The Write Man

by Lisa Ricard Claro

  He had hoped—well, he had hoped.

  But he knew she was lost to him the moment she looked into his eyes.

  Chapter 12

  Merry’s vision tunneled. Her body turned to flame as heat burst through her, then shriveled in on itself, as if her skin and bones were sucked into an abyss. She stared into the green-gold eyes she loved and feared she might become ill when her stomach pitched.

  “Please let me explain,” Nick began, but she shook her head and backed up one step, two, and then turned toward the exit and strode off as fast as possible while avoiding slamming into anything or anyone. She had to leave, had to get out.

  Nick caught her arm. She wrenched free.

  “Don’t touch me, you lying son of a bitch.”

  His eyes widened, no doubt at the use of her vernacular, but he said again, “Please let me explain.”

  Words barricaded themselves in Merry’s throat. Nick’s face blurred. She shook her head and fled.

  She knew he followed her, knew that no matter how fast she moved she couldn’t escape him if he chose to catch her.

  Fool, fool, fool!

  Tears blinded her as she pushed through the heavy glass doors and stumbled into the sunshine, gulping great gasps of air.

  “Merry,” he began, a few steps behind her. When she broke into a run he called, “Damn it, will you please stop? Talk to me for two seconds.”

  Merry heard his booted feet thumping behind her. She opened the car door and threw her purse inside but couldn’t follow it fast enough. Nick was there and grabbed the top of the door with both hands. It stood between them like a wall of steel.

  “Please, Merry, let me explain.”

  Merry’s body shook, overtaken by so many different emotions she didn’t know if she’d ever make sense of any of them. She stared at Nick, through the fake nose and faux facial hair, the makeup and ridiculous costume, seeing nothing but his eyes. Those eyes—those beautiful, beautiful eyes. She had trusted, believed in the man behind those eyes and the soul that lived inside them. She was the worst sort of naïve fool.

  “I couldn’t tell you,” he said. “I’m contractually obligated to keep my pen name a secret. I could get sued if—”

  “I want my dog.”

  “Merry—”

  “Give me the key to the villa and stay away for an hour so I can get Chula. When I leave, I’ll put the key under the mat. And I don’t ever want to see or hear from you again.” Her voice shook, and Nick’s face blurred through her tears, but she was proud of herself for being able to speak at all.

  Nick sighed. He yanked off the pirate hat and the crazy hair with it, grabbed the nose and peeled that off as well.

  “Please don’t do this. Now that you know the truth we can—”

  “The key.” She held out her hand, unable to still its trembling. Nick dug into his pocket and set the key in her hand.

  “Merry, I’m under contract with my publisher not to talk about Scurvy Rickets. Legally, I couldn’t say anything.”

  “Oh, I get it. So, you were worried that after our little fling was over, if I decided to blab it on my blog, you could be in mighty big trouble.”

  “Well,” he held her gaze. “Yes, that was a concern. But—”

  “So you trusted me enough to sleep with me, but not enough to tell me that you’re the one person in the whole world I actively dislike. You let me go on and on about Scurvy Rickets, you let me—” She sucked in a sob and looked away, wiped her eyes, and tried again. “I opened up to you, Nick. I gave you—” Everything, she was going to say, but the word stuck in her throat like a dagger. The truth was, she had given him more than everything. She had given him her trust. Blinking back more tears, she stared into his eyes. “I trusted you.”

  “You can still trust me. I never lied to you, Merry. I just didn’t tell you this—this one thing.”

  “You did lie, Nick. Every time you should have told me the truth but didn’t.”

  “Please come with me to the villa. Please. We’ll talk all of this through.”

  “No, we can’t. You’re under a contractual obligation, remember?”

  “I’d say that’s moot, under the circumstances.”

  “Why? Because now that I know the truth it’s more convenient—more conducive to your circumstances—to ignore it?”

  “You know me better than that.”

