Page 103 of Trust Again

I turned around to see who’d called my name.

No, no, no, shit.

Nolan was walking down the hall toward me, wearing a shirt with the slogan “Who run the world? (Girls)”… He was moving so fast that his coat was flowing behind him like a superhero’s cape. “Nice photos,” he said, nodding at the wall.

“Um… thanks.” I was shifting my weight from one foot to the other.

“Whatever your reason for coming down here, I wanted to repeat my offer to read the next chapters of your novel. Only if you want the feedback.”

I swallowed hard. The fact that I’d accidentally sent him the first chapters ofAbout Ushad already slipped my mind.

“No pressure! I was just so taken by Tristan and Mackenzie and wanted to know how things turn out for them. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding a publisher or at least an agent. So if you need a reader, just let me know.” He nodded again at Allie and me, and continued on his way down the hall.

“Thanks, Nolan!” I called out after him.

He just waved.

“That’s your instructor?” Allie asked.

“He’s cool, right?”

Allie fanned herself with her hand. “He looks like Chris Hemsworth. That’s crazy! How could you have kept this from me?”

I thought it over. “Well, I hadn’t noticed.”

Allie shook her head and we hooked arms.

“What are you going to do?”

I shrugged. “Probably nothing. This is a big opportunity for Sawyer, I don’t want to ruin that.”

“You really like her, don’t you?” Allie asked, surprised.

Without skipping a beat, I nodded. “She’s reliable, even if she can be pretty horrible at times.”

“Okay. Then we’ll be nice to each other from now on.”

I laughed. “That’d be perfect.”

Chapter 36

I spent Sunday in bed, staring at the world map on the ceiling. My head was pounding and my body felt heavy and cumbersome. The heartache wouldn’t go away. No matter how hard Allie tried to distract me, it just didn’t work. Eventually she understood how serious my fight with Spencer had been. And she realized I needed some time alone. It was all too fresh.

On Monday I went back to my classes, having spent the previous day in that in-between world of feeling either nothing or much too much. This drifting between numbness and unbearable pain was driving me crazy. So I buried myself in my classwork and studied. I spent afternoons in the library and I spent evenings with Watson at my desk, working onAbout Usuntil my wrists ached. The story helped me process everything I’d gone through: Mackenzie felt what I felt, and it was both painful and a relief at the same time. In the story, she finally moves on from her ex-boyfriend and is able to give Tristan a chance. She realizes that her feelings for him are deeper than anything she’s ever felt, that it no longer matters what her ex did, and she realizes how small all her old plans were. I wrote about how she spent weeks aching for Tristan, trying to distract herself with work and study.

And then something happened to me for the first time ever.

I got writer’s block.

It was the following Sunday morning and suddenly my fingers stopped typing. The fount, from which my inner feelings usually sprang, the source of my words and stories, just ran dry. Nothing came out.

Nothing.

Tristan and Mackenzie had hurt each other badly and now there was radio silence between them. They loved each other, but it was impossible for me to bring them back together. Whatever I tried, the two of them wouldn’t cooperate. Every sentence I wrote felt terribly wrong. It took me a whole day to write what normally took a few minutes.

That’s what I got for trying to use Spencer’s and my story. There was always a happy ending in my books, but it wasn’t working this time.

Fucking hell.