|
Get a Sneak Peek of Willa In Hiding below
Read the first three chapters below! |
Chapter One
Willa Starling could feel the barista judging her before she even reached the counter. It radiated from her like heat, this unspoken, unmistakable sense that she didn’t belong. Not because of what she said—she hadn’t spoken yet—or what she wore: a gray V-neck T-shirt, straight leg jeans, and a simple necklace her mother had given her that she never took off.
It wasn’t overt. The barista hadn’t said a word. But Willa saw it in the way her ponytail bounced with effortless confidence and the way she smiled at the customer ahead of her—warmly, like she meant it. There was something efficient and self-assured about her, like she might be the kind of young woman who likely read Joan Didion in her spare time and owned white sneakers that never got dirty. A woman who didn’t make enormous, humiliating life mistakes.
Willa, on the other hand, had been standing in line for five full minutes, fiddling with the small W pendant around her neck, and rehearsing how to order coffee like it was her first time out in public.
When it was her time to order, the barista glanced up and smiled. “Hey there. What can I get started for you?”
Willa panicked. “A drip coffee, please.”
Was a drip coffee too basic? Did it mark her as someone trying to look low-maintenance while being anything but? Would the barista think she was cheap? That she was unadventurous? That she didn’t belong here in this light-drenched café where everyone else wore brand-name sunglasses and held the exact amount of eye contact that said I meditate daily?
“Any room for milk?” the barista asked.
“Sure,” Willa replied, though she had no intention of adding milk.
The woman tapped the order in and smiled again. But Willa was still spiraling.
She imagined the barista watching her walk away and thinking, Clearly flailing. Early thirties, maybe late thirties if she’s been exfoliating. Some kind of midlife escape. Bought a notebook she’ll never use. Probably living on caffeine and lies.
It wasn’t fair to the barista, who had done absolutely nothing wrong, but Willa couldn’t stop assigning the woman thoughts. And in every version of those imagined thoughts, Willa was being found out.
She moved to the side to wait, fiddling with her phone to avoid eye contact with anyone. Her reflection in the pastry case revealed tired eyes, frizz haloing the part in her jet black hair, and lips pressed together like someone bracing for critique. She shifted her weight. Did the barista see the twitch in her jaw? The desperation in her quiet? Was she radiating failure somehow?
A man stepped to the counter behind her and ordered confidently, some multi-word thing with oat milk and a pump of something or other. He made a joke, and the barista laughed.
When Willa’s coffee appeared, she grabbed it too quickly and mumbled a thank you, already heading for the door.
Outside, the sun had climbed higher, casting soft golden light across the tops of the palm trees. It was early June, that sweet pocket of time when summer still felt new and full of promises. The breeze off the ocean was cool enough to earn its own personality—gentle, salty, the kind that rustled enough to make you feel watched. Willa walked slowly, coffee in hand, forcing herself not to check over her shoulder as though maybe someone from her old life had wandered onto this perfectly curated street to ask what she thought she was doing here.
La Jolla was nothing like the cities she’d known. It was clean in the way only expensive things are—landscaped and sun-washed with bursts of bougainvillea spilling from gated terraces and hedges trimmed into quiet submission. The air smelled like someone else’s vacation.
People passed her wearing wetsuits or Lycra or both, tanned and unhurried, laughing into phones and pushing expensive strollers. She wondered, not for the first time, what it would feel like to move through the world with that kind of ease—shoulders relaxed, voice at full volume, certain you belonged wherever your feet landed.
She turned a corner, and her rental bungalow came into view. Low-slung and whitewashed with blue shutters and a small porch, it looked like it belonged in a rom-com starring Hollywood’s current it girl. From a distance, it looked composed. But up close, there was something too curated about it. It was almost comical how perfect it was, like someone had designed it for a woman reinventing herself on purpose.
The salt-laced air wrapped around her as she stepped closer—refreshing, yes, but also invasive.
Willa took in the sight of the porch swing and her morning cup of coffee sitting forgotten on the railing. She took one last look down the street, then opened the gate and stepped inside, relieved to be invisible once again.
The bungalow was quiet in the way only unfamiliar spaces could be. The air smelled faintly of cedar and lemon from the cleaning products used before her arrival. Her suitcase sat half-zipped by the bedroom door, waiting to be unpacked.
She scanned the room, taking in the wide plank floors, the short bookshelves flanking the fireplace she wouldn’t need, the small writing desk tucked neatly beneath a window that overlooked the small backyard. It was so picturesque it almost embarrassed her, like she was trying too hard. Like the version of herself who had booked this rental had believed she’d arrive as someone better.
Still, she was here. And she needed to settle in.
She had to tell herself twice before finally moving.
Willa walked to her suitcase and crouched beside it. She pulled out stacks of soft, worn clothes and folded them into the small drawers opposite the bed, more from a need to do something than any real commitment to staying organized. Then came the books, half a dozen she’d carefully chosen back home in Las Vegas, each one held together with hopeful intent—a collection of essays by a friend who didn’t speak to her anymore, a poetry anthology, a few novels that had been sitting on her nightstand for far too long, and a slim hardcover memoir by an author who was scheduled to do a reading at Wexley’s in a few days. Willa had built this entire trip around the bookstore event, though she wouldn’t admit that out loud.
