Rewriting the Ending
Page 34
They stared at each other, unblinking, their expressions mirrored in rushed breaths and jagged urgent whimpers. “Juliet,” Mia finally rasped out, and Juliet pressed her lips together.
They emitted primal grunts and moans, their lips sporadically touching as they rode out a prolonged climax, hearts racing and fingernails pressing into skin.
They sought each other’s lips for more extended kisses as the adrenalin rushed over them, beads of sweat sending their entangled limbs into shivers.
With that kind of connection, once was never enough.
* * *
There were things that Juliet was good at, exceptional even. She was a writer—confident and skilled even in teaching the art and science of putting words on a screen. She was elaborately verbose. Excitable and tangential, yet incredibly passionate and competent.
Announcing to the world how amazing she was, though, pushed a lead weight into her chest and made her fidget with anxiety.
Even wedged securely between Mia’s knees as she sat high on a bench in their boutique hotel guestroom, Juliet’s fingers flicked and scraped and tangled with each other. Her body moved restlessly with each tap of her feet. Mia quietly soothed her, massaging her neck and smoothing down the softly capped arms of a simple dress over her biceps.
“Why can’t I just write it and let my publisher market it? I don’t want to do this.”
“They want to see you, honey, and hear from you. Not some pompous guy in a cheap suit. You’re the amazing writer who they love and have come here to see.”
“But I’m not. I put words on a page. I haven’t cured cancer. I’m just a chick who hated nine-to-five jobs, so I wrote a couple of books.”
Mia dropped her face to press a kiss to the crown of Juliet’s head. “Should I mention the Pulitzer now or later?”
“Shush,” Juliet replied quickly, turning in Mia’s hold so she stood facing her, hands flattened over her thighs. She sighed, giving Mia a sorrowful look and dropped her chin against Mia’s chest.
Mia’s firm hands grasped the front of her shoulders. “Your makeup and hair is done. No smudging it, or you’re going to miss this launch.”
“I think I want to miss it.”
“Just think: in a couple of hours, it all will be over and done with and you can get started on the next one…” The comment earned a loosely closed fist against her leg, and Mia giggled.
“I have two things for you Juliet. Would you like them now or after?”
“Things?”
“Hmmm, yep. One is a bit of a, how should I say it, a kind of good luck message from back home.” Juliet raised her eyebrows in a confused expression. “The States. From home. Your home.”
“Ohhh,” Juliet said slowly, although Mia wasn’t making sense to her.
“You want to see?”
“Yeah, I guess. Do I?” She was uncertain, hesitant. Good things had seldom come her way from home.
“You do, trust me.”
“I trust you.”
Mia’s feet hooked around the back of Juliet’s legs as she reached across the bench. She fingered an opened envelope, then reached in and withdrew a photo. Juliet gasped as Mia rested it on her palm. She looked up at Mia, then back down again at the photo. She repeated the motion a number of times before she could speak.
“Amazing, hey?” Mia picked up the photo and held it out towards Juliet as if to make her finally believe in what she saw there.
“Is she really reading it? They haven’t just set it up?”
Mia shook her head, thumb rubbing at Juliet’s side through the fabric of her dress. “I phoned them, and yes, she’s actually reading it. And saying some words, just a few, but the occasional phrase too.”
Juliet shook her head in amazement, blue eyes fixated on the image between them. It was a photo of her mother, thin and emaciated, but sitting relaxed in a recliner. Her feet were stretched out in front of her, and an old-fashioned, pale, pink knitted blanket was spread over her lap. In her hands was Juliet’s new book. Her mother had it on her lap, opened midway. There was a smile on her face.
“Glad you sent that advance copy?”
Juliet opened her mouth to articulate words, but nothing came out; it was the last thing she had expected Mia to give her.
“You okay?” Mia asked.
She earned another nod in response. “She’s said a few things?”
“Yeah, apparently. A few things about the book, and when people come in, she holds it up and says ‘my Juliet.’ The staff were so excited, I was almost in tears. They were all grabbing the phone and telling me the phrases she had said to them. I couldn’t keep track.”
