’t him, but honestly, I don’t think he really knows who he is.”
“You keep calling him a character, but he’s a real person Willow. With real feelings.”
“I know that.” I traced the whirls in the wooden table, wishing we were talking about anything else. Because I had feelings too and they hurt. “Can we just drop this and have some tea?”
She clasped my hands in hers so tight it almost hurt. “No, we can’t just drop this. I’ve let you drop too many things for far too long and it has to stop. You can’t keep running away when things get hard. That’s not how writing or relationships work. Nothing’s ever perfect, especially not on the first try, but if you really care about something, you need to be willing to fight through those hard times. Because you’ll never have anything worthwhile if you don’t.”
