At First Sight by Nicholas Sparks Page A

yet to say a single word to him, but he was pretty good at taking the occasional message. They were hard to read and sometimes smeared with . . . something-embalming fluid, maybe, or whatever else he used to stuff the critters-but whatever it was helped the notes stick directly to the door, and neither Jed nor Jeremy cared about the syrupy stain left in the aftermath.
He’d also settled into a routine of sorts. Lexie had been right-there wasn’t the slightest possibility of high-speed Internet access at Greenleaf, but he’d jerry-rigged a way to dial in to retrieve e-mail and do slow-motion searches, during which time he might wait five minutes for a page to load. On a positive note, the glacial pace of the connection gave him reason to head to the library most days. Sometimes he and Lexie would visit in her office, other times they’d head to lunch, but after an hour or so together, she’d say something like “You know I’d love to visit with you all day, but I do have to get some work done.” He’d take the hint and head back to one of the computer terminals, where he’d pretty much taken up residence for his research. His agent, Nate, had been calling him repeatedly, leaving messages and wondering aloud whether Jeremy had any great ideas for a future story, “since the television deal isn’t dead yet!” Like most agents, Nate was an optimist above all. Jeremy seldom had an answer other than that Nate would be the first to know. Jeremy hadn’t come up with a story, nor had he written even a column, since he’d been down south. With so much going on, it was easy to be distracted.
Or so he tried to convince himself. The fact was he’d had a couple of ideas, but nothing had come of them. Whenever he sat down to write, it was as if his brain turned to mush and his fingers became arthritic. He’d write a sentence or two, spend fifteen to twenty minutes evaluating his work, and then finally delete it. He spent entire days writing and deleting, with nothing to show at the end. Sometimes he wondered why the keyboard suddenly seemed to hate him, but he shrugged it off, knowing he had more important things on his mind.
Like Lexie. And the wedding. And the baby. And, of course, the bachelor party. Alvin had been trying to finalize the date since Jeremy had left, but that depended on the parks department. Despite Lexie’s endless reminders on the subject, Jeremy hadn’t been able to get through to anyone who might be able to help. In the end, he’d finally told Alvin to schedule the bachelor party for the last weekend in April, figuring the sooner the better, and Alvin hung up with an excited cackle and a promise to make it a night he wouldn’t forget.
It wouldn’t take much. As much as he was . . . getting used to Boone Creek, it wasn’t New York, and he realized he missed the place. Granted, he’d known it would be a major adjustment before he agreed to move down here, but he was still amazed by the utter lack of things to do. In New York, he’d been able to leave his apartment, walk two blocks in either direction, and find a slew of movies to see, everything from the latest action-adventure flick to something arty and French. Boone Creek didn’t even have a theater, and the nearest one-in Washington-had only three screens, one of which seemed perennially to show the latest cartoon offering from Disney. In New York, there was always a new restaurant to try and food that suited whatever mood he might be in, from Vietnamese to Italian to Greek to Ethiopian; in Boone Creek, dinner out was either cardboard pizza or home cooking at Ned’s Diner, a place where everything was fried and so much oil floated in the air that you had to wipe your forehead with a napkin before leaving. He’d actually overheard folks at the counter talking about the best way to filter bacon grease for maximum flavor and how much fatback-whatever that was-to add to collard greens before topping the whole mess with butter. Leave it to