Terry towered over him and stared for quite some time. Perhaps it was anywhere close to a half-hour, or that's what it felt like at least.

Chad shifted his weight and brought his broken hand into view, all gloriously obvious in a white cast as if to distract her from the true tragedy. That without her permission, or approval, he had thrown out his previous idea and started another.

"It's only the starting chapters, but I believe there's something there as you said there would be." He cleared his throat. "The title is something we can change down the line, but I feel it's different. It's an unfamiliar process for me taking life and putting it into a story, but I'm writing now and regularly."

Terry held up a finger to shush him. Her foot tapped the ground audibly. Her jaws clenched before she shook her head. Silent, she walked away, clutching the journal in one hand only to throw it down on the table with a loud thud, one that made him flinch. Then she sat down ever-so-slowly on her chair, pull it closer to the table, and flip to page one, with its awful handwriting. She sighed and began reading.

"Maybe I could..." he began, and she held up her finger again to shush him, a deadly warning, "get us a coffee..." he trailed off. Warning heeded.

Terry looked over the rim of her reading glasses, a death stare. "You will sit." And that was that as she went back to reading.

Chad pulled out his phone and began skimming his social media, browsing through statuses and posts, for something to do. Occasionally he laughed at memes, reminded of Bax. It was a nice change to allow those memories back in.  He'd been through similar drills before, with Terry. She was pissed, and when she was pissed, she had little to no patience for his whims and excuses. Today was one of those days, so all Chad could do was wait for her patiently.

He wondered about June as he stared at the search bar. He typed her name, surprised to find quite a few June Amari. He pulled the phone closer and eyed the tiny profile photos to determine which June Amari was his. None seemed to be her, or maybe one one without a photo was her. Who knew? He hardly could blame the girl for not advertising her life.

Terry woke him up with a rough nudge to the shoulder. He blinked wide. It seemed he'd nodded off while waiting. "So? What do you think?" he asked, rubbing sleep off his eyes and sitting up straighter.

She sat on the coffee table opposite him with a look he couldn't or rather, hadn't learned to decipher yet. She placed the journal on the table beside her and leaned back on one arm, considering him. "How long do you think to finish this?"

Chad blinked. "So you like it?"

She shrugged. "It's got a good bone. You'd have to change several things, but it'll work, eventually."

"So we're good?" He grinned. Please say yes, please say yes.

"Get me an outline, a thorough outline, by the end of the week and we'll see. At present, it's a handful of chapters. And I can't do anything with a handful of chapters."

He nodded. She was correct. As always.

"When can I expect the first draft?"

Chad didn't quite know, did he? Seeing how he was waiting for the moments to happen in real life before he wrote about them in the middle of the night, away from June.

"You have an outline, don't you? Something I can use to brainstorm marketing ideas, cover design?" she asked. Chad shook his head. "Chad!" she blew up. "This is getting ridiculously out of hand, mate. First, you pitch something else and take ages to deliver something entirely different from what we discussed. Now, on top of it all, you write something without an outline and expect me to be okay with it?"

Chad shot up, unable to defend himself sitting down. "It's a spontaneous piece. I haven't planned it at all. It's happening on its own and I'm writing it, like you asked."

"You're telling me you're going with the flow?"

He nodded. "Not entirely my style, I know, but at least, it's good material."

Terry nodded, though he could tell it wasn't what she wanted to agree to. "I did not mean write exactly what happens, Chad. You're a fiction writer, so fictionalise some bits, dramatise them, use the tropes in romcom and buck them, damn it. As much as I want this story, you must be careful how you write it."

Chad nodded. Terry had a point, as always. "What if I write it from my point of view? Would you trust me then?"

"I have no choice." She sulked away to her desk again. "Get me three to four more chapters in the next fortnight and we'll see if this has legs." She turned to her computer and typed something. "Now, go, get out of my office and get writing."

He happily obliged. He picked up his journal from the table and went to leave.

"Does she know?" Terry called out.

"Does who know?" He halted.

"The girl?" And for the first time, he saw a smile appear on her lips. He shook his head, and she nodded. "We will have to change more than a few things in it so you don't get sued." She laughed and waved him off.

"Go on, and type that shit up, will you? I can't be reading your awful writing next time. You bring me that journal again and I'll toss it in the bin." He could hear her keyboard clacking as he left. "And whatever happened to penmanship?" she yelled out.

"I don't know. It's a lost art, really!" Chad yelled back with a smile. His writing was truly God-awful, he had to admit. Some days he couldn't even read it himself.

As the elevator descended from Terry's floor, some thirty levels, Chad wondered about the bungled barbecue and how much he wanted to go there, knock on the door and drag his filthy excuse of a father out, and tell him to 'stay out'. But mostly, he thought about the kiss.

In fact, here was Chad, a man, constantly thinking about the woman next door, something his female leads often did in his books. Every morning he could smell her scent trailing as she made her way to work or uni. He even wondered how she looked sleeping someday, while he stayed up writing, trying to distract himself from that very thought.

Instead of heading home, Chad detoured at the lobby towards the quaint little cafe there, found a pastry to try with a coffee and sat down to write.

He began writing about the morning he'd sat atop the kitchen bench-top eating grapes when the news on the radio had sent him running back to Hyde Park. Except, in his book, it was a regular boring old neighbourhood park in an unnamed suburb.

He wondered if June would mind that he was writing about her? Knowing her, he guessed she'd mind, but he couldn't help himself. Not anymore. June was all he could think about, and writing about her as a character helped him keep his feelings in check. Fantasies suited him better than reality. Besides, he had gone too far forward to back down now. Even Terry had read it and loved it despite her deep frown.

