Amelia's Worlds

Tai knew what love was the moment they finished reading Amelia’s story.

They had had glimpses of it before. Over the past few weeks, they had been remembering little moments from their late ten-year relationship that might have been what people called love. There were times as a kid, when they would read late into the night, and fall asleep with a book on their chest, and get woken up by their mother in the morning, shaking her head as she turned off the golden lamp on the bedside table, that felt like love.

But if they ever felt the way Amelia’s story made them feel, they had forgotten. Every sentence was crafted with such care that Tai was completely pulled away and into its world. By the end of the first paragraph, the green walls of the room had faded away, and Tai had been swept off their feet and placed gently in the world Amelia had conjured. A world within a tea shop, where metaphors and people dined together, where every word spoken was filled with intent, and every moment was wonderful in its sincerity and imperfection. Words floated off the pages of her manuscript and danced with Tai’s mind to paint the walls, to play the music, to put intricate mysteries behind the smiles and grimaces of the characters. And the characters. The things they left unsaid were as clear as the things they did. Every movement opened a window to their minds, and the emotions coming out of them and swirling around everything were as familiar as Tai’s own.

By the time they finished, Tai felt like they had new friends in those characters, and a new home in that world. S deep and restless part of their mind had been lulled into a gentle calm, soothing, vivid, musical.

They looked at Amelia, her eyes flitting across all the people reading her story, and she caught their glance and gave them a half smile.

And Tai was in love.

This was the fourth day of the writing workshop Tai had started going to. They had noticed Amelia on the first, and thought she was cute. She seemed interested too. They’d had a few nice conversations outside of workshopping stories. Lighthearted and fun. But Tai’s priority was always writing. Their story was read and workshopped on the second day, and they had received some encouraging critiques. They had been writing every day for the past month and a half and could see themselves getting better. It wasn’t quite as glamorous as the “sensational first script launching them into the company of Woolf, Dostoevsky, and Dickens” fantasy they had entertained before picking up writing again, but it was rewarding. They enjoyed reading other people’s stories too. Everyone at the workshop was learning. They had been looking forward to reading Amelia’s.

After that day, things moved quickly. She was suddenly the most interesting thing in the world. A few days later, armed with unprecedented passion, Tai asked her out on a date. That night, they kissed. From the next morning on, they were together.

They went to used bookstores, watched meteor showers, danced, learned each other’s bodies. She brought over her cat when she visited. Tai made her the best dinners they’d ever cooked. She let them read her other stories, and they fell in love over and over again. It was the time of Tai’s life. Their heart was singing. They had both feet in the present. They woke up every morning with her, or with thoughts of her. And every thought, every feeling came with so much richness. It was intoxicating.

At the writing workshop, their love didn’t escape notice for long. The two of them were sitting a little closer, laughing a little harder at each other’s jokes every week. Their stories got more romantic, more hopeful than the last. And at home, they read each other’s favorite books. Listened to each other’s favorite music. At coffee shops, they wrote together. And they talked. Talked about writing, about inspiration, about passion, about their lives. They reviewed each other’s stories before they were read at the workshop. They tried each other’s routines.

Tai would watch her write sometimes. She could write on and on for hours when the mood took her. Her eyes now intense and focused, now lost in some other place. She was creating worlds, people, lives. Some exotic, some mundane, all beautiful. She’d blow a strand of hair out of her face as she weaved some woman through fear and hope. She’d have a sip of her coffee before making some man receive the worst news of his life. Tai was spellbound, with a front row seat to an artist at work. They got her to submit one of her stories to a weekly writing contest online, and she won with her first entry. She smiled a little at that. Her stories were published in the local writers’ zine every month. They were all beautiful. People were starting to notice. Tai barely paid attention to anyone else’s stories at the workshop now. Hers were of another level. Hers belonged in the company of the works of Tolstoy, Woolf, Dickens.

Months went by like this. Slowly, Tai’s writing started to taper off. They wanted to write with the kind of love they felt when they read Amelia’s writing. But it eluded them. Writing for more than an hour was a chore. They didn’t see the sort of reactions they wanted to see when their stories were read at the workshop. No tears, no giggles. No eyes that saw past the words on a page into another world.

Amelia’s writing had started to slow down as well. She had told Tai once that she had started writing when she was lonely. It consoled her. It started as journalling, but she had found it difficult to write about her deepest, truest feelings. So, she put those feelings into other characters instead. But now, she found solace in Tai. Suddenly her deepest feelings could be told over breakfast or whispered under bedsheets. Writing, once as much a part of her day as breathing, was becoming an afterthought.

Tai was distressed more at her lack of writing than their own. She didn’t seem to mind. She was happy. And Tai was too, but an itch was starting to come on. The coffee shop dates left something to be desired. Listening to her struggling to learn the guitar didn’t feel as serene as watching her write. They kept going to the workshop, but it had lost its magic. She brought the enthusiasm for both of them. People would sometimes ask her when she was gonna write her next story, but she’d just laugh it off.

Tai went back to her old stories. They’d read them slowly sometimes, taking time between every sentence to savor it. Other times, they read fast, entering those worlds and bringing back some color and flavor to ornament their own. They imagined talking to her characters. It was surprisingly easy, and quite nice. They were familiar with the pain of Maria, the self-absorbedness of Spencer, the loneliness of Kitty. Parts of these characters were in Amelia. Parts of these characters were in Tai. They would talk to Maria in moments of reflection. They would listen to Spencer’s quips about the movies they watched. They asked Amelia to roleplay as Kitty in the bedroom. Bit by bit, they were bringing down the walls between Amelia’s worlds and their own.

