I'm Already Jorn: Day 16, and 29,101 Words

Today I spent about half of my writing time writing backstory for Shalini (I promise she has a personality, Manta!) and the other half writing the scene that I introduced yesterday, where Wynn and Nora meet to talk about what happened at Jackie's Place. I can't really share this stuff right now, so here is a mostly irrelevant part of the scene where they talk at length about carrots and avocado on pizza.

When Nora walked in through the door of Empire Espresso, Wynn was already there waiting for her. He was sitting at a corner table, purposefully away from the crowd. He was wearing a faded red V-neck t-shirt and jeans, looking handsome as ever. Beside him was a take-out pizza box.

“What’s with the pizza?” Nora asked as she approached him, wanting to talk to him about anything else aside from the topics that they had come there to discuss. At that moment, she realized how nervous she was.

He looked up at her and smiled, although he didn’t look exactly like the confident, swaggering man that she had met there a few weeks prior.

“I didn’t finish my lunch,” he explained.

“Well what’s on it?” she said, opening the box.

“Marinated carrots, white onions, mushrooms, fresh coriander, mozzarella, and avocado sauce. The menu listed it as a classic pizza.”

“What is classic about that pizza? Why are there carrots on it, marinated or not? What is avocado doing on a pizza?” Nora wondered aloud.

“There’s a reason I didn’t finish it,” he joked.

“I wouldn’t even call that thing a pizza,” she scoffed, probably too rudely considering the low stakes of the topic.

Nora was looking at everything that Wynn did with a very keen eye. Every gesture, every expression, every pizza order was examined for possible evidence of his Wickham-like nature. She couldn’t decide what that pizza was evidence for.

They sat in uncomfortable since for a moment, unsure of how to proceed.

“Well, I didn’t ask you here so we could talk about pizza,” Wynn finally said.

Nora thought about reiterating once more that they weren’t actually talking about pizza, but some kind of shitty flatbread, but she thought better of it. She could take out her frustration about avocado and carrots on a pizza in another way, perhaps on a message board. Instead, she smartly settled on this: “I like pizza.”

“That’s great,” he replied, with more warmth than sarcasm. “But more seriously, I wanted to talk about what happened at Jackie’s Place. I know that everyone says that what happens at Jackie’s Place stays at Jackie’s Place, mostly because what happens there is so bizarre that no one will believe you. But I think it’s important that I give you more of an explanation of what happened between me and Oliver Goldstein, and why we reacted that way when we saw each other. You clearly picked up on some… iciness between us.”

“You could say that,” Nora said. “I was surprised that you knew each other at all. The creative writing community here in Toronto is starting to feel very small.”

“Tell me about it. I was excited to see you—I had been planning on texting you when I got back, but got caught up with all that returning to regular life stuff. I was meeting another friend to check out his favourite band, Wands N’ Roses, and you were the last person that I would have expected to walk in at that moment. And with Oliver, well…” he trailed off.

“Wait, there’s someone out there besides Jackie who actually likes that kind of stuff?”

“His name is Jorn Acorn. Weird guy,”

“Clearly,” Nora said. She realized at that moment that she was purposefully deflecting and joking, and wasting time by any means necessary, to put off the moment that Wynn would lie to her. Talking with him had always come so easily, and he looked so handsome that a not insignificant part of her didn’t care at that moment what he had to say.

“Stop,” she told herself. “That is not very Elizabeth Bennet-ish.”

“How do you know him, exactly?” Wynn asked.

“We share a book agent. Speaking of weird guys like your friend Jorn, his name is brian j. Pickles and he claims to sustain himself entirely on air.”

Ignoring Nora’s attempt at distraction, he continued. “As I mentioned, Oliver and I went out about ten years ago. Not that I really want to bring up an ex with you at this point, but I feel like it was kind of forced on me by circumstance.”

“That’s okay,” Nora lied, as she actually felt deeply uncomfortable. She wanted to believe that it was exclusively because she thought that Wynn was probably lying, a belief that she held because she felt like her life was imitating Pride and Prejudice. That made her uncomfortable, too. But if she was being honest with herself, she felt a little weird hearing about Oliver and Wynn’s relationship. She had definitely been attracted to Wynn, but was she still? Was she attracted to Oliver? What was even happening?

“I had just moved to Toronto from Halifax and he was waiting to move to Iowa City for his MFA. We met at a writing group and I was totally star-struck that I knew someone who was going to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. I was really easily impressed, obviously.”

“He does find ways to bring that up, doesn’t he?” Nora said.