“It’s the point of working for yourself, right?”
“In theory,” she said.
That had never really worked for Will, who had seemed at the mercy of his clients and his schedule most of the time. But he was successful, and she wasn’t complaining. Even internally.
“Is that how it is for you?” he asked.
She looked out the window. “Oh, I wouldn’t go comparing me to what you do. I pitch articles when I need work or have an idea. I’m not running a full-time business.”
“Do you think you’ll make it one now?” he asked.
She blinked. “I don’t…know. I’m not really sure that I have enough to say.”
“I think you could write a book about managing a household. God knows I found it useful.”
She shifted in her seat. “It’s all stuff anyone can google. I don’t have any particular insight into anything.”
“Even if I believed that, you explain it in a way that’s interesting and easy to understand.”
“I don’t think I bring anything new to the conversation. Household and organization and meal planning stuff…it’s pretty saturated.”
“Well, not that then. Something else.”
She took another sip of coffee. “Nothing about me is interesting.”
“Seriously?”
She could feel him looking at her, and she was forced to turn her head and look at him right back. “Present moment excluded,” she said. “Even then, it could be argued my husband is out being a lot more interesting than I am.”
“He’s out there being a cliché. Don’t give him that much credit.”
“Ha ha,” she said rather than laughed. “Sometimes I really do like you, Logan.”
“Why don’t you think you’re interesting, Samantha?”
Okay, now she liked him less. “I just think…doesn’t everyone think that they have something interesting to say, and really they’re just like everyone else? Talk about being a cliché.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I… I don’t know, Logan. It’s just, not everyone thinks they can just be a classic car…restorationist, or whatever your official title is. A lot of people think they can write. Or think they have great ideas that need to be written about. I just… What separates me from them?”
He didn’t say anything for a minute. “Whether or not you do anything about it, I guess.”
She had nothing to say to that. All she could do was sit with it.
Talking to him was always sharp. She just never knew which way it would cut. She didn’t have any other relationships like this. Not that she really considered what they had a relationship. It was ahappenstance. Because she’d known him since high school, and he and her husband had been best friends since they were in their twenties.
But either way, she had nothing else like this in her life and never had.
She didn’t dislike parts of it. He challenged her, and she felt free to challenge him back in a way she never did with anyone else.
She’d been taught that it was better to make things smoother. Her mom had always told her that. Her mother had just been naturally kind. Sure in her opinions on how things were supposed to work, yes, but naturally kind.
You have a strong personality, Samantha. You have to make sure you don’t run your husband over. No man likes that.
Well, she never ran her husband over, thank you. She’d learned very young that she couldn’t have confrontations without wanting to get out the matchbook and set things on fire, so she’d learned to not have them.
But Logan made her feel confrontational. He also seemed to enable the resulting pyromania.
