Tales From Sea Glass Inn (15 page)

The weather suited Ari’s own mood better
today than it did when it was milder. She should feel inspired by her
environment and the hints of an incoming storm. Maybe she needed a full-blown
autumn tempest to really get her creative juices flowing. She needed the waves
pounding against the bluff itself and the wind blowing debris across the inn’s
garden before she could squeeze the depth of the moment out of her fingers,
through the keyboard, and onto the page.

“Do you paint better when there’s a storm
than when it’s quiet?” she asked.

Pam tilted her head to one side and
considered the question before answering. “I don’t think so. Right now, I’m not
doing much at all, whether it’s sunny or pouring rain. I came to tell you I’m
done in the studio for the day, if you’d like to use it for a writing space.
This doesn’t really qualify as rain around here, but if you stay out in the
drizzle long enough, you’ll still get soaked.”

Ari believed her. Already, she was getting
chilled sitting out here. She dreaded the thought of going back inside or into
the studio to face her laptop, so she kept the conversation going. “How did
your painting go today?” Ari had seen Pam in her studio every day, and she’d
also seen the range and beauty of the paintings she’d done for the inn. Surely
such talent couldn’t remain submerged for long.

“I have to admit my painting not only hasn’t
gone well lately, but it’s been nonexistent. Today I organized my brushes and
canvases by size,” Pam said. “And I did get a nice pale ivory wash on one
canvas, so tomorrow it’ll be ready to sit on my easel and stare at me
mockingly. How’s your writing?”

Great.
Never better. I’m churning out a hundred pages of brilliant prose a day.
“I haven’t written as much as I’d hoped by this time,” she said. She hadn’t
written at all, but she wasn’t ready to admit the whole truth. “I usually can
process my emotions by putting the feelings into my stories and characters, but
I haven’t been able to lately. I guess I’m sort of lost, with no outlet for all
the stuff inside. I’d rather live through my characters than have to face the
pain and hurt directly.”

“Wow,” Pam said.

“Wow? Do I sound crazy?” Ari had been
desperate to confess her inability to work on her novel to someone, and Pam had
seemed the obvious choice. She was an artist and she seemed to be doing just
about anything besides practicing her art these days. Ari had thought Pam would
understand how terrible it was to be unable to create, but maybe she’d been
wrong.

“Not crazy at all. I meant wow, because I’ve
felt the same way before. I could paint feelings onto a canvas, and only then
did I really seem to get what they meant. Then, when I went through the most
terrible time in my life, I couldn’t paint at all. All I could do was sit and
stare at the pain. Until Mel came along.”

“What did she do?” Ari had some idea about
how Mel had taken care of Pam. She seemed to truly honor and support Pam’s need
to create. But it sounded like there was more to their story.

Pam laughed. “She somehow talked me into
making the mosaics for this place. I didn’t believe I could even get one of the
six she commissioned finished, and I was defensive every time she asked about
them, but she wouldn’t let her vision for the rooms here go. She carried me
along with her until I got all six done. Since then, well, I haven’t stopped.
Over the past year, I didn’t need any special circumstances to create. I didn’t
need to feel pain or joy, or to have the temperature, lighting, and environment
within certain parameters. I would see something and feel an emotion attached
to it, and then I’d paint it.” She sighed, a wistful sound. “I’d never felt
anything like it, as if my connection to the world was healthy and…unhindered,
I guess. It flowed.”

“What happened?” Ari asked. Pam would
understand what she meant. Why had the connection ended? Maybe Pam knew the
secret most artists sought to comprehend—how creativity could be controlled.
How one could stop it from leaving a person alone, groping in the dark.

But Pam didn’t seem to know the answer. “I
have no idea.” She shrugged. “The oil spill happened, I guess. I saw the horror
of it all around me, what it did to the wonderful birds and animals that live
here. What
we
did to them. And now, with Mel worried about the inn, and more businesses going
under every day…How could I paint everything I was feeling? And then I couldn’t
paint anything.”

“Does it scare you? Do you worry you won’t
ever be able to paint again?” Ari’s own fear bubbled to the surface of her mind
as she talked to Pam. She bent her knees and hugged them with one arm, the
other holding her jacket in place over her head so she didn’t get wetter than
she already was.

Pam put a hand on Ari’s shoulder and gave it
a pat, as if she knew Ari’s questions were as much about her own work as Pam’s.
“I was terrified. I thought I was going through the same thing I did before,
when I went for years barely picking up a brush. I still get frightened
sometimes, but I’m slowly finding faith in my need to paint. I feel more
confident about finding my way back to art when I’m ready for it. I’m just not
ready yet.”

“I wish I had your faith and confidence,” Ari
said. She let the jacket droop over her eyes and wrapped both arms tightly
around her legs. “I’ve got all these emotions, and I need to write them out
before I can get past them. I just can’t get them organized and structured into
sentences. Not even basic ones. Maybe it won’t ever come back.”

“I’ve read your books, you know. Jocelyn had
us read one for her book club, and since then Mel and I have bought everything
you’ve written. You’re a storyteller, Ariana. You have a gift for it, and it’s
part of who you are. Mel and I talked about painting the other day. I think it
hurts her as much as it does me when I can’t create. She saw what it did to me
when I stopped before, and she doesn’t want me to go through it again. But she,
always the practical one, said something that made me see what’s going on in a
different light. Both the catalyst for the last dry spell and the oil spill
were profoundly serious for me. Maybe I had to actually experience them before
I could paint them as subjects. It happened before.” Pam paused and looked
toward the sea.

Ari sensed Pam was looking into the past and
not at the ocean. She was torn between wanting to give Pam privacy, and her
innate need to understand other people. She gave in to her writer’s curiosity.
“What made you stop painting the last time?”

Pam was silent for so long that Ari thought
she wasn’t going to answer her at all, but she finally spoke. “I collapsed in
on myself when my ex-girlfriend yanked her son out of my life. I felt like I’d
lost my own child. Eventually I was able to finish his portrait and continue
painting, but first I had to really mourn his loss. I can only believe I’ll do
the same thing after I get through grieving the oil spill, the dead creatures
and ruined lives. Maybe one day I’ll feel ready to paint the rescue center or
the volunteers or the destruction and rebirth of the beach.”

Ari was happy for Pam and her optimism, but
she didn’t feel the same hope for her future. Maybe Pam was better at facing
emotions head-on than Ari was. And for a fact, Ari didn’t have anyone remotely
like Mel in her life to spur her on. Jocelyn was the closest thing she had to a
muse right now. Her most persistent fan.

After Pam patted her on the shoulder again
and went back to the inn, Ari continued to sit in the increasingly heavy rain.
She gave Pam’s suggestion a try and tentatively rummaged through the hidden
cache of pain she held inside. Sadness, anger, and guilt performed their
endless cycle until Ari felt queasy from the ride. She shivered and hunched her
shoulders when the raindrops got big enough to drip through her jacket and run
down her neck. She got up and ran past the studio and back to the inn. She
couldn’t face this alone, not without the help of her fictional characters. And
she couldn’t use them to help until she could get them out of her mind and into
the manuscript.

She needed to find a way to
be
a writer again,
without waiting for the readiness Pam was convinced would return. Maybe Jocelyn
wasn’t as wrong as Ari had originally thought. Would reading old passages and
answering the usual questions about her writing and inspiration break something
loose inside her? Would it remind her of what it was like to create and allow
her to recapture the inspiration she so frantically sought?

Maybe, just maybe, if Jocelyn approached her
again, she’d be willing to give this new plan a chance. She imagined Jocelyn’s
face when Ari would tell her she’d given in and would make an appearance in the
bookstore. She’d probably wear a maddeningly triumphant expression, as if she’d
known all along Ari would do her bidding. Maybe the whole damned thing was
worth doing just to see Jocelyn’s reaction.

Ari left the muddy, damp boots outside the
back door and ran up two flights of stairs in her stockinged feet. She bypassed
the room with her laptop and notepads, going instead into the kite room and
flopping on the bed. She didn’t feel like attempting to write anymore this
evening. She watched television for a while, and then went downstairs to work
on the jigsaw puzzle Mel had spread out on a card table. Ari picked up her phone
and ordered delivery pizza for her dinner—why go out and make it easier for
Jocelyn to find her?

When she had run out of ways to
procrastinate, she got out the two books she’d bought from Jocelyn’s bookstore
and read them far into the night. She wanted to go back and ask for more
recommendations since Jocelyn truly had pegged her as someone who understood
solitude and who was wrestling with family questions. Maybe the next book
Jocelyn suggested would be a guide to recovering a lost muse.

Jocelyn was on her mind all night. Had she
given up on Ari, or would she launch another attack? This time, Ari wouldn’t
say no.

*

In the end, Ari had gone in search of
Jocelyn, not the other way around. And now she was standing in the empty
bookstore, organizing her notes for the reading at the podium Jocelyn had set
in the corner of her store.

At first she’d resisted the urge to go back
to the store and face Jocelyn. But then she got bored enough to Google herself.
She had thought reading some positive reviews of her books might give her a
boost in confidence. Unfortunately, the first one she found was for her most
recent work.

Award-winning
novelist Ariana Knight disappoints with latest novel.

She should have stopped reading after the
headline, but she didn’t. She shouldn’t have gotten in her car and driven
directly to the Beachcomber Bookstore and told a delighted Jocelyn she’d do
this stupid signing, but she had. And now here she was. Ready to disappoint
again.

Jocelyn came over and broke Ari out of her
self-pity mode.

“Do you need a glass of water up here while
you read? Will you be comfortable standing behind the podium, or does it feel
too formal?”

Jocelyn had been nothing but helpful and
appreciative since Ari had arrived, and Ari had to admit that Jocelyn had
thrown together an elegant, yet intimate setting on short notice. Ari wasn’t
sure exactly how short the notice had been. Maybe Jocelyn had been planning
this night since the moment they met, confident she’d eventually wear Ari down.

“I like the podium because I can put my notes
down instead of holding them,” Ari said. No matter how she had ended up in this
predicament, she’d do her best to make it a success for Jocelyn and her store.
Ari was dealing with her own demons these days, but she could set them aside
for one night. She had come here to help Cannon Beach as much as herself, and
this was a way to support the town. Along the way, perhaps she’d remember why
she loved writing in the first place. “And water would be nice.”

Jocelyn gave her a wide grin and went to get
Ari’s drink. Ari watched her walk away with her long, patterned navy skirt
swaying around her bare ankles and the sleeveless white top showing off her
toned arms. Ari had come to this town with a heavy weight on her mind, and from
the start, Jocelyn had taken up residence in her head. She preferred to focus
on the ways Jocelyn irritated her. If she stopped being annoyed by Jocelyn,
she’d have to face the even more disturbing fact of her attraction to her. To
Jocelyn’s body, her smile, and her wide blue eyes that seemed to look right
into her customers’ souls. To her persistence and ability to survive—so different
from Ari’s desire to escape and hibernate. And to her grace, whether she was
riding her horse on the beach or walking across the store with a glass of
water.

Jocelyn set the glass on the flat rim of the
podium. “Are you okay?” she asked. “I have wine for the reception, but I can
get you a glass now if you’d like.”

Ari smiled but shook her head. A drunk
reading—that’d be an interesting first for her. Who knew what she’d break down
and say in front of the people who came. “I’d better say no, but thank you. I
always feel a little anxious before events like this, but I’ll be all right
once it starts.”

“I’m sure you’ll do great,” Jocelyn said.

She put her hand on Ari’s arm, probably
meaning it as a casual gesture of comfort, but her expression changed as the contact
was prolonged. All at once, Ari couldn’t read what Jocelyn was thinking, but
the point of contact between her silk-covered arm and Jocelyn’s bare hand grew
warm and drew all Ari’s attention, as if it was the only part of her body that
was fully alive. Blood rushing through capillaries, skin shifting and tingling
at the friction between fabric and Jocelyn’s palm.

Ari, fascinated by her response to Jocelyn’s
touch, lifted her hand and cupped Jocelyn’s cheek. She usually stayed in her
head when she was in moments like these, with girlfriends or lovers. She’d
overthink her actions and distance herself from the moment. Now, however, she
went with her instincts. Caressing Jocelyn’s high cheekbone with her thumb
because it made her tingle deep inside her belly, not because it was what one
of her characters might do. She wasn’t remembering old love scenes she had
written or planning future ones. She was present with Jocelyn, right beside her
in the world the two of them created.