The following week inches by slowly. As I see less and less of an edits-obsessed Rosalind, my writing productivity comes to a halt. I'm stuck right before the end of my act two—where Short-Haired Girl is going to ruin things with Slightly Older Girl, then nearly makes the mistake of getting back together with the formerly wonderful Curvy Girl, before realizing that Slightly Older Girl is her super sexy soulmate—but I can't figure out where things are going for the overall ending.

Is Slightly Older Girl a good match for Short-Haired Girl, or is it just wishful thinking? She seems like she's way too cool. And there's, like, maybe a slight power imbalance or whatever. But Curvy Girl isn't exactly a match for her either. I mean, after all that shit with the closet and whatnot? Not exactly "happily ever after" material.

This is what I get for not plotting the book in advance. If I'd have known where I was going with it, maybe I wouldn't have burnt myself out trying to figure it out as I went along.

So, as Roz sequesters herself away, communicating my tasks to me through a combination of texts or email, I find myself giving into the mind-numbingness of my job. I make sure her apartment stays clean; I gain complete access to her email and calendar, so I can respond to emails and set up her meetings for her; and I try my best to stay out of her way, even if there's this weird tug in my gut that keeps urging me to talk to her, see her, get to know her better.

Instead of bothering Roz, I spend the rest of my unstructured hours doom-scrolling. It was hard the first few days, when I kept getting all this aspirational writing content, but now, I've somehow migrated to Personal ChefTok. Which is, of course, how I set Rosalind's oven on fire.

It was a complete and total accident, to be fair. There was a viral recipe for these weird, puffy British bread things, but it had Lord of the Rings music in the background, and I know Roz loves LOTR because any Rosalind Lindbergh fan worth their salt knows this, and so then I was like, ooh, maybe I'll make her a stew for a fun end-of-week lunch. Yeah. A really nice, hearty stew, with the weird puffy bread things, and—

And I go and set the oven on fire.

The fire alarm goes off before I notice, of course. I'm so scared shitless that it nearly knocks me off the couch. But then, I'm scrambling up off the white sofa and nearly tripping over myself to get to the kitchen, because I can't immediately see what's wrong. Until I see the smoke seeping through Roz's stovetop and have the sense to look at the oven itself.

Which, holy shit.

Through the oven's glass door, I can see flames leaping up from off the bottom of the oven, a tauntingly bright orange that licks up the entire height of the oven's interior. Which, just, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. What do I do?

I whip out my phone and Google "what to do if oven on fire."

The fire alarm is loud in my ears as I wait for my phone screen to load. Why didn't I learn about this in high school? I feel like home fire safety should have been a higher priority than pre-calc. My heartbeat is racing double-time the alarm. I'm going to throw up.

Finally. My phone's loading screen finally stops, and the solution is at my fingertips: turn off the oven and keep the door closed. Starve out the fire, deprive it of oxygen.

The internet is so smart.

After shutting off the oven, I whirl around to go open the living room windows and turn on the living room ceiling fan and my face full-on smacks into another face—Roz's of course. Because who else could it be?

I hate my life.

"Fuck," she mutters, rubbing her forehead while I tenderly touch my chin. "What's going on? Is everything okay? The alarm—"

"It's all taken care of," I assure her, breathless. Her writing outfit aesthetic is so different from what I've seen of her in any other setting—she and Catalina meant it when they said Roz goes full-on hermit mode. She's wearing a tattered Murder She Wrote t-shirt that hangs off one shoulder and baggy basketball shorts, ones that showcase her toned legs and pink woolen boot socks. Her messy bun hangs off to the side, the scrunchie meant to hold it in place barely managing. There are dark circles beneath her eyes, giving her eyes this harrowingly sexy, yet semi-crazed, look.

She peeks over my shoulder and her eyes go wide. "Is the oven on fire?"

"The important thing to bear in mind here"—I take a step back towards the oven, my hands up in mock surrender—"is that the oven is off, and this fire is gonna kill itself, and everything will be super fine and peachy and cool but, okay, yes. It is currently on fire."

Her mouth opens and shuts a few times, like she's trying to think of what on earth she can say. The fire alarm hasn't stopped yet. "It's ... going to ... okay?"

"Yes," I say, nodding as I rest my hands on the oven door handle and lean against it, "the fire will indeed kill itself."

"I ... okay?" She rubs the bridge of her nose, squinting. "Can I ask what you were doing?"

"Uhhhh...." Now it's my turn to be at a loss for words. The alarm fills the silence while I gather my thoughts. "I wanted to make these weird British puffy bread things? For a stew?"

"You were going to make a stew?"

"Lord of the Rings?" is my only response. It's not a very good response.

Roz sighs, then—without warning—crouches down to peek around my legs. "Well, it's not the worst oven fire I've ever seen, I guess."