The memoir had found her at exactly the right time. She’d picked it up on a whim at an airport bookstore three months ago, hoping for something forgettable to get her through a layover. But by the second chapter, she was underlining entire paragraphs and folding corners like she was studying for a test. The author’s voice was uncomfortably honest and spare, a woman laying herself bare on the page without apology. It was everything Willa used to believe writing should be.
When she touched the spine of the book now, it felt less like admiration and more like reverence. It wasn’t only a memoir, but a flare fired into the dark. A promise that telling the truth on paper could still mean something.
She wanted to see that kind of courage up close. Maybe even remind herself what it looked like.
Willa placed the memoir on the desk, cover facing up. It was a talisman of sorts. Proof that it could be done. That she wasn’t delusional to think she still had something to say.
She stepped back and looked around the small room, trying to take it in the way someone else might. From a distance, it almost worked—the whitewashed desk by the window, the soft stack of books, the notepad open to a fresh page with a pen resting on top. The whole place felt borrowed and airy, like something from a vacation rental ad. Which, technically, it was.
Now, Willa lit a candle, one she’d bought specifically for the trip, labeled “Ocean Air” in lowercase font. She set her notebook beside the desk’s only ornament, a shallow ceramic bowl shaped like a seashell, thrifted on her second day here. The candle flickered faintly next to it, a tiny act of devotion. Proof she still believed in the idea of writing, even if the words hadn’t come yet.
From the outside, her being in La Jolla might’ve looked like the beginning of something. But inside, Willa felt like a room someone had walked out of too quickly, the air still unsettled from the exit.
She hadn’t written anything of substance in almost two years, not since she had walked away from the situation that had started as a mentorship and ended up as something else entirely. Something too tangled to explain and too exhausting to relive. She’d opened files, scrolled old drafts, changed a word here or there, but the writing—the kind that pulled something honest out of you, the kind she used to chase—had gone silent.
She was supposed to be working on her fourth novel.
Even her agent had stopped asking for pages months ago.
Willa sat down at the desk and stared at the blank notepad. Then she opened her laptop instead, the screen glaring back at her judgmentally. She clicked open a new note and typed in the title, SUMMER TO-DO LIST, and then, below it:
She stared at the last line, then deleted it.
It wasn’t that she didn’t remember. It was that she remembered too well—every detail, every conversation, every shared look. The aftermath of it all still clung to her, sticky and invisible, like humidity. She kept telling herself this was her fresh start, that she had three months to turn it all around.
Her mother, Julia, had already made a few comments about how “three months seemed like a long time,” but Willa had waved them off. She couldn’t explain that distance wasn’t the problem. It was the point.
No one here knew her. She could hide out, keep her head down. Write and heal. Come September, she’d be different. She’d be better.
It wasn’t overt. The barista hadn’t said a word. But Willa saw it in the way her ponytail bounced with effortless confidence and the way she smiled at the customer ahead of her—warmly, like she meant it. There was something efficient and self-assured about her, like she might be the kind of young woman who likely read Joan Didion in her spare time and owned white sneakers that never got dirty. A woman who didn’t make enormous, humiliating life mistakes.
Willa, on the other hand, had been standing in line for five full minutes, fiddling with the small W pendant around her neck, and rehearsing how to order coffee like it was her first time out in public.
When it was her time to order, the barista glanced up and smiled. “Hey there. What can I get started for you?”
Willa panicked. “A drip coffee, please.”
Was a drip coffee too basic? Did it mark her as someone trying to look low-maintenance while being anything but? Would the barista think she was cheap? That she was unadventurous? That she didn’t belong here in this light-drenched café where everyone else wore brand-name sunglasses and held the exact amount of eye contact that said I meditate daily?
“Any room for milk?” the barista asked.
“Sure,” Willa replied, though she had no intention of adding milk.
The woman tapped the order in and smiled again. But Willa was still spiraling.
She imagined the barista watching her walk away and thinking, Clearly flailing. Early thirties, maybe late thirties if she’s been exfoliating. Some kind of midlife escape. Bought a notebook she’ll never use. Probably living on caffeine and lies.
It wasn’t fair to the barista, who had done absolutely nothing wrong, but Willa couldn’t stop assigning the woman thoughts. And in every version of those imagined thoughts, Willa was being found out.
She moved to the side to wait, fiddling with her phone to avoid eye contact with anyone. Her reflection in the pastry case revealed tired eyes, frizz haloing the part in her jet black hair, and lips pressed together like someone bracing for critique. She shifted her weight. Did the barista see the twitch in her jaw? The desperation in her quiet? Was she radiating failure somehow?
A man stepped to the counter behind her and ordered confidently, some multi-word thing with oat milk and a pump of something or other. He made a joke, and the barista laughed.
When Willa’s coffee appeared, she grabbed it too quickly and mumbled a thank you, already heading for the door.
Outside, the sun had climbed higher, casting soft golden light across the tops of the palm trees. It was early June, that sweet pocket of time when summer still felt new and full of promises. The breeze off the ocean was cool enough to earn its own personality—gentle, salty, the kind that rustled enough to make you feel watched. Willa walked slowly, coffee in hand, forcing herself not to check over her shoulder as though maybe someone from her old life had wandered onto this perfectly curated street to ask what she thought she was doing here.
La Jolla was nothing like the cities she’d known. It was clean in the way only expensive things are—landscaped and sun-washed with bursts of bougainvillea spilling from gated terraces and hedges trimmed into quiet submission. The air smelled like someone else’s vacation.
