Ryan doesn’t want to be followed. I know because I’ve been there, and I recognized the look on his face when he left. So, I stay right where I am.

Left alone, I stare into space in silence for a while before ultimately turning on a baking show to at least try to quiet my racing thoughts. When it gets dark, I change into my satin pajamas, put my hair in a messy bun, and curl up under a blanket to watch some more.

I tell myself I’m not falling back into any kind of depressive episode. I’m just watching television like a normal person. Everyone binges shows, right? This is a totally mundane thing to do on a weekday evening when I don’t have work to do in the morning.

No work in the morning. I actually think, for normal people, that would be fun. A reprieve from the grind. But writing was never a grind, even if it was hard to shut it down at the end of the day. It was all the people-facing stuff—the travel, the interviews, the signings. Even those wouldn’t have been so bad if there weren’t so many of them.

Can I really walk away from the magic of bringing characters and scenes to life using only words on a page? That’s what it is—magic. A little kernel of an idea starts in my mind, all tiny and fuzzy at first. It grows bigger and bigger until it solidifies and intensifies to the point where if I don’t get it out, I start to feel like I might crawl out of my own skin. That’s when I pull out the laptop and type like a mad woman late into the night and early in the morning. And when I’m done, there it is—a living, breathing story on the page.

And then Ryan comes in. He tugs and tweaks and asks Why? and What if? He suggests stronger words. He makes it a stronger story. I take it back and respond. It’s a beautiful conversation where we weave thoughts and ideas, we give and take, we help it expand—and it wouldn’t happen if it weren’t for that little fuzzy kernel of an idea. If I never let it grow.

Words on paper. Ink on pages. A whole new world where there wasn’t one before.

Magic.

Always more magical because he was part of it. If I stop now, that piece of us will wither away. That piece of me will, too. There’s no way around it. Can I really let that happen?

We could replace it with a different kind of magic. I press a hand to my abdomen, remembering another tiny thing. It never got to grow, but we could try again. Maybe. If he wants to.