by Jae
“Um, I’m not a writer by any means, but isn’t that kind of the same?” Lana pointed at the subtitle.
“Well, as Mark Twain once said, ‘The difference between the almost right word and the right word is like the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.’”
Lana gave her a look. “Really? You’re using Mark Twain to justify your perfectionism?”
“I’m not a perfectionist,” Claire said.
“And I’m not twenty thousand feet above ground,” Lana muttered.
Claire’s grip on her hand tightened. “Don’t remind me. I’d just forgotten about it.”
“Oops. Sorry. But do you really think the book needs more work, or are you just driving yourself crazy before the meeting tomorrow?”
Claire rubbed her temple with her free hand. “Honestly? I don’t know anymore. I used to be able to hammer out a chapter and could instantly tell if it was good or not—or at least I thought so. But now…”
“Now…?” Lana prompted when Claire trailed off and turned her head away to stare out the tiny window.
A low sigh drifted across the armrest. Claire continued to watch wisps of clouds trail by. Just when Lana thought she wouldn’t answer, she turned back toward her. “Now I’ve lost trust in my own judgment.” She spoke so quietly that Lana nearly had to hang over the armrest to hear her. “I mean, my seven-year relationship crashed and burned, and I had no clue until the very end. And now look at this subtitle.”
Lana did.
“Prioritize Your Relationship.” A bitter snort escaped Claire. “If you asked Abby, I’m sure she’d say I was a complete failure at that. So would I really know if this chapter…or the entire book”—she picked up the pages on her lap and shook them roughly—“is utter bullshit?”
Lana studied her. Claire looked as if she had a stomachache. This was really gnawing at her—and probably had been for some time. “That’s why you want this publishing deal so bad, isn’t it? It’s not just because you need it to bolster your reputation so you can take over the counseling center one day. You want someone to tell you that your advice is sound and you still have what it takes to be a good therapist.”
The muscles in Claire’s jaw bunched as if she had to chew on that thought for a while. Finally, she gave a tiny nod. “I never thought of it that way, but you might be right. I mean, I wanted to get my book published before Abby…before she told me it was over, but afterward, the publishing deal became my main priority.” She tilted her head to the side and regarded Lana with something close to admiration. “You’re pretty insightful.”
“For an out-of-work actress working as a barista,” Lana added.
“I didn’t say that—or think it.” The look in her gray eyes seemed sincere. “You don’t need a degree to be smart.”
“Sorry.” Lana forced herself to relax back against her seat and gave Claire a lopsided grin. “It seems I needed a little validation too. Two years with no acting gig can do that to you.”
“Not that I’m an expert on showbiz or anything, but for what it’s worth, I think you’re a great actress.”
Claire might not have been an expert, but her praise still felt good. “Yeah? How do you figure that?”
“You’ve certainly managed to convince the homophobic idiot across the aisle that we’re a couple.” Claire nodded in the direction of a guy in a conservative business suit, who glared at them as if they had ordered the last bit of whiskey on board.
“Me?” She hadn’t even noticed the guy so far, much less talked to him.
Claire smiled. “Yes, you.”
She pointed at Lana’s arm, which was angled across the armrest so she could hold Claire’s hand. Her thumb was caressing the back of Claire’s hand without her having been aware of it.
“Oh.” Lana stopped the motion. Should she withdraw her hand? “Sorry.”
“No apology necessary. It felt really n… Uh, I mean, it’s good practice for tomorrow.”
“Yeah.” The more comfortable they were holding hands, the more natural it would look if they did it in front of the editor. The thought should have eased her nervousness about tomorrow, but instead, it left a bitter taste in Lana’s mouth. Should she let it go, or…? But she wasn’t one to hold back. “I’m not acting,” she said very quietly.
“Excuse me?”
Lana lifted their joined hands. “This isn’t part of the act. This is me trying to be a friend.”
Claire stared at her. “I…I know. You are turning out to be a pretty wonderful friend. I didn’t mean to imply… I just meant…”
A stammering Claire was kind of cute. Lana squeezed her hand. “It’s okay. You were trying to be a good friend too, saying something nice about my acting skills to cheer me up.”
Claire firmly shook her head. “No. I really believe what I said. I have a feeling that if Hollywood gives you a chance, you would be fantastic in pretty much any role.”
The words flowed over her like warm honey. “How can you know that? You’ve never seen me in a movie.”
“True, but you’ve got that same vibrancy that all of my favorite actresses have. You put yourself into everything you do one hundred percent, no holds barred.” Claire chuckled. “That’s how my kitchen ends up such a mess whenever you’re cooking. But if you bring that to your roles…wow.”
Lana had always considered cooking an art form just like acting, something she could use to express herself, and it pleased her that Claire had somehow seen a connection too. “Thank you. I think that’s the best compliment I’ve been paid for my acting skills since…probably ever.”
Claire acknowledged it with a nod.
For a while, only the muted droning of the plane engines and the conversation of other passengers filled the space between them.