“Mia…”
“I know. We’ll go and visit before school starts up. I’ve already started planning.”
“I never let myself think,” Juliet said. She worked at swallowing the emotion that was bubbling up inside.
“Yeah, I get that.” Mia leaned forward tipped Juliet’s chin up by her fingertip, kissing her tenderly.
“It’s hard to top,” Juliet said, “but I got you something else too. Just to say that I think you’re amazing and I’m so proud of you and that I love you.”
Juliet blushed. “You didn’t need to do that.”
“Oh, come on,” Mia declared. “You showered me with a crazy number of gifts when I started med school. How can I not return the favour?”
“You deserved them all.” Juliet cocked her head to the side.
“And you,” Mia said, sliding off the countertop and padding across the floor to her handbag, “deserve a little more spoiling.” Rustling a little, she eventually returned with a small velvet bag with a tie. She dropped it into Juliet’s hand. “It would have been in a box,” Mia explained sheepishly, “but I thought you might freak out that it was a ring.”
Juliet laughed and closed her eyes. “Probably would have.”
As Juliet slowly untied the ribbon and dipped her fingers in, Mia, her voice low and serious, said, “I love you, Juliet, and I am so incredibly amazed—honoured, even—to be your partner.”
Juliet blinked hastily. “How do I even respond to that?” she asked, a little bewildered by the intensity of Mia’s conviction.
“Oh, you don’t.”
“Oh, but I do,” Juliet countered. “Because I love you too.”
“You do?”
Juliet laughed, drawing a long chain out of the small bag. “I really do.” Slowly, she held the fine chain up in the air and dropped its pendant against her palm. “Mia, it’s…it’s gorgeous.”
Shrugging, Mia traced Juliet’s fingers. “I didn’t want to be too full on,” she said softly, “so I hope that’s okay.”
The pendant, a flat, oval-shaped gold plate, had tiny diagonal cursive writing engraved. Yours.
“I kept thinking up all these phrases about family and choosing family and some long, complicated thing. But honestly, you’re everything to me…You’re my family, my best friend, the hot, hot woman I get to have amazing sex with. So yeah, I’m just yours.”
“Mallania.” The word was exhaled rather than spoken.
“We should go. You have a crowd waiting and Internet feeds, and it’s all set up and ready for you. You should go.”
Juliet drew in a deep breath and raised a slow-moving hand to cup Mia’s cheek. “Thank you,” she said, rising up slightly on her tiptoes to kiss her. “Thank you.”
* * *
Mia watched quietly from the side of the small conference room with a glass of champagne in her hand. Juliet, despite her earlier protests, spoke eloquently and almost poetically, the epitome of exceeding expectations. She was softly spoken and casual, bohemian in her sensibility, and she oozed that persona of being everyone’s favourite friend and next-door neighbour.
But her eyes kept drifting to Mia, seeking her out even when Mia switched from a chair at the back to standing to the side by a bookshelf. Mia tried to relax Juliet from afar with an endless supply of encouraging smiles and nods in her direction while
Juliet read out a lengthy excerpt, then invited questions. During the Q&A, there was a flurry of hands and gestures, and Juliet squirmed in her seat, staring from Mia to her publisher and back again.
“Juliet, given that this book is well past the original release date, can we infer that it was a difficult journey to write?”
Juliet offered a small smirk to the journalist. Mia knew there were various theories, mostly that Juliet had disappeared and had no intention of ever completing her second book. Mia hoped that they were pleasantly surprised.
“I’ve found that writing a novel is as much about me the author as it is about the characters on the pages. It’s a challenging process.”
“There are some distinct similarities between Things My Mother Should Have Told Me and this,” another journalist rushed to ask. “Would we be correct in assuming that there are some autobiographical elements?”
Juliet glanced down, flicking the end of a pen with her thumb. “As I said, for me, writing is as much about self-discovery as it is about getting the words out. I wouldn’t say either novel is autobiographical, but I’ve drawn heavily on the people I have had the displeasure and pleasure of knowing in my life.”
