Just Like Her

Chapter 52

Emma

I stared at the blank computer screen, the blinking cursor mocking me. Daring me to write something—anything—that wasn't completely idiotic or sounding... dumbly.

I groaned as I slammed the screen down and shoved the thing back into my bag.

It was useless—I was useless, as a writer anyway.

It'd been near on three weeks since I had moved in with Tom and every day he got up and went to work, I sat down in front of my computer and... nothing.

Not a single damn paragraph in all this time, not even one bloody sentence!

I raked my fingers through my mess of curls and did my best not to scream in frustration. Instead, I inhaled deeply through my nose and forced myself out of Peter's back office and into the main shop.

At least I'm capable of stocking books, I thought crossly.

In the beginning, I thought it must be Tom's apartment—our apartment now as Tom was often eager to correct me, and I let him. But despite my mum having graciously repacked and sent my boxes and Tom having insisted on finding a satisfactory place for all my things and knickknacks, it still felt like his flat and it felt odd to be there alone without him.

So logically, I packed up my computer bag and headed to the one place I had always felt at home, Flannigan's.

Peter kindly set me up in his office, assuring me that with the influx of customers at the height of tourist season, he was too busy to sit "on this here old fanny." But when I offered to help lighten his workload and assist up front he promptly instructed me to park my fanny and write.

I settled in eagerly the first day, optimistic the nearby stacks filled with all the works of the literary greats would somehow inspire my writing, as if through some kind of osmosis.

Unsurprisingly, simple proximity did ruddy nothing to cure me of the block. Still, I came in almost daily, not having particularly anywhere else to go, and endeavored to try and write something—anything—simply just to tell Tom that I had.

A real writer wouldn't need extrinsic motivation, I chided myself as I straightened a skewed stack of hardcovers on display. A real writer wouldn't be able to stop herself from writing. She'd be drawn to it, consumed by it!

I sighed heavily.

Six months of writing had sounded like a dream, but now that reality had set in I realized six months of writer's block was going to be pure hell.

* * *

By the time I returned to the flat, the sky was painted with broad-stroked hues of pinks and lilacs. Silently, I leaned against the front door and bit my grinning lower lip as I watched Tom swinging his hips and crooning along to the radio as he dumped something from a cutting board into a pot boiling on the stove.

When I felt I couldn't fight the laughter bubbling up inside me a moment longer, I opened and closed the door again—louder this time—and called out to him.

"Honey, I'm home!"

Tom chuckled as he flicked off the music and walked out from behind the counter to greet me.

"I will never get tired of hearing that," he murmured into my hair.

"'Honey' or 'home'?" I teased him as I extricated myself from his grasp to deposit my keys in the nearby dish and drop my bag onto the couch.