It was all good fun at first. A way to keep Tai’s love and passion alive. But as time went on, they found themselves torn. Their waking thoughts were not of Amelia, but of her characters. When she spoke, they found themselves wondering which of her characters may say those words. It was always Kitty in the bedroom now. Tai had one foot in the present and the other always searching for something better. Sometimes, they would look at Amelia and barely recognize her. They wanted to write their own characters, their own stories, that could embed themselves in someone’s life so deeply. But nothing good came out.

It didn’t take long before a noticeable distance had grown between Tai and Amelia. Winter had rolled in. The writing workshop had taken a hiatus for a few weeks. The coffee got cold in their cups within minutes. The days grew shorter. Their conversations dwindled. The silences they shared weren’t as comfortable as they once were. Tai’s heart was always in an argument with itself. The cold was finding ways to creep under the skin, and all the hugs and cuddles were losing their warmth. Unkind thoughts and impatient words started making appearances. Long nights reluctantly gave way to cloudy mornings and damp pillowcases.

One of these mornings, Tai got out of Amelia’s bed and found her writing in the living room. She was kneeling in her pajamas, her laptop on the coffee table, typing rapidly. Her hair glowed golden in the morning sun. She acknowledged them with a half-smile, eyes lost in her newest world, and went back to typing. Tai’s heart leapt in a strangely painful joy.

She was writing a novel this time, something she hadn’t attempted since several years ago. She wouldn’t let Tai read it before she had finished. They asked to read only the first chapter. She refused. They resigned themselves to wait, but things were starting to feel different. She was in their mind again. In all the right ways. And they were painfully aware of how far she felt. But they were determined to bridge that gap.

They started making her coffee in the mornings. They played with her cat more. They told her about their day, their dreams the night before, their ideas for stories they may write one day. They told her about how deeply her stories had affected them. They told her about all the ways they loved her.

And then one Sunday morning, she broke up with them.

She was gentle, but firm. She explained how she felt, how her loneliness had come back, how the loneliness was so much worse when she wasn’t alone. Her words washed over them like buckets of rain. Suddenly, they couldn’t find footing anywhere. They could barely speak. They asked her to give them a chance. Give their relationship a chance. See the winter through. They told her they saw the problem, and they were getting better. But she had made up her mind. Finally, they asked to read her novel. But she was only halfway to the end.

The walk back home was silent. There was no Maria, no Spencer, no Kitty to console Tai. The wind blew harshly at their face, but all they felt was the burning emptiness in their heart. Empty, yet heavy. Threatening to bring them to their knees.

They waited for days for the tears to come. When they didn’t, they tried screaming. Their heart grew no lighter. The days were diminished to routines. The holidays passed without much cheer. Friends called. Family gathered. Work happened. Writing seemed impossible. When spring came, they moved into a new apartment. Memories of her lingered everywhere in the last one.

Slowly, as the leaves started appearing again. Tai found themselves coming back to life too. They’d have a few more months of grief before the thought of her would stop being painful, but they were ready to start living with some purpose again. They were ready to try writing again.

The writing workshop had started again, but Tai didn’t want to risk running into her. They resorted to reviewing their own work and submitting to the online weekly writing contest. There was still no love worth mentioning that came out of writing, but there was some comfort.

A couple of months later, they started freelancing as a writer. It was mostly journalistic work, or editing. It could get dull, but it let them diversify their art. They found a different writing workshop. This one seemed to be more a group of friends than anything and met in a house. Tai felt a little out of place, but they kept going. It was good to have community.

Another two months, and the local writing zine published one of Tai’s stories. Amelia’s stories hadn’t made an appearance for the last few issues. They heard from a mutual friend that she had moved to another city. They came across some of her stories in some literary magazines they were perusing. They were as beautiful as ever. Perhaps even more. One week, one of her stories appeared in the writing contest. It was the first and only one she submitted. It won.

As time went on, Tai started expecting to see her work appear in bigger and bigger places. One story had already featured in The New Yorker. One had been adapted into an episode of an anthology series. It seemed as though they had been right. She was good. She was special.

A longing started settling in Tai’s heart. Not for her. Or for her worlds or characters. But a yearning for that first love they felt reading her story at the workshop. The love they wanted to turn into their own writing. They had tried her approach before. Of starting by writing about their own deepest, truest feelings. Putting them into other characters. It hadn’t produced what they were looking for. She had something else, they had concluded. Something special. She’d give the characters her own emotions, but then she gave them other things. Fears a friend had told her about, dreams she had heard about in a song, a backstory pieced together from all sorts of places. But she could twist all this together so expertly that a great, believable character was born. That was her talent.

Tai just did not have the talent for twisting.

One day, Amelia’s newest creation came to their attention. It wasn’t the novel they had been anticipating. It was a song. A video she had uploaded of herself, singing in her room, playing the guitar.

Tai didn’t know much about music, but there was no doubt, she played beautifully.

When she played her last note, the longing in Tai’s heart dissipated. They thought of all the days she struggled to change chords on the guitar. How her strumming blended together into a rhythmless jumble. She never stopped.

They sat down at their writing desk. They had found love in Amelia’s worlds, but her world had love to give. And so did theirs. The twisting might not come today, but it will. And somewhere between then and now, the love will come too.

So they started to write.

“Tai knew what love was the moment they finished reading Amelia’s story.”