My eyes focus on the apple, its exposed flesh already brown. Better than yesterday, when there was nothing left but seeds and core. On Mom’s best writing days, the apple stays untouched, her fingers dancing on the keys, no chance of breaking their rhythm for a bite. On those days, Mom is Michelle Jacobson, New York Times bestselling author of The Lola Diaries.

I can’t remember the last time Mom forgot to eat her apple.

“I’m ready.”

“So, can I read it now?” Mom asks.

I perform the shrugging girl emoji.

If she reads it, she’ll encourage me. She’ll critique. She’ll call me a playwright.

“You can read it when it’s real,” I say for the thousandth time. “That’s what you’d say.”

“I know, Lee.”

Mom’s voice begs me not to press further, so I don’t. Before the pressure to follow up Lola, Mom was a force in publishing and proof that writing could be more than a hobby.

Now, I see my mom stare at a blank Word doc for hours. I hear the defeat in her voice when she says, I know, Lee.

And even though my stomach dips, everything inside of me is relieved to not love writing like that, to not be following in her footsteps. I love theater, but writing and directing are hobbies, and that’s all they will ever be. I’m not sure what Adulting looks like for me—I don’t even know what I want to go to college for—but I do know it won’t be my parents’ life. Dad’s symphony orchestra dreams landed him as an overworked and underpaid high school band director. Mom’s burnout is so intense there are days she doesn’t get out of bed.

I’ve seen firsthand what art can do to a person who loves it too much.

The mental toll of tying your financial security and self-worth to a creative pursuit.

“Well I read it,” Reid interjects. “The title needs work.”

Mom’s eyebrows shoot up. “Reid read it? Wow. That hurts.”

I swallow a piece of my Pop-Tart. “It’s not like I had a choice.”

“You bet that I couldn’t name every Survivor winner,” he says, closing his book. “You basically handed it to me.”

He even named them in order. It was bizarre.

I mean, who still even watches that show? It started before we were born.

I roll my eyes, but honestly? It wasn’t the worst bet to lose. Last week, when he was reading my script at breakfast, he didn’t even hear me come down the stairs, he was so absorbed in Melted. Before I made it across the kitchen, he laughed. Genuinely laughed. Like he got it.

It honestly did not compute. Because we do not get each other, Reid and me.