People passed her wearing wetsuits or Lycra or both, tanned and unhurried, laughing into phones and pushing expensive strollers. She wondered, not for the first time, what it would feel like to move through the world with that kind of ease—shoulders relaxed, voice at full volume, certain you belonged wherever your feet landed.
She turned a corner, and her rental bungalow came into view. Low-slung and whitewashed with blue shutters and a small porch, it looked like it belonged in a rom-com starring Hollywood’s current it girl. From a distance, it looked composed. But up close, there was something too curated about it. It was almost comical how perfect it was, like someone had designed it for a woman reinventing herself on purpose.
The salt-laced air wrapped around her as she stepped closer—refreshing, yes, but also invasive.
Willa took in the sight of the porch swing and her morning cup of coffee sitting forgotten on the railing. She took one last look down the street, then opened the gate and stepped inside, relieved to be invisible once again.
The bungalow was quiet in the way only unfamiliar spaces could be. The air smelled faintly of cedar and lemon from the cleaning products used before her arrival. Her suitcase sat half-zipped by the bedroom door, waiting to be unpacked.
She scanned the room, taking in the wide plank floors, the short bookshelves flanking the fireplace she wouldn’t need, the small writing desk tucked neatly beneath a window that overlooked the small backyard. It was so picturesque it almost embarrassed her, like she was trying too hard. Like the version of herself who had booked this rental had believed she’d arrive as someone better.
Still, she was here. And she needed to settle in.
She had to tell herself twice before finally moving.
Willa walked to her suitcase and crouched beside it. She pulled out stacks of soft, worn clothes and folded them into the small drawers opposite the bed, more from a need to do something than any real commitment to staying organized. Then came the books, half a dozen she’d carefully chosen back home in Las Vegas, each one held together with hopeful intent—a collection of essays by a friend who didn’t speak to her anymore, a poetry anthology, a few novels that had been sitting on her nightstand for far too long, and a slim hardcover memoir by an author who was scheduled to do a reading at Wexley’s in a few days. Willa had built this entire trip around the bookstore event, though she wouldn’t admit that out loud.
The memoir had found her at exactly the right time. She’d picked it up on a whim at an airport bookstore three months ago, hoping for something forgettable to get her through a layover. But by the second chapter, she was underlining entire paragraphs and folding corners like she was studying for a test. The author’s voice was uncomfortably honest and spare, a woman laying herself bare on the page without apology. It was everything Willa used to believe writing should be.
When she touched the spine of the book now, it felt less like admiration and more like reverence. It wasn’t only a memoir, but a flare fired into the dark. A promise that telling the truth on paper could still mean something.
She wanted to see that kind of courage up close. Maybe even remind herself what it looked like.
Willa placed the memoir on the desk, cover facing up. It was a talisman of sorts. Proof that it could be done. That she wasn’t delusional to think she still had something to say.
She stepped back and looked around the small room, trying to take it in the way someone else might. From a distance, it almost worked—the whitewashed desk by the window, the soft stack of books, the notepad open to a fresh page with a pen resting on top. The whole place felt borrowed and airy, like something from a vacation rental ad. Which, technically, it was.
Now, Willa lit a candle, one she’d bought specifically for the trip, labeled “Ocean Air” in lowercase font. She set her notebook beside the desk’s only ornament, a shallow ceramic bowl shaped like a seashell, thrifted on her second day here. The candle flickered faintly next to it, a tiny act of devotion. Proof she still believed in the idea of writing, even if the words hadn’t come yet.
From the outside, her being in La Jolla might’ve looked like the beginning of something. But inside, Willa felt like a room someone had walked out of too quickly, the air still unsettled from the exit.
She hadn’t written anything of substance in almost two years, not since she had walked away from the situation that had started as a mentorship and ended up as something else entirely. Something too tangled to explain and too exhausting to relive. She’d opened files, scrolled old drafts, changed a word here or there, but the writing—the kind that pulled something honest out of you, the kind she used to chase—had gone silent.
She was supposed to be working on her fourth novel.
Even her agent had stopped asking for pages months ago.
Willa sat down at the desk and stared at the blank notepad. Then she opened her laptop instead, the screen glaring back at her judgmentally. She clicked open a new note and typed in the title, SUMMER TO-DO LIST, and then, below it:
- Write 1,500 words a day.
- Finish draft by the end of August.
- Daily walks (no phone).
- Read two books a week.
- No social media before noon.
- Don’t contact him.
- Remember why you came here
She stared at the last line, then deleted it.
It wasn’t that she didn’t remember. It was that she remembered too well—every detail, every conversation, every shared look. The aftermath of it all still clung to her, sticky and invisible, like humidity. She kept telling herself this was her fresh start, that she had three months to turn it all around.
Her mother, Julia, had already made a few comments about how “three months seemed like a long time,” but Willa had waved them off. She couldn’t explain that distance wasn’t the problem. It was the point.
No one here knew her. She could hide out, keep her head down. Write and heal. Come September, she’d be different. She’d be better.
Chapter Two
Willa woke to sunlight streaming through the curtains she’d forgotten to close the night before.
For a moment, she lay there, disoriented by the brightness, by the unfamiliar ceiling, by the quiet that wasn’t punctuated by her upstairs neighbor’s footsteps or the hiss of morning traffic. La Jolla. She was in La Jolla.
Her first full day.
She sat up, feeling the kind of anticipation she hadn’t felt in months. Not the dread-laced kind that came with deadlines or obligations, but the real thing. The kind that made her want to get out of bed.
