Page 67 of Muscle Cub

“Maybe you should aim higher. If you write more exciting stories, they’ll be more likely to get made into movies.”

“Wow.” I didn’t know whether I should be fuming or laughing. I had no comeback.

“Email my pitches to your agent and see what they say.” Austin karate-chopped the pillow I’d thrown at him and lay down with a satisfied sigh. “I don’t mind if you pretend they’re yours. I’ve got tons of them.” He turned onto his side and curled away from me.

“Well, putting aside the problematic graphic content, I can tell you with certainty she’ll say that this kind of mixing of genres makes it impossible to sell a book. It’s too difficult to market.”

“You gotta stop coming from a place of no, Prof.” A yawn distorted his voice. “Choose to be positive.”

“You’re right. They’re fantastic ideas,” I said woodenly. “For another author.”

“I forgive you for being ungrateful.” He cracked an eyelid to peer at my reaction, failing to hide a grin. “Now shut up and spoon me.” He reached back and grabbed my hand, pulling my arm around him like I was a blanket.

I lay beside him, matching my breaths to his, basking in his presence in my bed.

I’d known him less than a week—barely five days—but it felt like we’d been doing this for months.

It wasn’t a holiday anymore, just an ordinary Wednesday night. And even though he knew fuck all about story craft, I could get used to this.

23

In the early morning, while the sky was still dark, we rolled around in a tangle of sheets making out until the alarms we’d set went off. Rushing to get Austin out of the house on time for work distracted me from having to say goodbye to him again.

I’d always thought of my home as a sanctuary, but it felt too quiet in his wake. I bore the evidence of our hours together in sore muscles and chapped lips. As I poured a second cup of coffee, I glanced at the clock, already calculating how many more hours it might be before I heard from him. Part of me was certain he’d text later, but a small voice whispered, What if he ghosts me?

I shook my head. Obsessing over him was a manifestation of resistance, a diversion from writing.

Despite the late-night brainstorming session with Austin—or maybe because of it—I spent the rest of the morning filling the pages of an untitled document with fragments of interfemoral sex and details of sharing my bed with him. My inner critic nagged and berated me about the futility of the exercise, but I clung to a small fierce faith in the power of practice.

At noon, my phone pinged with a notification. I snatched it up to find a long text from Austin with another rambling story idea. This one featured a runner who hooks up with a person on a dating app marked as less than a hundred feet away. One morning, the guy comes back from a run to find his neighbor waiting for him in his house face down, ass up.

I responded, Since I assume this is a precursor to horrific bloodshed, I decline to be turned on.

Smiling like a purple devil emoji, I abandoned my office to make a sandwich and banter with Austin about common foreign language terms for various sex acts until he had to go back to work.

I lost the afternoon to procrastination cleaning and scrolling Austin’s social media.

I fell asleep on the couch watching TV, trying to stay up until he called.

Finally, a little after midnight, the phone rang.

“Sorry. It took me forever to get out of the Hole. I was hoping since it was Thursday night after a holiday weekend, everybody’d knock off early, but Sawyer doesn’t want us to close if there’s so much as one guest in there. And that guy was a talker. Did I tell you Sawyer’s booed up with Luke?”

He had, but happy to hear his voice, I listened as he rattled on about the relationship between the campground owner and the young musician. Having been distracted by my own adventures over the weekend, I hadn’t been fully aware of how captivated the staff were by this workplace affair.

When he wasn’t trying to pack a story with the shock and awe of improbable violence, Austin was pretty entertaining. Although his segues could use some work. Out of nowhere, he said, “It’s our one-week anniversary.”

“My longest relationship in years.” Taken off guard, I’d reached for a quip, but when I heard his forced laugh, I regretted making light of it. “Quite the milestone, huh? Although anno is Latin for year, so it’s not technically an anniversary.” I could’ve kicked myself for being such a know-it-all. I tried to soften it with some humble ignorance. “I know it’s called a mensiversary when it’s been a month, but I’m not sure what the equivalent is for a week.”

Austin let out a long-suffering sigh. “Way to kill my weekiversary boner, Prof.” He chuckled. “What have you been up to?”

Writing four thousand words about having sex with you and stalking your selfies online. “Oh, you know, going through the motions of my writing practice.”

“Awesome!”

“Well, it’s nothing I can really use.”

“It’s not nothing. All practice is progress.”