"Shit, this is coming out all wrong!" she yelled at her computer screen, incessantly tapping the backspace key as she deleted paragraphs of work written better than anybody she knew could do, but still was considered mindless drivel and thus needed to be deleted.
He sat a ways behind her on her bed with a book she hadn't written but aspired to emulate one of these days.
"Jenna, why don't you just take a break? You've been working on that chapter all day and you haven't gotten anywhere."
She cursed under her breath and didn't listen to him as she started to type again. In actuality he didn't care whether or not she finished her chapter because he didn't like her work anyway. They were sensation stories, the touchy-feely kind nineteen-year-old female unpublished authors with no real aim in life poured out day after boring day. Worst of all, they were all about him.
When they met he was a bit flattered that she'd spent so many years writing novels that included him and his two brothers as the main characters, but once they started dating he realized how weird it was. When he finally wore her down enough to let him read one of them, he was so freaked out by how coincidentally accurate she was he never read any of them again, stating he was "too freaked out" by her writing a story about him before she even knew him. It was quite the opposite. She seemed to know him better than anybody else in the world knew him, but that was before she ever met him.
She sat back a few minutes later, eyes scanning over her three paragraphs of work, then shoot her head and hit the backspace key again. He closed his book, annoyed, and got off the bed. "Okay sweetie," he said, walking to her and pulling at her arm, "I think it's time to get off the computer now. You wonder why your eyes are going bad; you spend all day in front of that thing. Let's go."
"Go where?" she asked. He continued to pull but she didn't take the hint and remained seated.
"I don't know. Out. Come on."
"You just don't like it when I write, do you?" she asked. "I know you said you were uncomfortable with it so we settled that I wouldn't write when you were around, but dammit, babe, you just don't go home anymore." He let go of her arm and it dropped into her lap.
"It's not that, Jen."
"Then what?"
"You've been writing all day, you obviously are stuck, so instead of swearing and leaving me over there bored out of my mind, let's do something!" She sighed.
"Fine." She got up and followed him out of the room. He bypassed the living room of her apartment where her roommate was sitting. He didn't like her roommate at all; Analise was the type who made judgments before meeting a person and had already decided that since his famous persona was a certain way that he was exactly the same the media made him out to be. She refused to let him prove her wrong.
In the elevator Jenna spoke up. "Do you have a problem with my writing?" she asked. He looked over at her.
"I thought we already discussed this. I find it weird that you write about me like that." She shook her head.
"But before I let you read any of it you were extremely flattered. You pressured me for nearly four months to let you read some of it. Now that you have you hate it when I write around you and you won't let me ever talk about it�what is it?"
"Fine," he stated without emotion. "You know the story I read?"
"Yes, dear, I wrote it."
"Stop it. You said you wrote it before you met me�like, two years before you met me."
"Yes," she said, trying to figure out where he could be going with it. He was still speaking without any emotion and his lead was too slow for her.
"It was just�I would say about ninety percent of the story was true." She gave him a confused look.
"I made all of that up."
"Well it all happened. Of course some of the names were different and some of the events happened in different cities than you said they did, but they all did happen. It was so accurate it was like you were there writing everything down as it happened. I even remember saying some of the things you wrote. After I read it I began to wonder whether or not you were there but then you said you made it all up and it really weirded me out."
"I did make all of it up." He crinkled his nose.
"Maybe you have a gift or something."
"Maybe..." she said, looking away. He looked over at her and she didn't look back at him.
"You did make all of it up, didn't you?" he pressed.
"Isaac, I just said I did."
"Fine!" The elevator doors opened and they stepped into the lobby of her apartment building. It was warm outside. The snow was now gone and spring had finally arrived after teasing the citizens of Chicago for a few months with random cold days below freezing followed by warm days in the 70's. Jenna had gotten sick as a result of it and was finally getting off of it now that the weather was evening itself out.
They settled in a corner at the Unicorn Cafe where most of the college kids hung out in between classes to study or have coffee with friends. Jenna loved going there because it was close to home and the coffee came in glass goblets. It felt like home there. He didn't necessarily like being there because it was usually was so crowded. Jenna never let him complain about it.
"Jen?" he asked. She looked up from her copy of The Daily Northwestern, something she read everyday although there was never anything of real interest in it. It wasn't a real newspaper; most of the "news" consisted of the goings-on around campus, and Jenna had said time and time again she could care less what happened on campus.
"Yeah, hun?"
"Did you live in Tampa all of your life?" he asked. She crinkled her nose a bit; she hated answering questions about her past.
"No. I was born up here but I moved there when I was about three."
"Did you come back up here during summers and stuff? I know you said you have family up here."
"Not every summer," she vaguely responded and left it at that.
"What'd you do during summer in high school, then, if you weren't up here?"
"What's with all the questions, baby?" she asked, looking at him pointedly. "This isn't like you at all." He shrugged.
"I'm just wondering...just kind of making conversation." She looked back down at her paper. "So?"
"So what?"
"So what did you do during your summers?" She sighed. She knew what she was getting at and frankly it was annoying her.
"Do you really want to know, honey?" she asked. He nodded. "I was with you on tour." He nodded again, not saying anything for a while. Since they started dating he had a familiar feeling with her, like he'd seen her somewhere before but lost track over the years, and now he remembered. She was with him on tour; the reason her stories were so accurate was because she spent summers, at least two of them, with him and his brothers.
"So you weren't always Jenna, were you?" he asked. She shook her head.
"No," she said. "I went by Darling back then." He nodded.
"Well...it's certainly nice to see you again. For real."
"You've been seeing me every day for nearly a year now. You don't need to say that," she told him.
"And Analise..."
"She used to be Nicole," Jenna supplied. "Why do you think she hates you so much? You never were very nice to her, especially after the whole her and Zac thing...you never forgave her for what she did to him."
"No, I didn't."
"Let's talk about something else, okay dear?" Jenna asked, flipping the page of her newspaper. "It was a long time ago." She took a sip of her coffee. He stood. "Where are you going?"
"I'm...I'm just going to go." She nodded.
"Okay. See you later."
"Yeah. Later." He left his cup and walked out of the cafe. She returned to her paper; she'd expected it to end that way.
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