Claire glanced at her manuscript but didn’t open her pen to make more revisions, as if she was now afraid to make it worse.
“Do you want me to read it…the entire book or just this chapter or whatever you prefer? I mean, it’s a five-hour flight, and I forgot to pack a novel, so…?” Lana realized she was rambling and snapped her mouth shut. “If you’d rather not let me read it, that’s fine too. I know you—”
“Okay,” Claire said very quietly—so quietly that Lana wasn’t sure she hadn’t just imagined it. She was even paler than she had been when the plane had taken off. Her fingers trembled as she sorted the pages and held them out to Lana.
When Lana wanted to take them, Claire didn’t let go.
“Are you sure you want to read it?” Claire asked. “You hate relationship books.”
Lana shrugged. “That’s good for you, isn’t it? If I hate yours too, it’ll be in good company. You don’t have to be afraid it’ll mean it’s bad.”
“Oh. I guess that’s true.” Slowly, Claire eased her tight grip on the pages and allowed Lana to take them from her.
Lana let go of Claire’s fingers and cradled the pages in both hands as if they were the stone tablets inscribed by God. Claire had given her chapter two, the section on prioritizing relationships—either because it was the chapter she felt most insecure about or because she couldn’t yet handle giving her the entire manuscript. This was already big for her; Lana knew that, and she valued Claire’s trust in her.
She read the first paragraph, then had to reread it—not because it was badly written or confusing but because she could feel Claire’s gaze rest on her, and it was seriously distracting. “Don’t stare at me,” she said without glancing away from the manuscript. “It won’t make me read any faster.”
“Maybe I like looking at you.”
What the hell was that? Was she teasing…or flirting? Lana turned her head and studied her, but Claire had averted her gaze and busied herself by pulling more manuscript pages from her bag.
She’s just getting comfortable with her role, Lana decided and retu
rned her attention to the chapter.
Claire tried every relaxation technique she knew not to fidget in her seat. She peeked over at Lana.
Still reading.
Was she a slow reader or trying to be thorough, or was the book that hard to read for someone who wasn’t an expert? Claire had tried to leave out the psychologist jargon, but maybe those terms were so familiar to her that she had used them without realizing. Maybe—
“Stop driving yourself crazy,” Lana said. “It’s good.”
Claire slumped against the back of her seat and beamed. “It is? Really? You’re not just saying that to boost my confidence before the interview and the meeting with Ms. Huge tomorrow?”
“It’s good,” Lana repeated. She actually looked stunned, as if she hadn’t expected to like it.
Claire bounced once in her seat, making Lana giggle. She grinned back. God, she could have kissed her. Don’t you dare! Claire reined in her out-of-control emotions with a tight grip. “Give me details. What did you like about it?”
“It’s amazingly well-balanced.”
“What do you mean?” Claire asked.
“When I saw the chapter subtitle about prioritizing your relationship, I immediately thought this would be like the tapes my mother used to listen to. They always told women to sacrifice everything for love and to relegate their interests and their careers to a lower priority than their husbands’.”
Claire snorted. “When were those tapes recorded? The fifties? A relationship needs a good balance to work. One partner’s goals can’t be more important than the other’s. They might take precedence for a while, if there’s a crisis or a time you really need to focus on them, but in the long run, it needs to balance out.”
“Did it balance out in your relationship with Abby?” Lana asked quietly.
The question surprised Claire, but she still found herself answering honestly. “I thought so, but I guess Abby didn’t feel the same.” She tapped the pages on her lap. “I bet she would say we didn’t have even one of the seven keys of lasting relationships. Guess that’s why we didn’t last.”
It was painful to admit that, but now she was able to do it—at least to Lana since she knew Lana wouldn’t judge her. “What about you?”
“Me?” Lana smiled, but it seemed a bit forced. “If someone asks me, I will of course say that my amazing fiancée,” she playfully fluttered her lashes at Claire, “and I are batting a thousand on each of the seven keys—even though I have no idea what the other six are.”
“Communication, compromise, honesty, sharing, trust, and making an effort.” Claire rattled them off without having to think about it. “But that’s not what I was talking about, and you know it. What about your last relationship? When we met your friends at the Persian restaurant, they indicated that your relationship with Katrina hadn’t ended well either.”
“You can say that again,” Lana muttered. “She trampled all over my heart, then backed up, and ran over it again to make sure she’d done maximum damage.” She rubbed her chest as if soothing her battered heart. “I should have seen it coming, but I ignored all the signs. Guess we have that in common.”
Claire reached over and took her hand. “What happened?”
Lana sighed. “She had just broken up with someone when we met. I was hesitant to get involved with her at first, but she swore up and down that she was completely over her and only loved me.” She hung on to Claire’s hand as if that helped her get out the painful words. “Guess what? She lied. While I was in the hospital, recovering from the accident, she packed her stuff and prepared to move out. So much for the key principle of honesty.”
“Ouch. Maybe she just didn’t know her own feelings very well,” Claire said softly, wanting to ease Lana’s pain in whatever way she could.