It was no longer a matter of writing a story he thought was worthy. It was about his career as a writer. He had a fantastic story about one homeless, helpless youth and her unsung hero staring him in the face. He couldn't let it be.

For a moment, the writing flowed all the way until he got to the part where he'd found her in the park, broken, close to calling it quits. Bax was dead. Something in her had broken. She had lost the last person she called family. And something within him had leapt forwards, like a knight in shining armour. Maybe it was the familiarity of the loss or a more primal instinct to protect someone. Either way, it had been four months since they'd met, and from time to time, Chad wondered why he had helped her. If he looked at it from Jo's perspective, he looked crazy. Not that Jo knew the truth about how June became his flatmate, nor was he planning on telling her. None of it would matter in time, he supposed, sipping coffee in between writing spells. June would not be living with him forever. Would she?

That thought made it hard for him to continue sitting there, one leg over another, scribbling away at the journal atop his lap. He stuffed the book back into his bag and drained his cold coffee, staring at the culmination of his life, the satchel. It was a capsule for his life. He was a writer. That was all he was. It was all he had. It was all he could lose in a heartbeat if he couldn't write the story.

Why does it matter if she goes? The question barged into his mind. They were friends. That's all. But the thought of her moving out, the image of her walking out the door one last time gave him heartache. Jo was right, there was more to this story than he realised. Chad Gilligan was falling for a woman he never imagined he'd meet. Or was it Zachary Eve, falling for one of his characters again, as he always did? The lines were blurring and Chad's head swam with confusion. Who was he writing as? Chad, or Zachary? And whose feelings were they, his, or his alter egos?

That afternoon, he visited Tylor's café. He needed to walk those fateful steps once more to figure out when exactly June started mattering.

"Chad!" Tylor's voice boomed over the rest of the café and Chad felt a little shy suddenly. He waved at the crew and waited in line to order. "Long time, man, where you been for couples of months? We missed your face."

Chad laughed. Tylor always said the weirdest things, and he loved it. "Busy, you know how it is sometimes."

"Good to see you, man." Tylor grabbed Chad's hand and shook it vigorously. "What can I get you? The usual?"

"Just one set to go, thank you."

Tylor smiled knowingly. "To the park?" and Chad nodded. "Heard you met a girl?" This time Chad could almost hear the palpable disapproval in Tylor's voice.

"Visiting old memories," he managed.

"So no girl then?"

He laughed a nervous laugh. Could they all see something in him he couldn't? First Jo, then his dad, and now Tylor, all wondering if there was a new girl in his life. "Not yet."

Tylor winked, handing him a coffee and a croissant to go. "On the house. Go get her."

♡

Chad sat on the old bench. The bench where he'd met June, a grizzly homeless woman, drowning in a jacket several sizes too big, and hidden behind a scarf that covered most of her face beneath the hood.

She'd sworn at him, he remembered with a laugh. He would have never guessed what or rather who hid under that entire disguise if she hadn't spoken, or cussed. In another life, under other circumstances, Chad would have never engaged with her, let alone put himself in a position to bring her home. In another life, he would have walked away, never to see her again, never to think of her again. But here he was, several months down the track, unable to get her off his mind.

He wondered, sitting on that warm bench, how things could have turned out if it had been another Chad who had met June that cold morning. In fact, if Chad hadn't been as desperate for inspiration, he never would have heeded the advice to venture out to the park. He would have been comfortable sitting in his regular corner seat, sipping his regular coffee and occasionally glance out at the park, ignorant of the lives that crossed it daily or called it home.

He watched people cross his path, in conversation with friends, some with their phones or other devices in hand, music blaring in their worlds, while the rest of the world carried on outside. He had been one of those oblivious people once. He couldn't help but wonder how he'd survived this long as a writer, removed from the world he wrote about.

Chad's thoughts wandered back to June as he pulled out his journal and began writing. What if the only reason he had June constantly in his mind had nothing to do with his feeling for her? What if those feelings were, in fact, nothing more than him wondering how different life could have been, how dry it would have continued to be if she hadn't come along? That besides Terry, no one else knew the truth behind June was a little unsettling. It made him feel uncomfortable for once. He needed to talk to someone, to sort out his feelings, to clear it for what it was, genuine gratitude for getting him out of a writing rut. That was it. That was why he was pulled by the woman. It must be.

Or maybe it was guilt that their meeting inspired his new story. It was all about June. In his version, June was talkative, not like the mystery of the real woman, who opened up little by little. In his story, he was not a writer learning to get back on the wagon, but a bored accountant working a 9-5 job in a big firm, contemplating throwing it all away to chase his dream of the silver screen. Far removed from the reality, he supposed, removed enough to keep June from getting cranky. In his version, she was a stranded traveller who'd lost all her belongings and no way of getting back home, so she volunteered at a homeless shelter for food and a bed. The real June shouldn't mind that at all, he guessed, or rather he hoped. He said nothing in it about being only homeless, but he used their history and Bax.

When his coffee finished, Chad felt an end to his visit. He'd come here to pin down a reason for his sudden and utterly one-track mind regarding June, and he got nothing, nothing other than more questions and a deepening doubt that he was doing something horribly wrong. Rich people with rich people's problems, he imagined she'd say, especially in the early days' June. Perhaps June was still likely to say something along the line now if she were ever to find out what he was up to.

(Chapter 15 continues in the next part:)

(Image by MALEAH LAND on Pixabay)