  “That’s the point, isn’t it, Nick? I don’t know you at all.” She slid into the car and grabbed the door handle. “You aren’t the person I—I thought you were. Whatever this thing between us was, it’s over. I don’t want to see you or hear from you ever again, and that means in any way, including social media. And if you do, if you contact me or talk about me, ever, I’ll blow your Scurvy Rickets character wide open. I’ll share your secret on every social media service known to man. You want to ensure my silence? Then leave me alone. Do you understand?”

  “Please don’t do this.”

  “I didn’t, you did. And it’s done.”

  ***

  “As you wish.”

  He said the words aloud as Merry slammed the door, though he knew she didn’t hear them. She didn’t look at him again, but he stared at her rental car until it was out of sight, and then continued to stand in the parking lot as the sun beat down and the traffic blurred.

  He ached. Every muscle, every bone, every breath.

  His heart kept pumping. His chest rose and fell. Sweat beaded on his forehead and dripped into the fake brows he’d forgotten were still glued to his face. He peeled them off and walked to his car where he tossed them, the hat and hair, the nose, into the back seat. He shrugged out of the hot jacket and tossed that in as well.

  He glanced around him, not sure of how much time had passed since he followed Merry from the bookstore. He should go back inside, talk to the bookstore manager, apologize for the scene with Merry, say thanks for the opportunity, and blah, blah, blah, but he couldn’t now. He’d removed half his costume.

  He climbed into the car and peeled off of his face what was left of the fake skin, shot Phoebe a text with a brief explanation and apology for his unprofessionalism, and continued to sit with the engine running and the air conditioner blowing on high. He thought of the plans he’d had for himself and Merry tonight—a romantic dinner at Junonia, a good bottle of chardonnay already chilling in the fridge, and Casablanca and The Princess Bride ready to watch while they snuggled together on the couch with Chula snoring in their laps.

  He pictured again Merry’s face when she realized who he was, replayed that horrible moment, the very second, that the light died in her eyes. It didn’t matter that his betrayal was unintentional, that he had good reasons for doing what he did, or that he had already tried to tell her the truth in his last tweet as Scurvy Rickets. He thought that his reply to her ‘pound sand’ tweet made everything clear, in spite of the hidden meaning. But either she hadn’t read that tweet yet, or she had read it but didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was that she wanted him out of her life, and he didn’t blame her.

  He’d screwed up, and the only way he knew to prove his true feelings for her was to respect what she’d asked of him.

  He closed his eyes and thought of her the moment before she’d seen the truth—the dimple peeking from her cheek, the eyes of morning-glory blue, the sparkling light that was Merry Sunjoy. And it was to that woman he whispered once again, “As you wish.”

  ***

  The wavy fur of Chula’s head soaked up Merry’s tears. The little dog suffered Merry’s emotional display for a moment or two before swiping a tongue over her chin and wriggling to be put down.

  Merry stood on the patio and wiped her eyes, willing the tears to end. Her stomach roiled and pitched. She hugged herself and rocked back and forth, a self-soothing mechanism she had used as a child. It hadn’t worked then, and it didn’t work now.

  Nick Brubaker was Scurvy Rickets.

  She squeezed her eyes shut as more tears welled and poured onto her
cheeks. Her grief was grounded in more than the loss of what she had deluded herself into believing was a bright beginning with that most elusive of creatures—a person she could trust.

  First, she had been a gullible fool, sucked in by a pair of golden eyes and a sexy veneer. He had played her right from the beginning, and she had been so taken in that she hadn’t seen through his façade. She thought of all the things she had shared with him about her feelings toward Scurvy Rickets. How he must have laughed to himself when she said how much she loved the Pirates.

  And he had led her down the garden path, opened her up to talk about her childhood, her writing, her feud with—with him. She had been low fruit, ripe for the picking.

  She had been stupid.

  Someone she could trust. A new beginning. Hope for the future. She had wanted all of those things with such desperation that she had kept blinders on, hadn’t looked for signs that Nick might not be everything he seemed. And she dreaded the next days and weeks, because she would replay every moment spent with him, relive their conversations, looking for the clues she should have seen but didn’t. Didn’t, because she was too caught up in the lies of his lips and hands, the false kindness he expressed, the dishonesty of their entire relationship.