She padded into the kitchen and made coffee, the ritual soothing in its familiarity even as everything else felt new. Through the window above the sink, she could see a sliver of ocean, a glimpse of blue between the rooftops. It was enough to make her smile.
After a quick shower, she pulled on comfortable clothes—leggings and an oversized T-shirt—and skipped makeup. There was no one here to see her anyway.
She arranged herself at the desk, like it was a ceremony. Fresh coffee, a small bowl of almonds, and chocolate squares. She lit the candle she’d purchased at that little shop on Prospect Street yesterday.
Then, laptop opened to a blank document, cursor blinking.
Today, she thought. Today it starts.
She ran her hand over the notebook beside her—coil-bound, always. Coop used to call these notebooks her “magic books,” back when he said things like, “You make me want to write again.” She hated how the memory still sparked something. Like praise had branded her deeper than betrayal ever could.
Outside, late-morning fog pressed against the windows. Condensation slid in slow rivulets down the glass, like the house itself was sweating. She stared at the screen and felt the same blur inside herself.
The panic was soft at first, a quiet nudge in her gut. It wasn’t quite fear, not yet. Just a slowly rising awareness that she didn’t know where to begin.
It wasn’t a new feeling. She had been here before. Different desks, different cities, different versions of herself, but always the same hum of dread under her skin.
It wasn’t only writer’s block, but something deeper. A fear that maybe she had burned through whatever was good and original in her years ago, back when she still believed that brilliance could come from chaos.
Back when Coop told her she was a natural. Back when she thought wanting something badly enough was the same thing as earning it.
She sipped her coffee. The cursor pulsed, indifferent.
She opened her inbox to distract herself, which was a terrible idea. Because there he was. Cooper Reynolds. Even after all this time, his name still made something tighten in her spine.
She scrolled past the professional emails that began six years ago and straight into the personal. She hated that there was even a difference.
The subject lines were like little breadcrumbs, leading her back to a time she’d rather forget.
Loved that opening line. It’s you at your best.
Dinner next week? I’m taking you to my favorite place.
Missing you.
You make me want to try writing again.
She should have deleted them all a long time ago. She’d told herself that more times than she had backed out of writing retreats. But she didn’t.
Because sometimes she still needed to see that someone once believed she had it.
Even if it was him.
Even if the belief that came so casually in the beginning had turned into the kind that came with hotel rooms, lies, and the kind of secrecy that made her feel dirty even when she pretended it was thrilling.
She’d ended their relationship years ago.
But his voice still echoed in her head sometimes—when she was stuck, when she was scared, and on the rare occasion when she pieced together the right words into a beautiful sentence.
Come on, Starling. You know you’re better than this.
She hated that his voice still had power. That even now, years out and hundreds of miles away, a single remembered phrase could stir something in her—guilt, determination, grief. She couldn’t always tell the difference.
She leaned back in her chair, eyes on the ceiling. She had to shake this off. Get out of her head and back on the page.
But before she could move, her phone rang, sharp and insistent. Her agent’s name lit up the screen.
Willa didn’t answer right away. She thought about letting it go to voicemail, but that felt too much like avoidance. And she had promised herself she wouldn’t avoid anymore.
“Hi,” she said, trying to sound like someone who was actually writing.
“Tell me you have something.”
Her tone wasn’t cruel—Portia wouldn’t hurt a fly—but Willa could hear the exhaustion in her voice. She’d been digging for gold in the same spot for too long.
Willa had only met Portia Merritt once, but she’d never forget her. There was something quietly commanding about her presence. She didn’t raise her voice or rush her words, but people listened when she spoke. She had a face that didn’t offer much at first glance, but then she’d smile, and it felt like being let in on a secret.
Willa had always admired Portia, not only because she had a reputation as an agent who could sell a shopping list if she had to, but because she seemed to genuinely believe in her writers, even the ones who’d gone quiet.
Portia asked tough questions kindly and pushed just enough to get results.
“I’m working on it,” Willa said. It was a lie, but a hopeful one nonetheless.
“Willa,” Portia said, softer now. “You’ve been ‘working on it’ for two years.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because every time we talk, I hear a slightly more tired version of the same promise. I’m not trying to be harsh, but we’re really overdue, and I feel like you’re still circling the runway.”
Willa rubbed her forehead. “I’m trying. I really am. It’s just—I sit down, and nothing feels right.”
“You can’t wait for the work to feel good again. You have to write through the part that sucks.”
“I know,” Willa whispered.
“Then what’s really going on? Because you used to finish things, Willa. You used to push through. Now you revise half a draft until it’s dust and then vanish for three months. I know you’re not okay, but you won’t tell me why.”
Willa was silent. The words sat there, unspoken, pressing at the base of her throat.
Portia expelled a breath. “I’m going to be straight with you. I have something on my desk that I think you should look at. It’s clean and commercial. Solid. And the publisher’s interested if we put your name on it.”
Willa froze. “You want me to use a ghostwriter?”
“It would buy you time,” Portia continued. “It keeps your name in circulation. You wouldn’t have to do anything—just say yes. Think of it as a safety net.”
She knew Portia meant well. She was being offered a lifeline, a way to stay visible. But something in her recoiled. “I can’t,” she said quietly. “I can’t put my name on something I didn’t write.”
There was a silence that hummed at the edges.
Willa pressed her thumb to the corner of her eye, as if that could hold everything in place. She hated how quickly her voice had gone small. How much of this felt like failure disguised as practicality.
