Page 15 of Five Summer Wishes

WILLA

I used to think creative blocks were about laziness. Like if I wasn’t making something every day, it meant I wasn’t trying hard enough. Wasn’t committed. Wasn’t real.

Now I knew better.

Blocks weren’t walls. They were signals. Something inside you hitting the brakes when the rest of you was still pretending you know where you’re going.

That was me this week.

Every time I picked up a brush or pen, my hand stalled halfway. Every line felt dishonest. Every color felt off. Like I couldn’t make anything that didn’t feel like a performance.

Because the truth was, I didn’t know what I wanted to say anymore.

And for someone whose entire identity was built on motion, silence felt like exposure.

Sawyer texted me around ten with a photo of an old wooden sign he’d pulled off the back of a shuttered bookstore.

found this in the shop’s salvage bin. looks like something you’d give a second life to.

I stared at it longer than I should’ve. It was crooked, cracked, and perfect.

bring it over, I replied. I’ll see what I can do.

He showed up twenty minutes later with the sign and two iced teas. No agenda. No expectations. Just that quietly steady presence I was starting to crave more than I wanted to admit.

I laid the board flat across the porch railing, fingers skimming the faded lettering.

“You ever wonder if the things we save are just stand-ins for the parts of ourselves we’re not ready to deal with?” I asked.

Sawyer didn’t even blink. “All the time.”

I looked at him, brow lifted.

He smirked. “I work in salvage, Willa. My whole life is a metaphor.”

That made me laugh. Not big. But real.

He watched me for a moment longer, then said, “You want company while you work?”

I hesitated. “Yeah. I think I do.”

He sat beside me while I sanded the edges and filled the cracks with wood putty. We didn’t speak much. The air between us felt like something suspended—not tense, but weight-bearing. Like we both knew a conversation was coming, but neither of us wanted to rush it.

“Remember when I used to be allergic to silence?” I asked after a while.

Sawyer smiled. “I do.”

“I filled it with everything. Words. Jokes. Noise. Movement.”

“And now?”

“Now I kind of want to hear what it’s been trying to say all this time.”

He nodded, leaning back on his elbows. “That sounds like a woman who might finally be ready to stay.”

I didn’t answer. But I didn’t deflect either.

Which, for me, was kind of a miracle.

That night, after he left with the promise to return and see the finished piece, I stared at the board and realized I didn’t want to paint over the old lettering.

I wanted to keep it. Build on it. Layer something new without erasing what came before.

So I painted wildflowers over the corners. Let the faded words stay visible. Added lines of gold leaf where the cracks had been.

I didn’t try to make it perfect.

I made it authentic.

And when I finished, I sat back and cried. Quietly. Without drama.

Because for the first time in a long time, I’d made something that didn’t need to be loud to matter.

The next morning, I walked the finished piece down to Sawyer’s shop.

It was wrapped in an old quilt Iris used to keep in her trunk. I hadn’t planned that part—it was just the nearest soft thing I could find. But as I carried it, I realized it felt exactly right. Like she was part of it too.

The bell over the door chimed as I stepped inside. Sawyer looked up from behind the counter, and for a second, everything in me went still.

Not nervous.

Not uncertain.

Just still.

Like a breath I hadn’t known I was holding finally let itself go.

He met me halfway.

“This is for you,” I said, carefully unwrapping the quilt.

The second he saw it, he stopped moving.

The wildflowers. The gold-veined cracks. The faded, preserved lettering that still whispered this mattered.

He reached out slowly, fingers brushing the edge. “Willa…”

“I didn’t want to cover it,” I said. “I wanted to keep the story. Just make space for a new one.”

He looked at me. Really looked.

“That’s the most honest thing anyone’s ever made for me,” he finally said.

I smiled, even though my eyes were burning. “I think it’s the most honest thing I’ve ever made.”

He stepped closer. And when he wrapped his arms around me, I didn’t tense.

I melted.

Right into the space I’d spent years avoiding.

Right into the center of a life I never thought I could want.

That night, I sat on the porch with Harper.

She was drinking wine out of a mason jar and sketching the new layout for the potting shed like it was a blue-ribbon renovation project. I brought her a slice of pie and curled up beside her on the swing.

“I’m scared,” I said.

She didn’t look up. “Of what?”

“Of finally wanting something that I don’t know how to keep.”

She set the sketchbook down.

“That’s not fear, Willa. That’s growth.”

“Gross.”

She laughed. “You’re allowed to want things that aren’t temporary.”

I stared out at the yard. “What if I screw it up?”

“You probably will. But maybe not the way you used to.”

“And what if staying doesn’t make me free?”

Harper’s voice softened. “What if it makes you real?”

That landed hard. Because she was right. And because I was tired of being made entirely of escape routes.

The next morning, I did something I hadn’t done in a long, long time.

I applied for the summer residency program at the Oaklight Gallery downtown. Three months of shared studio space, exhibition planning, and—if I was accepted—a commitment to be here, in this town, in this moment.

I wrote a cover letter that didn’t try to impress anyone.

It just told the truth.

That I’d spent years making beautiful things while trying not to be seen.

That I was ready to change that.

That I didn’t want to run anymore.