That’s what I’ve feared this whole time since I broke up with. . .fuck, I don’t even want to think of her name right now. Maybe that’s immature of me, but all it’s going to do is bring back memories, and that’s not the point. But since that whole thing happened I’ve feared that I’ve lost those impulses, those moments, those thoughts. Maybe they are just romance novels. I’ll take the criticism. Lots of sex, similar plots, cookie cutter characters. Guilty as charged. But what’s more important than that is the following—none of that matters. What matters is what Everleigh reminded me of last night. That my stories make differences in people’s lives, however small, and however temporary, they matter.
Books are escapism. It doesn’t matter what’s inside them, does it? No. What matters is how they effect people—how they change hearts and minds when their words are allowed to be committed to paper. Sometimes those words win Pulitzers and National Book Awards. And other times, well, they just turn people the fuck on and allow them to escape to fantasy land for a few hundred pages. People can judge that as they will, I certainly can’t stop them, but I don’t care about those people’s opinions. All I care about is my readers, and it took an amazing woman to remind me of that.
She’s also shown me, inadvertently, that my worst fears are just that. The words are there. The thoughts are still inside me when I stop and open my ears enough to truly listen. And even though it’s a cliche thing to say, she’s inspired me. Maybe that’s the wrong word. She hasn’t inspired me at all. She’s reminded me. Now it’s just about taking that memory and writing an amazing fucking book with it.
Here goes.
12
Everleigh
My head is pounding.
Fuck.
I must be getting old because I feel like I’ve been on a bender like Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas. The truth is that I had a few drinks with my best friends last night, but I guess I’m getting to be a lightweight the closer to thirty I get. Everyone tells me how young I am or how young I look. But trust me, 29 is a far cry from 21, and I’m feeling that near decade of difference right now in both temples. I open one eye first, and then the other, as though waking up in stages might make the pain I’m feeling less. It doesn’t work.
Shit, what the hell did I drink? Oh right, I remember now. The shots. All the damn shots.
I’m usually not the type to relive my college days, but being with your best friends on a far off fantasy land trip feels just like when you’re away at college. That’s where we all met. Our school was in a small town just like this one, and just like this one, there were plenty of places to remind you that you were far away from real life, and all of those places served alcohol.
I reach for my bag, which is lying right on the floor next to the bed. Without even looking I just feel around and grab onto the bottle of Tylenol I always keep in there. I sit myself up and down a few pills with the bottle of water on my nightstand. I can hear the shower going, so I guess Rowan is more functional this morning than I am. Good for her. I don’t remember if she drank as much as I must have. I don’t remember much, but I’m pretty sure it’s safe to assume that Harley isn’t up and in the shower right now. I’m sure she’s passed out.
I close my eyes while sitting up in bed, as though I have a migraine or something instead of an alcohol induced headache. It doesn’t help at all, but once my eyes are closed the first thing that comes into my mind’s eye isn’t the dinner last night, and it isn’t thoughts of the signing that’s going to happen in a few hours. When I close my eyes I see Michael Knight. I see him like I saw him last night in the alley—tall, imposing, full of confidence, and looking at me like I was all that he wanted in the world, as though he could see right inside of me. I could open my eyes right now but I force them to stay shut, and the pain in my temples disappears from my conscious mind. As soon as I come back to reality I’ll feel it again, I know, like the Coyote realizing that he’s about to fall off the cliff only when he looks down.
But not now.
Not yet.
First I want to remember him for a few seconds. I want to remember us, there in the alleyway, feeling dirty and unlike myself, yet loving every second. My heart was pounding, terrified someone would see us, yet wanting him to press me even harder into that car, to lift my body up in his strong arms and place me on the hood. I wanted him to explore every inch of my body while the fear of being seen, coupled with my arousal, made my heart beat race faster than it ever should. That didn’t happen. I stopped him in his tracks. I pulled away. I injected rationality and responsibility into a situation that was all about feel and being in the moment. I know it was the right thing to do, especially for him, but that doesn’t mean that I wanted to.
I know he would have fucked me right then and there outside of the restaurant. I could feel his hardness against me. I could feel the force in his arms and the passion in his kiss. But he’s a man, and I knew that the last thing on his mind in that moment was his career, but I also knew that the last thing he needed while trying to rebuild everything he felt he’d lost was to be seen screwing a reader in an alleyway near his own signing. There would have been no recovering from that. I would have been the anonymous, slut groupie, but it wouldn’t have affected my life at all. But for Michael. . .for Michael that would have been it.
So I stopped us and went out with the girls.
But I wanted him.
I still want him. And if I didn’t have such care for his career, he’d be waking up next to me right now. I open my eyes as Ro steps out of the bathroom, a wall of steam trailing behind her. Her hair and body are wrapped in two huge towels, and she still has beads of water on her chest just below her neck. “Hey sleepy head,” she says, smiling at me like a mom with a sick kid.
“What in the hell did I drink last night?” As I ask her that question the pain comes back in full force, and I feel the pressure in my temples with even more intensity than I had a few minutes ago.