“It’s not forever, Willa. It’s just to keep things warm. You could use the time to—”
“No. I know what it is, and I know you’re trying to help, but I still have something to say. Of my own.”
The pause on the other end of the line was long enough for doubt to find a foothold.
“Willa, I’m not sure you understand what’s at stake here. This is your last chance with this house. If you pass, they’re dropping you.”
Willa exhaled slowly. “Shit.”
“Shit indeed,” Portia said. “Think about it, okay? It’s just to fulfill your contract, and then…” A beat of silence. “You’ve always had something to say. I want to make sure you still believe that too.”
“I do.” Willa said it like a vow. “I do.”
And she did. Beneath the static and the hangover and all her bad decisions, there was still a flicker of belief in her. That she was not done. That there was a story only she could tell.
After the call ended, Willa stared at her phone before setting it face down on the desk. She didn’t move, not to reach for the keyboard, or the coffee, or the almonds she’d barely touched. The candle flickered beside her, its scent turning thick and syrupy.
On impulse, she opened a new browser tab and typed her name in the search bar. It wasn’t something she did often. In fact, she’d gone out of her way not to as of late. But some part of her—the self-punishing part that still believed pain meant she was alive—wanted to see it.
The first hit was her author website. Her photo was two-and-a-half years old, taken for her debut back when she still thought dry shampoo and deadline panic counted as a writing process.
Next on the list was her author page on her publisher’s site. Below the same photo was a clipped and impersonal bio and her three book covers. No recent news or appearances to share.
After that came a list of think pieces, the ones that had once made her feel important. “Voice of a generation,” someone had said. That phrase had once made her dizzy with pride, but now felt like a dare.
She kept scrolling past the Goodreads reviews she’d stopped reading after her editor told her to, past the interviews she barely remembered giving, and then a blog post, dated only a few months ago. She hesitated for only a second before she began reading.
Whatever Happened to Willa Starling?
By Francesca Bloom
So there’s this writer, Willa Starling. You might remember her. She burst onto the scene a couple of years back with a debut that got a lot of buzz--The Year We Drove Away. Not the biggest bestseller, but definitely one of those books everyone who loves literary fiction was talking about.
She wrote two more books after that, both of which I’ve read, and then…radio silence. No new books, no essays, no appearances. It’s like she just disappeared.
Willa exhaled a deep breath before continuing.
Now, I get it—writers need breaks, and it’s totally fine to take time. But it’s hard not to notice how quickly the spotlight moves on, especially when you’re a woman in publishing. One slow year and suddenly you’re off the radar. She was poised for a long career. And maybe she still is. But potential has a shelf life…
Willa slammed the laptop shut and stood up quickly to cross the kitchen. She opened the fridge and closed it again, washed a clean mug, and straightened a stack of already-aligned coasters. She kept moving, worried the feelings might catch her.
But they did anyway.
Because it wasn’t only the fear of not writing. It was the fear that no one was waiting for her to try.
She sank onto the couch and stared out the wide windows at the sliver of ocean in the distance.
She had come here to start over, but today didn’t feel like a beginning. It felt like the long, quiet middle of something she didn’t know how to end.
For a moment, she lay there, disoriented by the brightness, by the unfamiliar ceiling, by the quiet that wasn’t punctuated by her upstairs neighbor’s footsteps or the hiss of morning traffic. La Jolla. She was in La Jolla.
Her first full day.
She sat up, feeling the kind of anticipation she hadn’t felt in months. Not the dread-laced kind that came with deadlines or obligations, but the real thing. The kind that made her want to get out of bed.
She padded into the kitchen and made coffee, the ritual soothing in its familiarity even as everything else felt new. Through the window above the sink, she could see a sliver of ocean, a glimpse of blue between the rooftops. It was enough to make her smile.
After a quick shower, she pulled on comfortable clothes—leggings and an oversized T-shirt—and skipped makeup. There was no one here to see her anyway.
She arranged herself at the desk, like it was a ceremony. Fresh coffee, a small bowl of almonds, and chocolate squares. She lit the candle she’d purchased at that little shop on Prospect Street yesterday.
Then, laptop opened to a blank document, cursor blinking.
Today, she thought. Today it starts.
She ran her hand over the notebook beside her—coil-bound, always. Coop used to call these notebooks her “magic books,” back when he said things like, “You make me want to write again.” She hated how the memory still sparked something. Like praise had branded her deeper than betrayal ever could.
Outside, late-morning fog pressed against the windows. Condensation slid in slow rivulets down the glass, like the house itself was sweating. She stared at the screen and felt the same blur inside herself.
The panic was soft at first, a quiet nudge in her gut. It wasn’t quite fear, not yet. Just a slowly rising awareness that she didn’t know where to begin.
It wasn’t a new feeling. She had been here before. Different desks, different cities, different versions of herself, but always the same hum of dread under her skin.
It wasn’t only writer’s block, but something deeper. A fear that maybe she had burned through whatever was good and original in her years ago, back when she still believed that brilliance could come from chaos.
Back when Coop told her she was a natural. Back when she thought wanting something badly enough was the same thing as earning it.
She sipped her coffee. The cursor pulsed, indifferent.
She opened her inbox to distract herself, which was a terrible idea. Because there he was. Cooper Reynolds. Even after all this time, his name still made something tighten in her spine.
She scrolled past the professional emails that began six years ago and straight into the personal. She hated that there was even a difference.
