“What was the last book you read that moved you?” I ask her.

“Like, to tears?” She scrunches up her face. “I’m not much of a crier.”

I huff a laugh. “Tears are a good signal, but it doesn’t have to make you weep to make you feel.”

One of the other senior editors, Casey, appears in my doorway. He leans against the door frame and crosses his arms. “Are you lecturing the interns again, Ryan?”

Margie pops up even straighter in her seat. “Oh, no. He was asking me about the last book that made me feel something.”

Casey cocks an eyebrow and smirks at me. “Really? Well, I’m interested. What was it?”

“Um,” Margie hedges. “Well, if you’re asking me the first book that comes to mind… We read In the Time Before in our contemporary literature class last semester. By Scarlett Frye. Have you heard of it?”

My mouth goes suddenly dry, and I blink rapidly a few times. Casey pushes himself off the doorframe as his smirk turns to a look of concern. I try unsuccessfully to swallow, then clear my throat.

“Yes,” I rasp. “I’m familiar.”

Casey’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead, but thankfully, he doesn’t say anything.

Margie seems completely unaware as she continues on. “Well, I loved it. It was super emotional. Is that what you mean? You want me to find a book like that one?”

There is not, nor will there ever be, a book like that one. Scarlett Frye is a paragon in the literary community. Her ability to develop multifaceted characters and carve meaning from not only their misfortunes, but from the very words themselves is—as of yet—unparalleled.

In short, she is a literary genius. Or she was. And I remember her well.

Dark hair fanned out on the pillow around her pale face as she held pages up over her head to read them aloud to me. A smile, her dark eyes glittering. Somehow, that smile meant more from her, was more beautiful on her than on any other human alive.

“You like it?”

She didn’t need my approval. She knew what she was capable of. But I gave it to her anyway. I always would.

“It’s breathtaking.”

Did I mean her or her writing? It didn’t matter. She and her words were always one and the same. I hoped she’d never run out of them. Never stop sharing them with me. Never stop letting me see the inner workings of her big, beautiful brain.

“Ryan?” Casey’s voice interrupts my sudden memory, and his short, black hair and dark skin replace the long, dark tresses and porcelain complexion from my vision.