“Whatever. It’s not important.”
Claire opened her mouth to tell her that minimizing her own feelings wasn’t a good way to cope with a painful experience. But Lana didn’t want a therapist, so she squeezed her hand instead. “I’m sorry. If she didn’t appreciate what she had with you, she didn’t deserve you.”
The grim expression on Lana’s face slowly faded away and was replaced by a smile. “So I’m not so bad after all?”
“You’re…bearable.”
Lana laughed. “Thanks. You’re bearable too.”
Claire took chapter two from Lana and put the manuscript back into the right order. If only she could do the same for her life so easily.
“There’s something else that has you worried, isn’t there? Something besides this chapter.”
Claire stared at her. Was she that transparent? That didn’t bode well for her interview and the meeting with Ms. Huge.
“It’s the way you’re straightening the manuscript.” Lana pointed at the neatly lined up pages. “If you could, you would ask the flight attendant for cleaning supplies and go scrub the toilet or something.”
The thought made Claire wrinkle her nose. “Ugh. No. I wouldn’t go that far, no matter how stressed I am.”
“So you admit there’s something else stressing you out.”
“You should have become a psychologist,” Claire grumbled.
“Hey, no insults!” The grin curling Lana’s lips took the sting out of her remark.
Claire was too tense to return the smile, even though she appreciated the attempt to cheer her up. “What I said earlier…about feeling like a fraud…”
“You never said that.”
“Maybe not in so many words, but…” Claire swallowed. While she encouraged her patients to reveal their deepest secrets, fears, and self-judgments, she had never done it herself. Who knew it could be so hard? “I do. Feel like a fraud, I mean.”
“That’s exactly what I thought all therapists were—frauds,” Lana said. “Quacks who sell snake oil to vulnerable people without believing a word of what they’re saying. Are you telling me I was right…that you’re preaching these seven keys without believing in them?”
“No, of course not. I believe in them.” Claire paused and forced herself to think about it—really think about it instead of clinging to old beliefs because they were familiar and soothing in this new, chaotic post-Abby life. Slowly, she nodded. “I believe in them,” she repeated with more vigor. “And that’s exactly why thinking of the interview tomorrow is giving me a stomachache.”
“The interview?” Lana echoed. “Not the meeting with the editor?”
“That too, but I think with her, it’ll be about the conditions of the contract and about meeting me in person, not so much about the content of my book. But at the radio station, I’ll have to sell my book. I’ll have to talk about the key principles of lasting relationships.”
Lana kicked off her shoes and pulled one of her legs under her. “What’s so bad about that? I thought that’s exactly what you wanted—to get a chance to talk about your book.”
“Four months ago, I would have been ecstatic, but now…” With a grimace, she opened the folder that held the manuscript and showed her the subtitle of chapter three: Honesty Is Always the Best Policy. “How can I advocate honesty while I’m lying through my teeth, pretending to be engaged to you?”
“To be honest…”
Claire tensed in expectation of what Lana would say next but tried not to show it. “Go ahead. That’s what we’re talking about after all—honesty.”
“Honesty is important to me. If I were one of your readers…maybe a real fan…and I’d later find out you’d lied about your own relationship…” Lana shook her head. “I wouldn’t like it.”
“Yeah. I know.” Claire stared at her knees. “But if I’m honest and tell the publisher that I’m no longer in a relationship, this book will never see the light of day. No reader will ever get to read it. That’s the irony of it.”
“Hmm.”
They were both silent for a
while, then Claire said, “I guess if the radio host asks me to elaborate on the honesty factor, I’ll just have to hope I don’t sound forced and inauthentic when I answer.” She sighed.
“Or tell them that you can’t give everything away and they’ll have to buy the book to find out more,” Lana said. “If you can pull that off in a tone that is the right mix of teasing, sexy, and professional, it might work.” She lowered her voice to the kind of tone she had described.
Claire shivered. She doubted she could pull that off the same way, but it was certainly worth a try. “That’s good advice. I might use that answer. Thank you.”
Lana nodded. “You’re welcome.”
Now that the immediate problem was solved—at least as much as it would ever get solved, Claire wanted to go back to her revisions, but Lana was still studying her.
“What?” Claire asked.
“Can I ask you something?”
“After everything I confessed to you today and over the last two months, you still need to preface a question with that?” It had surprised even Claire herself how open she’d been with Lana.
Lana smiled softly. “I guess I don’t.”
“So what’s your question?” Claire asked.
“If you manage to get that publishing contract, the publishing house would expect you to do more promotion once the book is out…give more interviews, right?” When Claire nodded, Lana continued, “But that would mean you’ll have to go through the same questions about honesty and the other key factors again and again. Are you sure you want to do that to yourself? Is it really worth it?”
“Yes,” Claire said without having to think about it. “This is the book I wanted to write pretty much since the moment I became a psychologist. I’m not ready to give up that dream, just because it won’t always be easy. Can you understand that?” She looked into Lana’s eyes, searching for approval or at least acceptance. It amazed her how important that was to her.