"Jesus, Ethan, have you even opened a window in here?"
Maya wrinkled her nose as she stepped into the apartment. The place smelled of burnt coffee and stale air. Stacks of books leaned dangerously against the walls, and on the desk sat Ethan, hunched over his laptop like it was an enemy.
"It's called focus," he said without looking up.
"It's called suffocating." She brushed a pile of crumpled paper off the chair and sat down. "What are you working on?"
Ethan let out a humorless laugh. "You're looking at it."
Maya glanced at the screen. Nothing but a blinking cursor. She raised her brows. "Groundbreaking."
He groaned and snapped the laptop shut. "You're hilarious."
"You're impossible," she shot back. "How long's it been? Weeks? Months? You can't keep staring at blank pages and calling it writing."
Ethan rubbed his face with both hands. He looked exhausted, like sleep hadn't touched him in days. "I've tried, Maya. Every time I start, it just… dies. It's all clichés, recycled garbage. Like I used to know how to write and someone ripped it out of me."
Maya leaned forward, her tone softening. "You had one bad draft. Big deal. That doesn't mean you're done."
He shook his head. "You don't get it. That first book—people think it was luck. A freak accident. If I don't prove I can do it again, then they're right. I'll be the guy who peaked at twenty-nine. Another washed-up name in the remainder bin."
For a moment, she just looked at him. His hair was a mess, his eyes bloodshot, his desk a graveyard of empty mugs. He looked less like a writer and more like someone being eaten alive by his own thoughts.
"Maybe," she said finally, "the problem isn't the words. Maybe it's you."
He frowned. "What the hell does that mean?"
"You don't go anywhere, you don't do anything, you don't live. You're trying to squeeze blood out of a stone. No wonder you're empty." She stood, grabbing her bag. "You want to write something real? Then get out there and find something worth writing about. Someone worth writing about."
Ethan didn't answer. He just sat there as she left, the door clicking shut behind her. The silence pressed in on him.
He reopened the laptop. The cursor blinked again, steady, patient, like it knew something he didn't. He stared at it until the words slipped out, barely more than a whisper.
"What if it's gone?"