Nicole 

"You're not going to become a frat boy now, are you?"

Lucas shot me a knowing look, not even needing to say a word for me to know that he was definitely not going to become the guy who drinks shitty bear every night and who attends every party on campus. He knew I was joking when I asked him that question anyway. 

"You wish."

At his late come back I couldn't help but laugh out loud while I tried my best to balance the weight of the last box I carried. 

Coming back to sunny California with Lucas and knowing that this time it was for good, hits different. It's better, so much better. 

I understand how this can be seen as convenient, how it worked so well for me that he decided to choose himself and his dreams first and move here, but mostly I'm just happy he made this choice for himself and not for someone else, in this case, for me. 

"Alright, we finally got it all here." With his hands resting on either side of his waist, he looked around the room, the wheels in his brain rolling as he was thinking about where to fit all of his stuff. 

Most of the things Lucas didn't consider totally essencial were in my place in San Francisco, while all the items he couldn't go without were inside the square sized brown boxes that we  carried inside his dorm room. 

For this semester he'd be attending college, and he'd be living in a shared dorm room with a roommate he didn't know yet.

"Yep. Come on, I'll help you unpack."

I opened the Spotify app on my phone and clicked on a 90's music playlist to distract us with some background noise for the next two boring hours. God, I really hate unpacking. 

Two hours later, and as if on cue, we finished unpacking and getting everything ready and set when a young boy who couldn't be more than eighteen walked through the door. 

His shaggy blonde hair covered his entire forehead and hid his eyebrows well, only his blue eyes contrasting the golden, sun kissed skin.

"Hi! Are you Lucas?"

"Yes." Lucas politely answered, reaching out his hand to shake his. "I'm moving in today."

"Cool. I'm Mike."

"Nice to meet you, Mike. This is Nicole, my girlfriend."

The boy looked at me and shook my hand too, not without flashing me a smile as well. 

"You go to Santa Monica College too?"

"Oh, no. I already did the whole college thing and I'm done and over with it." I chuckled at my own response. "I just came here to help him move in, I actually live in San Francisco."

"That's cool." He nodded as he took in the information before turning his head back to his new roomie. "Lucas, do you have anything against me playing video games?"

"Not at all."

"We'll get along great, then." The boy shot him a smile and laid on his back on his bed, his eyes immediately drifting towards the screen of the iPhone he held in his hands before adding something at the last minute with a quick glance at Lucas. "I hope you enjoy your time here."

Lucas thanked him and the two of us made our way out of the dorm room to go on a very special short date we had planned once we read about this new place online. It was also a great way for us to spend some time together before we were apart. 

The ice cream parlor looked like it came right out of an old cartoon show, decorated with pastel colors - mostly pink, blue and purple - that made it look like we were walking in cotton candy land. 

It might have been the mood that this little ice cream shop put me in with all those colors, or just how good that blue and pink ice cream box looked, but when it came to choosing the ice cream flavor, I ditched my go to flavor - raspberry - and chose bubblegum. 

Holding his cone with his lemon flavored ice cream that was dripping down the vanilla cone, Lucas sat down on one of the corn tables and I took a seat next to him.

"So, I'm meeting with a possible editor tomorrow morning." I blurted out while I tasted the sweet and strawberry-ish flavored ice cream. 

"Really? That's amazing!" 

I'll never be able to put into words how much it means to me that whenever I talk to Lucas about my dreams and my wish to become a published author, he just looks at me like I hang the stars in the sky, admiration and pure joy and happiness written all over his face. 

That's priceless. 

I can't help but think back to Matthew and how he didn't support me at all when it came to my writing. What a difference making a choice to love yourself first makes.

"Yeah." I smile shyly as I took another spoonful of ice cream to my mouth. "I'm really nervous, though. I don't know what to expect."

"It'll be fine, you've got this."

Butterflies danced in my stomach as I thought about what I was going to say next, the anticipation to see the way he'd react was slowly killing me inside.

My teeth sunk into my bottom lip unwillingly as my gaze was lost in fixation of the ice cream Lucas was eating. 

"Nic?" The feeling of his fingers on my hand made me snap out of the daze I was in, and my brown eyes met his blue orbits. "What're you thinking about in that pretty little head of yours?"

"I... had to come up with a title. For my book."

"And?"

Lucas was the very first person to read my story that he knew for sure it would become an actual book pretty soon. He gave me some ideas for the title, and I had finally chosen one. 

The title wasn't going to choose itself and when I emailed the editor and I needed to fill in the Subject box, one of his suggestions just popped into my head, never leaving my mind, almost like a song that you can't get out of your head. So I went with it. 

"The Missing Gem."

His lips curled upwards as his smile came to life, while his blue eyes sparkled under the florescent lights of the ice cream parlor. 

"You like it?" He asked me. 

The question made my mind do unstoppable twists and turns as endless thoughts about my book, the story that I had created in my bedroom on a rainy night, ran through my mind. When it was just a idea... an idea like many others that I had and that I wrote. 

I've had a lot of ideas, and only one of them turned into a full story, a soon to be book, hopefully. I guess this one is pretty special.

"Yes, I do."

  * * * 

When I thought about where I'd be meeting with an editor, a modern, hipster coffee shop wasn't what I had in mind. 

With my daily dose of caffeine running through my blood for at least one hour now, ever since I left the house to come here, I was feeling nervous and more than ready for another cup of coffee.

I was going through the blackboard on the wall, reading all the different types of drinks they created with coffee in it as I was trying to choose my poison for the next few hours when a voice caught my attention.

"Nicole Meyers?"

I turned around in the direction of the voice and showed the woman in front me my best smile. 

"Yes!"

"I'm Monica Lee." Her perfect aligned and white teeth snuck out of her lips as she smiled at me. "How are you?"

"Good, how are you?"

"Perfect!" She winked at me and took a seat in the chair opposite from me. "Did you order yet?"

"Um... Not yet, I was just going thorough the options."

"Oh, then may I? Their cappuccinos are the best I've ever had." 

I beg to differ, I thought, knowing all too well that no other coffee could even come close to the one they served at Magic Beans. 

"Sure, I'd love to try it." Was all I said, with a polite smile to go with. 

The drinks didn't take too long to come to the table and once they did, Monica and I were already engaged in a conversation about my book. Who knew meetings could be this fun?

"I gotta say, I fell absolutely in love with your book."

"Thank you so much." I said, a wave of relief washing over me as I took in her words. 

I spent a good hour and a half last night trying to choose what to wear for my meeting today and I ended up deciding to go with blue jeans, a white shirt with some vertical navy blue stripes and a blazer, just to make me look a bit more like the writer I want to be and not the homebody writer I am that would definitely prefer to go in her sweats. A blazer always does the trick. A blazer and, obviously, my black stilettos. 

Monica looked a bit more formal with an all black and white woman pant suit, but I still felt like I chose wisely. 

"It's a great book. It's fresh, it's new, it's... different from all those romance books that usually land on my lap, and I liked it."

I thanked her again and took a sip of my cappuccino, that by the way, was good, but not as good as the ones from Hampstead. 

"Now, let's talk about what you want." The statement threw me off a little. "You're the writer, you call the shots."

"My main goal is to publish it. I have more ideas, I can make this my living, I know it. Being a published author is all I've ever dreamed of."

The confidence with which I spoke right now was nowhere to be seen last year, and to be honest if the last year me would be sitting here right now, I think she'd blow this meeting.

"I love that." Monica replied instantly. "But first things first - I loved the story, but my job is to verify everything in that manuscript you sent me. See if all the facts are real, if it all adds up in the end, and talk some things through with the publishers to see if they need any changes to be made."

The last part of her speech caught me off guard. "Um... Changes?"

"Nothing major! You've got nothing to worry about, I've done this a million times." Her reassuring smile wasn't enough to calm my speeding heart though.

"Now, let's talk money. Usually the publishers I work with will want to meet with you and me to set the number, but I just want to know where your head is regarding this subject in case they ask me first."

Money? I didn't even think about it until now.

Matt would say I was being reckless, Lucas would say I was leading with my heart. 

"Well, uh... If I'm being totally honest, I haven't given it much thought yet. I guess I'd be okay with seventy per cent for me, and thirty for you and the publishers."

"Great! That will be your first offer, they'll want to negotiate and when that time comes we'll see what we can do."

"Okay."

What else can I say now?

"I want to get to know you a little bit more, if that's okay." Monica seems to be one of those people who breathe confidence and can lead the whole meeting without a hitch, and that put me a little bit more at ease since I was too nervous to lead anything.

"Ask me anything." I say with a shrug of my shoulders.

Before she could pop out a question out her perfectly red painted lips, a waiter approached our table with a little basket filled with mini croissants. 

"Thank you." She said to him as he walked away, before turning to me. "He always knows how to treat me and my clients well."

I limited myself to smiling in response at her sentence. 

"So, who is Nicole Meyers? What are you like?" Her brown eyes squinted as she asked me those two questions. 

"Uh... I don't really know what to tell you. I'm the girl next door, I've always wanted to write and after years of working for my best friend as her secretary, I finished my first draft of my book and... here I am." She rested her upper body on the back of the chair while she looked at me. "I-I'm sorry if this is a bad answer, my boyfriend would probably be way more capable of answering your question than me."

At the mention of the word boyfriend, her attention increased. Her body was now leaning forward on the table, clearly more interested in this subject than my poor definition of who I am. 

"Well, why don't you start there? If that's okay, obviously."

"Sure." I shrugged again. "I actually met my boyfriend in London. I went there for a few months to write, to focus on the story, to get to know the city... And I met him. We became really close and we started dating roughly two months into our friendship."

"Sounds like you got yourself a little love story of your own." She said with a hint of a smirk on her lips. "Is he still in London?"

"No, he moved here with me."

At my latest statement her eyes opened wide, almost as if she couldn't believe a guy from London would move across the Atlantic ocean to be with me. I don't blame her, sometimes I can't believe it either. 

"Wow, now I can see why you write romance so well! You live it."

I chuckled at her words. "I mean, I wouldn't exactly say that, I've had my share of heartbreak too. I just... was lucky to found the one for me. And I was lucky that he chose to stick with me."

"You're a bit modest, that's good. Would you be interested in doing a book tour?"

"I'd love to!" I responded without thinking twice.

"Great. It seems like you'll adjust just fine to your new adventure."

We shared the still hot from the oven croissants, finished our caffeinated drinks and ended our meeting, but not without exchanging phone numbers first and setting up our next meeting for the next month so we could go to her office, where I'd be meeting with her again and the publishers.

Is it just me or is this all going way too fast?  And too well?

 * * *

Author's Note: 

Hey yall!! How's everyone doing?

I know it's been all about Pixar and Lucas' future and his career but this chapter we're finally getting more details on Nicole's path as a writer! 😍 And don't forget we still got Lucas' past to read about, and boy, oh boy, you're not ready!!

Lemme know what you're thinking, tell me all that's going through your mind right now, and... as always, vote and comment!

If you haven't read Part 1 and Part 2 please do, it's gonna be SO important!! 💘

NEWS ALERT: I've got a new romance book coming out sometime in the future, and I can't wait for you all to read it and I can't wait to let you know more about my new idea, stay tuned! ✨

Xoxo, Mars