Enough. I stop this nonsense. Backpack Jack is no more. He was just another Hollandale Hiker. Or, in this case, Handsome Hiker. Nothing more. Nothing less. Gone for good. Stop thinking about him, Nix. Get him out of your head. You’re wasting minutes of your life. You’ve got bigger and better things to do. Get on with it.
And getting on with my evening is what I do. I head into the house with the remaining two inches of my cocktail in its tall glass and decide to work for an hour, or maybe longer; whatever my designing talent has in store for me.
* * * *
I can’t work, design…something. The penciled-lines, -fractions and -equations refuse to come to me. I stare at the drawing paper on the drafting table and…nothing flows. My hands and thoughts become dead. Everything is shut down at the m