  No, she corrected herself, not a relationship. A fling. She hadn’t known him long enough to build a relationship. And it could never be a relationship anyway, not when she had only known the mask he had shown her and not the person he really was. She had made the mistake of jumping in without caution, but he had used her impetuousness to his advantage. And every moment he didn’t tell her the truth about Scurvy Rickets was a moment he deceived her.

  Merry wiped her eyes again and called to Chula.

  It was time to go.

  She picked up the dog and carried her from the patio into the villa. She paused beside the coffee table where two DVD cases sat side by side, new and still wrapped in cellophane: Casablanca and The Princess Bride. She stared at them and cursed the tears that began again. She wanted to hate Nick, wanted to put all the blame on him, but she couldn’t. He hadn’t done anything she hadn’t allowed, and she had allowed a lot. Too much. She had wanted to believe the best so badly that she had done what she’d sworn she’d never do again, first with her mother, and then with Tom. She had trusted and expected too much, had given more of herself than was ever earned.

  She thought of the moments at her mother’s gravesite, at the peace she’d found there. Peace, brought on by the hope of a new beginning with Nick. But it had been a false hope. There was no such thing as a new beginning, she decided now, only more steps on the same old path she had always trodden. It would be different now, though. She was no longer the same Merry Sunjoy who insisted on rainbows and sunshine and silver linings. If she had learned nothing else from her drug and alcohol addicted mother, her lying ex, and Nick Brubaker’s grand deceit, she had learned this: Trust no one.

  She put the villa key under the mat, carried Chula to the car, and gave the Casa Blanca resort a long last look before driving away. It was beautiful, but she would not return.

  “Well, there is a silver lining in all this,” Skyblossom said.

  “I don’t think so.” Silver tears dripped from Moonflower’s eyes.

  Sunbloom rested her hand on Moonflower’s shoulder. “No, she’s right. There is a silver lining.”

  “What’s that?” Moonflower asked, wiping her eyes.

  “She’ll let no one trick her again,” Sunbloom said.

  Skyblossom nodded and her chin grew firm. “Nope,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Not ever again.”

  Chapter 13

  Nick leaned back in his chair and focused on his notepad. He wasn’t much of an artist, but he could draw a little, and he’d spent more time sketching Merry’s image over the last weeks than was probably healthy. He could never get her dimple quite right, or the shape of her eyes.

  “Nick, are you paying attention to me?” Phoebe’s voice huffed through the speaker on his cell phone.

  He stared at the image he had drawn and labeled himself a pathetic loser. With a snort, he tore the sheet from the pad, crumpled it, and tossed it in the trashcan beside his desk.

  “Nick?”

  Puffing out a sigh, he tapped the speaker function off and put the phone to his ear. “I’m sorry about missing the deadline. I’ll have the completed manuscript to you by the end of the week, no excuses. Gotta go, Phoebe. I’ll talk to you later.”

  The phone landed back on his desk with a clatter. He walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows of his high-rise apartment, peering out at the gray city landscape. Rain, sleet, and snow had pelted Chicago for two days, and he’d holed up. He had knocked out his weekly sports column and submitted it to his editor days ago, with the plan to finish up the Pirates book he’d begun while at the Casa Blanca resort in December. Instead, he’d spent his time sprawled on the couch in old sweats alternating his TV viewing between The History Channel and reruns of ’70s cop shows, sustaining himself on a diet of frozen pizza and canned soup. Every so often he’d surf the net—he liked reading Merry’s blog—and wondered what would be a suitable amount of time to respect her “never again” edict before doing his damnedest to change her mind.

  The sky spit snow now, delivering a different shade of gray-on-gray, layering more gloom on the backend of a long and chilly afternoon. He closed his eyes and imagined himself standing on the patio of the villa, recreated in his mind the brilliance of lightning illuminating the Gulf, the soft patter of rain on sandy ground, palm trees swaying in the wind and wet to add a moody percussion. If he concentrated, he could catch the scent of salt in the air, the spicy aroma of tropical foliage. One thought further brought him the subtle scent of warm vanilla—

  Idiot.

