I didn’t answer him, so he opened it to the first chapter. He breezed right past the dedication page without even looking. Bravo, I thought. Good for you.

When he started reading, I wanted to scream at him to stop. I was tempted to cover my ears. To refuse the assault of a book written to make me hurt. But I did neither. I listened, instead, to Isaac Asterholder read the words that the love of my life wrote to me. And they went like this…

Nick’s Book

You don’t have to be alone. We are mostly born that way, though. We grow up being nurtured to believe that the other half of our soul is somewhere out there. And since there are six billion people inhabiting our planet, chances are one of them is for you. To find that person, to find your soul-piece, or your great love, we must count on our paths diverging, the tangling of lives, the soft whispering of one soul recognizing another.

I found my piece. She wasn’t what I was expecting. If you formed a woman’s soul out of black graphite, bathed it in blood, and then rolled it around in the softest rose petals, you still wouldn’t have touched on the complication that was my match.

I met her on the last day of summer. It felt appropriate that I would meet a daughter of winter as the last of the Washington sunshine sieved through the sky. Next week there would be rain, rain and more rain. But today, there was sun, and she stood underneath it, squinting even beneath her sunglasses as if she were allergic to the light. I was walking my dog through a busy park on Lake Washington. We’d just turned around to head home when I stopped to look at her. She was lean—a runner, probably. And she was wearing one of those things that’s longer than a sweater and shorter than a dress. A sweater dress? I followed the line of her legs to camo boots. You could tell she loved those shoes by the worn creases and the way she stood so comfortably in them. I loved those boots for her. And on her. I wanted to be in her. A rough manly thought I’d be too ashamed to admit out loud. The straps of a messenger bag crossed over her chest and hung at her left thigh. Now, I consider myself a bold man, but not quite bold enough to approach a woman whose every body movement said she wanted to be left alone. I did that day. And the closer I got, the stranger she became.

She didn’t see me; she was too busy looking at the water. Lost in it a little. How can a man be jealous of water? That’s exactly what I wanted to explore.

“Hi,” I said, when I was standing in front of her. She didn’t raise her eyes right away. When she did, her look was a little indolent. I jumped right in. “I’m a writer, and when I saw you standing here, I was compelled to start putting words down on paper. Which makes me think you’re my muse. Which makes me think I need to talk to you.”

She smiled at me. It looked like it took effort, that perhaps maybe she didn’t smile very often and her facial muscles were stiff.

“That’s the best pickup line I’ve ever heard,” she mused.

I wasn’t sure if it was a pickup line. It was embarrassingly truthful. Just saying it made my lips pucker like I was holding in a mouthful of lemon pulp.

I eyed the worn leather messenger bag at her hip.

“What’s in the bag?” I asked. I was starting to get a feeling about her. Like I knew what she was before she told me.

“A computer.”

I didn’t peg her as a college student. She had too much attitude to be a professional. Self-employed, I was guessing.

“You’re a writer, too,” I said.

She nodded.

“So we speak the same language,” I offered. She had a strip of silver running through her brown hair. More proof, it seemed, that she was born for winter.

“You’re John Karde,” she said. “I’ve seen your picture. In Barnes and Noble.”

“Well, that’s embarrassing.”

“Only if I don’t like sappy women’s fiction,” she said. “Which I do.”

“Do you write it?”

She shook her head, and I swear that sliver of silver glimmered in the dying sun. My nerdy writer mind immediately said mithril.

“I’m working on my first real novel. It feels pretty angry.”

“Let’s talk about it over dinner,” I offered. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. I mean, sure she was stunning—but it was more than that. She was a house with no windows. You could go crazy in one of those. I wanted in. She eyed my dog.

“I can drop him off, my house is on the way to town.”

She paused only to check her watch before nodding. We walked in silence for a few blocks. She kept her head down, choosing the sidewalk over the rest of the world. I wondered if she liked the cracks, or if she just didn’t want to meet the eyes of the people we passed. It might have felt uncomfortable, our quiet walking, but it didn’t. I suspected her to be a woman of few words. Muses often spoke with their eyes and their bodies. The power they supply is electrifying in itself. They set fire to your synapses.

She waited at the edge of my driveway, even though I invited her in, toeing a stray weed that had forced its way up through the concrete. I wasn’t much of a gardener. My yard looked unloved. I walked Max back up to the house and opened the door I never locked. I stopped by his water bowl and topped it off under the faucet while he watched me. Max knew my routine with women. I’d take her to dinner, I’d say things about my writing and my passion, then we’d come back here. Before I went back outside, I ran my fingers through my hair, grabbed a piece of Juicy Fruit off the counter, and stepped into the chill. She was gone. It was then I realized that I had never asked her name. I never really told her mine—not my real one, anyway. I carefully unfolded the gum from its wrapper, sticking the yellow strip between my teeth. I pocketed the piece of wax paper, scanning the street for some sign of her. I’d just lost a girl I really wanted to know. It didn’t feel good.

Nick’s Book

She came back. Two days later. I saw her from my living room window, standing in the same spot I’d left her, staring at my house as if it were something out of a bad dream. The last time I saw her she’d been standing in sunshine, this time it was rain. She had on a white slicker, the rim of it dripping water into her face. I could see the silver streak in her hair plastered to her cheek. I watched her from the window for a few minutes, just to see what she’d do. She seemed rooted to the spot. I decided to go get her. Walking barefoot down my driveway, I sipped my coffee casually, running my tongue over the chip in the rim. A few raindrops dripped into my mug. When I came within a few feet of her I stopped and looked up at the sky.

“You like this weather.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” she said.

I nodded. “Want to come in for some coffee?”

Instead of answering me she started walking up the driveway, helping herself to the door. It slammed behind her before I realized she was alone in my house.

Was it my imagination, or did she make sure to step on every weed on her way up?

She didn’t stop to look around when she walked through the corridor that connected my foyer to the rest of the house. I had several pictures hanging on my walls—art and some family stuff. Normally women stopped to examine each one. I always thought they did it to ease their nerves. She took off her jacket and dropped it on the floor. Puddles formed around it as the rainwater skirted off. She was an odd bird. She walked right to the kitchen like she’d been there a hundred times before, stopping in front of my beat-up Mr. Coffee. She pointed to the cabinet above it, and I nodded. She chose a Dr. Seuss mug—smart girl. I tended to stick to the Walt Whitman with the chip on the rim. I watched her lift the pot from the warmer and pour without looking. She was staring out my window. Right when the liquid reached the rim of the mug, her hand automatically pulled back. I breathed a sigh of relief. She had the weight and timing perfected in that strange little head of hers. When she was done, she leaned back against the counter and looked at me expectantly.