The Fates (Book I) - 2014 Watty Award Winner!

3.9 - Life to Be Written

Dear Readers: Back in Greece! Where Cloe is set to meet Prof and Charliese...

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Scene 9: Life to Be Written

A.D. 2015

Cloe calmly crossed the street toward the couple at the shaded patio table.

Miss Primor saw her first and waved. Prof promptly jumped out of his chair for a huge hug. “Cloe! At last, you grace Greece with your presence!” he exclaimed.

She smiled and expressed how good it was to see him here. Once he finally let go, she leant in for a tame one-armed hug from Charliese. They were still practically strangers, after all—not yet on bear-hug terms. And really, Cloe had a hard time picturing Charliese giving anyone a bear hug; it just seemed too inelegant, too primitive for her.

For the next hour or so, they gushed about the gorgeous country, gorged themselves on its famous salad and fried slabs of cheese, and collectively concluded that there was no better way to spend a summer day. And by the end of it, Cloe nearly began to believe that she might have gotten to know Miss Primor as a human being, maybe, just a little bit. The personality beneath the cool porcelain veneer.

Trevor needed a visit to the restroom, after one too many beers, for which his fiancée called him out. “Well, being the only man at the table, I’ve got to carry you ladies’ weight in liquor,” he rationalized. “One can’t lunch in Europe without paying more for booze than food!”

Cloe tensed as he stood to leave. Perhaps she could see Charliese as a person now, but that did not mean that she felt prepared to talk to her one-on-one, woman-to-woman. Or girl-to-goddess, as it were.

“So what’s bothering you, Cloe?” Charliese inquired.

Caught off guard and confused, Cloe reached for her glass to gulp down the rest of her drink. There was not enough water to put off responding forever. What the hell was she talking about? She set the empty cup back down. “What do you mean?”

Charliese cocked her head thoughtfully, a thick swath of platinum hair spilling over her shoulder—her long locks were let half-down today, loosely clasped with a couple of diamond barrettes. “There’s a lingering unhappiness about you,” she candidly observed.

Cloe’s first defensive impulse was to lie. And yet she knew somehow—that grey gaze cut through bullshit like a guillotine.

She had to come up with an answer, and it had to be at least a little honest. “I was just… reading over rejections of my manuscript, on the flight here,” she confessed, opting to bring in a bit of humor with her next words. “In case I could find a hidden acceptance, reading between the lines.”

Miss Primor’s shapely lips curved up into a silent laugh.

Cloe shrugged uneasily. “So yeah—that tends to get me down.”

“Don’t let it,” Charliese instantly replied. “Make it lift you up.”

Cloe creased her brows over a dumbfounded stare.

“Tell me, Cloe—what’s the harshest, most painful criticism you’ve received about your trilogy?”

“That my characters don’t come to life,” Cloe answered, too quickly. The question had just been too easy to answer. That critique had been burned, branded into her brain ever since she’d first read it. The ultimate insult against the human lives she’d spun into her stories. Especially her protagonist, Prince Eldor of the ebon eyes, his heart of gold and endless depths of virtue in his soul… she couldn’t even stand to think of it. To think that he and all of her beloved characters had died upon the page. The pain cut deeper every time it crossed her mind.