The Writing Conference | Conneree AU || ✔

Chapter V

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His first day ended without a hiccup. Conner got out of the building late at night, as he suspected.  When he signed up for the conference, he was told they were late hours. He walked to his hotel, not having a car, and not wanting to rent one.

The walk was short and he arrived in his hotel room by the time it was 10:00. He was too tired to even eat dinner, he would have a big breakfast tomorrow morning.

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Conner awoke the next morning with plenty of time to take a shower, get dressed in the conference attire, and eat a suitable breakfast. The amount of writing work they had had at the conference the other day made his hands hurt, so he tried to alternate hands while eating in order to keep them writing for another full day of typing.

After breakfast, he brushed his teeth and hair and left the hotel for the start of a new conference day.  Hopefully, they would do more than boring writing exercises that day. On the walk to the Williams Press building, he found himself thinking about the young woman in the purple beanie- Bree.

She was just so interesting.  She was peppy in conversation, yet wrote about cemeteries. She wore a beanie but wasn't shy.  She had raised her hand to input often during the seminar the other day. She was such an interesting person, definitely not like anyone in Conner's hometown.

Conner tried not to think if she was going to sit next to him that day, that wasn't important.  He was at the conference to get his book published, not to think about girls. But, the harder he tried to stop thinking about her, the more he did. It was hard to erase the picture of her swinging ponytail under the well-fit purple beanie with the pink and blue bangs that swung when she laughed.

The laugh that was sweet, not choppy.  Such a merry sound to come from a girl who wrote about cemeteries.

Conner arrived at the conference in good time and headed into the same room as before and plopped himself and his stuff at the same desk as before. He took a better evaluation of the room this time.

There were a few more people than the other day, proving Bree's theory right. There were older people and younger ones.  Some were short, some were tall.  Some we're decked out in Williams Press apparel, showing that they had been part o this before. Others looked like high schoolers on a field trip to the snake section of the zoo.  The were in their own little corners with hands close to their mouths, assessing the situation with wide, assertive eyes.

By the time Conner had finished looking around the room, when his eyes returned it his desk, he noticed a familiar pair of converse on the floor under the divider. He pushed his chair away form his desk to look. Sure enough, there Bree sat, her back to Connor, engrossed in her story this time.

Conner rarely ever saw other people as committed to writing as him write, so it was interesting to see Somme of the same faces of annoyance, confusion, and frustration appear on Bree's face, ones he often thought he used too often.

"Hi, Conner," Bree said, having noticed him out of the corner of her eye without him noticing.

Conner startled. "Hi," he said.

She closed the lid if her laptop and turned it face him.  "You can't read my story if I'm not supposed to read yours," she said in response to his face.

"I wasn't," Conner trailed off, realizing how weird it would sound to say that he was watching her and not her screen. Yeah, that would definitely sound weird. "Never mind, that's fair,"

"Thank you," Bree said triumphantly.

"What are we doing in today's seminar?" Conner asked.

"More boring writing exercises," Bree said and laughed at his face. "You'll get used to them."

"I"m sure I won't,"

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