Sent down from above, unconditionally love

 "I just want to know what's going on with you and Cassie's mother?"

Carmen felt herself shaking as she said it. She didn't want to say anything, but it was getting a little annoying. Justin seemed to be on his phone with her all the time.

"Not anything yet," Justin made a face as if she might know something he didn't. 

"Well, you..you talk to her..a lot," Carmen said as she broke up the sizzling ground meat and put in the chunks of onion and pepper.

"I don't know, if it'll amount to anything," He went back to the dishes he was drying. "Just something on the side." He winced.

"Something on the side?" Carmen was disgruntled.

"Well," he turned to her and landed against the kitchen counter. "She's trying to help me write."

"Write what?" Carmen  looked at him as if he needed to tell her everything.

"Oh, it won't be published here."

Justin sighed as he went to find the penne as the water was starting to boil.

"Published, you're going to publish something?"

He nodded. "Hopefully."

That's when he told her that Cassie's mother was rather popular in Chinese dramas. "Some of her stories were in dramas, but then she got in a little bit of trouble. They weren't as crazy about her bromances as they used to be. So, anyway, she's been in the states for a long while. She even has her citizenship. And, and she's worked on some graphic novels, in the states. 

"What's her name?" Carmen wanted to know if she'd read any of her work.

"I can't tell you, it's a secret."

Justin left it at that. 

"But how can she help you?" Carmen mixed in the tomato sauce and spices and stirred what was in the skillet.

"I'm helping her, or so she says, but I'm learning a lot about a genre I'm not that familiar with. She is helpful, and she seems to think I would do OK with Wuxia dramas." Justin told Carmen that she still  had dramas in China. She knew people who still helped her and were anxious to see if he could come up with some new stories on the web in China.