The Author

The desk was cluttered with scattered notes and a laptop displaying a blinking cursor. Violet had her chin in her hands as she stared at the white screen, her mind was racing with a sudden spark of inspiration. She'd spent months trying to write her first romance novel, but today, the image of her ideal hero had finally solidified inside of her mind.

She leaned over the keyboard and began to type quickly, piecing together a man built entirely from her deepest desires. She gave him striking blue eyes that appeared to glow against his dark, black hair and complemented them with a sharp jawline and a playful smirk. As her words began to build her perfect man, filling the page with details of his tall, muscular frame, and effortless demeanor, her stomach let out a huge rumble.

Realizing she'd been sitting in the same spot for hours, Violet saved her draft and headed out her front door, grabbing her coat on the way.

The afternoon air in Apple Valley was warm and smelled of pine. Violet walked into her favorite cafe, sat in a small corner table, and ordered an iced coffee and a plain bagel. While sipping her drink, she let her mind drift back to her manuscript and thought about all the paths she could take in this story.

She was lost in thoughts when the scent caught her attention. A customer at the next table over was opening a freshly picked-up box of pizza, letting out a waft of melted mozzarella and garlic. Her mouth began to water and her coffee and bagel suddenly felt entirely insufficient.

Violet was already halfway out the door as the barista shouted from behind the counter, "Hey! You can't eat that in here!"

She'd dropped her plans to cook and was sipping the rest of her drink as she walked back home. She dialed the local parlor from her cell phone and placed an order for a medium pepperoni.

She'd made her way home and had enough time to shower before the doorbell rang. Violet grabbed her wallet from the kitchen counter, opened the front door, and froze.

Standing on her porch, holding a warm cardboard box was a delivery driver who looked as if he'd pulled himself directly from the pages she had written only a few hours ago. He had dark, untamed hair, a defined jaw, and piercing blue eyes that caught the porch light. Violet stared, her mouth hanging open stupidly. Her voice seemed to be caught in her throat while her brain struggled to reconcile the fiction on her screen with the person on her doorstep.

She fumbled with her wallet, trying to pull out cash with shaking hands. "Sorry... let me just... how much do I owe you?"

The man smiled, a familiar, easy smirk leaning into his features. "Don't worry about it. I got you."

Before she could process his words or push the money into his hand, he set the box into her hands, winked, and walked down the driveway toward his car.

Violet retreated inside, her heart pounding against her ribs. "Am I magic?" she laughed. She barely tasted the pizza as she thought about the impossible alignment of events. She wiped her hands and sat down to type one last sentence before bed.

"Satine was surprised to wake up to a beautiful arrangement of star gazer lilies being delivered by her mysterious new crush."

She laughed to herself and closed her laptop, telling herself she'd delete that in the morning. She plopped heavily into her bed and drifted off to a dream of those sexy eyes.

The bell rang and Violet shot up out of her sleep. Sunlight was creeping in through her bedroom window, and her hair was sticking up in every direction. She stumbled out of bed and made her way to the front door. She opened it, her eyes half closed from the intensity of the morning sun and her t-shirt hanging off one shoulder.

"Morning Ma'am." The man smiled at her.

He handed her a large vase of sunflowers and went on his way. She closed to door and pulled off the small handwritten card. "Call me cheesy, but you may have stolen a 'pizza' my heart. - Eli." She smiled, confused... but flattered.

"I am magic." she laughed. Over the next few weeks, Violet continued to write and little by little, the things she typed spilled into reality. Every small interaction she drafted seemed to materialize in Apple Valley a few hours later, bridging the gap between her imagination and the real world.

Tonight, Violet had written something extra special. Summer rain was gently tapping against her windows, but inside Violet's living room, the atmosphere was warm and light. A half empty box of chow mein was sitting on the coffee table, right beside a Scrabble board.

Eli leaned back on his elbows, a lazy, triumphant smirk playing on his lips as he looked down at the board. "Violet, I'm calling it. You can't play the word 'achoo'." It's not a word.

"It's absolutely a word!" Violet protested, crossing her arms and pushing her lower lip out to pout. "It's a verb. As in what someone does when they sneeze."

"That's a sound effect, not vocabulary," Eli countered, he rolled his eyes with amusement. He opened up the official dictionary app on his phone, tapped the screen a few times, and turned it towards her. "Zero results. Take your extra eight points off the board, cheater."

"You're impossible," she laughed, swapping out her tiles while Eli collected his own.

For the past hour, their game had turned into complete chaos. Eli had spent the entire evening teasing her and challenging every word she placed, while casually dropping high scoring words like he wasn't even trying. Every time she caught him grinning, a swarm of butterflies took flight in her stomach, making it harder and harder to focus on the tiles in her hand.

"There!" exclaimed Violet, "K-I-T-E. Kite. Any problems with that word, Webster?"

"My turn," Eli laughed.

He leaned forward, his dark hair falling slightly over his forehead as he meticulously arranged the three tiles he was getting ready to add onto the board.

"I'll use your K." he smirked, "And I'll add..."

