No one had ever talked to me this way. As if he were trying to pry open my chest, and get at what I kept locked up. The words and thoughts I kept to myself. My instinct was to walk away. Or run. But a deep well of longing stirred inside me to stand in the presence of someone who had crafted a life out of writing. A reality I could reach out and touch too, if I wanted.
I shifted my bag again.
Professor O’s smile returned. “I see you, Mr. Turner. And I want to hear you. For this Object of Devotion assignment, give me your blood and guts and fire. Give me everything.”
“Everything?” I smiled nervously. “That’s all, huh?”
He touched a hand to my shoulder. “I know you have it in you.”
After classes, I went back to the apartment to drive my piece of shit car to the Panache Blanc bakery-café for my pre-race routine: carb-load with a big sandwich the night before.
My car was a fifteen-year-old silver Dodge Stratus I’d bought when I graduated high school with some of my tuition money. The Drakes had tried to buy me something better, but I’d refused. It was old, it took three tries to get it to turn over in summer, ten or more in winter, but it was mine.
At our apartment, it was parked next to Connor’s brand-new, chick magnet, eight-billion-horsepower Dodge Hellcat.
A Tale of Two Dodges, I thought, as I climbed into my old sedan and turned the key. After three tries and a belch of smoke, the engine came sputtering to life.
At the Panache Blanc, I sat at a corner table with a sprout and cucumber on wheat and a side of fruit, contemplating an empty notebook and the give-me-everything poem I was supposed to write in it.
Professor Ondiwuje had X-rayed my damn soul, missing nothing. He knew I wrote my feelings instead of speaking them. Speaking out loud felt like weakness. I’d loved my dad. I’d told him in my own voice, and screamed it after him as he drove away. He took that love and tossed it away like garbage. Never again would I let myself feel that naked and exposed. Not out loud, anyway. Writing was different.
It hurts, doesn’t it?
Too fucking much. Which meant I had plenty of blood, guts and fire to write about.
I put my pen to paper. Let’s do this, motherfucker…
Five minutes later, I had doodled an impressive Bruins logo.
I turned the page and let my mind wander. Lines about coppery red hair and eyes like gemstones started appearing on the page.
“Hell, no. We are not going there.”
I scribbled those out and tried again. My pen doodled and then a sentence emerged.
Her eyes were the season, personified…
I tore the page out and balled it up.
For the next hour, customers came and went around me. A slow, lazy weeknight. Edmond, the big Frenchman who sang opera and recited sonnets on the regular, wasn’t there, but Phil lounged over the counter, scrolling his phone.
I finished off half the sandwich, and took up my pen again.
Pick a fucking subject that’s not her. Running. Write about running.
Safe. Easy. I could describe the adrenaline that coiled in my muscles right before the starting gun fired. Or what it felt like to fly over a hurdle. Or that last leg of the baton race with my lungs on fire and my legs driving to the finish line…
Where Autumn waited for me to wrap her arms around my neck, not caring if I was all sweaty, and she’d kiss me…
“Christ…”
I was about to call it a night when my Object of Devotion walked in the door. With her red hair and green dress, she looked like a handful of rubies and emeralds. My stupid heart took off at a gallop and then nearly stopped short when her exquisite face lit up to see me.
“Hey,” she said. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Yeah,” I said, my eyes drinking her in as fast as they could before looking away. “Small world.”
“Small world? I’ve been working here for two years and I’ve never seen you.” She started to sit in the chair across from me, then froze. “Oh. Are you busy? I’m just here to pick up my schedule. I won’t bother you.”