She's so close, I can feel a few stray strands of hair, escaped from her messy bun, tickle against the backs of my fingers. Fuck. I clench my fist, moving my hand away from her, hiding it behind my back. "That's good? I think?"

With a sigh, she stands, then yanks the scrunchy from the loose knot at the end of her hair. It sends her hair tumbling down in messy waves over her shoulder, jutting out in different directions. She stretches, and I hear her shoulder pop, even over the fire alarm. She winces.

"How about, for the future," she says, "we stick to ordering lunch in?"

Now it's my turn to wince. "Yeah, sorry. I really thought I could pull that off, somehow." My mind is in a frenzy, trying to come up with what it was that caused the oven fire. Was it too much butter, I wonder? My floormate did that once in college—used so much butter that it melted over the sides of the tin and went up in flames for just a moment. Or maybe I cleaned it wrong the other day? Maybe I used really flammable materials or something. Who knows?

Roz puts a solemn yet comforting hand on my shoulder. "It's okay," she says. "I can't really cook either."

My cheeks flush. "Okay, well, I can cook. Eggs."

She laughs. I'm still not over the sound of it. "Yeah, okay, Marcella." My heart swoops at her using my full name. When did she decide to start doing that? She pulls her phone out of her pocket, checks the time, and frowns, humming tentatively. "How do wings sound to you?"

"Wings? Like, chicken wings?"

"No, Marcella." There it is again. "Wings, like the ones on airplanes. Yes, chicken."

I blink. "Sure. Yeah. Thank you."

"Of course. Text me what you want from Wingstop, and I'll send you down to the lobby when it's here." She's already making her way back to her office, shuffling awkwardly as she attempts to put her hair back up in an almost-bun. It flops to the side, half of it already falling out of place. "Oh, and, Marcella, can you bring me another cup of coffee?"

Marcella. "Yeah, of course. Do you want me to leave it on the tray outside of your door again, or...?" Roz has a small table outside her office door. It's where I set the wooden tray with her massive mugs of coffee and her lunches. I have yet to catch her slip in and out to take the tray in or put it back. She's gone completely Phantom; I don't even see her use the bathroom—I think she has an ensuite in her office, which is a strange choice. But, Zillow lists this as a two-and-a-half bath—and I cleaned the full one in the hallway between the laundry room and Roz's room, and the full one connected to Roz's room. I can't get over how freaking overkill this whole apartment is. What kind of person needs two-and-a-half baths?

Roz draws her mouth into a tight line. "Hm, no. I guess it might actually be nice to have you tidy up around my office. I'm not a very clean recluse, I'm afraid."

"What? That's crazy. You? Messy? But you're so put together."

She glances down at her tattered Murder She Wrote shirt and smirks. "You think you're so clever."

"That's because I am. And you love it."

"Mm. I'm sure."

"You'd be so bored without me."

"I'd be so productive without you."

"Please. You love me. I add a certain flavor to your life."

"Is that flavor a soft, moldy cheese that was meant to be neither soft nor moldy?"

I lean against the oven more. Even when slouching, I'm still taller than her. I love the way she glares up at me, like it's a challenge. Like I'm a challenge. Her expression is all screwed up in this little scowl, but her eyes practically twinkle with laughter.

I can't help but laugh for real. "Why is that the first thing you thought of? A 'soft, moldy cheese?'"

She shrugs. "Writer's brain?"

"Well, I'm flattered that you're using your massive writer's brain to think up insults for me. So much creativity in that little noggin."

Roz rolls her eyes. "Please. Spare me."

"No, really. It's actually amazing how many writerly thoughts you must think up in there, and yet you have a fairly standard-sized head."

"What, would you expect me to have some kind of Tim Burton's Queen of Hearts head?"

"Well, with insults like a 'soft, moldy cheese that was meant to be neither soft nor moldy,' yes, actually." I push the sleeves of my tight teal sweater up my arms, then go right back to leaning against the oven door handle. I catch Roz's gaze flick up from my sweater sleeves back to my face. "You should be studied."

"Thrown in a lab," she says.

"Dissected in the name of discovery."

She inhales, closing her eyes, then sighs, over-exaggerated. "You're my favorite distraction, Marcella."

Fuck. Usually, if I hear my full name, it's because I'm in trouble with my parents. I haven't really heard it since college. But the way Roz says it, with warmth and soft l's and a clipped a that's slightly more ah than uh at the end, makes my stomach wind in on itself in a searing bundle of nerves. It's hot, the way she says it. Why is it so hot?

No one's ever said my name like she has. And, for better or for worse, it makes me want to draw it out from her lips again and again, just to see how many different ways she might say it. A soft whisper in my ear? A groan against my skin? A—

"Anyways," Roz says, interrupting yet another spiral of wildly inappropriate thought, "just bring in that coffee when it's ready, and text me what you want from Wingstop. I'm taking a break from edits for the rest of the day to look over the All Hail Mary script that Cat's husband sent over."

