The Meeting Point by Olivia Lara
Sixty-Nine
June 14
When my alarm blares, I mumble something addressed to Ethan—for my ears only—and force myself to walk/crawl to the bathroom to take a shower and hopefully wake up. It doesn’t help. I get dressed in layers as he said, put on a pair of sneakers and stumble out of my room.
Ethan’s already in the kitchen, filling a thermos with coffee and looking like he’s just been taken out of a box. No puffy eyes, no grumpy face, all smiles.
“Good morning,” he says a bit too loud, and I point to Celine’s room.
“Let’s go,” he whispers. “We have a bit of a drive.”
“Are you good?” he asks, after I have my first sips of coffee.
“Getting there,” I say.
“Not a morning person?”
“Are you taking notes? Does this disqualify me?” I ask half-aggressively, half-jokingly. “And I don’t think three can be counted as morning.”
“Mental notes,” he says. “And no, you’re still in the running,” he says, ignoring my tone.
“Since it’s too early for loud music and definitely too early for jokes—” I say.
“Especially mine.”
“Especially yours, and since you’re putting together this thick file on me, how about you tell me something about yourself?”
I think he’s smiling, but I can barely see him. “Fair. What do you want to know?”
“How come you look like you’ve slept twelve hours and woke up four hours ago to get ready? I thought you weren’t a morning person either.”
He laughs. “I’m not. But like you said, this is not morning. I don’t sleep much. In general. Four hours maybe five. I got six hours of sleep last night.”
“Why don’t you sleep?”
“I usually write at night. I like the quiet, the darkness. I write outside, on a patio, a terrace, something. It makes me feel free. Physical walls are like walls on my imagination.”
“I like that idea. Are you writing something now? A new book?”
“I’m jotting down ideas. But I’m mostly editing. That’s what I do at the café. I wrote a book a couple of months ago and now I’m basically rewriting it.”
“So you can write during the day too,” I say.
“It’s not the same. Revising is not writing.”
“Let’s agree to disagree. How long did it take you to write June After Midnight?”
“Not long at all. Three weeks maybe. It was my fastest first draft.”
“I guess you were inspired,” I say, realizing I sound somewhat bitter again.
“What about you? How long did it take you to write yours?”
“Funny enough, the same.”
“It is a story that writes itself,” he says eventually. “It’s a special story, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“What for?”
“That I wrote it first, I guess. That you feel I stole it from you.”
“Yeah, well,” I say. “I was wondering. Why did you use my real name?”
“Because, like you said, it’s your story. Your name.”
“Why didn’t you use Max’s real name then?”
“I used it in my first draft. But it didn’t get past my editor. She said calling him by the name you gave him would be more fitting.”
“Is your editor the one who changed David’s name to Daniel?”
He smirks. “No. I just didn’t like the name David.”
I try not to smile.
“Publishing is a mystery. For instance, my book has a different title in the UK.”
“What is it?”
“The Text.”
“No! are you serious?” I ask, trying not to laugh.
“You can laugh if you want. I did.”
“Which text?” I ask. “There were a few hundred back and forth.”
“Maybe it was the last one,” he says.
“Or the first,” I say.
“That was the one that changed everything, wasn’t it?” he says.
Yes, that first text changed everything. Then what am I doing here with you? At five in the morning, driving God knows where when Max is somewhere out there, hopefully waiting for me. And why am I thinking about him less and less when I’m with you? I would ask all these things, perhaps, if I was a different person.