An arm flew up from the midst of the crowd, a writer for a review website, perhaps, or another magazine journalist—Mia had lost track. “Your previous story was about solidarity. Would you agree that this is a story of love?”
Mia observed how Juliet’s finger stopped playing with the pen. “Perhaps a story of learning to love despite a flawed sense of solidarity,” she said after a moment of silence.
She continued to field questions for more than an hour and then spent another hour signing books with meticulously personalised messages.
Finally reaching the end of the queue and watching people slowly leave, Juliet reached Mia, who was waiting patiently on a stool, champagne glass in hand. Juliet moulded straight into her.
“Exhausted?” Mia asked gently, leaving her champagne on the table and closing her arms around Juliet.
“Ah-huh.” Juliet’s voice was muffled from nuzzling into Mia’s neck. “But I just want to stay like this for a few minutes.”
Mia flattened her palms to Juliet’s back and moved slightly, just enough to rock her almost imperceptibly. “You were amazing.”
“You think?” Juliet asked. “I felt like I rambled, and the questions were full on.”
Scoffing, Mia kissed her temple. “Seriously, you were so good.”
“Thanks.”
“Did you sign me a copy amongst that mass out there?”
Tilting her head up, Juliet engaged in a prolonged blink. “You got a dedication on the first page. I think that trumps a crappy signature.”
“True. Made my head swell.”
“I never would have finished it without you, you know that.”
Juliet nodded, smiling widely with dimples on full display. With a softened expression, she said, “Everything’s going so well with us lately. I wish things were better with your family, though. I mean, that would be awesome for you, for you to have things with them fall into place.”
“I wish that too,” Mia said. She kept her features neutral, rather than worry Juliet. “But I would rather them not be in my life than in it and causing us problems. You’re my family, Juliet, and if one day they want to be too, then fantastic. But if not, you and I are totally enough.”
“Totally, huh?”
“Totally.” Mia confirmed, sliding off the stool and steadying herself with Juliet’s arm. “Sorry, those Moëts have been going down a little easy.”
“Coffee back in our room?” Juliet asked softly, one hand on Mia’s hip, steadying her.
“We’re like an old married couple.”
“But with more sex.” Her eyes sparkling, Juliet tugged Mia in a weaving path through the chaos of discarded chairs and tables towards the exit. Mia laughed with delight as she followed behind Juliet, feeling warmed by the glasses of champagne and the undeniably settled feeling she carried with her these days. It wasn’t hard to see that they were both incredibly content. Happy.
They passed a poster just before they left through a staff door at the back of the bookstore. It was an enlarged version of Juliet’s book. She had deliberated for some time over the cover, working with the design team to get it right, e-mailing proofs back and forth at least ten times. When Juliet had finally showed it to Mia, the impact on Mia had been a rush of humbled and touched tears.
Two abstract hearts were centred on the cover, various colours and cracks evident on both. They were splintered, broken, shaded, and simply imperfect. They were connected by interlocking items, and it took the viewer a few moments to identify what they were. One was an identical representation of Mia’s necklace and pendant, and the other, the old frayed bracelet that Juliet wore. They looped around the hearts and then twisted into the gap between, around and around.
The simple title was positioned below.
And I love you
So I stay
“Yeah,” Mia whispered to herself as they slipped outside and onto the narrow track to their room. “She stayed.”
###
About hp tune
hp tune is a travel addict. You name it, she has been there on a donkey, or a camel, or snowshoes.
Born by the beach in Australia, she grew up catching waves and endlessly typing out elaborate stories on her prized possession – an electric typewriter!
Somewhere along the way, her typewriter got upgraded to a Mac Air, her backpack to a suitcase, and her hostel to four star hotels. hp still travels the world with the love of her life — her partner, not her Mac – though it is always packed.
CONNECT WITH HP TUNE:
Webseite: www.hptune.wordpress.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/hp_tune
E-Mail: authorhptune@google.com
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