Page 50 of Elevator Pitch

“You are not my—”

“Shush.”

My mouth falls open. She did not just shush me, and I’m ready to argue again with her when she begins her wisdom-incantation.

“You are strong. You are beautiful. You are kind.”

I snort. “You cannot steal someone else’s words as your own advice, Cassandra.”

“Oh, fine. But it’s the truth. You have resilience like no one I know. Cameron. Writing. You make decisions, and you go for it. You have goals and don’t let some guy get in the way.”

“If you go into the montage from Say Anything about men versus guys . . .” I warn.

“Oh my gosh, such a good movie,” Cassandra croons. “But I digress.”

“Yes, tell me how I’m all woman, hear my roar.”

“You are all woman,” she growls, giving me her best rawr for effect. “And you’re a beautiful soul with an active imagination. It’s a gift, Vee-Vee. And no guy, or man, or hot baseball manager with a tempting ass in baseball pants should make you question that worth.”

“He didn’t exactly—”

“And you’re a good person, Vee. You’re sweet and nice. God, so nice. And look what you did for him.” Her voice rises. A shift in the tide is coming, a rolling whitecap curling into itself, where she does break into a montage of her own about women’s worth and men being dicks, or thinking only with them, or acting like one, which never makes sense to me because dicks have limited purpose or action and . . .

“You will not hide, Verona. You will not be ignored.”

“Are we moving over to the Fatal Attraction portion of this pep talk?” I chuckle but Cassandra takes in a deep breath, like she’s about to jump into that rising tide and swim for her life.

“And you can go where you want to go, which is a damn baseball game for inspiration so you can write your next bestseller and take all the trips to Anywhereland.”

“Anywhereland?” I scoff.

“You know what I mean?”

“Actually, I’m not certain I do.”

“You don’t need him. He needed you.”

Basically, what she isn’t saying is he used me, and I exhale at the thought again.

Then I retrace my steps a bit. Hadn’t I let myself be used? Hadn’t I opened myself up for this downfall? This stupid experiment. What was I even doing with Ross Davis?

We shouldn’t have kissed. But it was just a kiss. A toe-curling, soul-awakening, clit-pulsing kiss, but still only a kiss. Like only sleeping together. Maybe I’m making the moment bigger than it is, or was, because the moment is clearly past tense. Ross isn’t coming back.

Which means the kiss was a big deal to him.

One that has him reneging on his experiment.

“You’re right,” I sigh, although I’m not entirely sure what I’m agreeing with in her speech.

I am resilient. I weathered Cameron’s affair and took him back because of the girls. Because I thought we would have a chance to rebuild our marriage and our family. Then, he was taken from me, and in the midst of our marital rebuild, the house collapsed, so to speak.

My subsequent grief conflicted with my already unstable emotions. I’d been broken by my husband’s poor decisions. With his absence, I dove deeper into my writing, turning it from my little hobby, as Cameron mockingly called it, to a profitable career. One that has afforded me a sensible apartment, a few vacations, and college tuition for the girls.

And dammit, I need to write. The creative itch is a real rash, one that festers and grows until you either ignore it with some other interest or give into the scratch.

Not exactly the best analogy if I’m trying to wax poetic and romantic, but a good one, nonetheless. Writing was a part of who I am, and I needed to write.

I needed inspiration, and I needed that ballpark.