“What didn’t you drink is the better question,” she answers, starting to towel dry her hair. “And the answer would be a resounding ‘nothing.’ For real, I felt like we were pledging Kappa Theta Omega again.”
Kappa. I haven’t heard or thought of those three words in years, but they’ll always have a special place in my heart. I was kind of the reluctant sorority chick in college. Ro and Harley are a year older than me, and we met at orientation at Ralph Emerson University in New England after I arrived in the summer before my freshman year, wide-eyed and more than a little naive. Rowan and Harley were sophomores at the time, and both of them were members of the Kappa Theta Omega sorority. They convinced me to pledge, and before too long we were all just sorority sisters and best friends. Not much has changed between us since then, except now we have jobs and follow our favorite romance authors around the country looking for autographs. My little sister, Hadley, is pledging Kappa right now. It’s becoming a family tradition.
“Those days are long gone, but my post drinking headaches definitely feel the same.” I’m not kidding when I say that. The reason I never drank much, even in college, was that I get ridiculously painful hangovers that last longer than they do for most people. I did one of those DNA tests a while back and it turns out that I have a high sensitivity to alcohol, so I generally avoided getting blitzed like I was twenty-one all over again.
“I didn’t recognize you last night. But it was kind of cool to see you let loose at the same time.”
“I’m glad I looked cool. It totally makes this worth it. I think I may throw up, by the way.”
“Again?”
“What do you mean again?” I ask.
“I mean I spent half of my night standing behind you in the bathroom with a fistful of your hair. You really don’t remember?”
I shake my head. I also tend to black out when I drink, even if I’m not that drunk. I just kind of lose time. “I sure don’t, but I believe you. I need to get my shit together, we have a signing to attend.”
“Tell me
about it,” Ro says. “This isn’t even my thing. You dragged me here.”
“I dragged you here?” I raise my eyebrow at her. Sometimes her fake conservatism annoys me. Especially when I’m already in a bad mood. “Stop telling yourself that. I didn’t drag you anywhere. You’re here because you want to be here. The sooner you admit it to yourself the better time you’ll have. Just give into it, already.”
“I can’t,” she says. “Irish-Catholic guilt. It’s hard to shake. You wouldn’t get it unless you were raised in a house like mine.”
She’s right on both counts. I don’t understand, and that’s entirely because I didn’t grow up like she did. My parents were cool people. Educated, liberal, progressive, and generally let me make my own mistakes in life. Rowan was one of six children, the first generation American daughter of immigrants from Dublin, and the story of her childhood read like a modern version of Angela’s Ashes. I love her mom and dad, but they’re old school Irish Catholic immigrants, and they mastered the art of making her feel guilty about almost everything, so it takes a lot to pull her out of her shell sometimes.
“I know,” I tell her. “But, still, don’t turn that shit on me. I didn’t drag you here.”
“I know,” she says, sounding guilty. “It’s just hard to shake. I feel weird being here to meet a bunch of guys I don’t know who write sex books.”
“Romance,” I correct her. “And a little erotica. Depends on which guy you mean, they’re all a little different.”
“Now who’s convincing themselves of something?”
“What do you mean?
“Oh, come on, Everleigh,” she says, sounding a little annoyed herself. “You can call them whatever label makes you feel better, but the fact of the matter is that they’re sex books.”
“Bullshit!” I say, the pain in my head secondary to the annoyance I’m starting to feel at her judgement, of all people.
“It’s the truth. Let me ask you this—if there were no sex in these books do you think that women would read them? You really think that if Fifty Shades was just a book about a timid secretary working for a high powered businessman with no S&M that it would have sold a gazillion copies? Come on.”
“Even if you’re right, so what? Who cares? You go to an action flick to see car chases and gun fights. You go to a comedy club to laugh. So what?”
“And you read sex books to do what, then?”
Check mate. She has a point, even if I don’t want to concede her argument just yet. If I’m being as honest as I’m asking her to be, the fact is that romance books are about sex—they just are. Even though I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, we live in a conservative country founded by people who viewed sex as a dirty thing to be discussed only in private. A few hundred years later and we’re still passing those bullshit beliefs through generations. But Ro is technically correct. If you took the exact same books and removed all the sex, the stories wouldn’t hold up. The sex is the glue that binds the stories together in romance—it’s the foundation of everything else. But again, I fail to see why that’s a problem or something to be ashamed of.
“Sex. . .romance novels give you an escape, just like everything else. They take you to places that you’re not in in real life. They let you be with men you’d honestly never have a chance with, if they even existed like they do in the books, which they really don’t. And yeah, romance is female porn. I’m not gonna lie. Guys look at YouPorn on their phones and give themselves a good tug. Us women like a little storyline and description in our porn. So what?”
“Fine. You’re right.”
“Huh?” I almost can’t believe my ears. Ro can be as stubborn as she can be conservative at times, so hearing her give in like this is freaking me out a little bit. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you right. I’m what now?”
“Shut up,” she says. “You heard me. You’re right, okay? You’re right. And how do I know? ‘Cause I downloaded one of their books last night and read the whole damn thing in one sitting before I went to bed.”
