“I’ve been trying to get my hands on this the whole trip. You’re crazy if you think I’m passing up this opportunity. What’s in here? Sappy love poems about how much you love me.”
“Something like that,” I muttered.
Some of my poems were about Dean, but I’d hardly call them sappy. Most were very personal though, about my thoughts and feelings. A few were even about nature. But all of them were meant for my eyes only.
Dean held me at bay and scanned the page. Flipped back to the previous one. And then another.
I finally made another attempt at grabbing it from him and succeeded. I held the journal to my chest and was surprised to find that I was panting like I was out of breath.
“I told you not to read them,” I scolded him, fighting tears for some strange reason. Having someone read my poems felt sort of like grabbing my heart out of my chest and splaying it in front of someone to figure out the inner workings. “They’re bad,” I continued.
His eyes widened in surprise and his lips parted. “They’re far from bad, Willow. They’re incredible. Why didn’t you ever tell me you wrote poetry?” His mouth dipped into a frown and his forehead wrinkled. He was deeply hurt by this fact.
“No one knows,” I emphasized.
“Why?” He sounded so shocked.
“They’re so personal that it feels weird to be like, ‘Oh here, read this!’”
He shook his head at me. “Here you are so deeply confused about what you’re supposed to do for the rest of your life and the answer has been in here the whole time.” He tapped my journal with a rough shove of his finger.
My brows furrowed together. “Write poetry? I hardly think I can make a career out of that.”
“Not just poetry,” he said with a shake of his head. A lock of brown hair fell forward into his eyes and he hastily flicked it away. “You should write.”
“Write what?” I was not following the train he was on.
“I don’t know.” He shrugged, his lips twisting in thought. Suddenly, he snapped his fingers together and his face lit with a thought. “What about a blog? You could write about our trip, and your life in general—I mean, you do enough crazy stuff for it to be interesting. You could post your poetry too.”
“But that’s not a career,” I argued.
“You could make into one,” he reasoned. “I know you have the talent to make it happen. You’re already in the public eye, I’m sure people would check it out.”
“Yeah, because they’re nosy.” I snorted, glaring off to the side. “I don’t know if I want to draw any more attention to myself.”
He eyed me as if to say really?
I took a moment to think about what he was really saying. “It could be fun. I guess.” I lifted one shoulder in a shrug.
“Think about it,” he pleaded.
I nodded. “I will.”
It wasn’t that crazy of an idea, and it was something I could definitely do.
I’d never thought of being a
blogger, but now that he brought it up the idea was actually appealing.
He leaned over and grabbed my journal from my hands, tossing it on the ground.
“Hey!” I yelled for what felt like the thousandth time. “That wasn’t—”
His lips descended on mine, silencing the rest of what I had to say.
My body, the treacherous being that it was, succumbed to his touch and all thoughts about my journal, blogging, and our impending arrival at home all ceased to exist.
Which I was sure had been his plan all along.