The subject lines were like little breadcrumbs, leading her back to a time she’d rather forget.
Loved that opening line. It’s you at your best.
Dinner next week? I’m taking you to my favorite place.
Missing you.
You make me want to try writing again.
She should have deleted them all a long time ago. She’d told herself that more times than she had backed out of writing retreats. But she didn’t.
Because sometimes she still needed to see that someone once believed she had it.
Even if it was him.
Even if the belief that came so casually in the beginning had turned into the kind that came with hotel rooms, lies, and the kind of secrecy that made her feel dirty even when she pretended it was thrilling.
She’d ended their relationship years ago.
But his voice still echoed in her head sometimes—when she was stuck, when she was scared, and on the rare occasion when she pieced together the right words into a beautiful sentence.
Come on, Starling. You know you’re better than this.
She hated that his voice still had power. That even now, years out and hundreds of miles away, a single remembered phrase could stir something in her—guilt, determination, grief. She couldn’t always tell the difference.
She leaned back in her chair, eyes on the ceiling. She had to shake this off. Get out of her head and back on the page.
But before she could move, her phone rang, sharp and insistent. Her agent’s name lit up the screen.
Willa didn’t answer right away. She thought about letting it go to voicemail, but that felt too much like avoidance. And she had promised herself she wouldn’t avoid anymore.
“Hi,” she said, trying to sound like someone who was actually writing.
“Tell me you have something.”
Her tone wasn’t cruel—Portia wouldn’t hurt a fly—but Willa could hear the exhaustion in her voice. She’d been digging for gold in the same spot for too long.
Willa had only met Portia Merritt once, but she’d never forget her. There was something quietly commanding about her presence. She didn’t raise her voice or rush her words, but people listened when she spoke. She had a face that didn’t offer much at first glance, but then she’d smile, and it felt like being let in on a secret.
Willa had always admired Portia, not only because she had a reputation as an agent who could sell a shopping list if she had to, but because she seemed to genuinely believe in her writers, even the ones who’d gone quiet.
Portia asked tough questions kindly and pushed just enough to get results.
“I’m working on it,” Willa said. It was a lie, but a hopeful one nonetheless.
“Willa,” Portia said, softer now. “You’ve been ‘working on it’ for two years.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because every time we talk, I hear a slightly more tired version of the same promise. I’m not trying to be harsh, but we’re really overdue, and I feel like you’re still circling the runway.”
Willa rubbed her forehead. “I’m trying. I really am. It’s just—I sit down, and nothing feels right.”
“You can’t wait for the work to feel good again. You have to write through the part that sucks.”
“I know,” Willa whispered.
“Then what’s really going on? Because you used to finish things, Willa. You used to push through. Now you revise half a draft until it’s dust and then vanish for three months. I know you’re not okay, but you won’t tell me why.”
Willa was silent. The words sat there, unspoken, pressing at the base of her throat.
Portia expelled a breath. “I’m going to be straight with you. I have something on my desk that I think you should look at. It’s clean and commercial. Solid. And the publisher’s interested if we put your name on it.”
Willa froze. “You want me to use a ghostwriter?”
“It would buy you time,” Portia continued. “It keeps your name in circulation. You wouldn’t have to do anything—just say yes. Think of it as a safety net.”
She knew Portia meant well. She was being offered a lifeline, a way to stay visible. But something in her recoiled. “I can’t,” she said quietly. “I can’t put my name on something I didn’t write.”
There was a silence that hummed at the edges.
Willa pressed her thumb to the corner of her eye, as if that could hold everything in place. She hated how quickly her voice had gone small. How much of this felt like failure disguised as practicality.
“It’s not forever, Willa. It’s just to keep things warm. You could use the time to—”
“No. I know what it is, and I know you’re trying to help, but I still have something to say. Of my own.”
The pause on the other end of the line was long enough for doubt to find a foothold.
“Willa, I’m not sure you understand what’s at stake here. This is your last chance with this house. If you pass, they’re dropping you.”
Willa exhaled slowly. “Shit.”
“Shit indeed,” Portia said. “Think about it, okay? It’s just to fulfill your contract, and then…” A beat of silence. “You’ve always had something to say. I want to make sure you still believe that too.”
“I do.” Willa said it like a vow. “I do.”
And she did. Beneath the static and the hangover and all her bad decisions, there was still a flicker of belief in her. That she was not done. That there was a story only she could tell.
After the call ended, Willa stared at her phone before setting it face down on the desk. She didn’t move, not to reach for the keyboard, or the coffee, or the almonds she’d barely touched. The candle flickered beside her, its scent turning thick and syrupy.
On impulse, she opened a new browser tab and typed her name in the search bar. It wasn’t something she did often. In fact, she’d gone out of her way not to as of late. But some part of her—the self-punishing part that still believed pain meant she was alive—wanted to see it.
The first hit was her author website. Her photo was two-and-a-half years old, taken for her debut back when she still thought dry shampoo and deadline panic counted as a writing process.
Next on the list was her author page on her publisher’s site. Below the same photo was a clipped and impersonal bio and her three book covers. No recent news or appearances to share.
After that came a list of think pieces, the ones that had once made her feel important. “Voice of a generation,” someone had said. That phrase had once made her dizzy with pride, but now felt like a dare.
She kept scrolling past the Goodreads reviews she’d stopped reading after her editor told her to, past the interviews she barely remembered giving, and then a blog post, dated only a few months ago. She hesitated for only a second before she began reading.