"Cat's husband?" I know she's married, but, for the life of me, I can't think of who to.

Roz nods. "Mauro Suarez? He co-wrote the adaptation for Bottle Blonde."

"Is that the one with the assassin who goes into hiding and ends up falling for a kindergarten teacher?"

She nods, smiling wistfully. "I liked the book better, but I trust Mauro to do a good job. And I'm cowriting, so I'll have a fair amount of control over what's going on. Also, it was still a good movie."

I wasn't a huge fan of it, honestly, but I think that's just because it was a lot of senseless violence for the sake of senseless violence. I much prefer Roz's methods—extreme violence that isn't gratuitous. It's kinda like a mix of Kill Bill and The Matrix, I guess? Badass, original, and to the point.

I can't wait to see this movie on screen.

"Who's the director?" I ask.

She bites her lip, fiddling with the waistband of her oversized basketball shorts. "We're in negotiations right now, so I'm not sure. We almost got Ridley Scott, but it fell through. Which is maybe for the best. If we get who I'm hoping we get, she'll have the background to cover a lot of the emotional aspects I want us to explore."

I nod. "Makes sense. I think there's no point to the story if we don't understand why Mary has to go and murder half of the university football team."

"Thank you! Thank you. And I also need someone to work with the lead actress to make a despicable yet redeemable main character come to life."

"Well, yeah, of course. Mary does unforgivable things to people who did unforgivable things, and she's the only one to get away with any of it. If she's not the right mix of everything, I bet that'd feel really off to the audience. Especially if they haven't read the book." Part of what makes All Hail Mary so satisfying is the fact that Mary gets her happy ending, even if her older sister, Rachel, is dead. There aren't a lot of works of fiction where women get revenge and walk away scot-free, especially ones that came out in 2012. It's a huge part of why it's still my favorite book of Roz's.

"I hope people see it that way," she says. "A lot of readers were still mad that she wasn't punished for her sins at the end of the book."

"She was punished before the book even started," I tell her. That's what my paper that Professor Kestler sent her had been about, the one I'd refused to think about for years. It was poorly executed, but this was my main point—and I stand by it, even still. "The whole book is practically her committing offenses that are bad enough to justify her sister dying like that."

"Oh my god, yes." Roz's eyes are bright, her smile wide. "Thank you! Karma doesn't exist in this book—if you think someone deserves karma, then you've got to do it yourself, y'know? Mary was a good person before Rachel's death. She was still pretty much a kid."

I'm nodding as she speaks. I think I could write books about Roz's books. Breaking them down, explaining them to people. I think that that's what makes Roz such an amazing writer: anyone can enjoy her books on the surface-level, but they're also comprised of a seemingly infinite multitude of layers that you can spend forever peeling back, piece by piece, as you try to uncover what messages and thoughts Roz wanted to convey to you, the reader.

Roz has continued on about Mary and All Hail and the message of it all. With anyone else, I might have let my eyes glaze over, had to fight off sleep. But hearing her talk about it herself is quite literally my everything. She's so passionate, so animated. Her eyes are bright and alert, and her grin is contagious, and she looks like she's conducting an invisible orchestra with how fervently she's waving her hands around as she speaks.

Finally, she takes a deep breath. "Anyways, that's why I really want a woman director for this movie. I think it's important."

"I totally agree," I tell her. And I do. Having this movie be directed by a man would almost feel sacrilegious, somehow.

"I just want her to agree already," Roz says, her smile tight. "She's been jerking us around for a couple weeks now, and it's like, take the project or don't. But just let us know so we can move on with our lives."

"Yeah, totally." I've been agreeing with her like this for the past five or so minutes, because Roz completely forgot about work and coffee and chicken wings. It's almost insane to me to see her light up to this degree about her writing—but, at the same time, it's making the little fangirl inside me fangirl even harder, because she clearly gets it. As one would hope the author of the book might.

Without warning, Roz goes completely silent, peering at me curiously. "If I sent you the first half of my new draft tonight, do you think you could look at it over the weekend? I'll pay you ... let's see, is six hours of work fair? It's only about thirty-seven-thousand words or so."

My heart skips a beat. "Oh, yeah, that actually sounds perfect." I'd do it for free, honestly, but I'm not in a position to turn down any kind of payment. "What kind of feedback are you looking for?"

"I want you to rip the plot apart," Roz says. "You seem to understand All Hail on a deep level. I want to see how one of my usual readers would react to my attempt at a rom-com. So, be as brutal as you'd like."

My lips part. "Brutal?" I don't know if I have that in me.

"Are you up for it?" She cocks her head. It feels like a challenge.

I bite the inside of my lip, hesitating a moment before answering firmly, "Of course."

I'm my own worst critic when it comes to writing. How hard can it be to become Roz's?