“Wait, you did what?” Now I really don’t believe my ears. “I’m gonna need to hear you say that all one more time.”
“Last night, in between assisting your vomit sessions and sobering up myself, I took out my phone and downloaded a book. I figured that with you being sick I couldn’t just go to sleep until I knew you were okay, so I. . .occupied myself for a while.”
“Holy shit,” I say, the smile on my face growing as I stare at my friend in amazement. “You’re one of us now. You popped your romance cherry. Which book was it?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It sure as hell does!” I say. Just then I hear a knock at our door, followed by Harley’s voice.
“What are you talking about?” she yells through the door. “I could hear your voices going all high through the wall.”
I’m shocked that she’s up and about, but I’m ten times more shocked at what Rowan is saying. Despite the pain in my head, I jump out of bed and rush to the door to let Harley in. She needs to hear this conversation. “Oh. My. God!” I tell her.
“What?”
“Our baby’s not a virgin anymore.”
“What?” Harley repeats, not having any idea what I’m talking about. I open the door all the way and she comes in and sits on the bed. She doesn’t look disheveled or hung over at all, she looks beautiful as always. “What are you saying, now?”
“Oh, God!” Rowan cries, covering her eyes in embarrassment.
“Well, Har, it seems that, unbeknownst to my drunk and passed out self, Rowan took to Amazon to download a romance novel, which she read in a few hours last night.”
“No shit!” Harley blurts out. “Which one?”
“And now you’re all caught up,” I say. “I was just trying to find that very thing out when you started knocking.”
“Well?” Harley says, staring at Rowan. “At least tell me which author it was.”
“Grayson. It was Grayson. He’s a really. . .talented writer.”
“Grayson? No shit, huh?” I’m a little shocked, but not really. “Very interesting.”
“Why is that interesting?” Rowan asks.
“Because it is,” Harley answers before I have the chance. “On a few levels. I like Grayson’s books. I’m more of a Colton girl, myself. Maybe I can just relate to his storylines a little more.”
“I bet you can,” I joke.
“What can I say,” she starts. “We all like what we like. I’m into his MMA series. ”
“Then we’ve come to the perfect place, haven’t we?”
“You, especially,” Ro says, giving me the raised eyebrow. I don’t remember much from last night, but I remember telling them all about Michael and me. I would have felt guilty keeping it from them—we’ve always told each other everything when it comes to guys and relationships—so this wasn’t going to be something I would feel comfortable keeping from them. They didn’t judge me when I told them, but they were surprised I’d hook up with a guy that fast. That wasn’t like me at all.
“Yeah, it seems so,” I say.
“Is it going to be weird seeing him later? Handing him a book to sign when you almost slept together last night?”
“I don’t know,” I say to Harley. “I guess we’ll see.”
“Yeah,” she answers. “I have an even better question.”
“What’s that?”
“How much heat is he packing?”
“What?”
“His dick, Ev. His dick. How big is it?”
“I didn’t really get to see it. I’m not sure. Don’t worry about his dick.”
“I’m not worried,” she says, looking mischievous. “I’m just curious. I’d like to know if renowned romance author Michael Knight is packing a hammer or not.”
“How would I know? We didn’t fuck.”
“But you felt it, right?” This time it’s Rowan chiming in, confirming all of my suspicions about her score on the freak scale.
“Yeah, I felt it. I grabbed hold of it, actually. It was. . .substantial.”
“I knew it!” Harley screams. “I knew he had a big one. But is it long or thick? Or both?”
“I think our game of twenty questions about his cock has come to an end, Har.”
“Okay, fine. But keep me updated as things progress.”
“I’ll stop in the middle to text you, including pics.”
“That’s my girl.”
I’m done talking about Michael’s cock, but I’m not done thinking about it. I’m not just remembering either. I’m fantasizing. I’m projecting into the future. I’m seeing a reality where we didn’t just make out and do some heavy petting, but where our naked bodies are crashing against one another, and he fills me up with that giant cock of his. Soon, I think, it’s going to happen very soon.
13
Knight
Setting up a table at a signing is work.
Good work, but work, nonetheless.
After grabbing a quick breakfast together at a local diner, Gray, Colt and I get back to the hotel and walk down to the singing room in full Wordsmith solidarity. When we do it looks like a house that someone just moved into, only they haven’t unpacked any of their shit yet. Huge brown boxes filled with paperbacks decorate the floor. Next to them are our banners and envelopes holding the swag—free extras like stickers, bookmarks, buttons, and custom pens—that each of us brought with our logos and book covers on them.
One of Grayson’s readers, Connie, helped run point on this event with the hotel, and when we get to the signing room she’s already there taking inventory and helping unpack Gray’s stuff. She lives in the area and has stayed here a bunch of times. She was good enough to help with things like negotiating a reduced bulk rate for rooms, getting us space to actually have the signing in, and a bunch of other logistical matters that, quite frankly, we’re too irresponsible and busy to be trusted with. If Colton or I had been in charge of any of that, our readers would be fucked right now, so I’m glad Connie is in charge. She’s super responsible and everything she’s touched so far has been golden.
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