She’s here without knowing how I feel. She’s here without knowing if I’m still with Chase. She’s here without knowing if I want to be friends or girlfriends or kick her out of my life completely. She’s here and she’s beautiful and she’s so fucking brave, braver than I’ve ever been.

My hand flies into the air.

“Yes! The barista!” Clementine Walker says. “You have a question?”

“I do.” My voice is shaking so badly and it’s awful and embarrassing and forces me to take a deep breath as the whole room turns their eyes on me while Beth brings me the mic. “Do you ever … I mean, have you ever…” Another breath, and this time, I meet Jasmine’s quizzical gaze, watch the way her teeth gently tug at her lip, and I steady. “Has the love interest ever turned out to be someone other than who you originally planned? Because I’m writing a book, and I had this great couple all planned out, but I can’t seem to get my main character as interested in him as she is in her roommate.”

Clementine smiles knowingly. “That’s the thing about characters—you think you’re in control, but even though they’re fictional people, they tend to have their own minds. I think of it as the most amazing blessing when my characters tell me what they want, even if it involves a whole lot more editing than I planned! Did you know in The One That I Haunt, Zach’s brother Tate was actually supposed to be the love interest? But once I realized that Zach and Angie’s bond over their cats was going to be an unbreakable one, I changed paths, even though I was halfway through the draft and two weeks away from deadline.”

There are gasps, and you just know they’re all from empathetic writers.

“I know, right?” says Clementine, and she’s chuckling as she wipes her forehead in a mock show of cleaning the sweat off her brow. “I can’t believe I did it either. But just because you’re telling a good story doesn’t mean it’s the right story. And I think it’s really important to tell the right story.” She looks right at me and answers so brightly that it’s clear she can’t tell my world happens to be turning upside down at that moment. “It sounds to me like the roommate is a relationship worth exploring.”

“Yeah,” I say slowly, picking out Jasmine in the crowd. “I’m pretty sure the roommate is my story.”

I offer her a slight smile.

She offers one back.

And then we wait.