I pressed against her and bit her neck, running my hand down her stomach until striking gold. She arched her back and moaned. I tried to enter her but couldn’t get hard.

“It’s okay,” she said after a minute of this.

I sighed, closed my eyes.

“Hey,” she said, cupping my chin. I looked at her through the water that poured heavily over our heads. “You’ll get more requests.”

“What if I don’t?”

“Then so what. You’ll write another.”

I stepped out of the shower, walked across the room, and went to the window without toweling off. I stared at the tracks. The rejections had opened the doorway of doubt. I started to doubt everything, my writing, my relationship, my current living situation, the fact that I had been without a job for a month and a half and was already anxious about rent. I stressed every time I bought a cup of coffee. I had entered into a predictable trance of complete and utter insecurity that reached into every aspect of my life. The notion that people wrote stories and were paid for them seemed ludicrous. It was as though the whole concept of writing and books was nothing more than an elaborate ploy at my expense.

Carolyn walked out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel. I left the window and sat on the bed.

“Do you think I’m screwing up?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, do you think it’s stupid for me to keep writing?”

“Of course not, Stratton. You’re following a dream. It’s not supposed to be easy.”

I sighed. “It just seems like one of those things reserved for other people, not me. It’s like the whole world is playing a trick on me and everyone knows it but me. And they’re all having a great hearty laugh watching me try.”

She hugged me from behind, pressing her wet head against my shoulder.

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know, it just seems kind of silly. All of it. It’s hard imagining actually being a writer. Like, it’s too good to be true, and half of me believes I’m only doing it to keep from being a responsible adult in the first place.”

“But you love writing, and books.”

“I don’t know what I love anymore.”

“Stratton, you’re just doubting yourself. It’s normal.”

I nodded and stood. “When the hell don’t I?”

She groaned and fell back into the bed with her feet still touching the floor.

“You sure do make yourself hard to love sometimes,” she said.

“Yeah, you should try living in this brain. It’s no pretty place. All Stratton, all the time. Yippee! It’s like watching a movie in which the main character comes out of the screen every few minutes to sucker punch you right in the gooch.”