He placed down one tile. "I." he smiled. "S... S.

Violet looked down at the board, then up at him, her brow furrowing. "Kiss? That's only four points, dummy! You're losing by thirty. You could have used that triple word score."

"I don't care about the points," Eli said, his voice dropping into a low, playful growl.

He swept his arm across the table, carelessly slinging the Scrabble board, the tile racks, and a hundred little wooden letters down onto the floor with a loud clatter.

Violet gasped, her eyes widening. "The score..."

He didn't give her a chance to finish. He reached out, grabbed her by the waist, and pulled her off the cushion straight into his lap. The moment was rough and full of momentum. Before she had time to laugh, his mouth was on hers.

His kiss was electric, stripped of any polite hesitation. Eli's hand tangled into the hair at the nape of her neck, holding her close while his other arm wrapped firmly around her back. Violet sank into it, her heart pounding against her ribs as she kissed him back with an energy just as intense. She was gripping his head firmly, his hair wrapped around her fingers.

Her world was spinning. She felt breathless. When he finally loosened his grip, they broke apart and his eyes gazed deeply into hers. His chest was heaving and he had a crooked, proud grin across his lips.

Violet stared at him, not smiling. The sudden overwhelming gravity of this magic hit her all at once with such force, it almost knocked her out. "You... you're not real."

Eli raised an eyebrow at her and swept a stray Scrabble tile off of his knee.

"I made you up." Violet said.

"If I were made up..." Eli said, his eyes sparkling with dorky confidence, "I definitely would have given myself a higher score that turn."

They both laughed and began sweeping up tiles and chow mein from the floor.

Once they finished, they moved to her front yard to sit on her porch swing watch the sun set. Fireflies were glowing in the bushes nearby and the two of them were holding hands, their quiet laughter filling the air.

A cool breeze swept around them, blowing through Violets hair. She barely felt the chill because the heat radiating off of Eli was more than enough to keep her warm. They'd only just met, but every time they were together, their conversation flowed effortlessly.

Up until now, writing Eli's reactions had just felt like playing a fascinating game, but sitting here in the fading light of the day, listening to his heart beat and his breath, the boundary between her manuscript and reality began to blur.

Eli turned toward her, the low light of dusk caught the vivid blue of his eyes, stripping him of any fictional pretense. He reached out, cupping her chin into his strong hands and sending a shiver down her spine.

"You know," Eli said softly, his voice dropping into a quiet intimate register that held no trace of his usual playfulness. "I've felt this... thing... between us since you opened the door."

Violet blushed and gazed down at his pants.

"Not that thing," he laughed, pulling her chin back up to look into his eyes, "But if you wanna feel that thing, just let me know." He wiggled his eyebrows up and down playfully.

She giggled.

"No, a pull to you. Something I can't explain." Eli said.

Violet's throat tightened. She wanted to tell him why. She wanted to confess the words she'd typed on her laptop, but her thoughts evaporated as his face moved towards hers again, slowly this time. Eli leaned in and Violet held her breath, her senses absorbing the smell of leather clinging to his jacket.

His lips met hers and the world seemed to disappear. His soft lips swallowing up hers, gently biting her bottom lip between his perfect teeth. As it deepened, her head began to spin and her chest ached with an intensity no words on a page could ever capture.

For just those few seconds, Violet surrendered to him entirely. Then the weight of reality crashed back down on her. She pulled back abruptly like she had been struck by lightning.

"I can't do this," she pushed herself up off the bench. "You're not real."

"Are you crazy?" He asked. "What are you talking about?" His brow furrowed in genuine concern.

She rushed inside her house and grabbed the printed draft of her manuscript. She ran back to the porch, the pages held tightly in her hands. She hurled the stack of papers towards him. They exploded and spread out across the lawn like falling snowflakes.

"Read 'em!" She shouted. "You're made up. I wrote you. Every detail. The way you look, the pizza, the flowers, the kiss. I put it all on paper before it even happened."

Eli looked down at the page that had landed on his lap, then looked up at her, entirely unbothered by the dramatic scatter of ink and paper. He picked up the page, glanced at the description of his own jawline, and grinned. He leaned down and picked up another page and read about the flowers.

"Well," Eli said, his voice light and laced with dorky charm, "If you wrote me to be your dream man, then I guess I'm just doing my job."

The absurdity of his reaction broke through her terror, forcing a laugh.

"Also, it says here, "'Satine was surprised to wake up to a beautiful arrangement of star gazer lilies being delivered by her mysterious new crush.'"

"Yeah?" Violet nodded.

"So... there's no mention of any note. Also, I did not deliver those flowers... and they were sunflowers, not lilies." He glared at her. "Do you like lilies more? Should I get them for you?"

Violet laughed out loud.

Over time, their bond grew into a deep and genuine bond no written word could ever capture. Years later, they would sit together inside their home with walls over filled with framed photos of the married couple, pregnancy, children, and even grand children. They would never skip the opportunity to tell the unbelievable story of how a blank Word document and an unpaid pizza brought them together.

The End

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