Whatever Happened to Willa Starling?
By Francesca Bloom
So there’s this writer, Willa Starling. You might remember her. She burst onto the scene a couple of years back with a debut that got a lot of buzz--The Year We Drove Away. Not the biggest bestseller, but definitely one of those books everyone who loves literary fiction was talking about.
She wrote two more books after that, both of which I’ve read, and then…radio silence. No new books, no essays, no appearances. It’s like she just disappeared.
Willa exhaled a deep breath before continuing.
Now, I get it—writers need breaks, and it’s totally fine to take time. But it’s hard not to notice how quickly the spotlight moves on, especially when you’re a woman in publishing. One slow year and suddenly you’re off the radar. She was poised for a long career. And maybe she still is. But potential has a shelf life…
Willa slammed the laptop shut and stood up quickly to cross the kitchen. She opened the fridge and closed it again, washed a clean mug, and straightened a stack of already-aligned coasters. She kept moving, worried the feelings might catch her.
But they did anyway.
Because it wasn’t only the fear of not writing. It was the fear that no one was waiting for her to try.
She sank onto the couch and stared out the wide windows at the sliver of ocean in the distance.
She had come here to start over, but today didn’t feel like a beginning. It felt like the long, quiet middle of something she didn’t know how to end.
Chapter Three
Willa woke on her third day on the coast to a phone that wouldn’t shut up. A scatter of pings—overnight emails, a weather alert, a calendar reminder she didn’t remember setting. She silenced them one by one until the room was still again.
The bungalow was already bright, light slipping through gauzy curtains, catching on the edges of borrowed furniture. She made coffee she didn’t want and stood in the kitchen while the machine gurgled and hissed. The air smelled faintly of something sweet she couldn’t name. For a long time, she watched the steam rise and disappear.
Her laptop waited on the table where she’d left it, a quiet accusation. She opened it anyway. The blank document blinked back at her, patient and expectant.
She tried to begin. A sentence, a phrase, a fragment.
Delete.
Try again.
Delete.
Her fingers hovered over the keys, then fell still. The quiet felt louder now, filled with the hum of the ceiling fan and the sound of her own shallow breathing.
She told herself she was just rusty, that this was what happened when you didn’t practice. But the thought of DC flickered through her anyway, uninvited—the hotel lights, the press of too many eyes, the sharp taste of something ending before she could catch it.
She shut the laptop, maybe a little too hard, and pressed her palms against her eyes until stars bloomed behind them.
Outside, the day had turned warm. The porch was washed in that soft, early-summer light that made everything look cleaner than it really was. If she stood on her tiptoes and squinted, she could make out a glint of water between the pines, the ocean a silver seam behind the houses. Somewhere down the block, a dog barked in sharp, uneven bursts.
She set her coffee on the railing and checked her phone with the flinching curiosity of someone peeking through her fingers at a scary scene. She opened Instagram, intending to kill a little time, but instead of checking her feed, she found herself scrolling back through her own profile. She scrolled through old posts and videos from her last book tour, back when her hair was glossier, her smile less tired, her captions more assured. There was one of her signing a stack of preorders in a bright-lit bookstore, laughing off-camera at something the manager had said. Another from a panel event in LA, where she’d worn a blazer and boots and answered audience questions with a poise that now felt foreign.
It all felt like a different lifetime.
Back when the words came more easily. Back when she believed she still had something worth saying.
Back when the DC event hadn’t yet turned her inside out.
A dull ache settled in her chest. A longing for that version of herself and for the sense of forward motion she’d taken for granted.
A realization landed with the same soft thud.
She didn’t want to disappear again. If this attention was going to find her anyway, she wanted to meet it on her own terms.
Willa tapped on the camera app. For a moment, she stared at her own reflection on the dark screen. It had been months since she’d said anything publicly. Since she’d looked at that little red light and pretended she had answers. She’d told herself she didn’t owe anyone an explanation, that silence was safer. But silence had started to feel like its own kind of noise.
She hit record and then immediately backtracked. What would she even say?
She exhaled and then started recording. “Hi. It’s been a long time.” Her voice sounded like it had walked a long way to get here. “The truth is, I’m…a little overwhelmed.” She chuckled awkwardly. “But I wanted to check in and say that I’m still here, still writing—or at least I’m trying to. And I’d like to share the process with you all—the good and the bad. If you’re here for that, welcome.”
She uploaded the video to TikTok and added a simple caption, “Committing to daily writing. No promises, just pages,” and then tapped Post.
A small sound left her—half laugh, half exhale—like a valve releasing.
Beside her, a neglected flower box sat on the porch railing, its soil dry and cracked, the plants half-withered from the sun. Not everything could be fixed in a day. She knew that. But she brought the box to the sink anyway and let the water run until the dirt darkened and smelled like rain.
Back inside, she ignored the bottle of wine in the fridge and poured herself a glass of water. At the desk, her laptop sat open and waiting. This time, when she looked at it, she didn’t flinch.
Instead, she smiled. A real one.
Posting on social media wasn’t akin to making a full comeback…but it was a start. It was what she’d come here to do. And today, she’d chosen to do it where everyone could see her try. She’d put it out into the universe, and now she had no other option but to follow through.
Within an hour, the video had five hundred views. Thirty comments. Ten new followers.
The dopamine hit was immediate.
After another hour, her views were up to five thousand, her comments growing and growing.