  He opened his eyes, took in the glass and steel, the snow. Why the hell was he still here when the paradise of Mimosa Key awaited him?

  Nick turned from the window and scanned his apartment. He wasn’t much of a decorator. The place was comfortable with the usual accoutrements, and an old girlfriend whose name he no longer remembered had helped him choose decent furniture and accent pieces, but as far as he could see, there was nothing here that wouldn’t look better in a beach house.

  He narrowed his eyes. It was time for a change.

  He returned to his desk and grabbed the notepad, this time jotting ideas, things to be done, preparations to be made. A timeline. He’d have Phoebe contact the editor of the Mimosa Times-Gazette—no, I’ll do it myself, make it personal—to see if they could use his services as a sports writer, someone local to promote the Barefoot Bay Bucks. He’d work for peanuts—hell, maybe even for free, because it would be fun. It would give him a foothold in the community, bring a sense of belonging to write about the hometown boys. He could still maintain his national syndicated column, no problem. There would be no conflict, and his celebrity, such as it was, should make him appealing to the local paper as a part-timer.

  He called the Casa Blanca and reserved the villa for earliest availability—a recent cancelation gave him four weeks beginning smack in the middle of February. Four weeks was long enough for him to find a place to live on Mimosa Key, even if he had to rent while he looked for a place to buy. And he’d drop by to see Ruth Canton as long as he was there. He’d visited the old woman a few times after Merry had left, and she’d given him good advice . . .

  “I’m confused,” Ruth had said, staring at him with a laser gaze. “Did you lie to her or not?”

  “It’s complicated,” Nick said. “There was something I should have told her but didn’t, because I signed a contract that makes it illegal for me to tell her, or anyone else. In spite of that, I planned to tell her anyway, but she found out before I had a chance. And I did tell her, sort of, with a tweet.”

  Ruth narrowed her stare. “A what?”

  “A tweet. It’s—”

  “Never mind.” She waved her hand. “Sounds like you screwed up.”

 
; Nick sighed.

  “Listen up,” Ruth said. “I’ve got something you don’t: a pair of X chromosomes. That means I know more about Merry’s thought process than you do.” Ruth tapped her temple with her index finger. “I know something else, too. She’s in love with you, but she needs to grieve the loss of that and beat herself up for being dumb enough to fall for a jerk like you in the first place.”

  “Well, thanks, Ruth. That’s depressing and not real helpful.”

  “Oh, listen, if I were forty years younger, I wouldn’t care how much of a jerk you are.” The old woman laughed and patted his arm. “You’re missing the key words. She loves you—that much was plain to see, every time she looked at you—and that love is still in her heart. It might be buried under a ton of angry steel, but it’s there. You need to crack through it.”

  “How am I supposed to do that? If I reach out to her, she’ll make public the thing I kept from her, the thing that cannot be made public.”

  “Will she? You don’t think she’s trustworthy?”

  “That’s not what I said. The problem is that now that she knows, she’s holding the threat of disclosure over my head as a way to keep me from contacting her.”

  Ruth chuckled. “Smart girl. But you know, if she’s an honorable person, then she won’t give up your secret, no matter what she said in anger. So what it really comes down to is, do you believe she’s honorable?”

  “I think so,” Nick said, and Ruth gave him a look. “I mean, yes. Yes. She is honorable, no question. You said I have to break through her steel. How do you suggest I do that?”

  “Easy,” Ruth said, holding his gaze with her sharp eyes. “Stop being a jerk.”

  ***

  “Wait, what?” Phoebe said. “You want what?”

  Nick shifted the cell phone from his right hand to his left and talked while he surfed TV channels.

  “You heard me. I want out of the contract. I need to be able to talk about Scurvy Rickets.”

  “Nick, that isn’t going to happen. Scurvy is a mystery man, and it’s good for marketing.”