In relationships, self-editing soothes your fear of being judged by people you love, whose rejections hurt more than anyone else’s. The price: silencing your creativity and giving up your chance to be loved for who you truly are.
Sometimes it’s easier to be yourself when the relationship stakes are low, like when you’re talking to anonymous strangers online. For your first scenario, imagine yourcharacters have never met. Using whatever text messaging app you prefer, create a scenario where your characters have logged onto an online messaging platform to join a conversation with the person (or people) they find there. Actually message each other, instead of talking—make it as “real” as you can! (Low-tech alternative: pass notes.)
Tip: Don’t worry about how the conversation “should” go—focus on what your characters’ unique personalities bring to the scene. What would they tell someone whose judgment they didn’t fear in real life? What would make them fall for someone? Remember, there’s nothing acharacterwon’t do, so make them do the unexpected!
—The Second Chances Handbook
A rendezvous with your ex to do an experimental marriage counseling session in public is a lot of pressure on a Saturday morning. Alot. Is it as much pressure as pitching your ecotour idea in front of sixty colleagues? No, but I have to start somewhere.
It took a fair amount of bickering to agree on a scenario, plus half a dozen illicit photos of the chapter, in direct violation of copyright law. I asked if McHuge could loan us a second copy of the book, but Tobin said no, which goes to show McHuge doesn’t expect to get the first copy back.
Like I said, no one wants your used sex book. Tobin didn’t appreciate it when I pointed this out a second time. He liked it better when I self-edited, I guess. Our conversation closed on a sour note.
It’s funny, in a grim way, how I made him agree there’d be no sex. I was petrified that the night I walked out was a one-time perfect storm that sank my desire, and when a calm day came along, he’d float my boat in a hot second.
Now I’m in Second Chance Romance, a used-bookstore-slash-coffee-shop located in a renovated stable well off the beaten track. It’s a compelling mix of old planks unevenly stained with decades of rain and new windows punctuating its long, low walls. It used to be one of Pendleton’s hidden gems, but lately the weedy gravel parking lot is choked with cars—Grey Tusk tourists seeking a shot of local color in their Saturday morning brew.
Tobin insisted the scenario was meant to be done with the two of us in the same room, although it doesn’t say that in the instructions. I refused to do it at the house, so we compromised on a café—very much a meet-cute type of place. I’m second-guessing this decision with my whole brain, but the point of improv is to learn not to die when you do something ridiculous in front of others, so. Here I am, clutching my phone so tightly I think my fingers might get stuck like this. Sex is unimaginable in this scenario, even if my memories of sexy, kind, generous Tobin weren’t overwritten with how lonely I am whenever he’s in the room.
Tobin gives me a tight wave from an alcove in the back of the odd-shaped room, where he’s scored what looks like the last two seats. The place has a dim, old-fashioned-general-store vibe with its warped wooden floors, bursting shelves accented with crooked stacks of orange-covered Penguin Classics at the endcaps, and layered perfume of old paper and new coffee.
Up close, what looked like a generous windowed corner with two beat-up green corduroy chairs feels more like a fight-sized space already buzzing with the bad vibes from our texts.
“We don’t have to sit at the same table,” I whisper, in violation of the store’s quirky, library-like policy of silence. To order, you have to point to one of six items on a laminated pictogram. I think the quiet rule moves product—if you can’t talk, what else is there to do but sip and read?
“This was all there was.” He pointedly picks up his chair andturns it to face the frosted window before settling into the balding cushions. “Better?” A touch of sarcasm leaks through his distant politeness.
“Yes. Thank you.” It’s still not big enough for Tobin, who’s dressed like Ryan Reynolds circaThe Proposal,his layered shirts and soft jeans smelling like they were sun-dried over pine branches.
He looked like this the day we met, at the West by North guides’ orientation meetup. I walked into the restaurant fifteen minutes early, determined to show how keen I was by arriving first. When the server pointed me toward the table, Tobin looked up from his book, one hand propping the pages open, the other coming to the back of his neck as he stretched.
Words—usually reliable friends of mine—abandoned me when he stood up at my approach, his Guatemalan scarf falling from his shoulders as if even clothing fainted dead away in the presence of this man. This man and his thick golden eyelashes, and his generous smile for a complete stranger, and his body that unwound like a fern frond on the forest floor, from curled to open, with an unleashed energy that made it clear the indoors could never contain him.
He stuck his hand out. “Tobin Renner. Nice to meet you.”
I twitched, somehow startled to be spoken to.
“Ah. Lynx,” he said, grinning.
“I… What?”
“Rookies paint an animal on their paddle. When it wears off, you’re a real guide. I don’t get to choose, but I’ll bet the head guide agrees on the lynx thing. You know, shy. Jumpy. Kinda brown, kinda tawny,” he said, tilting his chin at my hair, which I’d washed and left loose, thinking it’d be dirty and tied back all summer. He waited a beat, then added, “Famously elusive. And you are…?”
I realized I’d left him hanging. “Oh, god. Sorry. Liz Lewis.Sorry,” I repeated, fumbling his hand in mine. I didn’t think I was meeting my future husband, obviously. No matter what fantasies my vagina was spinning, my brain figured he was in some kind of free love situation with several yoga instructors who were as physically stunning as they were genuinely kind, and whose fair trade scarves looked great on Tobin, too.
“I should be some other animal,” I blurted. “I mean, lynx… People spend their lives wishing they could find one. They’re…” Not like me. “… beautiful.”
“Like I said,” he replied, unruffled. “Lynx.”
What I remember most about those fifteen minutes is how he made me feel: at ease, welcome, clever, funny in a way I hadn’t felt since… well, ever. I hoped we’d be assigned together. Out on the river, my quieter, more cautious presence could be a good match for his confidence. I looked at my hands as he very kindly rebuffed a woman offering to buy him a drink, resolving never to embarrass myself by making a doomed, drunken pass at him.
Now I wonder how much of the warmth I felt that night was true, and how much was Tobin being Tobin. What parts of me did he like, and what parts did he silently judge?
I don’t need this. I could go back to Amber’s and practice improv with Kris Kristofferson. Despite being a dog, Kris is one of the most creative, persistent people I know. Yesterday, she managed to bite through the six-pack of beer I had picked up while she was torturing the pet-grooming team. She shotgunned one and a half craft IPAs in a six-minute drive. A dog who can get around underage drinking laws can navigate McHuge’s imaginary objects, no problem.
Tobin waves me into the other chair before I can text Amber and ask her to offer Kris a deal she can’t refuse.
My screen lights up.