By four p.m., she was refreshing obsessively, chasing the high of each new notification like it was oxygen. Hundreds of comments. Thousands of likes.
Some of it was soft and buoyant.
“You’ve got this.”
“We missed you.”
Then the other kind—the kind that crawled under the skin.
“Are you finally going to tell us what happened in DC?”
“Why did you disappear?”
A knot pulled tight under Willa’s ribs. She backed out of the app and set the phone face down on the desk, as though that could hush a thing already in motion.
She reached for the glass of water she’d poured earlier, now warm, and took a slow sip. Her pulse was still skittering from the rush of it all—the posting, the numbers climbing, the sudden reminder that people were still watching.
She set the glass down and pressed her fingertips to the desk, grounding herself in the feel of the wood grain. The day stretched quietly and long around her.
The bungalow was already bright, light slipping through gauzy curtains, catching on the edges of borrowed furniture. She made coffee she didn’t want and stood in the kitchen while the machine gurgled and hissed. The air smelled faintly of something sweet she couldn’t name. For a long time, she watched the steam rise and disappear.
Her laptop waited on the table where she’d left it, a quiet accusation. She opened it anyway. The blank document blinked back at her, patient and expectant.
She tried to begin. A sentence, a phrase, a fragment.
Delete.
Try again.
Delete.
Her fingers hovered over the keys, then fell still. The quiet felt louder now, filled with the hum of the ceiling fan and the sound of her own shallow breathing.
She told herself she was just rusty, that this was what happened when you didn’t practice. But the thought of DC flickered through her anyway, uninvited—the hotel lights, the press of too many eyes, the sharp taste of something ending before she could catch it.
She shut the laptop, maybe a little too hard, and pressed her palms against her eyes until stars bloomed behind them.
Outside, the day had turned warm. The porch was washed in that soft, early-summer light that made everything look cleaner than it really was. If she stood on her tiptoes and squinted, she could make out a glint of water between the pines, the ocean a silver seam behind the houses. Somewhere down the block, a dog barked in sharp, uneven bursts.
She set her coffee on the railing and checked her phone with the flinching curiosity of someone peeking through her fingers at a scary scene. She opened Instagram, intending to kill a little time, but instead of checking her feed, she found herself scrolling back through her own profile. She scrolled through old posts and videos from her last book tour, back when her hair was glossier, her smile less tired, her captions more assured. There was one of her signing a stack of preorders in a bright-lit bookstore, laughing off-camera at something the manager had said. Another from a panel event in LA, where she’d worn a blazer and boots and answered audience questions with a poise that now felt foreign.
It all felt like a different lifetime.
Back when the words came more easily. Back when she believed she still had something worth saying.
Back when the DC event hadn’t yet turned her inside out.
A dull ache settled in her chest. A longing for that version of herself and for the sense of forward motion she’d taken for granted.
A realization landed with the same soft thud.
She didn’t want to disappear again. If this attention was going to find her anyway, she wanted to meet it on her own terms.
Willa tapped on the camera app. For a moment, she stared at her own reflection on the dark screen. It had been months since she’d said anything publicly. Since she’d looked at that little red light and pretended she had answers. She’d told herself she didn’t owe anyone an explanation, that silence was safer. But silence had started to feel like its own kind of noise.
She hit record and then immediately backtracked. What would she even say?
She exhaled and then started recording. “Hi. It’s been a long time.” Her voice sounded like it had walked a long way to get here. “The truth is, I’m…a little overwhelmed.” She chuckled awkwardly. “But I wanted to check in and say that I’m still here, still writing—or at least I’m trying to. And I’d like to share the process with you all—the good and the bad. If you’re here for that, welcome.”
She uploaded the video to TikTok and added a simple caption, “Committing to daily writing. No promises, just pages,” and then tapped Post.
A small sound left her—half laugh, half exhale—like a valve releasing.
Beside her, a neglected flower box sat on the porch railing, its soil dry and cracked, the plants half-withered from the sun. Not everything could be fixed in a day. She knew that. But she brought the box to the sink anyway and let the water run until the dirt darkened and smelled like rain.
Back inside, she ignored the bottle of wine in the fridge and poured herself a glass of water. At the desk, her laptop sat open and waiting. This time, when she looked at it, she didn’t flinch.
Instead, she smiled. A real one.
Posting on social media wasn’t akin to making a full comeback…but it was a start. It was what she’d come here to do. And today, she’d chosen to do it where everyone could see her try. She’d put it out into the universe, and now she had no other option but to follow through.
Within an hour, the video had five hundred views. Thirty comments. Ten new followers.
The dopamine hit was immediate.
After another hour, her views were up to five thousand, her comments growing and growing.
By four p.m., she was refreshing obsessively, chasing the high of each new notification like it was oxygen. Hundreds of comments. Thousands of likes.
Some of it was soft and buoyant.
“You’ve got this.”
“We missed you.”
Then the other kind—the kind that crawled under the skin.
“Are you finally going to tell us what happened in DC?”
“Why did you disappear?”
A knot pulled tight under Willa’s ribs. She backed out of the app and set the phone face down on the desk, as though that could hush a thing already in motion.
She reached for the glass of water she’d poured earlier, now warm, and took a slow sip. Her pulse was still skittering from the rush of it all—the posting, the numbers climbing, the sudden reminder that people were still watching.
She set the glass down and pressed her fingertips to the desk, grounding herself in the feel of the wood grain. The day stretched quietly and long around her.