but they had also settled into the maddening familiarity of friendship; maddening for her at least.

The future rose up ahead of her, a succession of empty days, each more daunting and unknowable than the one before her.

I usually write on a computer - unless I get stuck, at which point I switch to write by hand. I think that's common among writers if they get cornered on something.

Maybe we've grown out of each other.

I'm not the consolation prize, Dex. I'm not something you resort to. I happen to think I'm worth more than that.

But how can you not like music? That's the same as not liking food! Or sex!

She drinks pints of coffee and writes little observations and ideas for stories with her best fountain pen on the linen-white pages of expensive notebooks. Sometimes, when it's going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationery.