After You (Because of You 2)

I chew the rice as slowly as humanly possible, until it’s disgusting mush in my mouth, then I finally swallow. “No, I didn’t mean…. I mean, obviously—What I meant was… I obviously publish books. That other people write.”

Grinning at me, Henry says, “Wow, make sure I never get you on the stand. I’ll destroy you.”

“That’s kinda hot,” I tell him.

He regards me dryly. “Nice try. You can’t distract me. Single-minded focus. What’s your book about? Why don’t you want me to read it? Is it dirty?”

Since I know he’s latched on now and won’t give up until I tell him something, I give him as little as possible. “Some parts are, sure. It’s not a big thing. No one knows I wrote the books. I can’t believe I just slipped up and told you.”

His delight only grows. “Plural? There are multiple books?”

“Dammit!”

“Stop withholding this joy from my life. I want to read your books. I don’t care if they’re dirty. I want to know what comes from the creative mind of Nicole Harmon.”

“Never. Literally never. I would rather die than ever let you read my books.”

“I’ll find out,” he states. “I’m a lawyer. I have investigators at my disposal. I’ll find them one way or another, so you might as well just give me what I want.”

“You won’t,” I state. “I used a pen name. There’s nothing tying me to that girl. You can investigate until you die, you’ll never find out.”

“Or you could just tell me,” he suggests. “I have a theory that if you do, the world won’t end.”

“Mine would. I would die of humiliation.”

“Not medically possible,” he informs me. “Why would you be embarrassed, anyway?”

“Because they’re terrible,” I inform him right back.

His dismisses the notion immediately. “No, they’re not.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you would never publish a book you believed to be terrible.”

“I didn’t publish it because I thought… It was personal. Therapeutic. I had some stuff in my head that I needed to get out, and it was most enjoyable to do it in book form. I only intended to write one book, but that book… surprisingly found an audience, and a few people said they would like more. It completely defeated the purpose of writing the book in the first place, but I decided one more book might be okay. I started writing and before I knew it, there was a second book.”

“What was the purpose of writing it in the first place?”

I glance up at him, but I can’t hold his gaze, so I look right back at my food. “Closure. I wanted to close a chapter of my life that ended badly, I just wanted the end to be… better.”

“You don’t want me to read it because it’s autobiographical, then? Because I’ll find out about whatever happened to make you the way you are?”

I wrinkle up my nose at him. “The way I am?”

“Delightful,” he answers, immediately. “Obviously, I meant delightful.”

“You better have,” I mutter. “No, it’s not that. I mean, a little bit, I guess…”

“Then why?”

“The whole reason I used a pen name was to protect myself from shit like this, Henry. My thoughts are my own. Maybe if you read it, you would get the wrong idea about me. You would think you’re seeing into my soul, and… you would think things about me that I don’t want you to think. You might have expectations of my capabilities and emotional limitations that are wrong. The book isn’t autobiographical; it’s a fantasy. An old fantasy that I only intended to write and purge, but then… I don’t know, it was fun to live there for a while. It didn’t hurt that the books actually sold well, and I needed money to get this business started. I wrote a third book and bought myself a house. Paid cash. No mortgage.”

“Jesus,” he says, looking more than a little impressed. “If you made that kind of money, why’d you stop?”

“I’m not a writer,” I tell him, putting my container of food on the counter, no longer hungry. “I had a single story to tell and I told it. That’s it. I help other people get their stories out there. That’s my role.”

“I call bullshit,” he states, glancing around my living room. “No mortgage. What’d you pay for this place, 150, maybe 160? That’s gotta be after paying out the ass in self-employment taxes. So, if you made over $200,000 on your books, I’m gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you.”